Topics Ethics

Question Are philosophers the "early adopters" of new moral beliefs? Do philosophers lead new trends in moral thinking, or do they lag behind? If, in 100 years, some moral intuition has become widely held by the general public, should we expect philosophers to widely hold this moral intuition first?

Accepted:
September 29, 2011

Comments

This question raises a very deep metaphilosophical issue. Before treating it, however, I want to sharpen the question a bit, for you raise several issues that I think need to be distinguished. You might be taken to be asking whether, as a matter of empirical fact, some person who is a professional philosopher or who is now recognized by professional philosophers as a philosopher (but might not have been seen as a professional philosopher because s/he was not a part of the profession of philosophy or because the profession did not exist when the philosopher in question was active), could be an 'early adopter' of new moral beliefs; the third question that you raise might be seen as a corollary of this way of taking your question, asking for a prediction, based on an induction from the history of philosophy, as to whether it should be expected that a philosopher should be an early adopter of some new moral belief. An alternative way of taking your question is as raising the issue of whether philosophical work on morality as such drives moral thinking; a corollary of this question is the question of just what philosophical reflection on morality does, if it doesn't drive moral thinking. On the first formulation, the question is an empirical question, to be answered by an investigation of whether any person whom we might call a philosopher was an 'early adopter' of moral beliefs; depending on how many philosophers were 'early adopters', one could make a prediction about whether it should be expected that some philosopher will be an early adopter in the future. I am inclined to think that the answer to this formulation of the question is that there have been very few--if any--philosophers who have been 'early adopters' of new moral beliefs and that it is therefore not to be expected that a philosopher should be the first to hold some moral intuition that becomes widely adopted. But I may well be wrong--the answer I gave reflected my intuition and was not based on a thorough enough study--and I am quite open to changing my answer to this question when the relevant historical evidence is brought to my attention. While the first part of the second formulation of the question is also an empirical question, which I would answer in the negative, based on my knowledge of the history of moral philosophy, its corollary is not an empirical, but more properly philosophical question. The remarks that follow treat both the second formulation of the question and its corollary.

A beautiful passage from the penultimate paragraph of the Preface of Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right is directly relevant in this context. Hegel writes (I give Allen W. Wood's translation): "A further word on the subject of issuing instructions on how the world ought to be: philosophy, at any rate, always comes too late to perform this function....When philosophy paints its grey on grey a shape of life has grown old and it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognized, by the grey in grey of philosophy; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk." Hegel answers your question firmly in the negative: he denies that philosophical reflection leads to new moral beliefs. Hegel has a very particular conception of philosophy that shapes his view about whether philosophy can lead to new moral beliefs, so I want to consider the answer to this question given by a very different kind of philosopher from Hegel, the eminent historian of moral philosophy J. B. Schneewind. Schneewind argues that the very problems addressed in moral philosophy change over time: "The history of moral philosophy...provides important clues to the eras at which the stresses on widely accepted norms and values became overwhelming and change was necessary. If philosophers do little to bring about the strains, they sometimes provide means to diagnose or even to cope with them" (J. B. Scheewind, Essays on the History of Moral Philosophy, p. 123; italics added). Unlike Hegel, Schneewind does not deny that philosophers may bring about changes in moral beliefs, and he is therefore more optimistic than Hegel about what philosophers can contribute to moral reflection. Whereas Hegel thinks that philosophers can only reflect on changes in moral beliefs, Schneewind emphasizes that philosophy can help to stabilize new moral beliefs and thereby contribute to ongoing moral practices. It is, of course, possible that some philosopher might play a role in responding to a strain in society and hence be an 'early adopter', but mere 'early adoption' of a moral belief is not, to my mind, most important: more significant is when a new moral belief begins to be widely adopted and, hence, to effect real social change. In clarifying new moral views, philosophical reflection can help make it possible for those views to become more widespread. And this, I think, is a conception of the effect of philosophical reflection on morality that has considerable empirical support.