Philosophy

Volume 4, No 2, Fall 2009 ISSN 1932-1066 Human Suffering as a Challenge for the Meaning of Life Ulrich Diehl Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany email@example.com Abstract: When people suffer they always suffer as a whole human being. The emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering of human beings cannot be completely separated from all other kinds of suffering, such as from harmful natural, ecological, political, economic and social conditions. In reality they interact with each other and influence each other. Human beings do not only suffer from somatic illnesses, physical pain, and the lack of decent opportunities to satisfy their basic vital, social and emotional needs. They also suffer when they are not able to experience and grasp any meaning of life even if such suffering is not quite as obvious as most forms of physical, social and emotional suffering. Suffering from the lack for the sense of the meaning of life is a special form of emotional, cognitive, and spiritual suffering. Although all human beings share the same basic human need for some meaning of life, the fulfilment of this need is highly individual and personal. Although all forms of human suffering can be a challenge to the meaning of life, the personal conditions of suffering usually are a stronger challenge for the meaning of life. Among the personal conditions of human suffering, the Grenzsituationen cannot be cancelled or raised at all, but only accepted and coped with as existential aspects of the conditio humana. According to Karl Jaspers these are: death, suffering, struggling, guilt, and failing. The challenge for human beings to cope with these Grenzsituationen is a way to move from the mere Being-there to true human Existence.1 1 Presented in 2003 at the Annual Meeting of the International Academy of Philosophy (IAP), Rome, Italy. Any Ethics of Suffering would be incomplete without a contribution about emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering. The following contribution is coming from philosophical psychology rather than from empirical psychology. Although there are some important differences between the arm chair reflections of philosophical psychology and the various methods of empirical psychology in the way how they approach and treat psychological phenomena, with respect to understanding human suffering and other aspects of personal being and the nature of the human soul empirical psychology is not in a completely different position from philosophical psychology. After all empirical psychology is always forced to make some theoretical or philosophical assumptions about the nature of the human soul and personal being and these basic assumptions are not only controversial, but they must go beyond what is empirical and observable. In Plato's dialogue Phaidros (270a f), Socrates is teaching a young friend who wants to study the art of rhetoric that the true master of rhetoric has to know the nature of the human soul. In order to illustrate his Existenz: An International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts http://www.bu.edu/paideia/existenz Volume 4, No 2, Fall 2009 37 suggestion he is comparing the study of the soul with the study of the human body in the art of healing or medicine. Socrates is explaining what Hippocrates taught about studying the nature of the body or the nature of anything else: Whenever we have to study the nature of something we have to think about the question whether we are confronted with something which is uniform or rather with something which is manifold. Accordingly, when we study the nature of the human soul we have at first to investigate, whether the human soul is one and the same and therefore behaving similarly at all occasions or whether it is manifold like the form of the human body. Secondly, we have to find out what the human soul is causing to what according to its nature and from what it is receiving which kinds of effects itself. This remarkable piece of Platonic dialogue is rejecting the common prejudice that Plato's approach to the human soul or psyche is merely pre-scientific and therefore inferior to the methods of contemporary psychology, psychotherapy, and psychiatry. External Conditions of Human Suffering There are various forms of human suffering and there are several ways of distinguishing between different kinds of human suffering. Perhaps one of the most if not the most reliable, effective and adequate way of distinguishing between different kinds of human suffering is by their external causes, i.e. by the determinable causes outside of the individual body, the emotional self, the cognitive self and the mind of a person. At least this the way we think about these issues in modern empirical psychology. People may suffer from a variety of circumstances, such as (a) harmful natural conditions (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and bush fires, hurricanes, tornados and other extreme weather conditions), (b) harmful ecological conditions (radioactive or chemical contamination of the atmosphere and landscape in a certain geographic region including people, animals and plants, food and water, or biological contamination with viruses or bacteria causing epidemics), (c) harmful political conditions (dictatorship or anarchy, war or terrorist attacks, bad government, the absence of a modern constitution and a legal state which guarantees basic human rights, law and order), (d) harmful economic conditions (lack of economic growth, unemployment and inflation, the untamed globalization of the market, evasive international companies, lack of social and economic responsibility within management, the weakening of the political power of national governments), (e) harmful social conditions (inability to satisfy basic human needs, such as hunger and thirst, hygiene, shelter and clothing, security from aggression and crime), (f) harmful emotional conditions (inability to satisfy one's emotional needs for company, belonging and acceptance, the need for decent work, perspectives for one's future and self-respect through the freedom of self-determination), (g) harmful cognitive and spiritual conditions (inability to understand the natural and social world we live in, the inability to understand the conditio humana, i.e. the special position of human beings within the world equipped with the abilities for the acquisition of language and thought, of communication and community, of labor and cooperation, of love and self-transcendence through labour, art, science and religion), and (h) inability to experience and grasp some meaning of life. It is mainly due to the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl that modern psychology, psychotherapy, and psychiatry took notice of this very special human need. According to Frankl lacking any sense for some meaning of life is a fundamental form of emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering. The word "some" is not unimportant in this context because we would misunderstand Frankl by assuming that there is the meaning of life for all human beings. Although Frankl was convinced that all men and women share the same need for meaning in their lives, he did not assume that there is one unique, final and universal source of meaning or even only one and the same source for all human beings. Frankl rather considered of the meaning of life in such a way that he realized the personal and individual fulfilment of this fundamental human need under the special, concrete and contingent conditions of one's personal and social situation. In the same section of Plato's Phaidros (270a f), where Socrates is comparing the art of rhetoric with the art of healing, he asks his young friend, who is very enthusiastic about rhetoric, "Do you think that one can understand the nature of the soul without understanding the nature of the whole?" His disciple answers: "If one may believe the Asclepiad Hippocrates one cannot even understand something about the body without this approach." Socrates is agreeing with Hippocrates about this matter. But he is also insisting that this is not correct because the unquestionable authority of Hippocrates, but rather because of the authority of reason. Therefore both approaches are Existenz: An International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts http://www.bu.edu/paideia/existenz Volume 4, No 2, Fall 2009 38 necessary and complementary to each other: the holistic approach of trying to understand the nature of the whole and the analytic approach of trying to distinguish the elements of nature. According to Socrates this is even independent of the special field of knowledge: whether one is trying to understand the nature of the soul as in the art of rhetoric or whether one is trying to understand the nature of the body as in the art of healing-which amounts to be knowing, understanding and treating the body. According to Plato's idea of the mutual dependence of the holistic and the analytic understanding it would not make much sense to separate emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering completely from all other kinds of human suffering. When people suffer they always suffer as whole human beings in the natural, social and political world they live in. Therefore, if Plato is right we may assume that harmful natural, ecological, political, economic and social conditions always have some effect on the emotional, cognitive and spiritual conditions of people. People normally suffer more or less emotionally, cognitively and spiritually from harmful natural, ecological, political, economic and social conditions. For example, in a region of the world which is haunted by natural catastrophes or ecological damage, by dictatorship or anarchy, by wars or terrorism, by cultural or political crises, by bad economies or insufficient health care systems people normally get more and more frustrated emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually. If Plato is right, however we may also assume vice versa that emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering has some effect on the natural, ecological, political, economic and social conditions people have to live by. Without a certain emotional, cognitive and spiritual strength human beings normally do not have the psychological and spiritual resources to fight, control and overcome the harmful living conditions whether they are natural, ecological, political, economic or social conditions. For example, without any intelligence, fairness, courage and truthfulness, without any faith, love and hope they do not have the personal qualities necessary to overcome the challenges they have to face by unavoidable natural catastrophes or by man-made ecological damage, by cruel dictatorship or political anarchy, by numerous wars or by terrorist attacks, by certain cultural or political crises, by the downfalls of economies or by the insufficiencies of health care systems. Although there surely are such causal connections between human suffering and the conditions of the region of the world people live in, the relationship between emotional, cognitive, and spiritual suffering and the outer conditions of suffering is somewhat more complicated. In his Encheiridion the Stoic philosopher Epictetus remarks: "It is not so much the things in themselves which disturb human beings, but rather the conceptions of things" (section 5). There are many approaches and many leading figures in modern psychology, psychotherapy, and psychiatry that accept this rather old psychological insight. Philosophically speaking it means to accept the anthropological insight that human beings are hermeneutic beings, i.e. they are able to interpret one and the same situation in different ways. To accept this does not mean to question or even deny the existence of the external world or the existence of various ontological structures of the world independent of the human mind and consciousness. It also does not mean that human beings constitute or create the external world they live in, as contemporary constructivists think. Since there are radical and moderate constructivists, biological constructivists (Umberto Maturana and Francisco Varela) and psychological constructivists (Paul Watzlawick or Heinz von Förster) we have to distinguish between certain varieties of constructivism. Nevertheless it is common to all of them that they claim that there is some sort of construction of objects, events and state of affairs within the world and they consequently deny the existence of an external and ontologically structured reality independent of human consciousness, language and thought. In this sense they oppose all forms of epistemological or ontological realism (naïve, critical and metaphysical realism).2 To accept this anthropological insight also does not mean that Kant's transcendental idealism regarding space, time, and objects within the world is convincing when he is assuming that they are essentially constituted by the common human subjectivity of appearance and understanding. It merely means to accept that two or more human beings do not only have a different individual perceptual perspective on one and the same object, event or situation within the world depending on their actual and contingent position in space and time. They usually also have a different individual emotional, cognitive and spiritual 2 A useful collection of essays on contemporary constructivism is: Paul Watzlawick (ed.), Die erfundene Wirklichkeit. Wie wissen wir, was wir zu wissen glauben? Beiträge zum Konstruktivismus (München/Zürich: Piper Verlag 1997). Existenz: An International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts http://www.bu.edu/paideia/existenz Volume 4, No 2, Fall 2009 39 understanding of one and the same object, event or situation within the world depending on the actual and contingent conditions of their individual emotional, cognitive, and spiritual self. This is the main reason why individual people can cope, react and act in different, various and individual ways when confronted with the same harmful conditions of human suffering in the real world. For example, some may react to one and the same situation with frustration, passivity, and depression; others may react with vigilance, activity, and responsibility. For this reason there is a certain individuality and subjectivity and therefore even a certain independence of emotional, cognitive, and spiritual suffering with respect to real and determinate outer sources or harmful conditions. To accept these philosophical insights about the epistemic positions of individual human beings does not necessarily lead to epistemic or even ethical scepticism, subjectivism, or relativism. For despite of these psychological facts about the epistemic position of human beings in situations of real life they can still make true or false factual judgments about the state of affairs within the world and right or wrong ethical judgments about their courses of action. Factual truth and the ethical correctness can neither be questioned by the facts of perceptual perspectivity nor by the facts of the individuality of emotional, cognitive, and spiritual understanding. Another well-known aphorism in the Encheiridion of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus distinguishes between things that are in our control and others that are not in our control. "Under our control is our thinking, our actions, our inclinations, our aversions, shortly: everything which is coming from ourselves. Not under our control is our body, our property, our prestige, our outer position – with one word, everything which is not coming from our selves" (section 1). Epictetus advice is: "What one cannot change, one must accept." This piece of advice however might be supplemented by the opposite advice: "What one can change, one must not accept." Indeed, most of the time one only can find out how much can be changed as one attempts to change it. But the sophisticated art of reasonable decision-making in situations where one is confronted with and challenged by some sources of human suffering, as e.g. in politics and economy, in law and medicine does not only amount to changing the world, but rather to improving it. Therefore one might even say: Changing is easy; improving is difficult. In his famous eleventh Feuerbach-Thesis, Marx proclaimed: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, but it is necessary to change it."3 This famous dictum however is faulty for at least three reasons: (a) It is not possible for us as human beings to change the whole world, but only to change certain aspects of and situations within rather small regions of the world. (b) It is not really necessary to change certain aspects of and situations within the world, but to improve them, because whenever we change something we can also make things worse rather than to improve them. (c) It is not possible to improve certain aspects of and situations within the world without interpretation, understanding and knowing those aspects and situations. This is leading to the opposite advice of the one given by Karl Marx: Before we can improve certain aspects of and situations within the world, we need philosophers and scientists, politicians and economists, judges and medical doctors who can interpret, understand and explain them adequately. This is certainly true for the external conditions of human suffering. Sometimes, but not always it is also true for the personal conditions of human suffering. Given Plato's approach, Epictetus' advice and a rather dialectical view about the complex connections between the emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering of human beings and its outer conditions we can now have a closer look at the personal conditions of human suffering themselves. Personal Conditions of Human Suffering Another effective and reliable way of classifying various forms of human suffering is to distinguish them by their immediate and concrete sources within human beings themselves. Accordingly we can distinguish, discover and investigate four types of internal personal conditions of human suffering: First, there are conditions of human suffering within the physical body, such as an ordinary tooth ache, a pain caused by a broken arm or a wound hurting after an operation. Second, there are human suffering conditions within the emotional self such as normal frustration, good and bad stress, mourning, feelings of 3 Karl Marx, "German Ideology, A. Theses about Feuerbach, 11," transl. by the author from: "Die Deutsche Ideologie (1845/46), A. Thesen über Feuerbach, 11," in: Die Frühschriften (Stuttgart: Kröner Verlag, 1971), p. 341. Existenz: An International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts http://www.bu.edu/paideia/existenz Volume 4, No 2, Fall 2009 40 guilt and shame, fear and depression, lack of faith, hope and love. Third, there are human suffering conditions within the cognitive self such as the weakness of one's memory, lack of concentration and vigilance, lack of flexibility and good sense of judgment, the inability to understand one's friends, relatives or other people we relate to, or the lack of understanding of the social, economic and political structures and events. Fourth and finally there are conditions of human suffering within the spiritual self, such as (a) existential anxiety through lack of self-assertive and self-binding answers to such existential questions as: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? What do I want to do and realize in my life? What matters the most to me in life? What is my personal hierarchy of utilitarian, aesthetic, ethical and religious values? Which ethical ideals, principles, norms and values are most important to me? (b) When someone is losing faith in the existence of God, faith in the potential presence of God, faith in the personal relationship to God or faith in the love and mercy of God in view of one's shortcomings, failures and mistakes. (c) When someone is losing his or her basic trust in life, losing his or her sense of caring about one's life, losing his or her will to live on and to make the best out of one's life. In other words there is someone who suffers from the inability to grasp some meaning of life. Such a rather heuristic classification of the internal conditions of human suffering do not prevent us from the ability to further investigate the various external forms, reasons and causes of human suffering within their natural, ecological, political, economic and social circumstances. But it is necessary to distinguish them simply because emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering usually is highly personal and individualized. This means that in many cases external conditions (or types of conditions) which cause some inner emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering for one person do not necessarily cause any or at least the same kind of inner emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering for another person despite of the very same external conditions (or type of conditions). And these internal conditions can cause human suffering independently of and in addition to any other external conditions of human suffering, i.e. if there are no concrete and actual reasons and causes to suffer from any external sources or conditions of human suffering. Moreover any of these immediate and concrete internal conditions of human suffering can be determined as necessary and sufficient conditions for the subjective appearance, presence and disappearance of some additional reflective awareness of human suffering. This means that human beings do not only suffer from physical pain (similar to other living beings, such as animals with an adequate nervous system within the spinal cord), they also suffer from emotional grief, from cognitive failure and spiritual sorrow (unlike related living beings, such as chimpanzees or dolphins). Although animals do have some instinctual and habitual feelings of sorts, human feelings do only share some similarities with animal feelings. Apart from these similarities there is a large variety of culturally and socially shaped human feelings which we don't find in animals, such as social, aesthetic, ethical and religious feelings. Finally human beings can suffer from their reflective awareness of all kinds of suffering, such as physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering. This is not only a quantitative difference or additional factor among the various ways of human suffering (especially when compared with higher mammals). The human capacity to be aware of, to focus on and to reflect (thinking, understanding and explaining) their own human suffering and the suffering of other human beings is changing the very quality of human suffering in many different ways. One well known example is the change of the intensity of bodily pain, such as a tooth ache when concentrating on a certain task or some movie and being distracted in one's selfawareness. There are many other examples that we know by personal acquaintance and introspection. For details we would have to develop various phenomenological analyses what it is like to be aware of, to focus on and reflect the quality, intensity, duration and sources of internal and external conditions of human suffering. Human Suffering as an Aspect of the conditio humana After this rather short outlook on the external and personal conditions of human suffering I would like to outline some basic principles of a philosophical anthropology of human suffering. As I have indicated: Human suffering is very special among the various forms of suffering of all sentient beings. Human consciousness does not only enclose particularly human forms of physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering. Potential awareness of, focusing on and reflection about one's own suffering and the suffering of other human beings is also influencing, Existenz: An International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts http://www.bu.edu/paideia/existenz Volume 4, No 2, Fall 2009 41 changing, and shaping the very quality of human suffering. Moreover human consciousness about our own suffering and about the suffering of other human beings is an essential element of the hermeneutic understanding of being human within the world. There are mainly four reasons for this anthropological insight about the conditio humana with respect to human suffering: One reason for the special quality of human suffering is our human nature and it is incarnated in our special position within the world when compared to other entities as far as we know and understand them: As we know by ways of science and philosophy there are (1) physical objects and events which are unable to suffer (i.e. suffering in the sense of feeling pain rather than in the sense of undergoing some effected change), like all kinds of matter and energy. There are (2) living things that grow, age and die, but cannot feel any pain such as plants or lower animals (without a spinal cord). There are (3) living beings which grow, age and die, breathe, eat and drink, move around, hunt and procreate, which can feel pain and other sensations in their bodies and consciousness, but (a) which cannot feel the same kind of culturedependent and socially shaped kinds of suffering, e.g. like shame or guilt, anxiety or despair, (b) which are not able to share a similar kind of reflective awareness of their own suffering as their own suffering, (c) which are not able to engage in cognitive understanding, reflecting and explaining of their own suffering while it is still lasting or afterwards when remembering it. Another reason for the special quality of human suffering is that as human beings with our particular nature we do not only have a special and unique position among all living beings we know on Earth, but we can also be aware of, reflect, understand, explain and know about our special and unique position among all living beings (as we know them so far). These additional epistemic abilities are also transforming our hermeneutic understanding of the conditio humana because they are in themselves good reasons to accept the special and unique position among all living beings on Earth (as we know them) and even within the universe (as far as we know it). This philosophical insight about the special position and uniqueness of human beings within the universe (as far as we know it) however is often denied by many philosophers today because they wrongly tend to think that it is incompatible with Darwin's theory of the evolution of species. Many philosophers think that this notion of man's uniqueness is merely a consequence of the mythological conception of Man as the crown of God's creation and of Man as created within the image of God that we find in the biblical book of Genesis. Although this mythological conception of the relationship between God, Man and the world is containing some adequate insights enshrined in metaphorical language, the philosophical insight about the special and unique position of Man among the other living beings on Earth is also adequate and reliable from a merely empirical and scientific point of view. Often it is argued that Copernicus, Darwin, Freud have changed the self-understanding of Man within the universe so deeply that we could no longer consider ourselves to be in a special position among other creatures on Earth or even unique within the universe (as far as we know it). First, although Copernicus taught us that the Sun and not the Earth is the centre of our sun-system, modern cosmology is teaching us that we still appear to be in the middle of an expanding universe without discoverable spatial borders. Second, although Darwin taught us that humans are preliminary ending products of the evolutionary development of a manifold of species, our epistemic situation with respect to the very facts of the evolution of nature is still very special and a sound ground for uniqueness among all living beings on Earth. Third, although Freud taught as that human reason is not always and completely the master of human behaviour and actions, our capacity to realize the various conflicts between the affectivity and intentionality of human consciousness as incarnated within our bodies and hearts is putting us in a remarkably different position compared to all other living beings on Earth. The latter insight is as old as ancient Greek philosophy and it is still true in the age of modern cosmology in which we have begun to seek for other intelligent living beings within the universe. To find some, get in touch with them and communicate with them as non-human persons however would be a really revolutionary beginning of a new age in the history of human cultures and civilization. A further reason for the special quality of human suffering is that this knowledge about ourselves as human beings can change our attitude and behaviour towards the suffering of all other sentient beings, i.e. especially towards all kinds of higher animals (with a spinal cord) which can feel pain and other sensations and which can have some feelings similar to, but also different from our own human feelings. Inasmuch as we share some sensations and feelings with them we Existenz: An International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts http://www.bu.edu/paideia/existenz Volume 4, No 2, Fall 2009 42 usually feel closer to them than to other animals and we feel especially responsible for them. Inasmuch as we cannot share all of our sensations and feelings with them we usually feel also the distance and alienation from them and do have to realize that many forms of our special human suffering is different from their other forms of suffering. Finally another reason for the special quality of human suffering is that as human beings we can to some extent choose an attitude toward and an evaluation of our own personal human suffering and even more so with respect to the suffering of other human beings; e.g. we can notice or deny it, bear or raise it, tolerate or fight it, accept or control, minimize or enlarge it. Therefore as human beings we are always to some extent able to choose some personal and individual form of attitude toward and evaluation of our own suffering or the suffering of others. Last, but not least, we can change our own attitude and evaluation to some extent. This is even true of the philosophical insight about the special position and uniqueness of human suffering within the world. We can look at it pessimistically as the reason for a special and unique, but actually tragic loneliness within the universe, i.e. the existential tragedy of human suffering, or rather optimistically as a special and unique, but actually dignified responsibility within the universe, i.e. the existential dignity of human suffering. In the light of these hypothetical principles of a philosophical anthropology of human suffering we can finally look at the psychological and ethical problem of suffering from losing one's sense for the meaning of life. For after all we want to understand the complex relationship between human suffering and the reasons for losing one's faith in the meaning of life. The Basic Human Need for the Meaning of Life According to Viktor Frankl there are some basic principles about the meaning of life one needs to understand: (1) There is no meaning of life as such apart from human beings who have an emotional, cognitive and spiritual need for meaning in certain situations of their life. And although there is no single, general and universal source for the meaning of life for all human beings, all human beings are in need of some meaning.4 4 Viktor E.Frankl, Die Sinnfrage in der Psychotherapie (München: Piper Verlag, 1981); Das Leiden am sinnlosen Leben (Freiburg: Herder Verlag, 1977). (2) Meaning is mostly to be found in situations of human decision-making, in personal relationships and social living conditions. Human beings can and do share many sources for meaning such as friendship, marriage and family, raising and educating children, training and instruction of adults, decent work and responsible behaviour in all kinds of professions, research, teaching and self-formation within the arts, sciences and religions, responsible positions in education, economy, law and politics, etc. (3) Meaning is individual and personal in the sense that it is inherent to the concrete and contingent situation of a person within his or her life. Human beings need to discover it for themselves and others cannot discover it for them. Moreover meaning is personal and individual because what might be meaningful for one person must not also be meaningful for another person. Finally, meaning cannot be simply given to someone by someone else, but oneself must find it. (4) Although meaning is personal and individual, it is not merely subjective, but an objective reality inherent to a situation. However it can only be found by means of a special awareness of the form of a situation. The meaningful form of a situation amounts to be an opportunity on the background of a reality. Therefore meaning must be found and cannot be produced at will. And it must not only be found, but it can always be found in any present situation. (5) In the search for meaning, human beings are guided by their conscience. Since human conscience can fail and is never completely infallible, we can also fail about the meaning of a certain situation and even about the meaning of our life. Judgments about the meaning of a certain situation or the meaning of life are always uncertain and risky. Therefore we can judge about meaning only with an adequate humility. (6) Meaning cannot be searched for, achieved and perceived directly, but only indirectly through some meaningful activities. Whether we feel that our original sense for meaning has been challenged or destroyed by some form of external or personal suffering we cannot make up for it directly and willingly, but we have to find some other aspect of the situation or some new kind of activity which might be another source for our sense for meaning. This is why (the sense for) meaning seems to be so evasive at times and why it cannot be proven to someone who has doubts about its existence. (7) Neither the meaningfulness of the notion of the meaning of life nor the existence of meaning can be proven to empiricist or positivist, naturalist or Existenz: An International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts http://www.bu.edu/paideia/existenz Volume 4, No 2, Fall 2009 43 behaviourist philosophers and psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists who merely accept of the existence of empirical facts which can be verified by the positivistic methods of objective and quantifying science. There are philosophers and scientists who deny and doubt that the notion of the meaning of Life does make sense, is referring to an important human need and has to be accepted as a goal of psychotherapy. (8) For Viktor Frankl and his adherents, however, there is no question that there is something like losing one's faith in the meaning of life. It is an essential part of the emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering of human beings. People do have emotional, cognitive, and spiritual needs for meaning within their life. When this basic human need is getting frustrated, according to Frankl, it is satisfied by various substitutes, such as superficial sensual pleasures, obsessions and addictions, neuroses, personality disorders and psychoses, manias, depressions and other psychiatric illnesses. (9) The majority of human beings know suffering from losing the meaning of life and have been immediately acquainted with it by themselves or by other people. Emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering is a life-long concern for all human beings independent of age, gender, ethnic origine, nationality or religion. It is a constant topic for all people whether they are laymen or professionals who have to deal with these issues when supporting people who are seeking emotional relief, a healing cure for their wounded souls or a restitution of their mental health. (10) Emotional and mental health is the primary and only concern for psychiatrists, psychotherapists and other therapists. Emotional and mental health is not the same as the comprehensive form of well-being, called Shalom in the Jewish tradition or the spiritual salvation of the soul in the Christian tradition. Comprehensive well-being and spiritual salvation in the religious sense are of special concern for rabbis and priests, pastors and ministers or other spiritual guides. Therefore people who formally are believers in God (with their specific personal understanding of God) might also suffer from the meaning of life. And this is also true for people who used to have a firm and decent understanding about who they are and what they want to do in their lives before they entered a personal crisis. (11) Before psychotherapists and psychiatrists started out to understand, investigate and reflect the emotional and spiritual suffering of ordinary, neurotic and psychotic people in a more systematic, methodological and scientific manner they took it for granted that ordinary people and pre-scientific folkpsychology already know quite a bit about these psychological phenomena. Moreover if they are well educated they also know about the endlessly rich resources for a life-long learning procedure about these psychological phenomena within the manifold of religions and within the various forms and works of arts, such as epos, myths and tales, drama, literature and poetry, sculpture, painting and film, etc. (12) Although for Frankl there is no question that there is something like loosing faith in the meaning of life, there are many opinions and convictions, conceptions and controversies about the objective nature, the true sources and the real conditions of the ability or inability to experience and grasp one's actual and concrete meaning of life. Moreover there are many perspectives, descriptions and evaluations about the subjective ways of understanding the meaning of life. And finally there are various psychotherapeutic approaches, methods and rules about the therapeutic treatment of losing one' s understanding or the meaning of life. Human Suffering as a Challenge for the Meaning of Life Keeping Frankl's conception about the human need for the meaning of life in mind we can finally draw some conclusions about the ways in which human suffering can be a challenge for someone's ability to find some meaning in life. (1) All external and all personal conditions of human suffering mentioned above can be a challenge for the meaning of life under some situations. It all depends on the particular and contingent situation in which the individual person with its specific personality, biography and social setting is positioned at the moment given. (2) Whether or not a particular external or personal condition of human suffering really is a challenge for the meaning of life under the given situation is depending on the individual and personal understanding of what is constitutive for his or her meaning of life. (3) Since one's personal sense for the meaning of life is highly individualized people may cope, react and act in many different, unpredictable and even surprising ways toward any external and personal conditions of human suffering. It all depends on their personal emotional, cognitive and spiritual resources Existenz: An International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts http://www.bu.edu/paideia/existenz Volume 4, No 2, Fall 2009 44 for discovering some meaning in the remaining opportunities of their immediate living conditions when being threatened by the loss of meaning in other aspects of their life. (4) The individual ways of coping, acting and reacting with respect to external and personal conditions of suffering as challenges for the meaning of life is neither a good reason to negate or belittle the immense impact of physical and emotional pain contained in all forms of human suffering nor is it a good reason to accept and tolerate all the main sources of physical and emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering. The individual ways of coping, acting and reacting with respect to external and personal conditions of suffering as challenges for meaning can also be a good reason to resist and fight some of the main sources of physical and emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering. Therefore all professions in which preventing, prohibiting, diminishing and raising human suffering are essential tasks contain some of the most profound sources for meaning. (5) Since all the external and personal conditions of human suffering can be, but no single source must be a challenge for the meaning of life of all persons (except for the complete annihilation of human life on Earth and the immense threat for the future of mankind posed by atomic, biological and chemical warfare, world-wars and genocide) in all situations reasonable decisions have to be made with respect to the problem which external and personal conditions of human suffering are to be accepted and tolerated-even if only because of the inability to raise them under the given situations-and which external and personal conditions of human suffering are to be resisted and fought against. These decisions are always a matter of phronesis or sensitive and decent judgment under given circumstances. (6) According to Karl Jaspers however there are some conditions of human suffering which belong to human existence as such and which cannot be avoided and prohibited at all: the Grenzsituationen, or existential borderline situations.5 Among them are (a) the struggle for existence, which often is covered up by the human need for love and harmony, solidarity and cooperation; (b) the individual death, which is often denied or only accepted as a general necessity as long as we have not been acquainted with the immediate experience of the 5 Karl Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (München: Piper Verlag, 1994), pp. 229 – 280 [henceforth cited as PW]. death of person close to us; (c) the contingency of many aspects of our life which are a matter of chance rather than a matter of the orders and laws of nature or of the social and cultural rules of conduct and which cause a lot of inequalities; (d) the reality of responsibility and guilt which cannot be denied despite of all attempts to understand and explain human behaviour as determined by fate, biography, personality and (unconscious) motives; (e) the existential failing or the fragmentary character of human existence which is the reason why the existential attitudes of both pessimism and optimism are based on mere rational constructions which fail to be phenomenologically aware of the ambivalent and antinomic structure of human existence. (7) Among all personal conditions of suffering the Grenzsituationen usually are the hardest challenges of the meaning of life because they are unavoidable constituents of human existence. On the one hand they provoke deep feelings of helplessness and powerlessness and crash the natural and inborn human narcissism. On the other hand they provoke philosophical and religious questions and they promote and deepen the search for the meaning of life. This is why for Jaspers they are chances to wake up from mere factual Being-There (Dasein) to authentic human Existence (Existenz). Human suffering however is remaining an unavoidable element of human Existence: The common moment of all Grenzsituationen is that they bring about suffering; but the common moment is also, that they let the forces grow, which go along with the pleasures of existence, of meaning, of growing. Suffering is not one Grenzsituation among others, but all of them turn into suffering under their subjective point of view. Pleasure and suffering are unavoidably chained to each other. [PW 247] Although we started out with Plato's astonishingly modern and scientific approach to personal being and the nature of the human soul, and although we appreciated Epictetus' hint about the dynamic reality of the human mind we had to learn mainly from Frankl and Jaspers that emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering is much more individual, personal and complicated than at first sight. Any empirical psychological study on these very important and interesting phenomena of human suffering would have to start out with such preliminary and hypothetical philosophical assumptions in order to reach any reliable results which are adequate to the full and rich complexity of the phenomena.


_Augustine_

Philosophy

/ College of Arts and Letters Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006.12.06 Everything Gareth Matthews Augustine Published: December 06, 2006 Gareth Matthews, Augustine, Blackwell, 2005, 148pp., $19.95 (pbk), ISBN 0631233474. Reviewed by Sarah Byers, P.I.M.S. Toronto and Ave Maria University This is the second book (appearing in the same year as Allen Wood's Kant) in the Blackwell Great Minds series, which has two advertised goals: to give readers a strong sense of the fundamental views of the great western philosophers, and to capture the relevance of these philosophers to the way we think and live today. Clearly, these are both laudable goals, as is Matthews' own more particular goal of contributing to a wider recognition of Augustine's importance as a philosopher (6). Matthews succeeds in achieving his particular goal by making Augustine a dialogue partner with other important philosophers. The book presents an interesting array of topics treated by Augustine[1] -sometimes using commonly overlooked texts such as the Literal Meaning of Genesis, the Incomplete Commentary on the Literal Meaning of Genesis, and the Sermons -which it links to similar discussions from the history of philosophy and contemporary philosophy. With this topical and chronological range, Matthews shows that philosophers and students working in epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, logic, philosophy of language, philosophical anthropology, or philosophy of religion, and focusing on any one of a number of authors from Xenophanes to Hintikka, will be compelled to admit that Augustine's philosophical work is sometimes related to their own, and that consequently, comprehensive knowledge of their subject area will require some familiarity with Augustine. Arguably, the book also does a good job of presenting the material in a manner appropriate to "the way we live today," in the sense of 'the way we educate and learn today.' It can evoke the (sometimes exciting) classroom experience[2] of an introduction to Augustine for smart students whose background in philosophy has been topically oriented, who are largely unfamiliar with the primary texts, and whose attention span is best served by switching topics frequently. (Thus, e.g., there are fifteen chapters of about nine pages each, and most of chapter two is devoted to a recapitulation of Augustine's life as recounted in the Confessions, apparently offered in lieu of the Confessions themselves.) To the extent that this student profile describes a typical kind of college student in the U.S., the book could be a palatable way to give many people a first exposure to Augustine, and thereby perform a valuable service. Professors trained as specialists in ancient or late ancient philosophy, in particular, may find the volume a helpful resource for introducing variety into their teaching material. Let us now consider the book's content: its communication of Augustine's fundamental views and of their relevance for contemporary thought. Sometimes the volume offers illuminating comparisons to contemporary material which is genuinely complementary to Augustine's work. Perhaps the best example is the discussion of time in chapter nine. Here Matthews explicates John McTaggart's muchdiscussed[3] 1908 distinction between "A-series" time (involving tensed terms which depend upon a perceiver's 'location' in a timeline, such as "past," "present," and "future") and "B-series" time (in which events are "prior to," "simultaneous with," or "posterior to" other events, without reference to the perspective of someone inside the timeline).[4] He rightly compares this to Augustine's talk, on the one hand, of extended time as 'lived' time (the past and future exist only in our minds: Confessions 11.16.21, 11.18.23, 11.20.26), and his talk, on the other hand, of 'objective' time, that is, his use of a standard ancient definition according to which time is that by which we measure changes (e.g. the Literal Meaning of Genesis 5.5.12, Confessions 11.22.30). The comparison is a useful way to make Augustine's theses explicit and susceptible to analysis. / Yet how far does the similarity to McTaggart extend? According to McTaggart's idealism, change within the B-series depends ontologically upon the A-series, and the B-series is not real in itself.[5] Does Augustine agree? On page 82 we are given to understand that, because Augustine holds that "the only place where periods of time exist is in the mind," he also holds that "time is the measure of something mental" (emphasis added). Chapter nine continues: Augustine "can understand the B-series time line as a human construction, something each of us can make for ourselves" (83); and "from this perspective [sc. that of the A-series perspective of Confessions 11], the objective timeline is what we might call 'a well-founded fiction,' a fiction constructed in the mind of the individual thinker" (84). "'Real' time, that is, human time, is something we put together mentally" (83). Matthews is here in prestigious company. Russell offered a similar interpretation of Augustine (though without the use of McTaggart). [6] Yet Russell acknowledged that he lacked a specialist's understanding of Augustine, who was "better known to some others" than to himself.[7] Wetzel subsequently pointed out that it is difficult to square Russell's interpretation with Augustine's actual words, e.g. in 11.20.26.[8] I, too, have trouble agreeing with this kind of interpretation. Augustine says that the medium in which extensions of time subsist is the mind (11.27.36). It does not follow necessarily that he believes that time measures merely mental objects; and in fact, he plainly asserts that by time we measure changes in extra-mental objects (e.g. "time enables us to measure the motions of bodies and to say that, for example, this movement requires twice as long as that," 11.23.30, emphasis added). He also indicates that (B-series) time passes whether or not we attend to its passing. One simply cannot help being "in" it, and thus may find upon awakening from a reverie of philosophical musing that it has elapsed (e.g. 11.25.32: "I still do not know what time is, and ... as I say this I know that I am in time and have been talking about time for a long time"). In general, the text of Confessions 11 gives the impression that awareness of the passage of B-series time constitutes A-series time, and thus that the A-series is non-reciprocally dependent on the B-series (see e.g. 11.17.22, 11.20.26). Nevertheless, Matthews' comparison remains helpful because it suggests interesting lines of inquiry. The position of Augustine is both similar to and different from contemporary tensed and tenseless theories of time; and tracing these out in some detail is a worthwhile project. This same chapter deals with Augustine on creation, a topic that has received some attention in philosophy of religion circles. Owing to its contemporary relevance, the evolutionary theory Augustine sketches in the Literal Meaning of Genesis attracted the notice of van Inwagen, for instance.[9] The account offered in that text also resonates provocatively with the Big Bang theory. (Augustine argues that the "six days" are not periods of time, but that God created everything at once (simul omnia facta sunt) in one "blow" of establishing the universe (in ictu condendi, 4.33.51); what he actually created was matter having 'seed-forms,' i.e. having potency to yield the species that actually emerged later (e.g. seminaliter, 4.33.51; fecit [Creator] quae futura essent, 4.35.56; potentialiter, 5.5.14; 5.5.15-16).) Some of the main features of this account are mentioned again in the City of God (11.7, 11.30), though not with the same clarity or detail. This book does not mention that account. Doubtless Matthews had his reasons for omitting it, and it would have been interesting to know what they were. Perhaps one reason was that the problem which interests him on pages 78-9 seems to arise only when the Literal Meaning account is excluded. Using City of God 12.16, Matthews posits angelic thoughts, changing from the first moment of creation, in order to save Augustine's assertion that time began with creation: "given his [i.e. Augustine's] assumption that motion is a precondition for time, he could not think there was a time when that angel existed motionless, that is, thoughtless" (79). However, if we say with Augustine in the Literal Meaning that God (also) created matter at the beginning of time, then there is no need to use the angels to account for change. Moreover, if we do this then it becomes clear that Augustine includes the angels primarily for exegetical reasons, not philosophical ones. He introduces them (intelligences, i.e. 'intellectual light'), in order to explain why Genesis speaks of "light," "morning," and "evening" prior to the creation of the sun[10] (Literal Meaning 4.22.39; cf. City of God 11.7, 11.9, and, though mentioned only very briefly, the early part of 12.16 itself).[11] The account of angels as the first creatures therefore seems most pertinent to chapter ten ("Faith and Reason"), which concerns the Augustinian method "faith in search of understanding." However, it is notoriously difficult to disentangle Augustine's philosophical projects from his theological ones (and some might argue that in certain cases, it is not even advisable). More generally, it is to this book's credit that it does not exclude all mention of angels from squeamishness or embarrassment. As Harm Goris has recently pointed out, that kind of reaction is counterproductive given the importance of angelology for understanding other areas of medieval metaphysics;[12] and Augustine's other views about angels (that they exist and have a certain nature) depend no less on Middle Platonism than they do on scripture. Augustine as a 'philosopher of interiority' continues to provoke discussion,[13] and Matthews is right to think that there is more to be said on the matter. He devotes five chapters to exploring the ways that Augustine's positions in the Confessions, Against the Academicians, On Free Choice, and On the Trinity are like and unlike Descartes'.[14] The Confessions as a whole are "actually a 'self- / revelation'," despite being in the form of a prayer addressed to God (5) -apparently they are along the lines of Descartes' conversation with himself about his thoughts.[15] A "most fascinating passage" of Against the Academicians is one which "introduces what, in modern philosophy, is called 'the Problem of the External World' ... Augustine is introducing here, for the first time in Western Philosophy, the idea of one's own phenomenal world" (19-20), but "he does not recognize the Problem of the External World, let alone try to solve it" (23). "There is, in fact, a dim foreshadowing of Descartes' project in Book 2 of On Free Choice of the Will... . One has to admit, however, that Augustine's reconstruction project ... is nowhere nearly as systematic, ambitious, or compelling as Descartes' project in his Meditations" (36); Augustine "call[s] attention to an inner realm of knowledge each of us has open to us... But in no way does he suppose that this realm of inner knowledge is the foundation for all that we know" (42). Elsewhere we hear that, "the explanation Augustine offers [of how we can know that there are rational souls in addition to our own] is, so far as I know, the first statement of what has come to be called 'the argument from analogy for other minds'," (49) but "Augustine is not interested in discussing solipsism. He supposes, without offering any arguments to support the position, that there exists a world quite independently of him" (55). Fresh texts might shed additional light on the question of Augustine's resemblance to Descartes. In one of the sermons discovered by Dolbeau in 1990, for instance, we find: humans cannot turn over good things in their minds, unless they have perceived them through the senses of the body ... for you cannot, oh human being, think about a good thing, except such as you have been in the habit of seeing or hearing or encountering with some such sense. Whatever has not entered through a sense of your body, also cannot be thought about by your mind (Quidquid non intravit per sensum corporis tui, non potest et cogitari animo tuo).[16] If Dolbeau is right, then this sermon is authentic.[17] The last sentence of the quote evokes the scholastic tag, "There is nothing in the mind which was not first in the senses" (nihil in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu).[18] Augustine knew the claim from the Stoic account of concept-formation, as transmitted by Cicero.[19] Descartes' epistemology was based on a rejection of this claim.[20] Thus, an interesting line of research would be to track textually, and to think through, Augustine's joint commitment to the claim and to the so-called "illumination doctrine." Matthews is more accurate on the latter than a number of other secondary treatments when he describes it as a version of the Platonic theory of innate ideas (59). Yet at times the book could be clearer about the fact that, after Augustine's early dalliance with and repudiation of scepticism (Against the Academics 3.9.20; cf. Confessions 5.10.19, 6.4.6-6.5.7), his epistemology was a classical realism forged from Stoicism as well as Platonism (see e.g. the accounts of sensory cognition in the Literal Meaning of Genesis 9.14.25 with On the Trinity 9.16, 10.7, 11.2). In sum, we are all indebted to Matthews for continuing to draw attention to Augustine's philosophical range and relevance. In my view, this volume will be helpful primarily as a teaching resource for scholars already grounded in the history of philosophy. It is possible that an untutored neophyte could form a misleading impression about some one of Augustine's fundamental views, in addition to taking away the good things that are to be found in it; but in the hands of a professor with suitable background knowledge, it will be an effective way to pass on Matthews' well-founded enthusiasm for Augustine. [1] The topics are: scepticism, language, immateriality of the soul, epistemology from a first-person point of view, moral responsibility for dream-contents, time and creation, the relationship between faith and reason, the problem of foreknowledge and free will, the problem of evil, the problem of how it is possible to choose moral evil, lying, and the nature of happiness. [2] Thus Ch. 14, "Lying," contains a description of the way that Matthews teaches the topic, and student responses (126-7). [3] See e.g. the essays and references in Questions of Time and Tense, ed. R. Le Poidevin (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), and for a detailed review of the literature, S. Richter, The Reality of Tense (Hamburg: Hamburg University Press, 2004). [4] J. McTaggart, "The Unreality of Time," Mind 17 (1908): 457-74, reprinted in J. McTaggart, The Nature of Existence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927) Vol. II, Ch. 33. [5] See McTaggart contrasting his view with that of Russell: Nature, Vol. II, Ch. 33, sections 310-311, 315, 317, 347-350. (McTaggart ultimately asserts that both the B-series and the A-series are unreal, positing instead a C-series, which is non-temporal, but appears temporal under some conditions.) / [6] B. Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1948), 212; idem, History of Western Philosophy. Second Edition (London: Routledge, 1961), 352-3 (original edition 1946). Matthews mentions Sorabji (85); and Kirwan could have been cited as well. See R. Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1983), 301; C. Kirwan, Augustine (London/New York: Routledge, 1989), 185. It should be noted that the interpretations of these latter two authors do not agree on all points with one another, with Russell, or with Matthews. [7] Russell, History, 7. [8] J. Wetzel, "Time After Augustine," Religious Studies 31/3 (1995): 341-57; see 348. [9] P. van Inwagen, "Genesis and Evolution" in Reasoned Faith, ed. E. Stump (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1993), 93-127. [10] Gen. 1:3-13 (the first three "days"). [11] Also in City 12.16, when supposing that material creation began subsequent to the initial moment of time, Augustine uses angels for another exegetical purpose: they can explain how God is "lord" over subjects from the beginning of time. He is apparently trying to save Ps. 144:3 and/or Sirach 1:8. (The former: "Regnum tuum regnum omnium saeculorum et potestas tua in omni generatione et generatione." The latter: "Unus est Altissimus creator omnipotens rex potens et metuendus nimis sedens super thronam illius et dominans.") [12] He mentions anthropology and philosophy of God, owing to the fact that angels are between humans and God in the medieval hierarchy of being. See H. Goris, "The Angelic Doctor and Angelic Speech: The Development of Thomas Aquinas' Thought on How Angels Communicate," Medieval Philosophy and Theology 11 (2003): 87-105; see 88f. This article tracks Aquinas' use of Augustine as well as Aristotle. [13] See e.g. J. Cavadini, "Reconsidering 'The Self' in Augustine's Thought," forthcoming in Augustinian Studies (proceedings of the 2006 'Reconsiderations II' conference), R. Sorabji, Self (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 212-229; P. Cary, Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). [14] Ch. 1 ("The First-Person Point of View"), Ch. 3 ("Skepticism"), Ch. 5 ("The Augustinian Cogito"), Ch. 6 ("Mind-Body Dualism"), Ch. 7 ("The Problem of Other Minds"). [15] Discourse on Method 2; CSM III 116/AT VI 11. [16] Augustine is glossing 1 Cor. 2:9 ("Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those who love him"). Dolbeau Sermon 25 (=360B Maurist), paragraph 2: "... homines animis bona volvere non possunt, nisi quae corporeis sensibus perceperunt ... Non enim, homo, cogitare bonum potes, nisi quale videre vel audire vel tali aliquot sensu contingere consuesti. Quidquid non intravit per sensum corporis tui, non potest et cogitari animo tuo." See Vingt-six Sermons au Peuple d'Afrique, ed. F. Dolbeau (Paris: Institut d'Études Augustiniennes, 1996), 249. Trans. adapted from E. Hill, Sermons. The Works of Saint Augustine III/11 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1997), 367. [17] I happen to think that this sermon contains a short interpolation by a later medieval scribe (see a forthcoming "note" to that effect); but the content of the sound portion supports the present point. [18] See e.g. Eustachio a Sancto Paulo (an author of philosophical handbooks known to Descartes), Sum. Phil. III, 427-9, cited in E. Gilson, Index Scolastico-Cartésien (New York: Burt Franklin, 1912), 203-4. [19] Acad. 2.7.19-22. [20] His scholastic education had attributed it to Aristotle, of course. For Descartes' explicit use of the phrase to describe what he used to think before doubting his scholastic education, see Med. VI, CSM II 52/AT VII 75: "facile mihi persuadebam nullam plane me habere in intellectu, quam non prius habuissem in sensu." / Copyright © 2020 ISSN: 1538 1617 College of Arts and Letters Accessibility Information Notre Dame, IN


Twenty Questions

Philosophy

In the first of this new series for the journal, Peter Singer responds to questions from the editors and Theron Pummer.

Volume 4, Issue 2 Twenty Questions 67 Twenty Questions PeTer Singer Princeton University and Melbourne University in the first of this new series for the journal, Peter Singer responds to questions from the editors and Theron Pummer. HiSTory and oTHerS Compared to most other moral theories, utilitarianism is a fairly simple view that doesn't rely on any particularly complex or elaborate argument. Yet despite being around for a couple of centuries, utilitarianism is only endorsed by a tiny minority, and even this minority arguably fails to fully live up to what utilitarianism requires. At the same time, utilitarianism is rejected by many highly intelligent and sophisticated people who appear to have carefully reflected on its core claims and the arguments in its favour, including various attempts to debunk or discount opposing intuitions. Do these points affect how confident you are about your commitment to utilitarianism? Do you think you will be happy if your version of utilitarianism persuades everyone and no one is left to defend an alternative ethical theory, say in 100 years? Or does the prospect somehow frighten you? When you say "utilitarianism is only endorsed by a tiny minority" do you mean a tiny minority of the population as a whole, or a tiny minority of philosophers? if you mean the former, then that is true of any theory-Kantianism, Contractualism, natural Law ethics, you name it... most people don't think about ethical theories very much, let alone endorse them. if you mean the latter, then i don't think it's true- utilitarianism may be endorsed only by a minority of philosophers, but it's a sizable minority, and larger in some countries than others. and i don't think any ethical theory commands the support of a majority of philosophers. Journal of Practical Ethics PETER SINGER68 Why do many intelligent and sophisticated people reject utilitarianism? Some people give more weight to their intuitions than i do-and less weight to arguments for debunking intuitions. does that reduce my confidence in utilitarianism? yes, to some extent, but i still remain reasonably confident that it is the most defensible view of ethics. i don't know if everyone will accept utilitarianism in 100 years, but i don't find the prospect frightening. it would only be frightening if people misapplied it, and i do not assume that they will. Who do you think has been the most serious critic of your work? Is there any particular line of criticism to which you think you have been unable to respond? There is no single critic to whom i would give that label. different critics have focused on different aspects of my work. The most devastating criticism i ever received came from derek Parfit. it was directed at my attempt to defend a solution to Parfit's population problem that did not lead to his famous repugnant Conclusion. He convinced me that my proposal was indefensible. (See Michael Bayles (ed.), Ethics and Population (Schenkman, Cambridge, 1976). on the other hand, i'm still not sure what the right answer to Parfit's population problem is, although i lean towards the Total View, which means i have to swallow the repugnant Conclusion. Parfit has also influenced my views on metaethics. For many years i was Humean about practical reason, holding that reason must start from a desire; and i was a noncognitivist about ethical judgments, holding a view similar to that of r.M.Hare's universal prescriptivism. But i had long felt that Hare's reliance on the meanings of the moral terms was too thin a basis for the views i wanted to defend. Parfit's arguments in On What Matters against Hume's view of practical reason helped to persuade me that there are objective normative reasons. on animals, i've yet to see a plausible defense of speciesism, despite the efforts of Bernard Williams and, more recently, Shelly Kagan. So i regard the case against speciesism as settled. on the other hand, i take seriously critics like Tatjana Visak, who argues, in Killing Happy Animals, that i am too permissive regarding the killing of animals who live happy lives and will, if killed, be replaced by other animals who will live equally happy lives. There have been many critics of my views about euthanasia for severely disabled infants. i had some good discussions with the late Harriet McBryde Johnson, who was not a philosopher but a lawyer who had a rich and full life despite being born Volume 4, Issue 2 Twenty Questions 69 with a very disabling condition. as long as she was alive, when i wrote anything on that topic, i wrote with her potentially critical response in mind. as far as normative ethical theory is concerned, i don't find criticisms of utilitarianism persuasive, but there remains the question of the kind of utilitarianism that is most defensible. When Katarzyna de Lazari-radek and i began work on The Point of View of the Universe i still considered myself a preference utilitarian, although i already had doubts about it. But de Lazari-radek's criticism of preference utilitarianism (which drew on her understanding of Sidgwick on this question) and her response to nozick's experience machine example, was the final push that led me to abandon preference utilitarianism in favour of hedonistic utilitarianism. Who do you think was the greatest moral philosopher of the twentieth century, and why? Can i rephrase that to "the greatest moral philosopher of the past 100 years"? Then i think the answer is derek Parfit. i might give the same answer to the question as you originally formulated it, but On What Matters, which i think removes any doubt about him being the greatest moral philosopher since Sidgwick, appeared in the 21st century. i should add that i have had the benefit of reading, not only Volumes one and Two of that work, but the forthcoming Volume Three (on metaethics) and several draft chapters, on consequentialism, which i expect will be part of a future Volume Four, and these works reinforce my opinion. THeory do you still think that the best argument for utilitarianism is based on the principle of equality understood as equal consideration of interests? There's more to the argument than that. in The Point of View of the Universe we start with Sidgwick's argument for utilitarianism. His principle of universal benevolence is equivalent to the principle of equal consideration of interests, so defending that principle is an important step in the argument, but it is not enough. Sidgwick himself remained deeply troubled by his inability to demonstrate that egoism is irrational. That led him to speak of a "dualism of practical reason"-two opposing viewpoints, utilitarianism and egoism, seemed both to be rational. We use an evolutionary debunking argument to reject egoism, leaving utilitarianism as the sole survivor. Journal of Practical Ethics PETER SINGER70 Do you think it matters, for any practical decision I might face, whether moral judgements can be 'objectively' true? i do. you could just say "these are my normative views, and i'm going to treat them as if they were true, without thinking about whether moral judgments really can be objectively true." if you do that, then in practice your decisions will be the same whether or not moral judgments can be objectively true. But given that i think morality is highly demanding, it becomes easier to say that, since morality is so highly demanding, and there is nothing irrational about not doing what morality demands, i'm not going to bother doing what i know to be right. if there are objective reasons for doing what morality demands, it's more troubling to go against them. Many people object to you by noting utilitarianism implies that sometimes one should perform a morally repugnant act (e.g. torture a child) in order to promote the good. But this same trap (more or less) would "work" on pretty much all contemporary moral philosophers, as there are very few absolutists nowadays. What's your take on this? There are still absolutists. Some are proponents of the "new natural law" tradition, which has its roots in Catholic moral theology, even though it is presented as a secular position. others are Kantians, many of them outside english-speaking philosophy. in germany, for example, you would find wide support for the idea that we should not torture a child, even if (as in dostoevsky's example in The Brothers Karamazov) that would produce peace on earth forever. To me it seems obvious that if by torturing one child you could prevent a vast number of children (and adults) suffering as much or more than the child you have to torture, it would be wrong not to torture that child. our intuitions tell us that to torture a child is always wrong, and because cases in which torturing a child would be right are so extraordinarily improbable, it is good that we have such intuitions. Hare's two-level view of moral thinking explains this point well. Have your views about the role of moral intuitions in ethics changed over the years? You were once famous for rejecting any such role, but in more recent work you defend utilitarianism itself by appeal to (a kind of) intuition, and many arguments supporting utilitarianism appeal to intuitions about the moral irrelevance of e.g. mere Volume 4, Issue 2 Twenty Questions 71 distance. And it seems that if we want to fully flesh out a utilitarian theory, there is no way of avoiding appeal to intuitions, including to intuitions about particular cases. For how else could we settle on a specific theory of well-being or address questions about, for example, population ethics or the non-identity problem? i haven't changed my views about our everyday moral intuitions. in fact my readiness to reject them has, if anything, increased. it is a mistake to judge normative theories by the extent to which they match our everyday moral judgments. i used to argue against many of our intuitions (for example, the intuition that the killing of a newborn infant is just as wrong as the killing of an older person who wants to go on living) on the grounds that they were based on religious beliefs and specific to Western culture. That's still my view, but during the past twenty years we have learned a lot more from work in moral psychology by Josh greene and others. We now know that many of our moral intuitions have an evolved biological basis. So even when moral intuitions are universally held, that doesn't show them to be a reliable guide to what we ought to do-a point that Sharon Street has made convincingly. on the other hand, in The Point of View of the Universe, de Lazari-radek and i follow Sidgwick in arguing that there are some moral truths, or axioms, that we can see, on reflection, to be self-evident. Sidgwick calls these intuitions, and we follow him in that terminology. Perhaps we would have been wiser to use a different term. We are talking about careful, reflective judgments that, we argue, are based on reason, whereas our everyday moral intuitions tend to have an emotional basis. This fits with the fact that it is hard to see how Sidgwick's principle of universal benevolence could be selected for by evolution, except in so far as it came as part of a larger, advantageous package. We suggest that that package is the capacity to reason. WeLL-Being, VaLue oF LiFe and MoraL STaTuS It appears that you now accept a hedonistic rather than preference-based account of human well-being. What implications does this have for your views on the wrongness of killing persons? Do you think all pleasures are equal? Bentham said the pleasure of playing pushpin (pinball) was the same value as the pleasure of reading poetry, but Mill explicitly divided pleasures into higher and lower pleasures. What is your view? For example, is the pleasure some derive from watching pornograJournal of Practical Ethics PETER SINGER72 phy (assuming no actors are harmed, such as cartoon pornography) the same as the pleasure of watching a beautiful sunset or having achieved one's life work? i am currently inclined to accept happiness or pleasure as the ultimate good, rather than preference satisfaction. This eliminates the direct significance of the distinction between persons-defined as self-conscious beings who are aware of their existence over time-and sentient beings who are not persons, but a related distinction may still have indirect weight, because beings who can know that others like them are being killed will then fear that they too may be killed, whereas beings not capable of such knowledge will not. if your question about whether i think that all pleasures are equal is asking whether i accept something like Mill's distinction between higher and lower pleasures, then the answer is that i do not. in that sense i think that all pleasures are equal. But your account of Bentham's view on the pushpin versus poetry issue needs to be more precisely stated. Pleasures differ, as Bentham pointed out, in intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness, fecundity, and purity. What Bentham said is that "quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry." Bentham could have defended a taste for poetry on the grounds that, whereas one tires of mere games, the pleasures of a true appreciation of poetry have no limit; thus the quantities of pleasure obtained by poetry are likely to be greater than those obtained by pushpin, and we are right to encourage people to acquire a taste for poetry. The same seems likely to be true for many other examples. Pornography, for instance, is likely to pall and so bring decreasing amounts of pleasure over time, whereas setting oneself the goal of achieving something truly worthwhile seems likely to be increasingly rewarding over time. PraCTiCe Frances Kamm once said (in an interview with Alex Voorhoeve) that utilitarians who believe in very demanding duties to aid and that not aiding is the same as harming, but nevertheless don't live up to these demands, don't really believe their own arguments. She points out that justifying this by claiming that one is weak willed doesn't make sense: it would be very odd to say that one is weak if one saw a drowning child and did nothing. She concludes that 'either something is wrong with that theory, or there is something wrong with its proponents'. What do you Volume 4, Issue 2 Twenty Questions 73 think about this argument? Why haven't you given a kidney to someone who needs it now? You have two and you only need one. They have none that are working it would make a huge difference to their life at very little cost to you. The view that i take in Practical Ethics and some other writings is not that not aiding is the same as harming in all respects. especially from the perspective of our attitude to the agent, there are some differences, but the differences are nowhere near as significant as our ordinary moral judgments. i'm not sure that the cost to me of donating a kidney would be "very little" but i agree that it would harm me much less than it would benefit someone who is on dialysis. i also agree that for that reason my failure to donate a kidney is not ethically defensible. But i don't agree with Frances that this case is parallel to the drowning child case-that is, the case i described in which the rescuer runs no risk at all of serious harm. donating a kidney does involve a small risk of serious complications. Zell Kravinsky suggests that the risk is 1 in 4000. i don't think i'm weak-willed, but i do give greater weight to my own interests, and to those of my family and others close to me, than i should. Most people do that, in fact they do it to a greater extent than i do (because they do not give as much money to good causes as i do). That fact makes me feel less bad about my failure to give a kidney than i otherwise would. But i know that i am not doing what i ought to do. You said in an interview with Andrew Denton that if you and your wife had a child with Down syndrome, you would adopt the baby out. Could you explain the ethics of this and isn't it a selfish decision? Could you elaborate on your views about disability, in particular why you think a life with disability is of less value and what you think the implications of that are? i was assuming that there are other couples who are unable to have their own child, and who would be happy to adopt a child with down syndrome. if that is the situation, i don't see why it is selfish to enable a couple to have a child they want to have, and for my wife and myself to conceive another child, who would be very unlikely to have down syndrome, and so would give us the child we want to have. For me, the knowledge that my child would not be likely to develop into a person whom i could treat as an equal, in every sense of the word, who would never be able to have children of his or her own, who i could not expect to grow up to be a fully indepenJournal of Practical Ethics PETER SINGER74 dent adult, and with whom i could expect to have conversations about only a limited range of topics would greatly reduce my joy in raising my child and watching him or her develop. "disability" is a very broad term, and i would not say that, in general, "a life with disability" is of less value than one without disability. Much will depend on the nature of the disability. But let's turn the question around, and ask why someone would deny that the life of a profoundly intellectually disabled human being is of less value than the life of a normal human being. Most people think that the life of a dog or a pig is of less value than the life of a normal human being. on what basis, then, could they hold that the life of a profoundly intellectually disabled human being with intellectual capacities inferior to those of a dog or a pig is of equal value to the life of a normal human being? This sounds like speciesism to me, and as i said earlier, i have yet to see a plausible defence of speciesism. after looking for more than forty years, i doubt that there is one. ConTroVerSy You have written and commented on topics that have attracted considerable negative attention (eg bestiality, infanticide), and potentially distract from other things that you are focused on. Do you regret commenting on those topics? Are there topics that philosophers should not tackle? With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps it would have been wiser for me not to agree to review Dearest Pet. Many people have attacked me because of what i wrote in reviewing it; but it was only a book review, for goodness sake! anyway, i stand by what i wrote there (which basically just raises the question why it should be a criminal offense to have sexual contact with animals in a way that does not harm them). a psychotherapist who works with people troubled by their sexual feelings for animals told me that he gives my book review to his patients, and some of them find it helpful to see that the topic can be discussed in a calm and rational way. So i'm not even sure that, with hindsight, i regret having written it. as for the issue of infanticide, anyone thinking hard about what makes killing wrong will need to consider that issue. i'm certainly not the only philosopher to suggest that killing an infant is different, ethically, from killing an older human being who wants to go on living. So i don't regret discussing that topic either. Volume 4, Issue 2 Twenty Questions 75 i don't put forward provocative views for the sake of doing so. i put them forward where i think they have a basis in sound argument, and where it serves a purpose to have them discussed. i hope that other philosophers will do the same. ConTeMPorary iSSueS Do you think drugs should be legalised? yes. Prohibition has not been a success, and the costs of criminalization are huge. We see that cost in the lost lives of people who die from overdoses; we see it in the crimes committed by drug addicts to pay for their drugs; and we see it in the vast amounts of money funneled into organized crime, and in the resulting corruption of police and higher government officials, in some cases going to the very top, in many different countries. What is your view on the war on terror? Do you think that Islamic fundamentalism is a grave threat to our society and what do you think we should do about it? any form of religious fundamentalism is a threat to the values i hold, but recently islamic fundamentalism has posed the greatest danger. i have no expertise on how to combat it, though, so i am not going to comment on that part of the question. Do you think it is wrong for individuals in the developed world to have children, when they know that this will make them more partial and contribute less to the overall good? no, i don't. i worry that if people who think a lot about others and act altruistically decide not to have children, while those who do not care about others continue to have children, the future isn't going to be good. Do you think people who can't bring up their children properly, like drug addicts, should be encouraged not to have children? Should we pay them to take long term contraceptives? Some forms of encouragement would be justifiable. Journal of Practical Ethics PETER SINGER76 Do you agree with Richard Dawkins that we would be better off without religion? That's such a big counterfactual that it's really hard to answer. Would the violence and cruelty perpetrated in the name of religion continue, but in a different guise? Would Christian concern for the poor (shown by at least some Christians, although of course far from all of them) remain, to be expressed as part of a secular humanitarian ethic? Would there be less superstition and more appreciation of scientific method as the most reliable way of discovering the truth? on balance, i'm inclined to agree with dawkins on this question, but the nature of the question means that i don't have a great deal of confidence in my answer. You have written extensively on our duties to help distant people in extreme poverty, but it seems quite clear to many that, if total utilitarianism (or arguably any view that takes seriously the interests of possible future people) is true, our top priority should be reducing existential risks. Do you agree? If not, why not? i certainly think that we should give equal consideration to present and future lives, discounting for uncertainty. But there is a huge amount of uncertainty involved in some of the strategies that have been proposed for reducing the risk of extinction. it's good that some very bright people are working on this issue, trying to reduce that risk as best they can. That's an important thing to do. But if you are suggesting that it should be the top priority of everyone concerned about effective altruism, i think that would counterproductive. Human helping behaviour tends to be triggered by the needs of specific, identifiable individuals. That makes it hard enough to get most people motivated to give to the most effective charities that are helping people in extreme poverty today, because when you distribute bednets, you can't identify the children who would have contracted malaria and died if you had not done so. if it is hard to motivate people to help others who exist now, it would be much harder still to motivate people to give so that there will be humans living good lives many millennia into the future. How should we regulate migration? i presume you are referring to the problems posed by large numbers of refugees trying to travel to another country in order to seek asylum. This has become a global Volume 4, Issue 2 Twenty Questions 77 problem and it needs a global solution. on the one hand, the definition of "refugee" in international law is too narrow, because it applies only to someone who has "a wellfounded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion." Why do not people who have to leave their country because of drought or famine count equally when it comes to granting asylum? especially in the light of what we know about climate change, such refugees seem to me to be equally deserving of resettlement. on the other hand, why should we assume that because someone manages to get to a particular country, that country has an obligation to permit them to stay that is more pressing than the obligation the country has to accept refugees who are currently in a refugee camp in a third country? i think the idea that there is a "right of asylum" needs to be reconsidered, and perhaps it should be replaced by an equitable system of obligations on affluent countries to accept their fair share of refugees. A recent neuroimaging study of extreme altruists by Marsh et al. reported that the neural anatomy of such altruists is distinctive, and may in fact be the reverse of the brain abnormalities associated with psychopathy. You often argue that utilitarianism, and generally a more inclusive and altruistic morality, is the product of reason. Do such results challenge this assumption? yes, they do, to some extent, but it's too early to reach any definite conclusion. Marsh et al. studied people who donate kidneys to strangers. They may be different from other altruists who donate large proportions of their income to altruistic causes. i'm not yet ready to give up on the link between altruism, or utilitarianism, and reason. What is your position on human bioenhancement, including moral bioenhancement? i have some practical concerns: will it work? Will there be unexpected negative side-effects? But suppose that we can put aside those worries and can be highly confident that the proposed bioenhancement will reduce suffering and increase happiness for all affected-then i have no problem with human bioenhancement. indeed, it would be a very positive thing. as for moral bioenhancement specifically, i doubt that it will happen quickly enough, or spread widely enough, to solve the global moral Journal of Practical Ethics PETER SINGER78 problems like climate change that we face right now. But once again, if we could do it, that would be very good.