Topics Ethics

Question If a person performs good deeds according to a logic that is reprehensible, yet consistently leads to good deeds, is the person doing good, or is the good incidental? For instance, suppose an adult takes care of their elderly parents because they fear the public shame involved in letting their parents languish in a home, despite not actually caring about their parents at all. Is the person still doing the right thing, despite the less than admirable logic they use to get there?

Accepted:
April 12, 2012

Comments

Great question. According to most virtue theorists (in the tradition of Aristotle) and Kantians, the action is (at a minimum) tarnished, reflecting a serious impairment. It might be added, too, that in the tradition of some religious ethics, the act would not be praise-worthy if the motives are not praise-worthy. There is even a technical term in Christian ethics for this: good acts that are done for ill motives like the desire to avoid punishment are called acts of attrition as opposed to acts of contrition in which a person might reform or do some act or repentance for good reasons. Having said all that, I might add that if I was the elderly parent and there was no other way for me to receive care except from the likes of Goneril and Regan (two daughters who profess to love their father in Shakespeare's King Lear, when they only want his power) I might be tempted to accept the care gratefully. Perhaps the case is no different from imagining one is drowning and the only person who can and will rescue you is doing so out of a beastly vanity, wanting to be proclaimed a great hero. The only problem is that if we embrace an ethic in which motives do not matter, sometimes the elderly will wind up being treated like Coneril and Regan actually do near the end of the play (Lear is utterly abandoned and dies) and sometimes one might be drowning and the egomaniac would-be rescuer notices that there would be no cameras or reporters and so he continues to work on his tan.

Your question is a vexing one that philosophers continue to debate. Utilitarians who put utmost value on outcomes have been especially challenged on the grounds that they need to give more attention to motives, character, virtue and vice. Historically, it may be the British philosopher Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) who wrestled most with this issue from a utilitarian point of view.