MacIntyre on Money

John Cornwell introduces many central ideas of moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (whose work I haven't read), including on economics. Thought-provoking ideas for sure, though some of them will raise eyebrows:

MacIntyre’s key moral and political idea is that to be human is to be an Aristotelian goal-driven, social animal. Being good, according to Aristotle, consists in a creature (whether plant, animal, or human) acting according to its nature—its telos, or purpose. The telos for human beings is to generate a communal life with others; and the good society is composed of many independent, self-reliant groups....

In philosophy he attacks consequentialism, the view that what matters about an action is its consequences, which is usually coupled with utilitarianism’s “greatest happiness” principle. He also rejects Kantianism—the identification of universal ethical maxims based on reason and applied to circumstances top down. MacIntyre’s critique routinely cites the contradictory moral principles adopted by the allies in the second world war. Britain invoked a Kantian reason for declaring war on Germany: that Hitler could not be allowed to invade his neighbours. But the bombing of Dresden (which for a Kantian involved the treatment of people as a means to an end, something that should never be countenanced) was justified under consequentialist or utilitarian arguments: to bring the war to a swift end....

[The] rift between economics and ethics, says MacIntyre, stems from the failure of our culture “to think coherently about money.” Instead, we should think like Aristotle and Aquinas, who saw the value of money “to be no more, no less than the value of the goods which can be exchanged, so there’s no reason for anyone to want money other than for the goods they buy.” Money affords more choices and choice is good. But when they are imposed by others whose interest is in getting us to spend, then money becomes the sole measure of human flourishing. “Goods are to be made and supplied, insofar as they can be turned into money… ultimately, money becomes the measure of all things, including itself.” Money can now be made “from the exchange of money for money… and trading in derivatives and in derivatives of derivatives.” And so those who work in the financial sector have become dislocated from the uses of money in everyday life.

Comments

[Louise Gordon]

http://www.moneyandlifemovie.com/interviews/interviews.html

[Jagadish]

Virtue, utility, categorical imperative - these are reasons for oughts that may not be reconciled. I find this debate timeless and am constantly drawn to it. Thanks for posting.

[Jagadish]

"But the bombing of Dresden was justified under consequentialist or utilitarian arguments"

It is interesting that when Amartya Sen discusses consequentialism vs deontology in the context of Arjuna's doubt before the great of battle of Kurukshetra he attributes Arjuna's thinking to consequentialism. Arjuna does not think slaughter of so many people is justified. The evil of letting Kauravas be is lesser than the mass slaughter. In this context Consequentialist/Utilitarian arguments do not justify killing so many lives but Krishna's imperative (pardon my crude translation) does. This is opposite of what is quoted above.

[Namit]

Jagadish,

Interesting indeed! I need to think more about this, but I admit I am puzzled by Sen calling Arjuna's position consequentialist and Krishna's deontological. I am inclined to say it's just the reverse!

After all, Arjuna thinks that no matter what the justification or eventual outcome of the war, it is simply wrong for him to go against and kill so many, including uncles and teachers he so reveres. He is powerfully swayed by his desire to preserve life and to love/respect his elders (much like a categorical imperative) and not by any calculation of a greater good for the world that may follow the war.

Krishna, on the other hand, despite his earlier opposition, now supports going to war from arguably a consequentialist standpoint (the "utility" he upholds is the pursuit of duty/dharma, deemed necessary for social order and well-being), in the service of which end all sorts of deontological concerns of Arjuna are dismissed and many devious acts justified (for e.g., Krishna's advice to kill Karna when he is down, to get Bhima to hit Duryodhana "below the belt", to sacrifice Bhima's son Ghatotkacha, and to essentially lie to Drona about the death of his son Aswathaman). It seems to me that Krishna only preaches non-attachment to the consequence / outcome (perhaps to appeal to Arjuna's deontological leanings?), but is himself extremely attached to it in practice, as his repeated violations of the protocols of war suggest.

What am I missing and why am I so far apart from Sen? I think Sen is speaking of something broader than mere utilitarianism, including agent-relative valuations in assessing consequences, which I'll have to dig into further. Look for "Sen" in this article on consequentialism.

[Jagadish]

Namit
You raise interesting points here.

Why do you consider Arjuna's "desire to preserve life and to love/respect his elders" as a deontological leaning? Wasn't Abraham's sacrifice of his son Isaac out of deontological concerns? (I think Sarah would've asked God to buzz off ;-))

With respect to Krishna I was a little confused too. Throughout the epic Krishna goes about with his realpolitik as if means justify the ends (opposite of deontological ethics). But his call to do your duty is in Gita is deontological. But then by the time of Gita Krishna has become the supreme godhead. I think one needs treat Gita's Krishna independently to appreciate the ethical argument. Here is Sen.

"Arjuna tells Krishna that he does not want to fight, and that maybe they should simply let the unjust Kauravas rule the kingdom they have usurped, which may be the lesser of the two evils. Krishna argues against this, and his response takes the form of articulating principles of action that have been repeated again and again in Indian moral philosophy. Indeed, with Krishna's gradual transformation from being a noble but partisan patron of the Pandavas in the epic to being an incarnation of God, as he is in later Hinduism , the conversation with Arjuna has become a document of great theological importance, called the Bhagavadgeeta, or the Geeta for short."

Consequentialism, agent-relative valuation, etc all loosely fall under the umbrella of utilitarianism. I think Sen uses the terms Nyaya (for Arjuna's position) and Niti (for Krishna's position). In this sense Arjuna would be regarded to be on the side of utilitarians and Krishna on the side of Kantians (Yes, I am making 'Kalidasa is the Shakespeare of the East" error :-)). Please see Sen's reply.

[Namit]

Jagadish,

Thanks for the useful links. As I see it, the world of the Mahabharata makes a big deal about respecting and honoring elders (gurus, parents, uncles, etc.; recall Bhishma's vow of celibacy, or Eklavya giving up his thumb). In the Gita, Arjuna expresses a paralyzing, visceral distaste at the mere thought of killing them and his friends and cousins. It's programmed into him as simply the wrong thing to do. To not harm his elders is to him an end in itself. That's deontological, no? See, for instance, how Arjuna expresses his doubt:

O Krishna, I see my own relations here anxious to fight, and my limbs grow weak; my mouth is dry, my body shakes, and my hair is standing on end. My skin burns, and the bow Gandiva has slipped from my hand. I am unable to stand; my mind seems to be whirling. These signs bode evil for us. I do not see that any good can come from killing our relations in battle. O Krishna, I have no desire for victory, or for a kingdom or pleasures. Of what use is a kingdom or pleasure or even life, if those for whose sake we desire these things—teachers, fathers, sons, grandfathers, uncles, in-laws, grandsons, and others with family ties—are engaging in this battle, renouncing their wealth and their lives? Even if they were to kill me, I would not want to kill them, nor even to become ruler of the three worlds. How much less for the earth alone? ... How can we gain happiness by killing members of our own family?

How can I ever bring myself to fight against Bhishma and Drona, who are worthy of reverence? How can I, Krishna? Surely it would be better to spend my life begging than to kill these great and worthy souls! If I killed them every pleasure I found would be tainted. I don't even know which would be better, for us to conquer them or for them to conquer us.

However, Sen sees Arjuna's distaste for this war as arising from "consequence-sensitive reasoning". Indeed, a possible consequence is that he might end up killing lots of people. But I'm not at all convinced that this is a better reading of Arjuna's doubt. He is after all a warrior. He is not turned off by the idea of war itself or its generally destructive consequences, but by the idea of fighting his kin and elders.

Krishna's invocation of duty does seem deontological, though his actual behavior is so full of utilitarian calculus that one wonders whether he pitched duty to Arjuna as a means to an end. :-) That said, is it not possible that what we have here is a conflict entirely within deontology, i.e., about which of two deontological considerations is more precious? In the end, Krishna manages to persuade Arjuna that a warrior's duty is weightier than a nephew's obligation—both deontological—not the least by dazzling him with his godly form. :-)

[vp]

Pardon me for being contrarian, but if the quoted extracts about money are anything to go by, my first impression is that MacIntyre is an extraordinarily fuzzy and woolly thinker, who is just stringing together phrases and sounding profound to impressionable minds.

Money is merely a medium. If the goal is to critique the human tendency to want to accumulate money, the focus should be on human greed. I don't know if it is Cornwell's interpretation or MacIntyre's original thought itself that fudges this distinction. Secondly, I sense that this critique of money is aimed at modern society - note the reference to derivatives. This is ahistorical and silly. People have been making money from shuffling money around for ages - think of Italian banking during the Renaissance or Indian money lenders.

Moral philosophers who do not have much to say but use lots of words to say it in anyway, drive me up the wall.

[Jagadish]

Namit,

At the outset let me state that it can be frustrating to hammer down 'Hindu' thoughts/ideas/ethics onto a 'European' grid. I think we are doing just that.:-)

You make me see an important point here when you state

"the world of the Mahabharata makes a big deal about respecting and honoring elders. In the Gita, Arjuna expresses a paralyzing, visceral distaste at the mere thought of killing them and his friends and cousins. It's programmed into him as simply the wrong thing to do. To not harm his elders is to him an end in itself."

I would call such respect/love for elders or familial piety as virtues. And virtues by their very nature can be conflicting and can stand as an ethical system only by many virtues moderating amongst themselves. So such virtues cannot be seen as deontology. Deontology would mean duties/imperatives that are independent of human emotions. Arjuna viscerally recoils at the thought of the killings. For Kant 'will' is the most important thing. Consequences of your will can be ( are?) accidents and hence cannot form the basis for a moral rule/evaluation. If you willed good the consequences of your act does not matter. Arjuna has already willed good, else he wouldn't be at Kurukshetra, to seek/establish justice. It is only in considering the consequences - slaughter of his kin - he recoils. His emotions play a big part in his dilemma. His emotions come to life only when he considers the consequence. His emotions supercedes his will. Hence I cannot see Arjuna's position as deontological. This is when Krishna asks him to do his duty and not consider the fruits/consequences of it. Isn't this like what Kant says?

"He is after all a warrior. He is not turned off by the idea of war itself or its generally destructive consequences, but by the idea of fighting his kin and elders."

I think you are making a distinction between killing per se and killing one's kin/elders. As a warrior he doesn't care about killing but does care about killing his kin because of some decree?. Does Manu Smriti say anything like this? It does makes many stupid demands like this

"Throughout India, Manu's dharmasastra is held in the highest esteem. In Tamil Nadu there was a king who earned the name of "Manu-niti-kanda-Cola" for the exemplary manner in which he administered justice. Once a calf got crushed under the wheel of the chariot ridden by his son. The king was so fair and strict that, when the aggrieved cow, the mother of the calf, sought justice, he ordered his son to be crushed to death under the wheel of the same chariot."

So is 'Thou shall not kill your kin' a inviolable law like 'Thou shall not kill a calf'? I guess not.

Krishna does use utilitarian calculus/realpolitik throughout the epic. But as I quoted Sen before - "Indeed, with Krishna's gradual transformation from being a noble but partisan patron of the Pandavas in the epic to being an incarnation of God, as he is in later Hinduism, the conversation with Arjuna has become a document of great theological importance" - Krishna addresses Arjuna as a God in Gita. In this sense, as I see it, there is a demand to view the conversation independently. He is a Kantian if you can grant that( or Kant was Gita's Krishna ;-)).

[Namit]

Jagadish,

I see where you are coming from. But I'm still unclear on where I stand. As this SEP article says, "deontological morality, in contrast to consequentialism, leaves space for agents to give special concern to their families, friends, and projects." Deontology is agent-relative, consequentialism is agent-neutral. "An agent-relative reason constitutes an objective reason for some particular agent to do or not to do something, even though it need not constitute such a reason for anyone else ... Each parent, for example, is commonly thought to have such special obligations to his/her child, obligations not shared by everyone else." In this light, Arjuna's refusal to fight his kin/elders can appear deontological. It need not come from a public decree; the agent only has to consider the act universally wrong in and of itself. I think this is true for Arjuna (surely shaped by virtues that lead him to this moral position).

That said, I would also say that the lines between deontology and consequentialism are very often unclear (see here and here, for instance).

So take the idea that Krishna's invocation of duty is deontological. But if we pause to ask why Krishna considers duty so paramount (i.e., what might happen if one were to flout his duty), we enter the consequentialist realm. Indeed, how many of our deontological leanings do not have an aspect of consequence factored in, whether we articulate it or feel it in our bones? As soon as we ask why we hold a deontological position ('do not murder', 'do not torture'), we come up with reasons that invariably, and to various extents, factor in what we imagine to be the consequences, whether for us or for our community (say, punishment from god, breakdown of social order, rise of fear and immorality, slippery slope for human rights, etc.). In a passage in the Mahabharata, Yudhisthira describes what might happen if society turns away from dharma, which very much sounds like fear mongering; this suggests that the pursuit of duty can be consequentialist.

To add a final twist, "in Kant's Categorical Imperative ... the fulfillment of one's duty is considered to be good intrinsically and universally. Arguably, this cannot be so, as an action is deemed 'good' by virtue of the imperative, and so is good by virtue of its 'consequence' of satisfying the imperative." :-) So what we have here may be a moral conflict entirely within consequentialism, i.e., about which of two consequentialist considerations is more precious. How's that for coming around full circle? :-)

vp,
What a chaudhvin ka chand you have become! I say any article capable to drawing you out must have something going for it. :-)
Happy Thanksgiving!