The Value Structure of Action

τὸ μὲν που ἀρετὴν αὐτοῖν καλεῖς, τὸ δὲ κακίαν; Πῶς γὰρ οὔ; Οὐκοῦν τὴν μὲν δικαιοσύνην ἀρετήν, τὴν δὲ ἀδικίαν κακίαν;

"You call one of them, I presume, a virtue and the other a vice?" "Of course." "Justice the virtue and injustice the vice?"

Plato, The Republic, 348c, Plato V, Republic I, Books I-V, translated by Paul Shorey, Loeb Classical Library [Harvard University Press, 1930, 1969, pp.84-85]; Socrates questioning Thrasymachus.

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In weather, climate is what you expect; weather is what you get. In ethics, purposes are what you intend; consequences are what you get.

Τηλεπατητικός (Telepateticus)

The distinctions between means and ends, and between being and doing, result in the following structure of action, from beginning to middle to end, upon which much ethical terminology, and the basic forms of ethical theory (ethics of virtues, action, and consequences), are based. Note that "mean" in this context originally meant "middle," as it still does in statistics and in scientific expressions like "the mean annual temperature" of a place. This is very different from "mean" as the verb form of "meaning," or "mean" as in a petty, small (), or hostile, malevolent attitude -- the Confucian , "mean person."

Note that the opposite of "virtue," Latin virtus, Greek ἀρετή, is "vice." This is from Latin vitium, but there is no independent root for the idea in Greek. "Vice" in Classical Greek is κακία, kakía, from κακός, kakós, "bad" (cf. "cacophony"). The opposites of ἀρετή and κακία are illustrated in the Plato quote above. In turn, "bad" in Latin is malus (cf. Nietzsche on malus). See discussion of the terms in relation to the vice of greed.

In English, there is the curious difference that "vice" can be personal failings that perhaps are only chronically serious (e.g. smoking), while the corresponding adjective, "vicious" (Latin vitiosus) is used for something or someone immediately harmful, hostile, and even criminal. A person may have vices that can be colorful or amusing, but a vicious person is someone to carefully avoid. Also, a dog can be vicious; but a dog otherwise really cannot have vices or virtues, if these are conscious moral qualities rather than just habits from training.

A parallel case of differentiation between noun and adjective is something we also see in Greek, where κάλλος, "beauty," is a matter of physical appearance alone, while κάλος, "beautiful," can mean noble or morally virtuous as well as physically appealing. Similarly, in English, since "bad" is an adjective but not a noun, "evil" as a noun need not have the moral connotation that "evil" does as an adjective. Disease is an evil of human life, but usually not a moral evil.

Source of Action, Will, Character Χαρακτήρ	Means, Μέσα	Ends, Τέλη
	Actions, Means to Ends	Consequences, Ends of Action
Good and evil persons, good and ill will, intentions. aretaic judgments: judgments of moral worth of character, or virtues (Greek ἀρετή, aretê; Arabic , murūʾah, مُرُوءَة) [note]. virtue ethics: Plato & Aristotle, e.g. wisdom, justice, bravery, temperance; no rules. Compare the Boy Scout Law: to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Contrast the Seven Deadly Sins, or Vices, κακίαι: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust.	Moral right and wrong, good and evil actions (also instrumental goods, means that are simply effective to bring about some end). deontic judgments, judgments of obligation (Greek δέον, déon = needful, right, proper). deontological theories: the nature of actions instead of or as well as the consequences determines moral worth; must have rules to judge nature of actions. Ambiguous whether such theories include or exclude the value of ends. Inclusive theories generate dilemmas.	Purposes non-moral value, good and bad things obtained by actions. What is the Good? pleasure, virtue, happiness, being, life, knowledge? teleological theories: only consequences determine moral worth. (Greek τέλος, télos = end). Teleological theories, such as Utilitarianism, may actively exclude individual rights, what Bentham called "nonsense on stilts." Thus, "the end justifies the means."
Being	Doing	Ends
Moral character, virtues, what a person is: honest, trustworthy, etc.; what we know about people when we know them & trust them to behave in characteristic ways. The vicious person, however, we know to fear and avoid.	Actions, manifestation of moral character; what we expect from what we know of people, or what we use to establish what we know about people; a bad person may do what is right, and a good person may do what is wrong.	Results of actions. What has been caused and brought about. Is it good? Is it worth achieving with wrongful actions? Can right conduct produce bad results? Can good intentions produce bad results?

The common definitions of teleological and deontological ethics, in terms of means and ends, result in some logical confusion that is a real source of error in the history of ethics. If we begin with the definition of a teleological ethical theory as one where only the ends count (as in the basic form of act Utilitarianism), this secures things pretty clearly. If only the ends (consequences) count, then the ends do count, but the means do not count.

In the traditional Square of Opposition at right, the truth of "only the ends count" implies (1) the truth of "the ends count" and the falsehood of both (2) "the means count" and (3) "only the means count." The simple proposition "the means count" contradicts the proposition "only the ends count."

If the basic meaning of a deontological ethical theory is that it contradicts the basic premise of a teleological theory, then all we have is the truth of "the means count." This then does not logically imply either the truth or the falsehood of either "only the means count" or "the ends count." So we are left with a significant ambiguity about the meaning of deontological ethics. This can go either way. "Only the means count" and "the ends count" contradict each other and so cannot be both true or both false. Picking one determines the other. This has been a source of great confusion in ethics, where we often have the sense that because "only the means count" and "only the ends count" are logically exclusive (they cannot both be true), they are therefore logical contradictories (the falsehood of one implies that truth of the other), which they are not. In fact, they can both be false.

Traditional deontological theories in ethics, where the consequences are absolutely irrelevant to right action (e.g. Kant, Confucius), do tend to go with "only the means count." This can be called a strong or exclusive deontological theory. With either a teleological or an exclusive deontological ethical theory, there are no ethical dilemmas of the common "the right versus the good" form. The goodness of the ends is the only consideration for a teleological theory, and the rightness of the means is the only consideration for an exclusive deontological theory. To the extent that such dilemmas are ruled out rather than accounted for, we may say that the given of ethical life (with dilemmas) falsifies both teleological and exclusive deontological ethical theories.

The alternative then, is to go with the other logical possibility for deontological ethics:  Both the means and the ends count. This allows for common dilemmas, since good ends may be chosen despite the wrongness of the means used to obtain them OR the right means may be chosen despite the fact that they lead to bad or worse ends than the wrong means. This is a weak or inclusive deontological ethics. What it implies is just the Polynomic Theory of Value, where the means and ends are judged in terms of different domains of value, which may agree or conflict in their valence. Similar dilemmas can occur between further distinct domains of value, including conflicts between the domains here represented by being and doing. Consequently, this all represents a significant discovery in ethics for the Friesian School.

"A world is supported by four things...." She held up four big-knuckled fingers. "...the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing...." She closed her fingers into a fist. "...without a ruler who knows the art of ruling."

The Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, Truthsayer of the Emperor, Dune, by Frank Herbert [Ace Books, 1965, p.37]; three virtues -- wisdom, justice, & courage -- plus piety, in prayer, and finally the "art of ruling," Sanskrit, अर्थशास्त्र, Arthaśāstra. Temperance is missing.

The absence of piety, ὁσία, let alone prayer, εὐχή, among the formal virtues in Plato and Aristotle is noteworthy, although Plato's dialogue, the Euthyphro is about piety entirely, and we do find Socrates saying prayers, as at Phaedo 117c. For the "art of ruling," we have the title of Aristotle's, Politics, Πολιτικά. And then there is Machiavelli.

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[5] καὶ αὐτὸ τοῦτο δὲ σπουδὴν πᾶσαν παρεισενέγκαντες ἐπιχορηγήσατε ἐν τῇ πίστει ὑμῶν τὴν ἀρετήν, ἐν δὲ τῇ ἀρετῇ τὴν γνῶσιν, [6] ἐν δὲ τῇ γνώσει τὴν ἐγκράτειαν, ἐν δὲ τῇ ἐγκρατείᾳ τὴν ὑπομονήν, ἐν δὲ τῇ ὑπομονῇ τὴν εὐσέβειαν, [7] ἐν δὲ τῇ εὐσεβείᾳ τὴν φιλαδελφίαν, ἐν δὲ τῇ φιλαδελφίᾳ τὴν ἀγάπην.

[5] Vos autem curam omnem subinferentes, ministrate in fide vestra virtutem, in virtute autem scientiam, [6] in scientia autem abstinentiam, in abstinentia autem patientiam, in patientia autem pietatem, [7] in pietate autem amorem fraternitatis, in amore autem fraternitatis caritatem.

[5] And beside this, having brought in all diligence, supply also to your faith [πίστις] virtue [ἀρετή]; and to virtue knowledge [γνῶσις]; [6] And to knowledge self-control [ἐγκράτεια]; and to self-control patience [ὑπομονή]; and to patience piety [εὐσέβεια]; [7] And to piety brotherly love [φιλαδελφία]; and to brotherly love divine love [ἀγάπη].

2 Peter 1:5-7, cf. σέβας, "reverential awe, object of awe, holiness, majesty," εὐσεβής, "pious, religious; holy, hallowed, sacred."

The Seven Sins and Virtues

In Mediaeval Europe the "Four Cardinal Virtues" -- wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance -- were the virtues listed in Plato's Republic. The three Christian or Theological virtues -- faith, hope, and charity -- were given by St. Paul (Corinthians I, 13:13). These seven together are sometimes said to correspond to the Seven Deadly Sins -- pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust (in this form the original work of Pope Gregory the Great). So far, however, I have not seen these systematically matched up and explained.

A clue, however, may be found in Dante's Divine Comedy. The levels of Purgatory in the Purgatorio are organized around the Seven Sins, while the levels of Heaven are organized around the seven virtues in the Paradiso. If we match these up, top to top and bottom to bottom, we get the first two sections (3 columns of virtues, 2 of vices) of the following table.

Virtues				Vices
	Love/ Charity	Caritas	愛 ài	Lust	Luxuria
	Hope	Spes	望 wàng	Gluttony	Gula
	Faith	Fides	信 xìn	Avarice/ Greed	Avaritia
	Temperance	Temperantia	中 zhōng	Sloth	Acedia, La Paresse
	Justice	Justitia	義 yì	Wrath	Ira
	Courage	Fortitudo	勇 yǒng	Envy [note]	Invidia, L'Envie
	Wisdom	Sapientia	智 zhì	Pride	Superbia

At the top of the table are Love (or Charity), which of course is the most characteristic of God in Christianity, and Lust, characteristic of the highest circle of Purgatory for Dante, and which may be the functional equivalent of love for some people. It is not hard to see how Love and Lust correspond to each other. The others, if they are really supposed to correspond, pose more of a challenge.

That Wrath can be a corrupted sense of Justice is something that we might see at the end of the very disturbing movie Seven [1995], where Brad Pitt, who has tracked down the serial murderer Kevin Spacey (who has killed people he thinks are guilty of each of the Seven Deadly Sins) and has just discovered that the man has also murdered and decapitated Pitt's own pregnant wife, kills him. This exemplifies Wrath, but it also happens to be Just Retribution. Divine Justice, indeed, has commonly been characterized as the Wrath of God.

Someone who thinks they are Wise, but isn't, is likely to be Proud.

Felix Vallotton, La Paresse, "Sloth," 1896

One who is Slothful, may sometimes appear Temperant, but only because they are too lazy to do wrong or overindulge, not because they are deliberately restraining themselves. Explanations could be produced for the other matches, but they seem less obvious.

This old etching at left for "Sloth" interests me because I have three other images at this site of a naked woman lying prone on a bed. But those are not images of sloth. The women are all reading books. Here, we just see the woman playing with a cat. One of the other images is the painting by Hermann Fenner-Behmer given below. I knew a woman who would read like this. After a while, it would become difficult to leave her be. There is another Paresse, of rather different import, painting by Gustave Courbet [note].

After the list of virtues, I have added what are the rough Chinese equivalents. Chinese philosophy has its own canonical virtues, so there is no reason to think that the matches will be exact, but, especially for faith, hope, and charity, there is some interest, among Chinese Christians, in providing equivalents. But there are other good matches. "Moderation" is key idea in Confucianism; and so the character for the "mean" or the "middle," , nicely corresponds to the idea behind "temperance." The character for "right," , does not simply and directly mean "justice," but it is used in binomes for "justice" and partakes of some of the ambiguity that we see in the Greek term δίκαιος, which basically means "just" but is used frequently for what is right in general.

I don't know why, but a small industry now seems to have developed over the Seven Sins. Multiple books have been published, and The History Channel has featured a series on the Sins, often featuring authors of the recent books.

Vices		Virtues
Lust	Luxuria	Chastity
Gluttony	Gula	Abstinence
Avarice/ Greed	Avaritia	Liberality
Sloth	Acedia, La Paresse	Diligence
Wrath	Ira	Patience
Envy	Invidia, L'Envie	Kindness
Pride	Superbia	Humility

In the table at right are what are called the "Heavenly" or "Contrary" virtues, which clearly are intended as the opposites of the Seven Sins. I had not heard of these for years, but they may originate, like the Sins themselves, in the pious moralizing of Late Antiquity. These terms all derive from Classical Greek, but several of them are only used in the New Testament, and γενναιοδωρία, "liberality" or "generosity" (literally "noble giving"), with the most appropriate meaning, although with ancient roots, I only find in Modern Greek.

One interesting addition to the lore mentioned in these venues is the demonology of the Sins.

Vice		Demon
Lust	Luxuria	Asmodeus
Gluttony	Gula	Beelzebub
Avarice/ Greed	Avaritia	Mammon
Sloth	Acedia	Belphagor
Wrath	Ira	Amon
Envy	Invidia	Leviathan
Pride	Superbia	Lucifer

From the 16th century we have the demon of Lust identified as "Asmodeus," of Gluttony as "Beelzebub," of Avarice as "Mammon," of Sloth as "Belphagor," of Wrath as "Amon," of Envy as "Leviathan," and of Pride as "Lucifer." A curious thing about this list is that several of the names, especially "Beelzebub" and "Lucifer," are alternative names for Satan himself. Indeed, I wasn't aware the "Lucifer" could possibly refer to anyone else. "Mammon" is now commonly used to mean wealth and greed -- Jesus says that you cannot serve God and Mammon, without saying really what "Mammon" is [Matthew 6:24].

This may be an example of a general problem with supernatural beings, whether different names go with different beings or belong to the same one.

Hermann Fenner-Behmer (1866-1913), The Bookworm, 1910, detail; complete painting in popup.

The same dynamic can be seen in India, where Brahmā and Prajapati may or may not be the same person, and goddesses like Kālī, Pārvatī, and Mahādevī are worshiped independently but at some level of theory seem to merge into a single Goddess. We also get something of the sort with the difference between, say, the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Virgin of Fatima. They are clearly both supposed to be the Virgin Mary, but they each have a separate cult and very different associations. In Classical religion, of course, this is like the differences between Athena Parthenos, Athena Promachos, Athena Nike, etc. With the demonology of the Sins, however, the assignments may well be the imaginative work of a single idiosyncratic modern writer.

Envy and Jealousy in Peter Toohey's Jealousy

The Virtues of Franklin and Wooden

The Roman Catholic Church (i.e. the Church of the Latin Rite under the authority of the Bishop of Rome) includes, of course, a system of moral teaching, largely founded on Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. As we see in the Catechism of the Catholic Church [Doubleday, 1995, pp. 407, 411; translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, United States Catholic Conference, Inc., Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994], the "Sources of Morality" are divided up in a fashion comparable, in some ways, to the system here [with the section numbers of the edition, pp.485-487]:

The treatment of the "sources of morality" in the Catechism begins in medias res, i.e. "in the middle of things," in terms of the analysis above, with the action considered first. However, there is a significant ambiguity here. The "object chosen" can mean either the action that is the immediate manifestation of the will (the legal actus reus), or the goal, end, or purpose that the action is intended and expected to bring about. This confuses the means and the ends of action and thus does not promise a clear analysis, despite the later statement, suddenly introducing the distinction, that "The end does not justify the means." This ambiguity puts us in the position that we cannot immediately say whether the system of morality will be deontological or teleological. The absence of the terms right and wrong, and a preference for the terminology of "good" and "evil," betrays a neglect of the centrality of the action itself in moral judgment. The "virtue ethics" form of Aristotelian ethics may explain the underdeveloped character of the distinctions.

The end of action as such is introduced under the heading of the intention, which again involves an ambiguity, since the inherent value of an end, as a good or evil object, is a different question from the internal quality of the intention or motive (the legal mens rea). Thus, a good action, such as distributing food to the poor, although causally resulting in a good end, that the poor have been fed, may be done from a bad motive, for an ulterior end, "in order to be seen by men." This may be seen as something that "corrupts the action," but the action and its outcome as such actually remain good and laudable. As Sir James Frazer said, it is better (for all the rest of us) to have people doing good from bad motives that doing evil from good ones. The objective value of the action or its natural outcome are different from what the subject thinks he is doing, and why. The Catholic system makes it difficult to separate these elements.

What are then called the "circumstances" of the action involve a further ambiguity. The circumstances of an action may determine whether it is right or wrong, or even a moral issue at all. But the Catechism includes the consequences in these "circumstances," which again confuses the means with the ends. The statement of §1760, that "A morally good act requires the goodness of its object, of its end, and of its circumstances together," is simply false. As we see in moral dilemmas, right action may have bad consequences, or wrong action good consequences. Hence the dilemmas. The act of killing may be right or wrong depending on the circumstances, with good or bad consequences, or even good or bad motives, occurring quite independently. A person may hate another and wish them dead yet quite justifiably end up killing them in self-defense -- and thankful for the opportunity to do so. In fact, a morally good act does require a morally innocent motive -- an act of out good will. That does not affect whether the action is right or wrong in itself. Jesus may reproach the killer for ill will, but the law will stop at a justifiable actus reus. Yet the formula just quoted does not even mention the motive, unless, because of the previous ambiguity, the phrase "of its end" is supposed to refer to the mens rea.

Failure to Distinguish
Means from Ends	Intention from Object i.e. Determination of Will from Action or Purpose	Circumstances from Consequences i.e. what may determine the rightness of an action from what results from the action
Failure to Order in Sequence: Will from Action from Consequences

Thus, every one of the three "Sources of Morality" cited in the Catechism involves ambiguity and confusion that subvert an understanding of the structure of morality. Some of the consequences of these confusions may be seen in the general statement, "There are some concrete acts -- such as fornication -- that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil." Choosing a moral evil may involve a "disorder of the will," and fornication may even be, ex hypothese, an intrinsic moral evil; but a "disorder of the will" is not entailed by the act, as this statement asserts, unless fornication is itself a evil independently of an ordered or disordered will. Thus, it doesn't explain anything to a person committing fornication to say, "You have a disordered will." They will want to know why, in itself, fornication is wrong. We are not told that here and are provided with nothing that would enable us to figure it out. Instead, the confusion we see in these distinctions allows a statement like that to come in "under the radar."

Despite these confusions, Catholicism features conceptions of atonement and expiation that are generally superior to what we find elsewhere in philosophy and religion. These motivate the theory of Purgatory, which, although rejected by Protestants, is morally more sophisticated than their view of forgiveness, redemption, and the afterlife.

The terminology used by Confucius easily fits the categories of the analysis above. The discussion of Confucianism is reserved for the page at the link. We should note, however, that, while Confucius has no theoretical treatment of the structure of ethics, we don't seem to have anything that would generate the kind of muddle we just saw in Catholic ethics.

Confucian Terminology
Rén, , "benevolence, charity, humanity, love," kindness. The fundamental virtue of Confucianism. Confucius defines it as , "Aì rén," "love others."	Yì, , "right conduct, morality, duty to one's neighbor," which may be broken down into: zhōng, , doing one's best, conscientiousness, "loyalty"; and shù, , "reciprocity," altruism, "what you don't want yourself, don't do to others." Lǐ, , "propriety, good manners, politeness, ceremony, worship." Xiào, , "to honor one's parents," filial piety.	Lì, , "profit, gain, advantage': NOT a proper motive for actions affecting others. The idea that profit is the source of temptation to do wrong is the Confucian ground of the later official disparagment of commerce and industry.

Note, Chinese Virtues

Confucius [K'ung-fu-tzu or Kongfuzi]

Key Passages in the Analects of Confucius

The Polynomic Theory of Value

Crime and Punishment, Repentance, Restitution, and Atonement

The Fallacies of Moralism and Moral Aestheticism

Ethics

Value Theory

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The Value Structure of Action, Note 1;
Egyptian Virtue

The semantic range of Greek ἀρετή seems remarkably similar to the Egyptian word , which Bill Petty translates as "excellence, virtues" [Egyptian Glyphary, A Sign List Based Hieroglyphic Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, Museum Tours Press, 2012, p.233; we do have the plural form here].

The key glyph in that writing is , which both Petty and Sir Alan Gardiner [Egyptian Grammar, Oxford University Press, 1927, 1964, p.518, glyph U22] see as a humble tool, a "chisel." Thus, the basic verbal use of the glyph, with its phonetic value, is the word , to "chisel, fashion, carve" [Petty, ibid.]. In such a word, it is uncertain whether is being used as an ideogram or a "generic determinative," since the meaning is generalized beyond the physical reality of a tool, a chisel. Phonetically similar or identical is , a verb that means to "string (beads), fasten" [ibid.]. Here can only be used as a determinative, and/or for its phonetic value.

The interest of this for our purposes is in contrast to the origin of the Latin and Greek words for virtue in manliness (vir) or war (the god Ἄρης). An Arabic word for virtue, , murūʾah (مُرُوءَة), can be defined as "manliness," like Latin virtus, but the Arabic root, مَرَأَ, maraʾa, is simply "to be healthy, wholesome, etc." In turn, the Egyptian words derive from a hand tool and from carving, fastening, and similar manipulations. The Egyptians made stuff, not war.

The term goes back to the verb (or ), which Petty defines as "be efficient, beneficient, potent, trusty, devoted, costly, excellent, splendid, thoroughly" [ibid.]. This is quite a cascade of meaning; and while we might wonder whether ideas like "efficient, beneficient, potent" are related to handcrafting, the glyph really can only be used for its phonetic value. A determinative like is used for writing or, widely, for abstractions, or has meanings of "strong, victorious, victory, mighty" and so gives us a determinative for strength. These determinatives bespeak the range of meaning for the terms that lead to . Virtue as a moral quality is an abstraction, but virtue as excellence in some craft or task is about strength, even victory.

I am curious that mnḫ in Egyptian looks suspiciously like the root mlḥ in Arabic, which gives us the basic verb مَلَحَ, malaḥa, "to be beautiful, handsome, pretty, comely, nice, elegant," etc. From this we get the derived word مَلِيحَ, malīḥ, "pretty, handsome, comely; beautiful; nice, pleasant, agreeable, witty." This can also just mean "good" in some dialects of Arabic; and in Lebanon I heard it pronounced mnīḥ, to specifically mean good food -- perhaps related to its other meanings as "salt, salty, salted," etc. I don't have any information indicating that the Egyptian and Arabic roots are cognates, but I am especially struck by meanings given for as "be efficient, beneficient, potent, trusty, devoted, costly, excellent, splendid, thoroughly" [Hieroglyphic Dictionary, A Middle Egyptian Vocabulary, by Bill Petty, Museum Tours Press, 2012, p.66]. The semantic ranges here are not the same, but they are all about value and there do seem to be grounds for comparison.

The correspondence of Egyptian "n" to Arabic "l" we also see with the Egyptian word for breast, , mnd, which corresponds to Arabic مَلَجَ, malaja, "suckle" -- cognates to Latin mulgere, "to milk," and English "milk" itself.

Another thing curious to me is that the glyph , identified by both Petty and Gardiner as a chisel, really doesn't look like one. A chisel should have a sharp point, and we don't see that here. Egyptian chisels look much like modern ones, usually just sharpened round bars, historically of copper (which needed frequent sharpening). Instead, this looks more like an Egyptian hammer, which has a large round wooden head set on a handle. The head here looks like a mushroom and is not going to work for much chiseling. On the other hand, although Egyptian hammers often seem to have a mushroom head, its form is usually the reverse of the glyph, more like , which is unattested. At least part of the mushroom form is due to wear and tear, from use, on the wood.

What looks more like a chisel is glyph U23, , which Gardiner glosses as "chisel(?)" and for which Petty gives no general identity or meaning. Some chisels did have handles like this, which would be convenient for fine wood working, unlike chisels that would be pounded into stone with a hammer. But this glyph seems to be exclusively used with two different phonetic values for a large variety of words that have nothing to do with each other, including Elephantine Island, , and, of all things, "pyramid," .

We don't have another glyph that is obviously a hammer, and there does not seem to otherwise be an ideogram for "hammer" used in the appropriate words. In the word , "mallet," we have an odd determinative that Gardiner glosses as "bandage(?)" and Petty as "bandage, bind" without question. What this has to do with mallets is anyone's guess.

The actual word for "hammer" given by Petty is , which contains no ideogram and only has a determinative, a tree branch (Mꜣ) that is used for "strong." Curiously, this word does not occur in Gardiner's vocabulary and, although it is in Petty's English to Middle Egyptian Dictionary, A Reverse Hieroglyphic Vocabulary [Museum Tours Press, 2016, p.109], it is missing from the Hieroglyphic Dictionary, A Middle Egyptian Vocbulary [Museum Tours Press, 2012]. What we do get in the latter, however, is the origin of the word. Thus, we start with , "be strong, prevail over, strong man, strong dutiful, brave" [p.160]. From this we get , "valor strength, bravery," and, most significantly, , "beat." We get the word "beat" by reduplicating the root and adding a determinative, a cross, meaning "damage," and finally the determinative we have been seeing, which is used for "strong" but is literally a man delivering a beating -- something we have already seen in the word for the corvée. From there to , we add a "y" to make an adjective (as in Arabic, with ), a "t" to make a feminine noun (Arabic , the tāʾ marbūṭa), and finally the tree branch determinative. So, the sense of the word "hammer" is entirely something with which you "beat," i.e. "hammer" something. What you hammer with, we are left to assume.

So this is all very curious, but it really doesn't make any difference. Chisel, hammer, mallet, whatever:  They are all tools. And "virtue" seems to have something to do it.

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The Value Structure of Action, Note 2;
Envy and Jealousy in Peter Toohey's Jealousy

Θές με ὡς σφραγῖδα ἐπὶ τὸν καρδίαν σου, ὡς σφραγῖδα ἐπὶ τὸν βραχίονά σου· ὅτι κραταιὰ ὡς θάνατος ἀγάπη, σκληρὸς ὡς ᾅδης ζῆλος· περίπτερα αὐτῆς περίπτερα πυρός, φλόγες αὐτῆς.

Pone me ut signaculum super cor tuum, ut signaculum super brachium tuum, tuum, quia fortis est ut mors dilectio, dura sicut inferus aemulatio: lampades eius lampades ignis atque flammarum.

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as hell []; its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame.

The Song of Songs, of Solomon, 8:6

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27: On fait souvent vanité passions même les plus criminelles; mais l'envie est une passion timide et honteuse que l'on n'ose jamais avouer.

One often prides oneself on even the most criminal passions, but envy is a timid and shameful passion one never dares confess.

28: La jalousie est en quelque manière juste et raisonnable, puisqu'elle ne tend qu'à conserver un bien qui nous appartient, ou que nous croyons nous apparetenier; au lieu que l'envie est une fureur qui ne peut souffrir le bien des autres.

Jealousy is in some manner just and reasonable, since it only aims at preserving a good that belongs to us or which we believe belongs to us, whereas envy is a fury which cannot bear the good of others.

324: Il y a dans la jalousie plus d'amour-propre que d'amour.

There is in jealousy more self-love than love.

406: Les coquettes se font honneur d'être jalouses de leurs amants, pour cacher qu'elles sont envieuses des autres femmes.

Coquettish women pride themselves on being jealous of their lovers to hide that they are envious of other women

François, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), Maxims, translated by Stuart D. Warner and Stéphane Douard, St. Augustine's Press, 2009, pp.8 & 63, color added

A new book, Jealousy by Peter Toohey [Yale, 2014], argues that envy and jealousy are really the same thing. In a review of the book in The Wall Street Journal, Andrew Stark says:

Is there any reason to view envy as jealousy's evil twin? In fact, is there any difference between the two at all? Toohey is not so sure...

Mr. Toohey says, when we look closely at such distinctions, they seem to dissolve. Jealousy, some say, arises when we lose something that is ours to someone else. Envy, by contrast, is what we feel when another person gains something we would like to have for ourselves...

The idea that jealousy targets one's own loss, and envy another's gain, doesn't make sense in a world where, too often, one entails the other. ["The Green-Eyed Monster," December 9, 2014]

But Toohey and Stark seem to be wrong. There is a difference between envy and jealousy, along just the lines indicated in the review. And we can start with something mentioned by Stark himself at the beginning of the article:  "The Almighty himself was jealous." This is a reference to Exodus 20:5, "for I, the LORD [] your God, am a jealous God [, ʾÊl qannā]." Here "jealous" is , qannā. God is jealous that Israel should not worship other gods. However, it doesn't seem to make much sense to say that God is envious of the other gods. I've never heard it said, even by Stark, that the God of Israel is an "envious God." This even sounds kind of ridiculous. There is not much for God to envy about either other gods or the human condition. But it should be clear that if God can be jealous but not envious, then these words do not mean the same thing [note].

The difference between envy and jealousy begins, as Toohey and Stark say, with the distinction, as in so much else useful in ethics, between self () and other (). Beyond that, concepts are both missing and mistated in their treatment. Thus, "jealousy targets one's own loss" is wrong in that one need not have lost anything to be jealous. The logical extreme of jealousy is when someone is disturbed by their spouse merely speaking to or having some sort of other innocent contact with, anyone who can be seen as a potential rival. Usually it is absurd to say that this person is envious of the rival -- unless they actually possess some trait that can excite envy and create a jealous worry about its appeal to the spouse. That is not a factor in God's regard for other gods; but God will indeed be jealous whether Israel worships other gods or not.

At the other extreme, we can be envious of the good fortune of someone who has absolutely nothing to do with us and whose gain does not "entail" our loss. Thus there is the story of the Russian peasant who envies his neighbor's cows, praying to God, not that he should similarly have cows, but that his neighbor's should die. Similarly, "Whenever a friend succeeds, Gore Vidal once said, a little something in me dies" [William Voegeli, The Pity Party, Broadside Books, 2014, p.47]. These are particularly vicious and sterile kinds of envy, where it is simply the success of others that is offensive. Nevertheless, such is the basis of a great deal of modern politics -- especially where accusations of "greed" merely mask an impotent envy. On the other hand, a little envy may not be a bad thing. A friend may be flattered that you envy their plans for travel; and envy of another's achievements might inspire the enterprise to equal them. Similarly, a little jealousy may be flattering to one's mate, since it is evidence of your attachment for them. "You're jealous!" may be a delighted and amused exclamation with the implication, "You care!" Or it may have very different context and overtones.

An interesting case for questions of gender stereotypes involves a generally positive sense of envy. When two women who do not know each other strike up a conversation, it may begin with one saying something like, "I love your shoes!" This is an expression of envy, but the drift of it is positive, as an expression of admiration or praise. The natural response is for the woman wearing the shoes to identify them by brand or designer and then reveal where she got them. Since this means that the first woman might be able to buy the shoes for herself, the sterile, negative sense of envy is cut off. Of course, the interaction could go different ways. The second woman may be a snob who wants to flaunt the expense or exclusivity of her shoes, and so she may remark that they are too expensive or unobtainable for the first woman to get them. This is not a friendly response, and its thrust is to turn a positive form of envy into a negative and impotent kind. At the same time, it is almost inconceivable that a (straight) male would begin a conversation in such a way with an unknown woman. This may be largely because the customary response, where the male could get the shoes, is senseless. Unless the male is a transvestite, he will not be interested in getting the shoes; and men generally do not buy shoes for their wives or girlfriends, whose taste and preferences in footware may be unknown or incomprehensible to them. There would also be something a little creepy about it. Men tend to focus on specific physical features of women for which the gentleman will not express open admiration, while the clothes are irrelevant save in so far as they flatter the figure and beauty of the woman. Polite masculine praise for a woman's appearance will stick to generalities. At the same time, "I love your shoes" may suggest a foot fetishism whose implications could range from mildly disturbing to alarming.

So the key elements for the meaning of jealousy and envy so far are therefore that in envy there is some good in the possession of another, while in jealousy there is some good that is or, as is thought by the self, ought to be in the possession of the self. In unpacking this, a new element enters the question. We can get some sense of this looking at Latin, where we already know that "envy" comes from invidia. "Jealous" comes from "zeal" and does not appear to derive from a relevant term in Latin. We discover, however, that another Latin term can be used for "jealous," and that is aemulus, from aemulor, "to rival." Used as a noun aemulus can mean "a rival." Thus, in jealousy, the fear that a good in one's possession, like a spouse, may be taken by another, or that another posesses some good that ought to belong to one's self instead, introduces an element of rivalry, in which the other and their fortune is not remote and unrelated to one's own but instead involves a direct confrontation over a good that cannot be shared and is not fungible. In jealousy, there is a sense of a contest, and a zero sum game. These can be entirely lacking in envy.

The sense of contest goes back to the origins of both "jealous" and . "Jealous" is from "zeal," ultimately from Greek ζῆλος, zêlos, which is "eager rivalry" and even, of all things, "jealousy" -- as with both in Latin aemulatio. The Greek word at Exodus 20:5 in the Septuagint is actually ζηλωτής, zêlôtés, which St. Jerome has simply transcribed into the Vulgate as zelotes. The Hebrew can also mean "ardour" and "zeal." The root of the Hebrew word may even mean "become red," or livid, as in the face. Thus, an Arabic cognate is , qāniʾ, "blood red" or "deep red," from a hypothetical verb , qanaʾa. The jealous God is an angry God. Indeed, jealousy seems a passionate state, as is typical in love rivalries.

Envy, Greek φθόνος, phthónos, may be more distant, cold, and bitter, like the Russian peasant's sterile resentment against his neighbor. And although the Liddell & Scott Greek lexicon defines φθόνος as "ill will, envy, jealousy," it also says that ζῆλος is "a noble passion, opp. to φθόνος (envy)." So there is a little ambiguity, or uncertainty, there; but we get no sense that φθόνος can be "a noble passion"; and ζῆλος and φθόνος are canonical opposites.

And so the title of Stark's review for the book Jealousy, "The Green-Eyed Monster" (and the book's own green cover art), isn't even right. That's envy, not jealousy -- although the identity is the claim that he and Toohey make. And they can cite Shakespeare:

Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. [Othello, Act 3, Scene 3, Lines 70-72]

But Shakespeare, speaking of adultery, certainly means jealousy, and the color is, perhaps, arbitrary -- or it exhibits the same kind of confusion as Toohey and Stark. If we accept the origin of jealousy in anger, color does gives us a nice way to express the difference. Envy is green; jealousy, like anger, red. The jealous husband is liable to be angry, both at his wife and at the man paying attention to her; but it makes less sense that the envious person, however resentful, is angry. Jealousy may involve shouting; envy, not so much. Envy may conceal itself and express false praise, while plotting some kind of harm.

Of course, elements of envy and jealousy can be involved in the same situation; and many languages have words that scholars uneasily define using both (like φθόνος) -- although part of that may be the lack of clarity that is evident with Toohey and Stark themselves. Pure envy is directed at the goods or good fortune of another. But a person may see the fortune of another as the result of rivalry and loss, when there actually isn't any rivalry and the gain of the other has nothing to do with the absence of fortune in the one. This sort of thing occurs in life (especially the politics of envy, which is particularly nasty when it is ethnic envy) and is explored in fiction. A person who is the object of an envy with overtones of jealousy may be astonished that he is seen as a rival or that his success is seen as damage or loss to the envier. A puzzled "You should be happy for my success" is a sentiment expressed in history more than once -- one wonders if a "friend" ever expressed it to Gore Vidal. The complexity of these cases has confused Toohey and Stark into a thesis of identity, which is rendered absurd by many counterexamples.

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The Seven Sins and Virtues

Ethics

Reviews

Envy and Jealousy, Note

ἢ οὐκ ἔξεστί μοι ποιῆσαι ὃ θέλω ἐν τοῖς ἐμοῖς;
Aut non licet mihi quod volo facere?
Or am I not allowed to do what I wish with mine own?

Matthew 20:15

We can see a similar counterexample to Toohey and Stark in a statement such as, "Those who own their own property are jealous of property rights." The statement, "Those who own their own property are envious of property rights," is not at all the same thing and is not true. The former means that owners want to protect their rights; the latter implies that owners somehow do not have rights that others do have. We could say, "Those who own their own property are envious of those who have greater property rights." What is more natural is that, "Those who rent are envious of property rights." This is because renters would like to take away the rights of property owners, i.e. landlords, as in the City of New York. Where renters or vassals acquire feudal tenure, they have compromised the rights of the owners. In modern politics, this is accomplished through rent seeking.

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The Value Structure of Action, Note 3

In the very interesting and visually stunning movie Altered States [1980], we find actress Blair Brown (b.1946) prone and naked in a hallucination experienced by her husband, played by William Hurt (in his first movie). She is not reading, or playing with a cat, but posed more like a sphinx, up on her elbows, with her head up and breasts exposed. As Hurt's hallucination progresses, Brown's figure turns into sand and then is blown away by the wind.

What interests me here is that the scene was edited after the first release of the movie, which is when I saw it, in Los Angeles, in 1980. The original cut had several views of Brown's body, including one from the rear that highlighted what the Greeks would have called her καλλίπυγος, "beautiful bottom." This is the shot that was subsequently edited out, along with some of the other nudity in the movie, including that of William Hurt. It has never been restored in any versions I've seen. On television broadcasts, of course, even more of the remaing nudity could not be shown.

All that we are left with in the original scene to remind us of the missing image is a shot of Brown's καλλίπυγος after her body has turned to sand. This does not have nearly the same impact, of course, and the sculpture in sand doesn't quite match the shape of what we had seen previously.

The whole idea of the original scene was obviously to present an archetypal image of sexuality and eroticism. Perhaps Blair Brown's bottom did that all too effectively and was judged a bit too much, even for audiences in 1980, which was still benefiting from the way nudity had been used more freely in the 1970's. Since then, the freedom of those days been ground down between, on the one hand, religious scruples, and, on the other, feminist ideology that is essentially anaesthetic and anhedonic.

The irony now, of course, is that very, very explicit pornography is freely available on the Internet, usually without much interest in the vivid beauty we find in the images of Altered States. We can only hope that the καλλίπυγος was not literally left on the cutting room floor but is preserved in film vaults for the happy day of its restoration.

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The Value Structure of Action, Note 4;
Chinese Virtues

The "five virtues" in Chinese ethics are part of the system of correspondences that go with the five Chinese elements.

five virtues
benevolence	propriety	good faith	righteousness	knowledge
wood	fire	earth	metal	water
five , perfect benevolence
gravity, deference, coutesy, reverence, respectful- ness	generosity, tolerance, breadth, liberality, leniency	good faith, sincerity, confidence, trustworthi- ness	ernestness, diligence, quickness, promptness, wit	kindness, generosity, clemency, gracious- ness

Although the theory of the elements creates a strong tendency to classify everything in terms of fives, we also get a fair number of independent classifications by sixes, as in the Six Relationships, and in fours. Here I consider several systems of virtues and then wander off into some other numerical classifications.

The second set of fives given here are those actually listed by Confucius at Analects XVII:6. Confucius says that these are the five things that define "perfect benevolence," . There are multiple translation for each term, based on those given by James Legge [1893], Arthur Waley [1938], D.C. Lau [1979], Joanna C. Lee & Ken Smith [2010], and Mathews' Chinese Dictionary [1943, 1972]. The order is that given by Confucius, which only coincidentally would match the order here used for the five elements, except that does occur in the middle, where earth belongs, in each case.

four principles
humanity	propriety	rectitude	wisdom
East	South	West	North
four virtues (of women )
right behavior	proper speech	proper demeanour, appearance	proper employment, needlework & cookery
four studies
literature	conduct	loyalty	faith

The first set of fours, the "four fundamental principles," i.e. of Confucianism, are simply the "five virtues" with one missing, but we also get a related concept and character, , for "wisdom," in place of "knowledge." What we end up with are virtues that in the five element theory correspond to the four cardinal directions. If this is done deliberately, or "good faith" passed over for some other reason, I couldn't say.

The next set of four, although simply the "four virtues," are traditionally supposed to be those in particular of women. Their content would, of course, be traditional notions about the proper roles of women, though, curiously, the gloss of "proper employment" meaning "needlework & cookery" is from a modern dictionary [ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary, edited by John DeFrancis, University of Hawai'i Press, 2003, p.888] rather than in an old source like Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary [Harvard University Press, 1972, p.770]. There is an old expression, the "three obediences and the four virtues" for women, . The "three obediences," "subjections," or "dependencies," are upon the father, the husband, and the son. As elsewhere historically, these attitudes tend to persist in rural society but break down in urban, if not liberal, society.

The "four studies" mostly involve virtues of conduct, including , "loyalty" or "conscientiousness," which we do not otherwise find in these lists -- despite its importance for Confucius. But we also find "literature," which sounds like it should be in the "six arts" below, but isn't. The character for "study," , can also mean "teaching," "doctrine," "religion," etc., as discussed with the Six Schools of Japan.

six virtues
wisdom	bene- volence	good faith	righteous- ness	moderation	harmony
six (virtuous) actions
filial piety	friendship	kindness	love of kin	endurance	charity
six arts
propriety	music	archery	chariot- eering	writing	mathe- matics

With the "six virtues," we get four that are the same as the "five virtues," with the substitution of "wisdom" for "knowledge" as in the "four principles," and a trade-off of "propriety" for "good faith." "Moderation" and "harmony" are new.

The "six virtuous actions" definitely fall into the class of virtues, and they lead off with the significant Confucian virtue of filial piety, . The character here for "action" we have seen already as "conduct" among the "four studies."

Next, with the "six arts," we mostly get things that are extra-ethical skills, even two martial arts (archery and charioteering), but they lead off with propriety, , which is not only a significant Confucian virtue, but one of the "five virtues" and "four principles." This is an interesting and perhaps revealing choice. "Propriety" encompasses manners and etiquette. In general, such things seem to have less to do with morality than with the artistry of polite society. As such, "propriety" was despised by Taoism but treasured by Confucianism. If propriety is not fully a matter of ethics, but a kind of art, this would effect a compromise between Taoism and Confucianism, retaining a place of importance for it, while exempting it from the "persuasion by force" that to Taoism was the "beginning of disorder []."

Despite all these virtues, actions, and arts, we are still missing an important Confucian moral quality. Thus, at Analects IV:15 we see the "one thread" that runs through the teaching of Confucius, the qualities of and , "conscientiousness and reciprocity." "Reciprocity," though defined with the Confucian equivalent of the Golden Rule, is missing from the lists here. So we still don't get a comprehensive system. Profit, , of course, is not a virtue for either Confucianism or Taoism. It might be for Mohism, but does not occur here anyway.

seven passions
joy	anger	sorrow	fear	love	hate	lust

For a set of seven, we can include the Chinese "seven passions," which are a bit more relevant to the virtues than the "six schools," "six kingdoms," or the "four classes." From the page on the emotions, I include the animation above at right, which also has seven images, though these were chosen more for the color associated with the state, beginning with the conventional "happy face," than to list cardinal emotions. Death is not, of course, an emotion, but its ultimate absence, while envy is not one that makes it into the Chinese list. The colors are not, of course, those associated with the Chinese elements. Another set of seven can be found with the Seven Gods of Good Fortune.

Other Numbers in the Chinese Tradition

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Copyright (c) 2006, 2007, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2024 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved

Chinese Virtues, Note;
Other Numbers in the Chinese Tradition

This section is on "Chinese Virtues," but with the Chinese habit of creating lists of certain numbers of things, it is hard not to continue with some sets that are not virtues. The "Four Classes," the "Seven Passions," and even the "Four Beauties," may nevertheless have some connection to the theme of virtues.

six schools
Yin-Yang, Cosmologists	Names, Sophists	Mohism	Legalism	Taoism	Confucian- ism

An urge to classify in sixes, which we have just seen in the "Six Virtues," etc., is also something we see in the "six schools" of the Spring and Autumn, , Period. The "six arts" were also supposed to originally correspondent to the "six classics," which, however, were later reduced to the more element-friendly "five classics." Unlike with the five elements, I have not noticed a tendency to match up the respective schools, arts, and classics.

six kingdoms
Ch'i	Ch'u	Han	Wei	Chao	Yen

The "six kingdoms" are the states of the Warring States, , Period which combined in 240 to resist Ying Cheng, the King of Ch'in. Unfortunately for them, by 221 the King of Ch'in had succeeded in conquering all of them, creating the Empire of the Ch'in Dynasty. On the map we see the dates of conquest. Note that these kingdoms supply the names of some later dynasties.

four classes
scholars	farmers	artisans	merchants

Another set of fours are the "four classes" of traditional Chinese society. These are very definitely in a hierarchical order, with the scholars as the most prestigious and authoritative and the merchants as the least. The whole of Chinese society, however, can be encompassed in the expression 臣民, chénmín, which can be rendered "officials and commoners," i.e. ministers and the people. We see 臣 as one of the "Six Relationships," subordinate to the "Prince," 君, jūn. Ministers, of course, will be drawn from the 士 class.

Like many Greek philosophers, the Confucians viewed merchants as parasites and trade as something that added no value to things and was more or less a kind of swindle. Not surprisingly, Chinese foreign trade was at times prohibited, never so disastrously as during the Ming Dynasty when European traders began to arrive -- like the Protuguese in 1513. We can see Confucian hostility towards merchants recycled in Communist China and then in the Marxism of some lingering enthusiasts

But a comparison of the Chinese classes with the Indian caste system is instructive. Thus, the scholars, unlike the Brahmins, were never priests. That sort of thing was relatively uninteresting to Confucians. And so, while Brahmins mainly taught sacred literature, like the Vedas, Confucians taught the largely secular Classics. Both, however, had their own particular rituals, 禮, lǐ, which Confucians might religiously perform for their ancestors, even if they didn't believe in an afterlife. You did it out of social obligation. Otherwise, the remaining Chinese classes would all belong among the Vaishyas in India. We are missing a formal military class, like the Kshatriyas, because the military was largely despised by the Confucians.

We are also missing a class, like the Shudras in India, of mere laborers. The character for "artisans," 工, can mean "labor," but artisans, responsible for wonders like porcelain and silk weaving, would never be considered mere laborers. A more elaborate classification is the "Nine Classes.".

four great beauties
Hsi Shih, Xi Shi	Wang Chao-chün, Wang Zhaojun	Tiao-ch'an, Diaochan	Yang Kuei-fei, Yang Guifei
b.506 BC, Spring & Autumn Period	b.c.50 BC, Former Han Dynasty	b.c.161/176 AD, Three Kingdoms	719-756 AD, T'ang Dynasty

The last set of fours are the "four great beautiful women" of Chinese tradition. These range from the fictional (Tiao-ch'an) to the legendary (Hsi Shih) to the firmly historical (the others). These women were supposed to be so beautiful that, respectively, on seeing them, the fish forgot how to swim and sank, birds forgot how to fly and fell from the air, the Moon hid itself in embarrassment, and, finally, Yang Kuei-fei put the flowers to shame. We don't get a group anything like this in the West, and the only comparable example I can think of that involves the appearance of a beautiful woman is when the mistress of the Emperor Constantine IX Monomachus, Maria Scleraena, was seen at the theater. In the general misogyny of Confucian culture, the story of the women often involves the destruction of a kingdom. Thus, Hsi Shih was sent as an agent to seduce Fu Ch'ai, the King of Wu, and bring about his downfall, which she did, in 473 BC. Tiao-ch'an figures in plots featured in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Yang Kuei-fei was blamed, and executed, for the rebellion that ended the otherwise illustrious reign of Ming Huang in the T'ang Dynasty. On the other hand, in 33 BC Wang Chao-chün was married off to leaders of the Hsiung-nu barbarians and was credited with moderating their policy towards China and in introducing them to Chinese civilization. The tone of the stories is thus slightly different for each of the women.

Return to Chinese Virtues

Key Distinctions for Value Theories,
and the Importance of Hume

Karmaṇy evādhikāras te mā phaleṣu kadācana /
mā karmaphalahetur bhūr mā te sango 'stv akarmaṇi,

Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward.
Work not for a reward; but never cease to do thy work.

The Bhagavad Gita, 2:47, Juan Mascaró translation [Penguin Books, 1962, p.52]

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Should we then, in the face of this criticism, reconcile ourselves to the view -- expressed countless times by so many: by some of the Sophists in Plato's dialogues, by Hobbes and by many more recent authors -- that what is just is what has been laid down as law by the legislator, and that there is no other valid law apart from this? This view can of course be expressed with varying degrees of consistency. The radical version says that whatever a sovereign or ruling power has established is indeed just: Hitler's Nürnberg laws, and Stalin's codes, and the American Constitution -- all are equally just. But this compels us to accept the inconvenient conclusion that norms which contradict each other may be equally legitimate and equally just. Advocates of this view, therefore, usually try to circumvent the problem by arguing that the value-laden concept of justice has no discernible meaning if it is taken to suggest a supreme paradigm according to which we can measure and assess existing legislation; if, on the other hand, 'justice' means nothing except positive law, i.e., what is established in existing legislation, it is a misleading and useless concept.

Leszek Kołakowski (1927-2009), "On Natural Law," Is God Happy? Selected Essays [Basic Books, 2013, pp.242-243]

Objectivism and Subjectivism

Some key distinctions can be used to characterize the nature of ethics. Most fundamental is whether morality is a matter of rational knowledge or not. If it is a matter of rational knowledge, then our doctrine would be objectivism, which implies that morality is "out there," in the objects, and so is independent of personal preferences or sentiments. If it is not a matter of rational knowledge, then we could subscribe to subjectivism, that morality is indeed a matter of personal preferences or sentiments, in the subject, i.e. only in the mind or self. David Hume, is very properly often cited as the classic representative of subjectivism, as in the ethics textbook Moral Reasoning, by Victor Grassian, which I used to use in my ethics class. To Hume, morality depends on our own sentiments or feelings, as there is no matter of fact to determine moral truth [note].

Nor does this reasoning only prove, that morality consists not in any relations, that are the objects of science; but if examin'd, will prove with equal certainty, that it consists not in any matter of fact, which can be discover'd by the understanding. This is the second part of our argument; and if it can be made evident, we may conclude, that morality is not an object of reason.... Take any action allow'd to be vicious:  Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but 'tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it. [A Treatise of Human Nature, Shelby-Bigge edition, Oxford, 1888, 1968, pp.468-469, original spelling, boldface added]

If morality is just a matter of feeling, and not a matter of rational knowledge, then it is not really amenable to dispute. I have my feelings and you have yours. It is not uncommon, however, for people to think that others disagree with them on moral issues, not because of different feelings, but because of a lack of feeling. We see this in an example given by Victor Grassian, who recalls responding at the time to a speech by Secretary of State Dean Rusk on the war in Vietnam.

At that moment, it appeared to me that the Secretary of State simply did not feel sufficient sympathy for the vast suffering of human beings who were being sacrificed for unclear ideals of American security. As I listened to Rusk, my predominant reaction was not to argue with him rationally, but in some sense to shake him into an emotional realization of the enormity of human suffering we as a nation were creating in Vietnam. [Moral Reasoning, Second Edition, Prentice Hall, 1992, p.24]

We have no difficulty, however, imagining Rusk telling Grassian that he "did not feel sufficient sympathy for the vast suffering of human beings" who lived under Communism. There are no "unclear ideals of American security" involved. After mass murderers like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, and Ho Chi Minh, the United States wanted to preserve South Vietnam and Cambodia from Communism. We failed. As it happens, more people were murdered in Indo-China after the Communist takeovers than had died in the wars there that involved France and the United States [cf. Death by Government, by R.J. Rummel, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1995]. Many Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees live in the United States after fleeing the terror (often as "boat people") of the new regimes. Richard Nixon's prediction that there would be a "bloodbath" after a Communist victory, greeted with smug derision at the time, was fully born out by events -- to the horror of some former supporters (e.g. Joan Baez) but with compacency by others (e.g. Jane Fonda).

Basing a moral argument, with an appeal to feeling, on only part of a story of suffering, has also occurred in relation to the invasion of Iraq by the United States in 2003. Many antiwar protesters express outrage over the suffering to the Iraqi people caused by the United States in military actions in Iraq. But the story of an Iraqi exile in Los Angeles, Tamara Darweesh, was related by the Los Angeles Times on 24 March 2003:

A few days ago, Darweesh went to the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, where antiwar protesters were gathered. She asked to talk to them about why it is important to topple Hussein. The protesters thanked her, turned and walked away.

"I'm so disappointed with the left," said Darweesh, who considers herself a liberal. "They are in complete denial because it doesn't fit into their equation of the Mideast. But Saddam is an Arab leader who has killed more Arabs than Israel ever has."

The antiwar protesters, she added, are "very condescending. They are supposed to be for human rights, but the suffering of the Iraqi people just doesn't exist for them. They deny us our stories."

For people whose argument is their sensitivity to suffering, the political left thus puts itself in the position of protecting one of the nastiest neo-Nazi dictators in recent history. As a matter of fact, examined elsewhere, feeling cannot be morally commanded; and so the approach of insufficient feeling for moral correctness is barking up the wrong tree [note].

If morality is not just a matter of feeling, but of rational knowledge, we then must face the question of how that works. This is addressed in detail elsewhere. Here it may be noted that Aristotelian arguments about knowledge, which reduce reason to the self-evidence of first principles, known by intuition, leaves us with certainties that seem fully as subjective as Hume's moral sentiments. There is no more verification of self-evident propositions than there is of those based on feeling. This problem is resolved when it is noted that Socratic Method, as used by Socrates himself (not that described by Plato in the Meno), examines the logical consequences of propositions in order to expose contradictions. This will falsify some of our premises, in a manner first appreciated by Karl Popper. Which premises is a matter of continuing inquiry. This does not, to be sure, verify with certainty any remaining premises, but it does give us something to do, which subjectivism and self-evidence do not. They both leave us at dead ends.

A common misconception in ethics is that another distinction, between absolutism and relativism, means or amounts to the same thing as objectivism and subjectivism, and that any absolutist or objectivist view of ethics is necessarily heteronomous. Likewise with relativism, subjectivism, and autonomy.

"Heteronomy," ἑτερονομία, is the doctrine that moral knowledge comes from outside the self, i.e. from the world, the state, society, history, etc. "Autonomy," αὐτονομία, is the doctrine that moral knowledge comes from within the self. Two key versions of autonomy are found in Plato and in Kant (who originated this terminology). In Plato, the paradigms of value (the "Forms" or "Ideas") are indeed outside of us, but they are in the World of Being, which is ontologically separate from the World of Becoming within which we live. Our connection to the World of Being is by way of memory, since we experienced that world in between lives, before being reincarnated, as was Plato's belief (introduced in the Meno). In turn Kant, believed that morality results from an application of pure Reason, which is something that does not exist in the visible world, the Phenomenal world, but that we possess in our relation to things-in-themselves, which lie behind visible reality.

The autonomy of Plato and Kant is opposed to the heteronomy of Aristotle and Hegel. Thus, Aristotle believed that nothing like the Forms of value existed separately, but only in the specific examples found in experience. These could only be learned about through experience, which is why Aristotle says that ethics is not a study for the young. They don't know enough yet. Similarly, although Hegel talks about "Reason" and might, to some, sound like Kant, he thinks that Reason exists in the visible, Phenomenal world. The doctrine that "Real is Rational" means that what you see is what is rational, the basis of the principle of "judicial positivism" discussed below. Hegel reinforces this with the metaphysical view that only universals (including the State) are real and that individuals are ultimately unreal. In that, he was closer to Plato than to Kant or Aristotle, but Plato's metaphysics, that only the Forms are ultimately real, cannot be construed into a form of heteronomy -- except perhaps as combined with Aristotle by the Neoplatonists, who eliminated reincarnation and Recollection. In Kant, the individuality of phenomenal beings corresponds directly to the individuality of those same beings among things-in-themselves, by which he would be closer to Aristotle than to the others.

The structure of metaphysics and ethics in Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel is reexamined in a footnote below.

The "Pirsig" of the following chart is Robert Pirsig in the popular philosophizing novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Grassian and Pirsig, although no more than a popular novelist, are taken to represent views that are very characteristic of current academic philosophy. (A further version of this chart, below, proceeds to better known recent philosophers.)

It is easily assumed that autonomy implies subjectivism and relativism. This is especially deceptive when dealing with Hume, who is a subjectivist and is thus liable to be presented (as in Grassian's Moral Reasoning, and elsewhere) as a relativist. But Hume's theory of knowledge allows him to believe things he cannot rationally know (or prove); so while his theory is subjectivist, his beliefs are in fact absolutist. That was also the case with the issue he is the most famous for -- causality:  He had no doubt that everything that happened had a cause, he just didn't believe that this could be proven or otherwise rationally motivated.

Most important for our purposes is the Socratic differentiation of absolutism. Socratic Ignorance means that ethical values are real, objective, and absolute but that the human condition is to be ignorant of them. This enables us to distinguish Socratic Absolutism, where values are absolute but unknown, from Dogmatic Absolutism, where absolute values are claimed to be already known. Platonic Recollection is Plato's theory that knowledge is possible but that it comes from within and is our memory of another world, a place of perfect goodness, justice, and beauty (the "World of Being"). This is the classic combination of autonomy with objectivism, although, of course, it is not the only way that autonomy can be combined with objectivism.

And so the assertions of morality cannot be logically derived from factual assertions about social or historical habit and custom. The force, certainty, and actual moral nature of morality is a residue that reference to society cannot account for. Since that residue is found in our own moral sentiments, this is something left to autonomy. While Hume's distinction between "is" and "ought" is often used as an argument that moral statements are baseless or meaningless, this was not what Hume had in mind. Instead, we must take him as arguing for what now would be called the "axiomatic independence" of ethics, something that would have already been comprehensible to Aristotle, who expected that each area of knowledge possessed its own first principles. It seems like many recent philosophers neither know their Aristotle nor understand their Hume.

Despite the simplicity and logical clarity of Hume's point, not everyone likes it. One problem is a misunderstanding of what it means. It is not unusual for writers to think that Hume's arguments about causality and morality mean that they are based on nothing. This is delightful for Nihilists. Faced with such interpretations, others think that Hume's arguments must be denied in order to avoid Nihilism. This is a confusion that doesn't help anything. One version that this takes is to try and collapse fact and value together, in order to preserve both. I have discussed Sam Harris trying to do this, although his purpose is only to promote both scientism and atheism.

Another motivation for collapsing fact with value is to avoid the possibility that value could have a transcendent basis. Even Wittgenstein represents a threat in that respect, since in the Tractatus he had said, "The sense of the world must lie outside the world....in it no value exists..." [§6.41]. We don't get something like that repeated in the "later," relativistic Wittgenstein; but even in the early version, Wittgenstein, poorly educated in the history of philosophy, may not have realized that Plato had already posited a transcendent source for value, albeit one where value does exist "in the world," both because things "participate" in the Forms and because we "Remember" the Forms from our time in what in Buddhism is called the "interim state," before rebirth.

We can find another example of trying to collapse fact and value in Metaphysical Animals, How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life, by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman [Doubleday, 2022]. The motive here is unclear, but it seems to be shared by, at least, Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001) and Philippa Foot (1920-2010), who were both reacting against the Nihilism of Logical Positivism and other reductive Oxford Philosophy.

But, from the evidence of Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman's treatment, the collapse of fact and value is into nothing more acute than a muddle of the issues; and this is often in conjunction with positive treatments of Wittgenstein, who provides no philosophical ethics and who can only be interpreted by Anscombe, at least, as conformable to the moral positivism of Aristotle and St. Thomas. I am given to understand that the mere combination of fact and value judgments in specific cases is enough to refute Hume, justified only by the relationship to their context in a Wittgensteinian "form of life." If I have gotten the right idea, this is absurd.

One of the other philosopher women considered by Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman is Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), whose treatment of "Fact and Value" can be found in a chapter by that very name:

A misleading though attractive distinction is made by many thinkers between fact and (moral) value. Roughly, the purpose of the distinction (as it is used by Kant and Wittgenstein for instance) is to segregate value in order to keep it pure and untainted, not derived from or mixed with empirical facts. This move, however, in time and as interpreted, may in effect result in a diminished, even perfunctory, account of morality, leading (with the increasing prestige of science) to a marginalisation of 'the ethical'. (Big world of facts, little peripheral area of value.) This originally well-intentioned segregation then ignores an obvious and important aspect of human existence, the way in which almost all our concepts and activities involve evaluation. [Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, 1992, Penguin, 1993, pp.25-26]

Most of this introduction to the issue is wrong and, indeed, "misleading." The "purpose" of the distinction is not to "segregate" value but to clarify the issue of justification: What makes propositions of morality or of value true? "Pure and untainted" has nothing to do with it. Hume's argument from logic, as we have seen, is that such propositions will not logically follow from "empirical facts," but there is no problem with them being "mixed" with empirical facts; and the reproach that this is contrary to the insight that "almost all our concepts and activities involve evaluation" is wholly irrelevant and beside the point.

Factual things may or may not involve value. That the sun rises and sets is a matter of fact; but that the sunrise and sunset may be beautiful is a matter of value. That "homicide" involves the killing of a person is a matter of fact; that this may be morally wrongful (Hume's "wilful murder"), or justifiable, is a matter of value. "Value" does not just float off into the ether, independent of facts and things. It would be absolutely meaningless if it did.

And we might note that, with something like the sun, the subject of the proposition may be a thing that exists as a matter of fact, while the matter of value, that the sunset is beautiful, belongs in the predicate. Indeed, the predication itself is the "ought." As we see above, this is exactly how Hume thought about it.

The idea that the fact/value distinction would "diminish" morality is absurd in relation to Kant -- for whom, we know, the Moral Law filled him with as much wonder as the "starry heavens." When it comes to Wittgenstein, the absence of ethics from his philosophy is due to his view that philosophy cannot deal with the subject, for reasons that go way beyond the fact/value distinction. As a philosopher, Wittgenstein is simply not a moralist, early on because ethics isn't science, later because philosophy has nothing to add to ordinary language.

For neither Hume nor Kant do we end up with a "Big world of facts, little peripheral area of value"; and for Murdoch to make that assertion, one might wonder how well she knew her Hume and Kant. The actual point of Hume's argument, about logical ground and justification, seems to be something that Murdoch does not consider, if she is even aware of it.

Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman's treatment doesn't even include the kind of legal distinctions that clarify issues like this. Indeed, they do dwell on features of motive and circumstance as though this helps their argument against the division of fact and value. It doesn't. Motive and circumstances simply specify how value judgments, or legal principles, are to be applied, usually to the facts of a case. Thus, the difference between murder and manslaughter is malice, which is a vice of malevolence and thus a value term, applied to motive. This simply shows us how fact and value are intertwined, not how they are the same thing. Envy can also be a vice of malevolence, but it is not about the same things.

Indeed, as Kant was aware, the law separates the quid facti from the quid juris. In modern courts, where juries have been stripped of their proper powers, they are told that only judging the quid facti is their business, while the application of the law, the quid juris, is the province of the judge. No part of that is any claim that that two spheres are unrelated. They are now kept as separate as they are only because judges, prosecutors, and politicians are terrified that juries might find defendants innocent on the grounds that the law under which they are charged is unjust and without moral force -- Lex mala, lex nulla.

But value extends far beyond matters of fact, not the least because value admits of degrees, whose scale extends beyond common examples. Thus, the evil of judicial positivism is that the Courts can never deliver perfect justice, and frequently no justice at all. For Christians, the "perfection" (τέλειος) enjoined by Christ at Matthew 5:48 is generally not attainable -- Kant thought it would take eternity. Thus, value extends off into what does not exist, does not yet exist, or what cannot even ever exist. Yet we wouldn't mind seeing it realized among things, even while Utopianists may be willing to kill in the expectation that such actions will produce perfection. Obviously, we must guard against them.

In fact, we have seen Philippa Foot explicitly characterize her theory as "a species-dependent account of virtue," which makes it sounds like some kind of Sociobiology -- and a theory entirely devoid of a ground for moral obligation, without, that this, hidden imperative premises that would obligate us to pursue and fulfill the inherent purposes of human nature. Such a thing, indeed, does nothing but beg the question of moral obligation.

Foot, Anscombe, and the others, of course, were reacting against the Positivism and Nihilism of A.J. Ayer, Gilbert Ryle, and the other dominant British philosophers of the age. Aristotelian ethics might seem like a good start in response; but unfortunately the issues often seem to be as confused in the responses as they were in their targets. Confusion continues in the analysis of Benjamin Lipscomb, whose account does not really give us any clarity about either side of the debate.

For instance, Lipscomb places some emphasis on A.J. Ayer and the missionary work he performed by bringing the doctrine of the Vienna Circle to a British audience, presenting it in Language, Truth, and Logic [1936]. This was a wholly dogmatic book and was really innocent of any argument for the arbitrary principles it was presenting. For some reason Lipscomb does not give us any background for Positivism, the doctrine that only science is knowledge, which goes back to Auguste Comte (1798-1857), or bring us up to date that "Logical Positivism" is what the doctrine of the Vienna Circle, and of A.J. Ayer, would be called -- although later in the book the term turns up in places.

It is a wonder of the age, and an embrassment for the history of philosophy, that anyone thought they needed to give A.J. Ayer the time of day. His manner was dictatorial, stipulative, authoritarian, and, frankly, incoherent. Logical Positivism became a theory of meaning, that propositions are meaningless unless based on either logic or empirical "sense data." Without empirical "cash value," terms and statements are literally meaningless -- a move unfortunately pioneered by Hume himself. This can also be stated as the principle that propositions, and their constituents, are meaningless unless they can be logically or empirically verified -- a doctrine thus called "Verificationism."

Unfortunately, you must understand what a proposition and its terms mean before you can determine whether they can be verified or not, or whether they are logically true or need some other ground, such as "sense data." Also, how do we determine whether Logical Positivism and Verificationism are themselves true? They are not logically true, and the Postivists never argued that they are based on empirical science or "sense data." So the whole project is self-refuting and incoherent.

Benjamin Lipscomb doesn't point out any of this, although he diagnoses the problem as a reductionistic metaphysics of a materialistic "billiard ball" universe. He should have added that such a metaphysic cannot be established by Logical Positivism, which rejects all metaphysics. Other Positivists, like Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), at least restricted their claims to the principle that science only makes predictions, without any metaphysical commitments, even to the existence of matter itself -- something Bertrand Russell, who tried to get Carnap to claim anything, found very frustrating. With such an approach, however, it is not clear that the Positivist could say anything about ethics, for or against. The "emotive" theory of value statements was then as arbitrary as any of the rest of the doctrine.

But some generations of philosophers were intimidated by this mess. It was, indeed, the spirit of an age of nihilism, relativism, and subjectivism. Anyone can worry about the foundations of morals and value, but A.J. Ayer and the Positivists made no real contribution to the issue, and we are left with some wonder that the opponents of this confused Nihilism took it so seriously for so long. It was simply arrogance and intimidation -- the way censorship is now sold at American universities.

Lipscomb is no more helpful about the is/ought distinction than he is about Logical Positivism. His initial explanation does not begin with Hume or anything like Hume's argument. Instead, Lipscomb begins with the distinction between "fact" and "opinion." In fact, this has nothing to do with the is/ought distinction and can only get there by several steps of free association. Opinions can be about anything, and we call them "opinion" if we, or those who hold them, are not sure that their truth can be demonstrated. "Facts" are what we would expect to turn opinions into claims of knowledge; and thus facts can be about any matter relevant to the opinions that the opiners hope to justify.

But Lipscomb then steers the analysis in the direction of the Positivists, where "facts" can only be logic or "sense data." "Opinions" that cannot be justified in those terms first, to the Positivists, become meaningless, and second become the repository of the value judgments that the Positivists exclude from rational discourse. Thus, Lipscomb's explanation of the is/ought distinction moves through issues that are really irrelevant to its origin in Hume.

Nevertheless, we eventually get to Hume because of the fallout from Anscombe's accusation of war crimes against Harry Truman. We get a whole section of his book entitled "'Is' and 'Ought'" [pp.164-167]. This begins with a reasonable presentation of Hume's argument, including the long quotation from Hume himself with which I have begun this section of this webpage. Fair enough. Then we get:

Anscombe's attack begins with an acknowledgement of the logical point: any inference from "is" to "ought" is not a strict deduction. But that doesn't mean that such an inference can't be rational; there are other kinds of rational inference besides deduction. [p.163]

Actually, except for induction, which is not at issue here, there aren't. And if we are going to invoke Aristotle, we must see Hume as relying on Aristotle's own conception of an axiomatic system, like geometry, with first principles and theorems that are deduced from them. This is what Aristotle called "science," ἐπιστήμη. Theorems of ethics that are imperatives must be deduced from first principles that also contain imperatives. It is just logic.

When Anscombe wants to claim that thre are "other kinds of rational inference besides deduction," she means to smuggle in other things from Aristotle, such as normative principles of teleology, or Kantian hypothetic imperatives. Indeed, Philippa Foot will propose that ethics consists of hypothetic imperatives, even as Foot and Anscombe share a desire to revive Aristotelian principles. But Aristotelian substances that contain entelechies, ἐντελέχειαι, i.e. final clauses/purposes, require metaphysical assumptions that beg of question of Hume's argument about axiomatic first principles. It is "stacking the deck," the way the Positivists packed their rejection of metaphysics and ethics into their arbitrary epistemology. Thus, the example Lipscomb gives is how iron is necessary for the growth of blueberries [p.166] -- just the sort of example of biology, growth, and development that Aristotle would have used himself, in the appropriate context. The origin of moral obligation, however, is not the appropriate context. This is no more than a dream of authoritarian social engineering, just as is the heteronomy and judicial positivism implied by Aristotelian ethics.

We end up with a full exposure of Aristotelian ethics:

If we can return to Aristotle. If we can make sense of the idea of a human being's proper function, of a characteristically human pattern of life. If so, then we could, with Aristotle, begin to work out a table of the traits that enable people to live vibrantly successful (Anscombe's word was "flourishing") human lives, and build an account of ethics on that footing. To do so would require that ethics draw seriously on biology, psychology, anthropology, and more. [p.167]

Of course, nothing in "biology, psychology, anthropology, and more" can impose a moral obligation on anyone; and "the idea of a human being's proper function" sounds like some kind of brainstorm of dictatorship, which can impose no moral obligations on anyone either. This only makes sense for Aristotle if human nature contains a normative entelechy, ἐντελέχεια, whose content has been discovered by the good and the wise and whose imperatives are then incumbent on us all. Anscombe can get real moral obligation from it no more than blood from a stone. But it does sound like her Catholicism.

Iris Murdoch's "The Sovereignty of Good"

Two Philosophical Mistakes in Poincaré (1854-1912)

Sam Harris Flunks His Hume Exam

Hume is a skeptic (which in philosophy means believing that knowledge is impossible) but of a certain kind. "Pyrrhonian" skepticism, named after Pyrrho of Elis (365-275 BC), is that because knowledge is impossible, we should practice suspension (ἐποχή, epochê) of judgment on all things. On the other hand, this was later modified when the scholars in Plato's Academy went through a phase of skepticism. Carneades of Cyrene (d. 129 BC), a Scholarch (president) of the Academy, is particularly associated with this movement of "Academic" skepticism. The Academic skeptics ultimately said that although there may be no certain knowledge, there is reasonable belief, and this is necessary for practical judgments in life. That is the term that Hume uses, as he says, "The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life" [Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding p. 126], and "There is, indeed, a more mitigated scepticism or academical philosophy, which may be both durable and useful, and which may, in part, be the result of this Pyrrhonism, or excessive scepticism, when its undistinguished doubts are, in some measure, corrected by common sense and reflection" [p. 129].

Kant understood that Hume was in no doubt of the quid facti (the matter of fact, the existence) of causality or morality but that his skepticism merely consisted in his inability to account for the quid juris, the foundational justification of them. The failure to find the quid juris cast no doubt whatsoever on the quid facti. Hence Kant famously says about Hume and his critics, this case concerning the issue of causality, but equally applicable to moral questions, about which Hume had comparable ideas:

Allein das der Metaphysik von je her ungünstige Schicksal wollte, daß er von keinem verstanden würde. Man kann es, ohne eine gewisse Pein zu empfinden, nicht ansehen, wie so ganz und gar seine Gegner Reid, Oswald, Beattie, und zuletzt noch Priestly, den Punkt seiner Aufgabe verfehlten, und, indem sie immer das als zugestanden annahmen, was er eben bezweifelte, dagegen aber mit Heftigkeit und mehrenteils mit großer Unbescheidenheit dasjenige bewiesen, was ihm niemals zu bezweifeln in den Sinn gekommen war, seinen Wink zur Verbesserung so verkannten, daß alles in dem alten Zustande blieb, als ob nichts geschehen wäre. Es war nicht die Frage, ob der Begriff der Ursache richtig, brauchbar, und in Ansehung der ganzen Naturerkenntnis unentbehrlich sei, denn dieses hatte Hume niemals in Zweifel gezogen; sondern ob er durch die Vernunft a priori gedacht werde, und, auf solche Weise, eine von aller Erfahrung unabhängige innre Wahrheit, und daher auch wohl weiter ausgedehnte Brauchbarkeit habe, die nicht bloß auf Gegenstände der Erfahrung eingeschränkt sei: hierüber erwartete Hume Eröffnung. Es war ja nur die Rede von dem Ursprunge dieses Begriffs, nicht von der Unertbehrlichkeit desselben im Gebrauche.

But Hume suffered the usual misfortune of metaphysicians, of not being understood. It is positively painful to see how utterly his opponents, Reid, Oswald, Beattie, and lastly Priestly, missed the point of the problem: for while they were ever taking for granted that which he doubted, and demonstrating with zeal and often with impudence that which he never thought of doubting, they so misconstrued his valuable suggestion that everything remained in its old condition, as if nothing had happened. The question was not whether the concept of cause was right, useful, and even indispensible for our knowledge of nature, for this Hume had never doubted; but whether that concept could be thought by reason a priori, and consequently whether it possess an inner truth, independent of all experience, implying a perhaps more extended use not restricted merely to objects of experience. This was Hume's problem. It was solely a question concern the origin, not concerning the indispensable need of using the concept.

[Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, translated by Lewis White Beck, The Library of the Liberal Arts, Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1950, p.7; «Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik», Werkausgabe V, Schriften zur Metaphysik und Logik I, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft, Insel Verlag Wiesbaden, 1958, p.116-117; color added]

To think that Hume did not believe in the principles of causality and morality is to confuse the content of knowledge with its object, or de dicto ("concerning what is said") properties with de re ("concerning the thing") properties. Observing that moral claims are made in historically contingent, fallible, and corrigible ("correctable") propositions, some infer that the objects of those propositions share in the same historical contingency. There is no force to that inference whatsoever, since it can only be made by confusing dictum with res and applying predicates of the former to the latter. Could that inference be made, it would simply erase the entire significance of moral discourse: no moral imperative (an "ought"), as Hume himself noted, can be derived from the contingent fact of something being said at some moment in history (an "is"). The idea that the description of practice, as the natural history of what we actually do, is sufficient for moral theory, which is what many philosophers today wish to do with Hume, effects a grotesque reductionism of people's sense that they ought to do certain things into the bare, retrospective indicative that they have. This would indeed be a pure Pyrrhonian suspension of moral judgment, and it is not at all a reflection of Hume's views.

Modern historicist and linguistic relativist theories (see Relativism about Wittgenstein, Rorty, and Robert Solomon) combine relativism with objectivism and heteronomy -- since history and language are objective things that exist outside of us but vary in time, place, and context. These connections are the worst of all possible worlds: putting the moral agent at the mercy of external standards (language, society, culture, etc.), even while these standards cannot be rationally questioned. Hegel had thought that history was the concrete exemplification of Reason and so could be rationally critiqued and changed, but the real, external reality, as such nevertheless derived authority from its presupposed rationality. Other versions of heteronomous relativism, even those derived from Hegel, now do not need to take Hegel's notion, or any notion, of reason very seriously. This can give near or complete totalitarian force to mere social and cultural traditions.

Again, we saw that the lawless one [παράνομος] is unjust [ἄδικος] and the lawful one [νόμιμος] just [δίκαιος]. It is therefore clear that all lawful things [πάντα τὰ νόμιμα] are just [δίκαια] in one sense of the word, for what is lawful [νόμιμα] is decided by legislature [ὑπὸ τῆς νομοθετικῆς], and we say each of them is just [δίκαιον].

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, V.i.12-13, 1129b12-14, Aristotle XIX, Loeb Classical Library, translated by H. Rackham, Harvard University Press, 1926, 1934, 1982, pp.256-259; translation modified after Terence Irwin, Nicomachean Ethics, Hackett Publishing Company, 1985, p.118

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[Romans 2:14] For when gentiles [ἔθνη] who have not the law [τὰ μὴ νόμον ἔχοντα] do [ποιῶσιν] by nature [φύσει] what is of the law [τὰ τοῦ νόμου], even though they do not have the law, they are a law to themselves. [2:15] They show that the work of the law [τὸ ἔργον τοῦ νόμου; Sanskrit , karmadharmasya] is written [γραπτόν] in their hearts [ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις αὐτῶν].

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Leges sine Moribus Vanae --
Laws without Morals are in Vain.

Motto of the University of Pennsylvania,
a school that is currently tolerating anti-Semitic "hate speech" and vandalism.

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Lex injusta non est lex -- An unjust law is not a law.

Lex mala, lex nulla -- A bad law is no law.

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No, we can neither expect nor demand respect for the law just because it has been promulgated, regardless of its content. What matters is not respect for this or that (often accidental) decision of the majority in a parliament or of a judge. Rather, what matters is respect for the moral law, which may or may not coincide with the positive law and which involves the legally irrelevant distinction between good and evil.

Leszek Kołakowski (1927-2009), "Crime and Punishment," Is God Happy? Selected Essays [Basic Books, 2013, p.236]

Judicial Positivism

The idea that actual, heteronomous institutions and practices thereby possess moral force is "judicial positivism" -- what Leonard Nelson called Rechtswissenschaft ohne Recht, "Jurisprudence without Justice." This can be stated as the doctrine that:

1. "Justice is the practice of the courts," and

2. The only law is "positive law," i.e. actual statutory and case law.

The opposite of "positive law" is natural law, i.e. principles of natural justice, including natural rights, that do not exist as statutes or case law but that actually have moral force, as mere laws, as such, do not. Thus, Martin Luther King, quoting St. Augustine, said, "An unjust law is no law at all" ["Letter from a Birmingham Jail," 1963; Lex injusta non est lex]. Thus, judicial positivism is decisively falsified if we allow, as, I dare to affirm, sensible and morally mature persons do, that the practice of the courts can be unjust, and that it is possible for laws to be unjust. Persons who deny that the courts or the laws can be unjust are seriously out of their reckoning, either as fools or villains, or some combination thereof.

Later, in the debate over the Constitution, one problem was whether there should be a Bill of Rights. The Federalists Alexander Hamilton and James Madison argued that a Bill of Rights could produce misunderstandings:

1. People might say that we only have the particular rights listed in the Bill; and

2. That we only have the rights because they are listed and so positively granted.

When most of the States insisted on a Bill of Rights, and Madison was won over by his friend Jefferson, he suggested the Ninth Amendment to prevent such misunderstandings:  "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Various sophistries have been offered to get around the plain meaning, and the historical motivation, of this text, but it clearly allows that rights exist which are not listed in the Constitution, and it thus implies that such rights do not exist because they are granted by positive law.

Today, the most infamous self-professed judicial positivist was probably the late Robert Bork, who (in)famously stated that the Ninth Amendment was a "blot of ink," i.e. a meaningless hieroglyph that could not be interpreted. In this, he at least honestly admitted that his judicial philosophy denied the existence of the very things the Ninth Amendment was talking about. Bork was not confirmed for the Supreme Court. Later, however, when Clarence Thomas was nominated, he was actually attacked, before other things were found to accuse him of, for not being a judicial positivist. Thomas's acknowledged adherence to, and Bork's rejection of, natural law principles, however, are both unusual. Most judges today (reflected in most Constitutional case law) are reflexive and unconscious positivists; and modern American political and judicial attitudes are overtly hostile, as was Bork, to principled disobedience to existing law, even law that is grotesquely unjust and, on any honest reading of the Constitution, unconstitutional. A good example of this reflexive positivism was President Clinton, who said, after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City:

When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving [sic] a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly... that they would work for the common good, as well as for the individual welfare... However, now there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. [boldface added]

The stigmata of positivism are all over this, with Clinton, a former professor of Constitutional law (!), considering whether some of the freedom "given" to us in the Bill of Rights should be taken back. To have politicians, and especially such a man as Clinton -- the perjured President -- considering how others have been "irresponsible" and should be deprived of their freedom is full of a particularly bitter but tragicomic irony. The same positivist animus to natural law principles of justice and freedom can be found in the modern rejection of the powers of juries, and in recent treatments of Thomas Jefferson.

While Bork is now infamous as a positivist, more prestigious Justices articulated positivist priniciples long ago. An important and influential example of that was Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841–1935), who said:

There is a tendency to think of judges as if they were independent mouthpieces of the infinite, and not simply directors of a force that comes from the source that gives them their authority. I think our court has fallen into the error at times and it is that that I have aimed at when I have said that the Common Law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky and that the U.S. is not subject to some mystic overlaw that it is bound to obey. [quoted by Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, 2011, p.159; boldface added]

Noteworthy about this passage is the apparent contempt and disparagement that Holmes has for natural justice, natural law, and natural rights. He dismisses such conceptions as about "the infinite," a "brooding omnipresence in the sky," or a "mystic overlaw." But the United States, and every American, is indeed subject to some "mystic overlaw that it is bound to obey," and that is, in the memorable words of President Calvin Coolidge, "the eternal foundation of righteousness":

Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. That state is most fortunate in its form of government which has the aptest instruments for the discovery of law. [to the Massachusetts State Senate, January 7, 1914; boldface added]

In the great words of Sherlock Holmes, "It's every man's business to see justice done" ["The Crooked Man," Memories of Sherlock Holmes, 1892]. Justice Holmes directly contradicted this when one day Judge Learned Hand (1872–1961) told him, in parting, "Do justice, sir, do justice." Holmes actually stopped and called Justice Hand back so that he could object that their job was to apply the law, not to "do justice":  "That is not my job... It is my job to apply the law."

I'm sorry to need to express such disrespect, but the response I have to this rebuke of Learned Hand by Oliver Wendell Holmes is, "What an a**h**e!" One wonders if Holmes would have enforced the Fugitive Slave Laws without flinching. Might Learned Hand have asked him, "At the end of the day, sir, do you ever ask yourself whether you have done good or evil by enforcing your laws? And what answer will the Lord of Hosts expect? Do not forget, 'The judgment you give is the judgment you get'?" (ἐν ᾧ γὰρ κρίματι κρίνετε κριθήσεσθε; Matthew 7:2) [note].

Ironically, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had named his immortal detective after the father of Justice Holmes, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894). But one might not know from Justice Holmes's words that he was denying the philosophical basis of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as Coolidge and Hand were affirming them. Of course, some caution and modesty in the application of Natural Law is necessary when some judges, or many judges, apply some half-baked version of Marxism and think that this is "eternal righteousness" (a term that would have occasioned laughter from Marx). Whether such follies can be prevented by the abolition of the Ninth Amendment, which affirms Natural Rights, seems unlikely.

We see the full meaning of the positivism of Justice Holmes in his statement that law is "the articulate voice of some sovereign or quasi-sovereign that can be identified" [ibid.]. This goes back to the Code of Justinian:  Quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem, "Whatever pleases the prince has the force of law" [Justinian, Digest, 1.4.1; S. P. Scott, The Civil Law, II, Cincinnati, 1932; Alan Watson, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985, Revised English-language edition, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998].

The Code explains that the authority of the princeps (i.e. the Emperor) derives from the people:  Utpote cum lege regia, quae de imperio eius lata est, populus ei et in eum omne suum imperium et potestatem conferat, "In so far as with the lex regia [the grant of imperium, the authority of command], by which is born his authority, the people conferred upon him and in him all their own authority and power" [ibid.].

Now, with Holmes, in a democracy, sovereignty does not lie in a "prince" (as Richard Nixon wished, but who might be overthrown as ἀνάξιος, "unworthy"), but in the People. As John Locke would have said, the authority of a king, being conditional and fiduciary only, reverts to the People on the non-performance of his duty. Holmes knows this and relies upon the sovereignty of the people.

But this is still not right. Even democracy does not miraculously turn things that are unjust into things that are just by no more than a vote. As Coolidge says, "Men do not make laws"; and, as shown above right, Leonard Nelson correctly held that moral obligation depends on no will, either our own or that of any other. Socrates already argued this in the Euthyphro. The Pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, not pious because it is loved by the gods (see here a modern academic complaint about this).

Justice Holmes and most Constitutional jurisprudence since does not believe in eternal righteousness; and, indeed, Holmes is regarded as representing a form of moral skepticism -- very different from that of Hume, at least in his autonomous form [note].

The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant

Confusions about Hume in Antony Flew

The Polynomic Theory of Value

The Fallacies of Moralism and Moral Aestheticism

Heinrich A. Rommen, The Natural Law, a Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy

Chinese Virtues

Ethics

Value Theory

Political Economy

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Key Distinctions for Value Theories,
and the Importance of Hume, Note 1

I am discussing Grassian here because the book is familiar to me, having used it in my ethics classes for a number of years, and because it seems to be representative, in ideology, to other contemporary ethics textbooks that I have examined.

As it happens, Grassian shies away from a complete commitment to feeling and subjectivism:

Although Hume was right that the ultimate source of our moral principles resides in our feelings, one should not assume that we must be slaves to our feelings. One cannot only change one's principles when they conflict intolerably with one's natural feelings, one can also attempt to adjust one's feelings when they conflict with one's reasoned preferences. The moral life is a constant interplay between reason and feeling. [p.24-25]

Unfortunately, on page one of his book, Grassian quotes one of Hume's most famous statements, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions..." If Grassian now disagrees with Hume, and frees reason from Humean slavery, he must explain how reason provides a source of moral knowledge and certainty independent of feeling. This is precisely what Hume denied, and Grassian, now inexplicably breaking with Hume, does not bother to explain how it is that reason, with no identified resources of its own, can overrule moral sentiment -- what is the moral "matter of fact" that Grassian has discovered that Hume did not? Having trashed any clarity in his commitment, Grassian naturally goes on to say that we cannot choose between objectivism and subjectivism. Indeed. The result is simply incoherent, or, at best, missing an account of rational moral knowledge. Since he begins the passage by actually saying that "Hume was right" that the "ultimate source" of our moral principles is in feeling, he evidently doesn't realize that an account of rational moral knowledge, of the rational moral matter of fact, has been rendered necessary.

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Key Distinctions for Value Theories,
and the Importance of Hume, Note 2

Islam was never a religion of peace. Islam is the religion of fighting.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Caliph of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), 14 May 2015

The defeat and overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq was swift and apparently easy, and the catpure of Saddam himself was later celebrated in an episode of South Park (in a parody of The Wizard of Oz set in, of all things, Canada). However, fashionable opinion is now that the war was a mistake, because when the Sunni community, allied with al-Qāʾida, revolted against the American occupation, this led to a long and difficult fight, of which the public quickly wearied, allowing the Democrats to take Congress in 2006 and to elect Barack Obama in 2008, largely on anti-war rhetoric.

While George W. Bush may have inadvisedly celebrated a bit too much at the overthrow of Hussein, with his notable "Mission accomplished" boast, the arguments usually heard now against the war are unrealistic to foolish. It is not clear that anything would be better in the world if Saddam Hussein were still in power, with uncertainties persisting about his weapons programs and with a constant threat of massacre directed against the majority Shiites or the Kurds, which required constant American and British air patrols. If the Left now misses Hussein as a good partner in a Realpolitik that could ignore his crimes, they should go back and apologize for their indignation that the United States "tilted" towards Hussein the the First Gulf War, when the Reagan Administration judged him preferable to his enemy, Iran.

The Bush Administration might be faulted for not anticipating the revolt of the Sunnis, yet it is no surprise that the Sunnis would wish to retain their dominance in the country and not share power with the Shiities and Kurds. Surprise or no, that would need to be dealt with. While one complaint about the Iraq war was that it was not against al-Qāʾida, in response to the attacks of 9/11, the participation of al-Qāʾida in the Sunni revolt actually served to reverse this objection. Drawing al-Qāʾida into Iraq undermined its strategic objectives, degraded its strength, and actually led to some dissention in the ranks about the wisdom of devoting resources there, especially when it ended in defeat. The terror bombings of Shiites did not always seem suitable in the Cause of Islam even to Osama bin Laden. Thus, certain objections to American invovement end up recoiling on themselves, as Iraq became a battle of opportunity in the larger "War on Terror."

The real disgrace was not in any miscalculation on the part of the Bush Administration but in the glee of the Democrats and their all but open cheerleading for an American defeat -- many of them having grown up learning their Anti-Americanism by cheering for American defeat in Vietnam. Democrat Senate leader, the despicable Harry Reid, announced that the war was lost, while Senator Barrack Obama was part of an effort to prevent the "surge" of American forces that actually ended up defeating al-Qāʾida and suppressing the Sunni revolt. Since President Bush had always warned, correctly, that the "War on Terror" was not going to be quickly won, it was not his fault that the Democrats would rather score political points than usefully help in the pursuit of a winning strategy. Leftist propagandist Michael Moore liked to say that "there is no Terrorist threat," presumably meaning that any U.S. military action, even in Afghanistan, was unnecessary.

While Barrack Obama retained American forces in Afghanistan (with constant promises and deadlines to get them out, thereby encouraging the Tālibān), he soon withdrew them from Iraq -- acting like the apparently stability of the regime was his own accomplishment -- removing a element that might have prevented Shiite Prime Minister al-Maliki from gradually attempting to push Sunnis out of the government. Meanwhile, a revolt against the Assad dictatorship in Syria gave Barack Obama the idea that it would soon be overthrown; and he drew a "red line" against the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people. When chemical weapons were used nonetheless, Obama let it go, asking an anti-war Democrat Congress (with more than a few Isolationist Republicans) if he should do anything, knowing the answer would be negative. The Russians then volunteered to supervise the surrender of the Syrian weapons, which, of course, they really had no intention of doing, since Syria was a Russian client. American aid, supposedly directed to liberal anti-Assad rebels resulted, by 2015, in half a billion dollars being spent and all of "four or five" rebels being trained by American forces.

Meanwhile, an al-Qāʾida splinter, the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) or of Iraq and "the Levant" (ISIL), came to dominate the northeast of Syria, from which it invaded Iraq in 2014 and quickly occupied the second largest city in the country, Mosul. The Iraqi Army, no longer a national force that could command the loyalty of Sunnis, broke and ran, abandoning its equipment, which ISIS scooped up. Having dismissed ISIS as the "JV Team," Obama allowed some airstrikes (there had been more against the Serbs in Kosovo) and some resupply of the Iraqis -- but no direct aid to the Kurds, who had the only effective fighting force in the area. More than a year later, ISIS has proclaimed a Caliphate and become simply the "Islamic State" (IS), and essentially nothing has been done, still, to get them out of Mosul, where they have been murdering, raping, and enslaving Shiites, Christians, and other religious minorities -- as well as destroying ancient archaeological sites, including Palmyra in Syria, which I have visited myself. Obama is complacently inactive because he thinks that the tide of history will take care of them, without reflecting that the "tide of history" took some heavy fighting to get rid of people like the Nazis. (He also seems to be relying on the "tide of history" to defeat the Russians currently invading the Ukraine, without providing an iota of military aid to the Ukrainians.)

The wise maxim of Machiavelli has not been so well vindicated since Neville Chamberlain surrendered to Hitler at Munich:

..che non si debbe mai lasciare seguire uno disordine per fuggire una guerra: perché la non si fugge ma si differisce a tuo disavvantaggio.

...that one should never permit a disorder to persist in order to avoid war, for war is not avoided thereby but merely deferred to one's own disadvantage... [The Prince, Daniel Donno translation, Bantam, 1981, pp. 20, 82; Italian text, Il Principe, Nuova edizione a cura di Giorgio Inglese, Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino, 2013 e 2014, pp.24, 171]

Thus, the positive achievements of the Bush Administration have been squandered by the Obama, with all the sacrifice of American lives, including the soldiers with limbs blown off or disfiguring injuries inflicted, now wasted, and disorders grow that some future President will be required to address, while the President says that he displays true leadership in dealing with "Climate Change." History will wonder at the motives of activists whose apologetics, inertia, and obstructionsim protected Islamic Fascism in its infancy -- including their arguments that blasphemy, in effect, should again be a crime, at least when it is directed against Islam, but not against Judaism or Christianity. The butcher's bill for the Nazis was millions of people. Militant Islam, meaning both Sunni ISIS and Shiite Iran, is gearing up, while quite openly stating its bloody ambitions, for a similar toll -- unlike Hitler, as it happens, who always protested his peaceful intentions -- and Nazi executions of civilians were never proudly displayed in the news. Meanwhile, the bien pensants contort themselves to blame Islamic militancy on America, or the West in general. Those damn Crusaders started it all, and now we're paying the righteous price, although, of course, there is no real Terrorist threat.

Update: 2017

Shortly before the Presidential election in 2016, Iraqi and American forces began the operation to retake Mosul from ISIS. My suspicion at the time was that the Obama Administration hoped that the recapture of the city would help the Democrat Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. However that might have helped her, it was not to be. It took many months to retake the city, with final success only coming in July 2017. ISIS had taken the city in a couple of days, as Iraqi soldiers ran away, and then held it for three years, defending it tenaciously in months of street fighting. At the same time, Syrian rebel, Kurdish, and, apparently, American forces were closing in on ISIS strongholds in Syria -- to the point where the Syrian government complained that Americans were invading Syria. Syrian government forces meanwhile, with Russian help, finally drove the rebels out of Aleppo. This involved drawing down some forces elsewhere, so that ISIS actually reoccupied Palmyra, and took the opportunity to blow up some more ancient monuments of the city. The Syrian government seems to have actually been going easy on ISIS, even buying oil from them, with the idea that ISIS would be defeated by the Americans, while other Syrian rebels, supported by the West, needed all the attention of the government and the Russians -- in order to preserve the Assad regime.

Thus, the Obama Administration, originally demanding the end of the Assad regime, and threatening action in the case of the use of chemical weapons, ended up by doing and accomplishing nothing. The Syrian government used chemical weapons again, to which the new President, Donld Trump, responded with air strikes, but then nothing else. American policy still has no way of deposing President Assad, while hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees stream into Europe.

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Key Distinctions for Value Theories, and the Importance of Hume, Note 3;
Autonomy and Heteronomy in Plato, Kant, Aristotle, and Hegel

ΑΝΤΙΓΟΝΗ
οὐ γάρ τί μοι Ζεὺς ἦν ὁ κηρύξας τάδε,
οὐδ᾽ ἡ ξύνοικος τῶν κάτω θεῶν Δίκη
τοιούσδ᾽ ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ὥρισεν νόμους·
οὐδὲ σθένειν τοσοῦτον ᾠόμην τὰ σὰ
κηρύγμαθ᾽, ὥστ᾽ ἄγραπτα κἀσφαλῆ θεῶν
νόμιμα δύνασθαι θνητὸν ὄνθ᾽ ὑπερδραμεῖν.
οὐ γάρ τι νῦν γε καχθές, ἀλλ᾽ ἀεί ποτε
ζῇ ταῦτα, κοὐδεὶς οἶδεν ἐξ ὅτου ᾽φάνη.

Antigone
For me it was not Zeus who made that order.
Nor did that Justice who lives with the gods below
mark out such laws to hold among mankind.
Nor did I think your orders were so strong
that you, a mortal man, could over-run
the gods' unwritten and unfailing laws.
Not now, nor yesterday's, they always live,
and no one knows their origin in time.

Sophocles, Antigone, Lines 450-457, Antigone speaking to King Creon of Thebes, who will execute her for performing rites for her dead, rebel brother; translated by Elizabeth Wyckoff, Sophocles I, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, The Modern Library, 1942, 1954, p.202; Greek text, Sophocles, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, translated by F. Storr, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1912, 1981, p.348.

---

Again, we saw that the lawless one [παράνομος] is unjust [ἄδικος] and the lawful one [νόμιμος] just [δίκαιος]. It is therefore clear that all lawful things [πάντα τὰ νόμιμα] are just [δίκαια] in one sense of the word, for what is lawful [νόμιμα] is decided by legislature [ὑπὸ τῆς νομοθετικῆς], and we say each of them is just [δίκαιον].

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, V.i.12-13, 1129b12-14, Aristotle XIX, Loeb Classical Library, translated by H. Rackham, Harvard University Press, 1926, 1934, 1982, pp.256-259; translation modified after Terence Irwin, Nicomachean Ethics, Hackett Publishing Company, 1985, p.118

---

[Romans 2:14] For when gentiles [ἔθνη] who have not the law [τὰ μὴ νόμον ἔχοντα] do [ποιῶσιν] by nature [φύσει] what is of the law [τὰ τοῦ νόμου], even though they do not have the law, they are a law to themselves. [2:15] They show that the work of the law [τὸ ἔργον τοῦ νόμου; Sanskrit , karmadharmasya] is written [γραπτόν] in their hearts [ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις αὐτῶν].

---

An unjust law is no law at all... To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.

Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," 1963.

With the distinctions between moral autonomy and heteronomy and between "is" and "ought" in mind, we might consider the metaphysical constructions by which such notions have been discriminated, or not, in the history of philosophy. Most importantly, where no ground is provided for such discrimination, and fact and value are assimilated to each other, we can see an inevitable form of judicial positivism in certain doctrines.

The classic metaphysical doctrines upholding a differentiation of grounds for "is" and "ought" are found in Plato and in Kant -- where Kant himself originated the terminology of autonomy and heteronomy. Thus, matters of fact in Plato will refer to the the visible World of Becoming, within which we live, while matters of value will be based on the Forms (εἔδη) in the transcendent World of Being. At first glance, this would seem to be a doctrine of heteronomy, with the principles of value outside of us. However, we only have access to the Forms through the memories of our interim existence between lives, before we are reincarnated. This is the characteristically Platonic doctrine of "Recollection." So, as things stand for us at the moment, our moral knowledge autonomously comes from within, from our own memory. Its character is to be tested and verified by Socratic Method.

Without relying on reincarnation or a separate reality, Kant's version of autonomy is more straightforward. The basis of factual knowledge is in phenomenal objects, which constitute the world of experience. The basis of moral knowledge is in Reason, which we hold within us. At the same time, Kant regards Reason as itself rooted in the trascendent reality of things-in-themselves, so that morality can make an unconditioned command (the Categorical Imperative, i.e. to do right regardless of the consequences), such as can only occur among things-in-themselves (with phenomena always conditioning each other, as, coincidentally, in the Buddhist doctrines of "relative existence" and "dependent origination"). Things-in-themselves are not a separate reality because they are constituted by the objects that are present to us in the world but that have features that are objective yet which may be lost in the forms of our perception -- although, as through morality (or religion), we have some hint and/or connection to them. This is no longer so extraordinary an idea, since we know from science that there are all sorts of features possessed by objects in the world that are entirely invisible to ordinary experience, or even to scientific observation. Ask a physicist what "strangeness" is among sub-atomic particles.

The weakness of Kant's theory about Reason is that he wishes to derive all its features from the abstract system of formal logic. In theoretical terms, this means that he wishes to associate the principle of causality with conditional propositions, substance with predication, etc. -- laid out in what is called the "Metaphysical Deduction" of the Critique of Pure Reason (§§9-10 of the "Analytic of Concepts," A70-83). This really doesn't follow, although Schopenhauer produced a version in his dissertation, "The Four-Fold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason," which at least acknowledged substantive differences between the different forms. Even worse, however, was Kant's application of this preconception to morality, where he thought that abstract rational features, such as (1) law-like form (the "maxim"), (2) generalization, and (3) consistency, were sufficient to determine the content of the Categorical Imperative. The many problems with this are examined elsewhere. Fortunately, Kant inconsistently produced versions of his Moral Law that contained substantive conceptual additions to rational formality and so stand as more sensible expressions of the nature of moral obligation. In these terms, Plato's theory allowed much greater room for substantive principles of morality. Adjusting Kantian philosophy for similar allowance was accomplished by Jakob Fries.

The ontological dualism of both Plato and Kant, formulated in different terms, allowed for a differentiation of cognitive grounds between fact and value. As we have seen, Hume himself provided a similar differentiation, between external matters of fact and the internal "matters of fact" of our own sentiments. The drawback of Hume's treatment was that the non-rational subjectivity of our sentiments means, not just that moral disagreements cannot be rationally adjudicated, but that our sentiments, merely as our sentiments, provide no ground by which we can hold others to moral obligations that they may deny.

Where no differentiation of grounds is provided, even as indeterminate as Kant's or as ineffective as Hume's, fact and value collapse together, so that we have genuine moral heteronomy and logically, as a consequence for the nature of justice, judicial postivism. This is nicely expressed by Aristotle himself, as we see in the epigraph above but which warrants revisiting now:

Again, we saw that the lawless one [παράνομος] is unjust [ἄδικος] and the lawful one [νόμιμος] just [δίκαιος]. It is therefore clear that all lawful things [πάντα τὰ νόμιμα] are just [δίκαια] in one sense of the word, for what is lawful [νόμιμα] is decided by legislature [ὑπὸ τῆς νομοθετικῆς], and we say each of them is just [δίκαιον].

This may be the first statement of judicial positivism in history. Here we see justice defined, not just as a function of law, but of positive law, for Aristotle precludes later ideas of natural law by identifying law as "decided by legislature [ὑπὸ τῆς νομοθετικῆς]." In terms of Aristotle's view of value, this is not surprising. Virtues are matters of habits, éthê [ἔθη, singular éthos, ἔθος -- Nicomachean Ethics, II.i.1], and all practical knowledge is limited to circumstances with which we become familiar through experience -- which is why the study of ethics is not for the young [νέος -- I.iii.5]. As we have seen elsewhere, Plato provided a pre-critique of this theory in the Republic, where the "Myth of Er" discusses someone with "some share of virtue which came by habit without philosophy," who was then unable to judge what was good or bad in unfamiliar circumstances and so to "choose wisely" the new life into which he will be born. The terms of this critique are discussed in relation to the Meno.

As Aristotle followed Plato but missed the essence of his understanding in this matter, Hegel similarly followed Kant. Kant's metaphysical dualism is starkly rejected by the elimination of things-in-themselves. In Hegel, all is phenomenal. A significant feature of this is that Kant had a Christian sense (out of precious little that actually remains of Chrsitian sensibility in his thought) that the phenomenal world is fallen and that the reality here can never measure up to the perfection demanded by the Moral Law. Indeed, our inability to achieve moral perfection is part of Kant's argument for immortality. In turn, Hegel's elimination of things-in-themselves means that phenomenal reality is itself perfect, as fully rational in moral terms as Kant would have said it to be, indeed, fully rational, but only in scientific terms.

The consequence in Hegel's philosophy, that "the Real is Rational," is that the full and complete expression of value is found in the factual social and political structures of the world. When we add in another feature of his metaphysics, that individuals are relatively unreal and only universals are fully real, then the individualism of liberal politics disappears and the collectivism, authoritarianism, and even totalitarianism of the holistic State emerges -- to become the most "progressive" and trendy as well as the murderous and destructive political ideology of the 20th century. The heteronomy that threatened in Plato with the theory of the Forms, becomes real as Hegel pulls the Forms down, not into concrete individuals, but into abstract institutions -- as he switches the terminology, so that the State becomes "concrete" and the individual "abstract." This system, in all is appalling detail, I have discussed at more length on the webpage for Hegel.

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Key Distinctions for Value Theories, and the Importance of Hume, Note 4;
Μὴ Κρίνετε, Judge Not

The biblical quote above is from a famous and intriguing statement in the New Testament:

[Matthew 7:1] Μὴ κρίνετε, ἵνα μὴ κριθῆτε· [7:2] ἐν ᾧ γὰρ κρίματι κρίνετε κριθήσεσθε...

First of all, the language here is interesting. We see three different forms of the verb κρίνω, krínō, "to decide disputes, to judge, etc.," along with a derived noun τὸ κρῖμα, κρίματος, tò [neuter] krīma [nominative], krímatos [genitive], "a decision, judgment, sentence, condemnation." The form κρίνετε can be either a second personal plural present imperative or indicative. Its first occurrence, as μὴ κρίνετε, is certainly an imperative, "Judge not." This is the challenge of the passage. Without judging others, something Christians, no more than anyone else, have been singularly unable to do, ordinary judicial proceedings, along with many other things, would not happen.

But this simple injunction, apparently so unlikely and impractical, although many Christians, of course, struggle to apply it, is, after a fashion, qualified. We get an explanation, at some length. Initally we are simply told, ἵνα μὴ κριθῆτε, "that you be not judged." Here we get κριθῆτε, which is the second person plural aorist indicative (identical to the imperative again) passive of κρίνω (where the aorist, usually a past tense, here seems to be used just for the aorist aspect). This puts things in a slightly different light, especially when we compare it with other passages where we are urged to rebuke or upbraid sinners. But we can also compare it to passages where Jesus warns us that we are in danger of judgment. So here, we are cautioned that by judging others ourselves, we become subject to the principle of our own judgment.

This is vividly expanded in the following verse. In 7:2 we get: ἐν ᾧ γὰρ κρίματι κρίνετε κριθήσεσθε, which can be literally translated, "For in that judgment which you judge, you will be judged." Initially, we get ᾧ κρίματι, which are a relative pronoun and κρῖμα, both in the dative case after the preposition ἐν, "in." And we see κρίνετε again, now certainly in the indicative. Finally we get a single word, κριθήσεσθε, which is the second personal plural future indicative passive of κρίνω, "you will be judged." The principle is expanded again in the rest of 7:2, "and the measure [μέτρον] you give will be the measure you get," which I do not need to examine in detail.

So, perhaps, this is not a full prohibition of judgment, which would be all but impossible, and inconsistent with other commands in the New Testament, but a very strong caution that one establishes the terms of one's own judgment by the forms in which one's judgments take. As applied to Oliver Wendel Holmes, we could say that his own practice of ignoring questions of justice and injustice, or perhaps just right and wrong, therefore creates the terms of his own judgment in the Hereafter, where considerations of justice and injustice, or right and wrong, can be precluded and ignored, according to his own principle. This may not be what he would prefer on the Judgment Day, especially if he knew he was perpetrating injustices in any of his court decisions. "I was just following orders," was not accepted as a defense at Nuremberg. But perhaps that is a principle by which, using it himself, he could be excused.

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Key Distinctions for Value Theories, and the Importance of Hume, Note 5;
Mr. InJustice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

From the quotes above, we see the nature of the judicial positivism and the rejection of natural law and natural justice by Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes. But it is worse than that. The Bill of Rights is positive law. But Holmes did not believe laws should be overturned just because they violated provisions of the Bill of Rights. A recent column in The Wall Street Journal supplies more quotes and information. This is the review of Oliver Wendell Holmes, A Life in War, Law, and Ideas, by Stephen Budiansky [Norton, 2019], written by Adam J. White, identified as "a Hoover Institution research fellow and an assistant professor of law at George Mason University" [WSJ, May 25-26, 2019, pp.C5-6]. Mr. White acknowledges the mixed heritage of Holmes, but we don't get an explicit recognition of how appalling it all really is.

Initially we get a shocking statement by Mr. White:  Holmes' "reputation as one of the Supreme Court's greatest justices rests mainly on his criticism of judicial efforts to assert written or unwritten constitutional rights against the will of the political branches of government." According to this, not only is the Ninth Amendment a dead letter as a ground for "unwritten rights," but the entire Bill of Rights is a dead letter, since Holmes will not assert "written rights" against the legislative or executive branches (a deference recently affirmed by Positivist Robert Bork). If this is true, Oliver Wendell Holmes does not deserve the time of day from any American. Instead, his existence is a red flag for the manner in which Constitutional Government has been voided and the Republic driven off the rails in the 20th Century. Why bother having a Bill of Rights if people like Justice Holmes have no intention of enforcing it?

Freedom from Fear, 1943, Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), National Archives at College Park

Lest we think that Mr. White has misrepresented Holmes, we get plenty of examples and quotes. Thus, Holmes said, "If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It's my Job." No, it's not. His job is to protect the rights -- the life, liberty, and property -- of the probably rather large minority of citizens who do not want to "go to Hell." In this, Holmes implicity endorses "the tyranny of the majority," probably with the sense that leftists sometimes have that a popular vote or popular will is unaminous, perhaps with dissenters ignored or rejected as unworthy of notice (probably all fascists and racists).

This reveals Holmes as really having no understanding of the moral and legal principles and foundation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. He has failed to understand that "Governments are instituted among men to secure these rights" and consequently has missed the basic principle of all Constitutional government. This introduced a cancer into Constitutional jurisprudence that has only grown since, to the ruin of the Republic.

A couple of infamous cases, for different reasons, illuminate the principle Holmes wishes to employ. One involves his dissenting opinion in Lochner V. New York (1906), which overturned a New York law limiting working hours in bakeries. This was ostensively to protect workers from working excessive hours. However, it was actually bit of special interest legislation, promoted by established bakeries, to limit competition. Thus, the politically connected bakers were rent-seekers, using political power to protect their economic position and hamper competition. Whether Holmes bought into the deception or not (the "Progressive" interpretation is that he did), his complaint about the decision is revealing. He said that the Constitution does not "embody a particular economic theory," presumably meaning laissez-faire capitalism, which all Progressives from then until now know is evil. This makes Holmes, in this matter, a hero of the Left.

However, the issue of Lochner was not an "economic theory," but a matter of Constitutional rights. Broadly, the rights involved were the freedom to contract one's labor as one wishes. This is generally called "liberty"; and the 14th Amendent says, "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," with this on top of Article I, Section 10 saying, "No State shall... passs any... Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts." New York had deprived both bakers and workers of liberty without due process and had voided their contracts, thus "imparing" their obligations. The Progressive theory justifying such actions was not based on law or the Constitution, but on a Marxist theory that the workers are "exploited" in capitalism and cannot be expected to defend their own interests by freely negotiated agreements in the marketplace. The workers, after all, are "wage slaves," and are at the mercy of the capitalists, who have the power to control wages and pay the workers whatever they want.

None of that was true and, after all, cannot properly be taken into account when Constitutional rights, or "public liberties," in Jefferson's words, are at stake. However, despite his disparaging reference to an "economic theory," the dissent that Holmes expressed in Lochner is sufficiently explained, not by any implicit Marxism on his part (an "economic theory," and despite his postumous recruitment to leftist, statist, and collectivist ideology), but by his unwillingness to enforce Constitutonal rights and by his deference to legislative actions. Not just Holmes, but subsequent "Progressives" exemplify the deception effected by self-interested rent-seekers, which otherwise "Progressives" recognize in demonized corporations.

But Lochner had something else in it that Holmes would not like. For a while, Lochner established the principle of "substantive due progress," which means that the 14th Amendent principle of "due process" cannot be satisfied just by legislation saying it establishes "due process." That would be "formal due process," which means that whatever politicians want to do, if they call it "due process," then it is. This would mean that the 14th Amendment is no protection at all.

An excellent illustration of this was in a episode of the television series L.A. Law [1986-1994], where a commercial fisherman has had his boat seized by the IRS, which claimed that an (anonymous) informant had told them that the boat was being used to smuggle drugs. Taking them to court, the judge ruled that the seizure was legal because the IRS had followed it own rules, which, of course, it had written itself. That, ladies and gentlemen, is "formal" due process; and, as the actual practice of "our" government, it exists far beyond any fictional example on television.

Substantive due process would mean that no one can be deprived of life, liberty, or property without being convicted of a crime in a court of law by a jury of their peers (Sixth Amendment -- ideally where juries have not been lied to about their powers), where "excessive fines" also will not be tolerated (Eighth Amendment). If "formal" due process can just skip the Sixth and Eighth Amendments, let alone the Fourth and others, then the Bill of Rights can be rendered entirely without force. This is what Jefferson meant when he said that it is the way of things for government to grow and liberty to retreat.

Robert Heinlein quipped that "swallowing camels and straining at gnats" is a required course in every law school. What this means in effect is that sophistry can be substituted for the rights and powers held in law and justice by every American citizen. Justice Holmes was part of the evil and the crime of substituting such sophistries.

Holmes' most infamous opinion was in Buck v. Bell (1927), about a Virginia law to sterilize the "feeble minded" and, apparently, other residents of State hospitals. The plaintiff, Carrie Buck, had been sterilized herself. Holmes upheld the law, with the chilling and infamous explanation, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Eugenics, of course, was at the time all the rage.

This decision continues to appall, but it clearly follows from the principle we otherwise see in Holmes of not protecting the Constitutional, let alone the natural, rights of persons. The State of Virginia can mutilate the body of Carrie Buck (which is what it did) on the basis of nothing more than a pseudo-scientific theory. What would lie behind the assumption of such a power is terrifying far beyond this law or Holmes' opinion. Carrie Buck's body had been mutilated even though she was neither accused nor convicted of any crime. The principle therefore seems to have been that the State of Virginia can do whatever it wants to Carrie Buck's body, or to that of any of us, for whatever reasons seem good to it. This violates a very basic Natural Right, which is ownership and control of one's own body (a right, of course, constantly and systematically violated by drug laws). But such a right is not likely to be recognized in the jurisprudence of Oliver Wendell Holmes, even though we could easily argue that Virginia had violated the Thirteenth Amendment, whose prohibition of slavery implicitly affirms a person's ownship of their own body, the very thing that slavery alienates.

Although Holmes originally applied his same toothless principles to free speech, he was eventually bought around, thanks to people like our own Learned Hand (according to Mr. White), to defending it. As Mr. White glosses the matter, however, Holmes remained uninterested in principles of "economic liberty." This was an ill omen for the future, when the New Deal Court (after the reviled Constitutonalists had died off) not only abolished substantive due process but empowered an absolutist Federal Government with sophistical interpretations of the General Welfare and Commerce clauses, allowing that Government to spend money on just anything (with a perfunctory gloss for the "General Welfare") and for any economic activity in the country, or anything "affecting" economic activity, to be "regulated," i.e. controlled by that Government.

This was the Zeigeist where the deep thinkers wanted to emulate the economic success (!) of the brave new Soviet Union -- which was busy breaking eggs (i.e. heads) to make inedible "omlettes." Such a version of Constitutional law, however, as I used to tell my classes, would allow the Federal Government to prohibit you from picking your nose, since this could gross someone out, who would not then buy dinner, which could "affect" interstate commerce. I kid you not. This is the level of reasoning in these cases. Perhaps it means that Holmes' "imbeciles" now dominate government. But they are not imbeciles, just tyrants. And Oliver Wendell Holmes has already said that he will help us "go to Hell." Good work.

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