Comparative Metaethics: Neglected Perspectives on the Foundations of Morality 9781138351677, 9780429435164

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Comparative Metaethics

This collection of original essays explores metaethical views from outside the mainstream European tradition. The guiding motivation is that important discussions about the ultimate nature of morality can be found far beyond ancient Greece and modern Europe. The volume’s aim is to show how rich the possibilities are for comparative metaethics and how much these comparisons offer challenges and new perspectives to contemporary analytic metaethics. Representing five continents, the thinkers discussed range from ancient Egyptian, ancient Chinese, and the Mexican (Aztec) cultures to more recent thinkers like Augusto Salazar Bondy, Bimal Krishna Matilal, Nishida Kitarō, and Susan Sontag. The philosophical topics discussed include religious language, moral discovery, moral disagreement, essences’ relation to evaluative facts, metaphysical harmony and moral knowledge, naturalism, moral perception, and quasirealism. This volume will be of interest to anyone interested in metaethics or comparative philosophy. Colin Marshall is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. His research focuses on the intersection of historical and contemporary philosophy of mind and metaethics. He is the author of Compassionate Moral Realism (2018).

Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory

Putting Others First The Christian Ideal of Others-Centeredness T. Ryan Byerly Methodology and Moral Philosophy Edited by Jussi Suikkanen and Antti Kauppinen Self-Transcendence and Virtue Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychology, and Technology Edited by Jennifer A. Frey and Candace Vogler Moral Rights and Their Grounds David Alm Ethics in the Wake of Wittgenstein Edited by Benjamin De Mesel and Oskari Kuusela Perspectives in Role Ethics Virtues, Reasons, and Obligation Edited by Tim Dare and Christine Swanton Self, Motivation, and Virtue Innovative Interdisciplinary Research Edited by Nancy E. Snow and Darcia Narvaez Morality in a Realistic Spirit Essays for Cora Diamond Edited by Andrew Gleeson and Craig Taylor Comparative Metaethics Neglected Perspectives on the Foundations of Morality Edited by Colin Marshall For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-Ethics-and-Moral-Theory/book-series/SE0423

Comparative Metaethics Neglected Perspectives on the Foundations of Morality

Edited by Colin Marshall

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-35167-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-43516-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This volume is dedicated to the lost and silenced metaethicists, those thinkers whose insights died with them.

Contents

Introduction

1

C O L I N M A RSH AL L

PART I

Moral Metaphysics 1 The Metaethics of Maat

17 19

KEVIN DELAPP

2 The Groundedness of Normativity or Indigenous Normativity Through the Land

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B R I A N YA Z Z IE B URKH ART

3 The Nature of Mexica Ethics

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J A M E S M A F F IE

4 Etemeyaske Vpokat (Living Together Peacefully): How the Muscogee Concept of Harmony Can Provide a Structure to Morality

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J O S E P H L E N MIL L E R

5 Species and the Good in Anne Conway’s Metaethics

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JOHN GREY

6 The Art of Convention: An Aesthetic Defense of Confucian Ritual

119

IRENE LIU

7 Matilal’s Metaethics N I C O L A S B O MMARITO AN D AL E X KIN G

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Contents

PART II

Moral Experience 8 Goblet Words and Moral Knack: Non-Cognitivist Moral Realism in the Zhuangzi?

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C H R I S TO P H ER C. KIRB Y

9 Constructing Morality With Mengzi: Three Lessons on the Metaethics of Moral Progress

179

J I N G H U A N D SE TH RO B E RTSO N

10 Nishida Kitaro¯’s Ko¯iteki Chokkan: Active Intuition and Contemporary Metaethics

198

L AU R A S P E C K E R SUL L IVAN

11 Augusto Salazar Bondy’s Philosophy of Value

213

CLARK DONLEY

12 Sontag on Impertinent Sympathy and Photographs of Evil

236

S E A N T. M U RP H Y

Author Biographies Index

257 260

Introduction Colin Marshall1

The chapters in this volume offer a rich garden of ideas about the nature of morality that emerged on five continents across thousands of years. The topics range from grand views about the very fabric of the cosmos to nuanced suggestions about humans’ layered moral experiences. Reflecting on these ideas promises to both challenge and enrich contemporary Euro-American metaethics. Metaethics, broadly speaking, is the investigation of the underlying nature of morality.2 While any more precise characterization of what this involves is risky, a few general statements will help clarify what this volume aims to accomplish. One way to locate the field of metaethics is via certain “why?” questions. If a child asks why she shouldn’t hit someone, the answer is pretty easy: it’s wrong to hurt others. If she asks why it’s wrong to hurt others, though, it’s hard to find an easy answer (aside, perhaps, from “it just is”). Metaethics attempts to answer the most basic “why?” questions about ethics, that is, questions that would arise even if we had settled what we should do, which things are good, and what sort of people we should be. For example, even if we all affirm the sentence, “it’s wrong to hurt others”, we can still ask “why?” – where we are now asking (for example) what that sentence means, how we know that it’s true, or what its truth consists in. Since every human society has some form of moral code, and the temptation to repeatedly ask “why?” seems deeply rooted in human psychology, it seems likely that humans across the globe have been discussing metaethics in one way or another since before the start of recorded history. Contemporary metaethics, however, became established as a distinct subfield of philosophy only in the 20th century – largely in response to the writings of G.E. Moore, A.J. Ayer, and J.L. Mackie.3 The first periodical dedicated to metaethics (Oxford Studies in Metaethics) appeared only in 2006. Despite this late start, metaethics is one of the most vibrant and quickly growing areas of Anglophone philosophy. Dissertations, articles, monographs, and conferences about metaethics are increasingly common.

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The recent growth of metaethics is partly due to its philosophical inclusiveness. Ethics isn’t the only area that’s one question away from metaethics – in fact, every major subfield of philosophy has helped inform metaethics in important ways. Metaethics includes (but is not limited to): • • • • • •

• •

logical questions about inferential relations involving moral claims metaphysical questions about moral properties and facts epistemological questions and questions in the philosophy of mind about our representation of and access to those properties and facts questions in the philosophy of language about the semantics of moral language theological questions about the relationship between morality and divinity questions in the philosophy of science and mathematics about how ethical thought and progress relate to scientific and mathematical thought and progress questions in political philosophy about the relationship between the moral and the political historical questions about the plausibility of earlier philosophers’ answers to these questions. (Plato, Aristotle, Hume, and Kant all loom large)

By that measure, metaethics may be the most inclusive subfield of 21stcentury philosophy.4 By another measure, however, metaethics may be the least inclusive subfield. Other subfields of philosophy have well-developed literatures comparing approaches from different intellectual traditions. At the time of the workshop on which this volume was based (August 2018), online searches for “comparative logic”, “comparative epistemology”, “comparative metaphysics”, “comparative aesthetics”, “comparative political philosophy”, and “comparative ethics” respectively yielded over 7,000, 13,000, 17,000, 39,000, 67,000, and 73,000 results. A search for “comparative metaethics” yielded only eight. Not 8,000. Just eight. And two of those results were related to the workshop. To be sure, online search numbers are often misleading, and a significant amount of comparative metaethics has been done without that label.5 Even so, it is striking how little work has been done in Anglophone philosophy on metaethical thought from outside the mainstream European tradition – especially since, as several of the following chapters reveal, thinkers from outside that tradition have responded to it and developed it in insightful ways. The chief aim of this volume is help show how much mainstream contemporary metaethics stands to gain by opening itself to a broader range of comparisons and inspirations. The rest of this introduction proceeds as follows. I first offer a brief description of each of the below chapters. With those descriptions in

Introduction

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place, I then propose two explanations for why so little work has been done on comparative metaethics. Next, I say more about how this volume hopes to contribute to contemporary metaethics while recognizing some important limitations and potential problems. I conclude with some acknowledgments.

1. Summaries of Chapters This volume has two parts: I. Moral Metaphysics and II. Moral Experience. Broadly speaking, Part I concerns the nature of value, especially insofar as it fits into the larger universe, whereas Part II concerns humans’ ways of apprehending value. Most of the chapters touch on both themes, but I have divided them based on which theme takes center stage. Within each part I have organized the chapters based on philosophical connections. Hence, every chapter is meant to contrast productively with its neighbors. In this section, I offer a brief summary of each chapter. 1.1. Moral Metaphysics In “The Metaethics of Maat”, Kevin DeLapp describes the ancient Egyptian notion of maat, a notion that simultaneously concerned both justice and truth. A person who aspires toward maat is a maaty, and being a maaty is important to whether one is admitted to the afterlife. To be maaty requires speaking appropriately and being appropriately spoken about. Hence, the test for admission to the afterlife involved a person’s true name being weighed against their words. For the ancient Egyptians, the universe was created through language, so tying the ethical notion of maat to language did not imply that ethics was less than fully real – they held that even the decay of physical things could be checked through proper ritual language. Ritual utterances get their power from reenacting the creation of the universe and their correspondence to things’ true names. DeLapp argues that this view provides a deep challenge to the central distinction in contemporary metaethics, that between moral realism and anti-realism. On the one hand, maat-facts stem from the fundamental nature of the universe, and so they are independent of human minds and practices. On the other hand, maat is essentially linguistic. In fact, DeLapp argues, the ancient Egyptian view approaches contemporary quasi-realism in how it sees moral language as not simply descriptive while using moral language to explain morality. Hence, this view offers a striking challenge to some of the most widely accepted metaethical taxonomies. Another challenge to common assumptions about the relation between language and morality is offered by Brian Yazzie Burkhart in “The Groundedness of Normativity or Indigenous Normativity through the Land”. Burkhart’s focus is what he (following Glen Sean Coulthard) calls

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“grounded normativity”. Grounded normativity concerns Indigenous ethical frameworks in which physical place plays a central role. For example, the traditional Diné (Navajo) view is that people gained the capacity to reason by receiving words that were spoken by four sacred mountains. These words, when used by humans, encode a complex of relationships to the land and the various beings who live on it. By contrast, most mainstream Euro-American ethical frameworks give no particular weight to place, so that our obligations and moral self-understanding have no essential connection to any particular area or geography. This contrast becomes pernicious when a settler society sees itself as a ‘philosophical guardian’ of Indigenous peoples. By imposing systems of thought that aren’t grounded in the land and offering these as ‘translations’ for Indigenous words, settler societies threaten to corrupt Indigenous ethical systems on a fundamental level. Burkhart considers a particularly important example of this: a confusion of grounded normativity with what he calls “Fatherland normativity”. Whereas grounded normativity hinges on non-dominating relations to land, Fatherland normativity involves a dominating, exclusionary relation to the land that (e.g.) manifests in a categorical opposition to immigration. Burkhart concludes by arguing that grounded normativity offers a form of moral realism without either general, abstract principles or (as realism is often conceived) moral statements whose abstract truth floats free of any connection to the land. Metaphysically robust normative relationships are also a central concern in James Maffie’s chapter, “The Nature of Mexica Ethics”. Maffie locates Mexica (Aztec) views of value and obligation within the larger Mexica understanding of the cosmos. Central to the Mexica view, as Maffie understands it, is the notion of macehua, a process by which an agent brings about some result and thereby becomes deserving of something. One case of this is humans’ cultivation of corn, which thereby makes them deserving of the sustenance that the corn then provides. The same normatively loaded relationship holds, for the Mexica, between the creator beings (such as Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca) and humans. The creator beings brought humans into existence through a macehua process, which thereby obligates human to provide sustenance to the creator beings – unlike familiar Abrahamic views on which an omnipotent divine being in no way depends on humans’ activity. In fact, both humans and creator beings are constituted by teotl, a sort of sacred energy or life force (the metaphysics of which Maffie has described in detail in earlier work). Central to this view, then, are demanding creating/sustaining relationships that are intrinsically normative. Unlike most contemporary views that see normativity as inhering in relationships, however, the Mexica view is decidedly non-anthropocentric – humans are merely some nodes among others in a vast, normatively loaded cosmic fabric. A similarly rich normative fabric is described in Joseph Len Miller’s chapter, “Etemeyaske Vpokat (Living Together Peacefully)”. Miller describes

Introduction

5

the core normative concept in Muscogee (Creek) thought, for which he uses the term ‘harmony’. Unlike, say, a Platonic or Moorean conception of goodness, the Muscogee conception of harmony is essentially relational, and the fundamental moral obligation is to promote harmony. This involves a balancing of energy. Moreover, unlike many other relation-focused ethical views (but like the views described in Maffie’s and Burkhart’s chapters), the Muscogee view includes relations to nonhumans, including all of an agent’s surroundings. Miller suggests that harmony has both moral and prudential value, though the prudential value of promoting harmony is not chiefly aimed at solitary agents as in, say, Thomas Hobbes’s view. One surprising consequence of this view is that morally correct action requires a surprising amount of detailed non-moral knowledge concerning the structures of energies in the various entities that one interacts with. Miller offers the example of hunting. Proper hunting requires knowledge of how to use one’s weapon and the hunted animal’s anatomy (for the sake of reducing suffering) but also knowledge of which person in one’s community should first receive the kill from the hunt. Hence, morally correct action requires detailed knowledge of the natural world and one’s community, in stark contrast to, say, certain Kantian views. While Burkhart’s, Maffie’s, and Miller’s chapters draw on non-European traditions to challenge anthropocentric metaethical views, a similar challenge emerges in John Grey’s chapter on a largely neglected European philosopher: “Species and the Good in Anne Conway’s Metaethics”. Grey spells out the surprising consequences of Anne Conway’s essence monism, that is, her view that all created beings share the same essence. Essence monism was (and remains) a heterodox view – most European philosophers who considered the question maintained that humans have a different essence from (e.g.) horses, plants, and rocks. Grey looks at the details of Conway’s argument for essence monism and proposes that she accepts this metaphysical view for distinctively moral reasons, in particular, that there should be no limits to any creature’s potential to participate in goodness. As a theist, Conway held that the world was created by a benevolent, omnipotent God and inferred that God would not set limits to any creature’s moral improvement. This provides a striking instance of ethics guiding metaphysics. Grey draws three further surprising metaethical implications from these views. The first is that, while some facts about what is good for an entity might appeal to its species (e.g., what is good for me qua human), other facts about its goodness will not (since, e.g., it is not essential to me that I am human). The second is what Grey calls the “universality of moral subjecthood”, according to which all creatures are appropriate objects of rewards and punishment because all creatures are at least capable of moral deliberation. Grey concludes by pointing out that these views intersect in a surprising way with the view (defended by Michael Smith and others) that we have reason to do whatever an

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epistemically perfected version of us would advise us to do. Conway’s view implies that every creature (even inanimate ones) has such an epistemically perfected counterpart, which would mean that every creature has reasons to act. This final conclusion may seem absurd but is not easily avoided given essence monism. Hence, on Grey’s interpretation, Conway shows how facts about humans’ vs. nonhumans’ essences can have a surprising impact on the scope of moral subjecthood. While Conway was concerned with moral improvement that requires becoming a different species, Irene Liu, in “The Art of Convention: An Aesthetic Defense of Confucian Ritual”, considers an approach to specifically human perfectibility, drawn from the Confucian philosopher Xunzi. Liu’s starting point is the challenge of defending the emphasis on ritual in Confucian ethics. Many of the required rituals are extremely specific, such as an instruction to bow when entering a staircase. Metaethically speaking, it is hard to see what could justify such specifics rituals. Some commentators have attempted to do so in an Aristotelian vein, looking at Mencius’s account of how human nature can be fully realized. Liu objects, though, that such accounts cannot plausibly account for what she calls the “normative fineness” of rituals – the very specific requirements they involve. The same problem, Liu argues, faces attempts to justify rituals via their capacity for maintaining social order – a view suggested by Xunzi. However, elsewhere Xunzi claims that moral education resembles crafting raw materials into something useful and good, and some Confucians compare rituals to the proper application of makeup to a face. This, Liu proposes, points to a more promising approach. Just as makeup accentuates some natural features while covering others, so too ritual accentuates and refines some emotions and desires while redirecting or suppressing others. This is an aesthetic justification, and Liu takes it to be an objective one. Aesthetic perfection, unlike development of humans’ biological nature or supporting social order, does plausibly require very specific details and so is a much better fit for this case. The idea of grounding moral value in aesthetic value (especially in terms of beautifying human nature) is rarely encountered in Western philosophy. However, Liu suggests, it may offer a richer metaethical understanding of social convention in moral life than most metaethicists have thought possible. Part I of this volume closes with Alex King and Nicolas Bommarito’s chapter, “Matilal’s Metaethics”. Bimal Krishna Matilal was born in India, educated at Harvard, and taught at Oxford. He is well known for his work in logic, but his complex metaethical views have received little attention. Drawing on various classical Indian philosophical sources, Matilal defended a form of metaethical pluralism that offers a promising framework with which to consider comparative metaethics in general, not least since Matilal himself engaged in detail with mainstream Anglophone metaethicists, including Bernard Williams, Gilbert Harman, and R.M. Hare. King and Bommarito show how Matilal’s pluralism is

Introduction

7

positioned between moral relativism and traditional absolutism. Against views that relativize ethical frameworks to different cultures, Matilal denies that cultures can be neatly individuated. This line of criticism, King and Bommarito argue, is likely inspired by the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness, according to which nothing has a static, independent nature – a general metaphysical view that provides a ground for suspicion about the individuation of cultures. However, Matilal also denies that there is any single set of moral standards that all people should conform to. Instead he holds that there are various, potentially incommensurable moral standards. King and Bommarito argue that this opposition to ‘singularism’ was inspired by the Indian notion of dharmas, as exemplified in the Bhagavad Gītā. Matilal used a case from the Bhagavad Gītā to defend the possibility of an individual facing a genuine moral dilemma because of a clash between such different standards. How, though, does this rejection of singularism fit with Matilal’s rejection of relativism? King and Bommarito find an answer to this in Matilal’s discussion of Jaina philosophy, in particular, of the concept of ‘non-onesidedness’. The best-known exemplification of this concept is the image of several blind people feeling different parts of an elephant. To the person feeling its leg, it seems like a tree, while to the person feeling its tail, it feels like a broom. These people encounter something real, and so each can get something right (though none are guaranteed to). Carrying the analogy over, we might see different people as all trying to touch the same complex moral fabric (some succeeding in different ways, with others failing). Hence, King and Bommarito conclude, Matilal offers us a way of understanding and legitimizing some ethical differences without abandoning the realist’s ability to simply reject some moral systems. If something like Matilal’s view is right, then the project of understanding morality in the fullest sense requires detailed attention to different forms of moral experience. This leads to the second part of the volume. 1.2. Moral Experience In “Goblet Words and Moral Knack: Non-Cognitivist Moral Realism in the Zhuangzi?”, Christopher C. Kirby proposes that the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi offers a form of moral realism according to which moral reality cannot be grasped through propositional belief or literally described, but only felt, intuited, and indirectly expressed. Relatedly, Kirby argues, Zhuangzi offers a picture of moral expertise that does not assume the possibility of communication – instead, moral expertise is distinguished by inarticulable ‘knacks’. Kirby’s argument focuses on the use of so-called ‘goblet words’ in the Zhuangzi (the text whose ‘inner chapters’ are attributed to Zhuangzi). The goblet words, which appear in metaphor and poetic phrases, are meant to indicate a sort of truth, but the truth in question is not so much a property of sentences as a dynamic

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ultimate nature. Likewise, Zhuangzi saw thought and language as standing in a dynamic relationship with reality as opposed to merely trying to mirror it. Zhuangzi presented his view in deliberate contrast to the intellectualism of the Confucian and Mohist traditions. The ideal of agency, for Zhuangzi, was found in skillful artisans, whose mastery of their craft was shown by how they adapt their own bodies in responding to particular situations. These artisans have tapped into the true dynamic nature that guides their actions, but since that nature is dynamic, none of them have completely grasped it. Hence, the moral grasp of even the best people at most only ‘tips toward’ the ultimate truth. Moreover, in contrast to mainstream Western accounts, Zhuangzi does not assume that good agents will converge in their actions or beliefs. Kirby concludes by proposing, however, that this is not an indication of moral conventionalism or relativism but rather of the richness of a moral reality that cannot be conclusively expressed. The theme of moral development is likewise explored by Jing Hu and Seth Robertson in “Constructing Morality with Mengzi”. Hu and Robertson draw on the work of the Confucian philosopher Mengzi (sometimes called ‘Mencius’) to shed light on how people’s moral views can progress. Hu and Robertson direct their attention in particular to how a moral anti-realist can explain such progress, given that anti-realists cannot (or need not) appeal to the apprehension of real, mind-independent moral facts. Menzgi, on their reading, has three lessons to offer contemporary anti-realists on this front. The common theme between these lessons is that moral progress involves more than just inferentially driven changes to moral beliefs. Their first Mengzian lesson is that our moral deliberation and development include important elements beyond beliefs and inferences, elements that are also affective and motivational. The second lesson is that, as Mengzi shows, analogical reasoning can play a role in shifting agents’ moral perspectives, even in the face of otherwise unassailable, internally consistent sets of moral beliefs. The third lesson is that moral progress is explained by the emergence of certain emotions in engaged situations. While some contemporary philosophers have appealed to related considerations, Hu and Robertson show that Mengzi’s approach benefits from his moderately complex view of human nature, according to which it is comprised of four ‘sprouts’ that can each develop into virtues. (As an aside, I will note that while Hu and Robertson focus on how Mengzi’s views can help anti-realist accounts, I suspect that the considerations they raise deserve serious attention from moral realists as well.) In “Nishida Kitarō’s Kōiteki Chokkan”, Laura Specker Sullivan explores the 20th-century Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō’s concept of ‘active intuition’. Specker Sullivan argues that Nishida, a practicing Buddhist who studied European philosophy extensively, offers a powerful alternative to contemporary views on which our moral knowledge arises from

Introduction

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non-inferential intuition or sentiment. Most contemporary intuitionist and sentimentalist views appeal to something receptive or passive, in which, say, an armchair philosopher has some moral fact strike her as true. By contrast, Nishida, on Specker Sullivan’s reading, takes the relevant intuitions to arise only insofar as we are actively participating in our world, such as when we find ourselves reaching out to help someone who has tripped. Nishida thus offers what seems to be the opposite of the familiar view (defended by, e.g., Iris Murdoch and John McDowell) that moral perception is prior to action. Active intuition, on Nishida’s view, provides us moral knowledge both of what, say, a situation requires and of ourselves as moral agents. All this knowledge, for Nishida, is deeply dependent on the historical development of subjects’ interactions with their world. Hence, on Nishida’s view, the armchair philosopher who attempts to understand ethics ahistorically is necessarily at a disadvantage compared to more engaged thinkers – a striking challenge to the widespread ideal of doing ethics (and philosophy generally) in the cool hour of deliberation. A similar emphasis on activity in the experience of value is described in Clark Donley’s “Augusto Salazar Bondy’s Philosophy of Value”. Augusto Salazar Bondy was a Peruvian philosopher who systematically engaged with all the major issues in metaethics: metaphysics, epistemology, language, mind, and the implications of metaethics for concrete political and ethical problems. Much of his work discussed the views of European philosophers, especially Kant and Wittgenstein. At the same time, however, in his discussions of political domination and oppression, he drew attention to the pernicious role that philosophy can play. Donley first describes Salazar Bondy’s early metaphysics of value, which hinged on the idea of an entity fulfilling its being. Salazar Bondy later rejected this view, however, for broadly Moorean reasons. Instead, partly inspired by Wittgetstein’s Tractatus, Salazar Bondy developed an understanding of value as a transcendental condition of rational action and interaction (and an accompanying view of ethical language as non-descriptive, on analogy with logical language). Yet truly understanding value, for Salazar Bondy, requires understanding valuative experience. Donley lays out the basic structure of Salazar Bondy’s hierarchical account of valuative experience on which we attribute value to objects, realize those attributions through action, form preferences, and then make choices that realize objects based on those preferences. All of these aspects of valuative experience are guided by the idea of objective, universalizable value, and so are distinct from mere likes and dislikes. Salazar Bondy indexes all valuative experience to ‘patterns of valuation’. These patterns therefore play a fundamental role in all our actions as rational beings. Yet, Donley shows, Salazar Bondy does not think all patterns of valuation are on a par – some involve the imposition of alien values, and this means (in a broadly Kantian sense) that they fail to be universal. A key example of this, for Salazar Bondy, was the imposition of European philosophy and religion in Latin

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America. Nevertheless, Salazar Bondy was optimistic about the potential for Latin American philosophy to achieve authenticity through critical revisions of the imposed patterns. Relative to contemporary metaethics, Donley argues that Salazar Bondy’s views could be fruitfully engaged with on at least three fronts. First, Salazar Bondy describes how social practices depend on values, in contrast to the more familiar emphasis on how values depend on social practices. Second, Salazar Bondy carefully considers the difficult question of how socially encoded patterns of value can be assessed without appealing to moral properties or entities. Third, Salazar Bondy offers powerful examples of how metaethical thought can directly bear on very real social and political challenges. A similar link between real social and political problems and broad metaethical concerns appears in Sean T. Murphy’s chapter, “Sontag on Impertinent Sympathy and Photographs of Evil”. Murphy draws out two ideas from Susan Sontag’s discussions of sympathetic reactions to war photography in her book, Regarding the Pain of Others. Both ideas challenge widely held views about moral perception and moral emotions. The first idea is that war photographs provide us with general moral knowledge, such as enlarging our sense of how much suffering human wickedness has caused. While a significant number of contemporary philosophers (such as Lawrence Blum) defend the view that we can acquire moral knowledge by perception, their focus is typically on knowledge of particulars. The second idea is that our sympathetic reactions to war photographs have a sort of content concerning not just the objects of sympathy but also ourselves (the sympathetic subject). Sontag claims that our sympathy declares that we are both innocent with respect to the suffering we see and unable to help, even when we are neither in fact innocent nor impotent. This poses a challenge to views that give sympathy a straightforwardly positive role in our moral lives. The view Murphy finds in Sontag also poses a concrete practical challenge to everyone who finds themselves reacting sympathetically to others: perhaps our sympathetic reactions obscure (or even deny) our own complacency in bringing about the problematic situation in question. In my view, Sontag’s challenge raises a question in relation to the specific theme of this volume: does mere sympathy for other intellectual traditions (a sympathy that, on a general level, many philosophers would profess) obscure the question of why those traditions are regarded as ‘other’, and why they have received comparatively little attention from contemporary philosophers? This brings us to the general topic of why, in contrast to other subfields of philosophy, metaethics has included so little comparative philosophy.

2. Why So Little Comparative Metaethics Before Now? I hope you will ultimately agree that the chapters just described show that comparative metaethics offers an incredibly exciting range of philosophical

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views and challenges to contemporary metaethics. Hence, I do not think that the relative rarity of comparative metaethics up until now is due to a lack of material or potential interest. In this section, I identify two other factors that I think do, at least in part, explain why this area is underexplored. The first factor is relatively straightforward. As I noted earlier, metaethics intersects with all other subfields of philosophy. This makes it really hard. A complete defense of, say, the anti-realist view that moral facts are just projections of our desires ends up requiring discussion of intersecting issues from metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, etc. Once such a view is on the table, defending an opposing realist view (on which, say, moral facts are robustly mind-independent) calls for addressing the anti-realist on each of these fronts. That is a lot to juggle – perhaps more so than for any other subfield of philosophy. In addition, comparative philosophical work on any topic is also really hard, but for different reasons. It involves trying to coordinate different linguistic and conceptual frameworks. Towering over that coordination task are profoundly difficult meta-philosophical questions about the possibility and meaning of comparative and interpretive work. Hence, I suggest, there is a fairly sanguine explanation for the rarity of comparative metaethics: pursuing it requires dealing with two mutually-amplifying sets of serious challenges. Since metaethics is relatively new as a distinct branch of philosophy, it may just be too early to either expect many metaethicists to take on the challenges of comparative work or to expect many comparative philosophers to take on metaethical questions. Difficulty cannot be the whole explanation, however, since many academics are drawn to their areas of specialization precisely because they enjoy difficult challenges. The other factor I’d like to propose, then, is less sanguine. While racism and sexism run throughout the history of philosophy, in the 18th and 19th centuries a number of prominent intellectuals (such as Christoph Meiners) deliberately set out to craft a story of philosophy centered on European men – downplaying the writings of women and earlier narratives that gave Egypt and India a central role.6 Much of these efforts were connected to the work of Immanuel Kant7 and helped shape the profoundly influential story of philosophy articulated by G.W.F. Hegel, according to which the highest forms of philosophical thought appeared only in Europe. It is likely that all of subsequent European philosophy was affected by this course of events in one way or other. Yet, I’d like to suggest, 20th-century metaethical inquiry was particularly vulnerable to it because metaethics has maintained an unusually close connection to Kant. While Kant’s thought has impacted every area of contemporary philosophy to some degree, his framing of metaethical issues in the 1785 Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals looms large in the most influential texts of 20th-century metaethics, such as G.E. Principia Ethica, C.L. Stevenson’s 1944 Ethics and Language, R.M. Hare’s 1952 Language of Morals, and J.L. Mackie’s 1977 Ethics: Inventing

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Right and Wrong.8 By contrast, Kant’s metaphysics, epistemology, and logic seemed to have dropped off more in their influence. This may have been because Kant’s focus on imperatives in the Groundwork made his framing especially amenable to the 20th-century ‘linguistic turn’ in philosophy, whereas other parts of his philosophy were harder to adopt in linguistic terms. For example, Kant’s famous distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments (central to his epistemology and metaphysics) requires more philosophical work to defend than his distinction between categorical and hypothetical imperatives. The latter distinction seems supported by the surface grammar of statements, whereas the former does not. Hence, mid-20th-century Anglophone philosophers, most of whom gave language a central place in their approaches, were perhaps most likely to frame their discussions relative to Kant when discussing metaethics – which in turn helped sustain the sort of narrative and focus produced by Meiners and others.9 I am not suggesting that all metaethicists influenced by Kant inherited the hegemonic aims of people like Meiners, nor am I suggesting that Kant was their primary historical influence. I am also not suggesting that continuing to engage with Kant is necessarily wrong (at least, I sincerely hope not, since nearly all of my own work does!). But, insofar as we are looking for a historical understanding of why so little work has been done on comparative metaethics, one important possibility is that Kant’s outsized influence brought with it an implicit assumption that metaethics is really found only in Kant and those white, male philosophers he conspicuously engaged with (such as Hume, Aristotle, and Plato). Ironically, then, it may be in part because metaethics has maintained more connection to its history than other subfields of contemporary philosophy that it has shown comparatively little interest in looking outside the mainstream European canon. Let me emphasize that my proposal here is a hypothesis painted in broad strokes about a long and complex stretch of intellectual history. There are alternative explanations for the phenomenon in question that I have not argued against. As mentioned earlier, one potential explanation is that comparative metaethics just does not have anything philosophically significant to offer. This volume as whole, I believe, refutes any suggestion along such lines. However, there is another important potential explanation that should be considered: perhaps comparative metaethics is morally or politically inappropriate or dangerous. I consider this worrisome possibility in the next section. Before I do so, though, I want to say something about why I am optimistic about the future of comparative philosophy. Regardless of why relatively little comparative metaethics has been done up to now, I have yet to find a metaethicist or student of metaethics who, when presented with it, was not interested in the prospects for comparative metaethics. I am more confident that comparative metaethics has a bright future than I am of any explanation for its limited past.

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3. Hopes, Limitations, and Dangers The primary hope of this volume is to introduce some exciting metaethical ideas into the contemporary metaethical literature, thereby inspiring others to join in doing comparative metaethics. Many of the chapters also aim to add to the literature on the non-canonical figure or tradition they focus on, but for most of this volume’s authors, this is a secondary aim. For that reason, many of the authors explore a range of philosophically illuminating interpretive possibilities. This is similar, in fact, to how many 20th-century metaethicists have engaged with Kant. Their concern was not limited to getting Kant’s own views exactly right; they also aim to land on important ideas through engaging with Kant’s texts.10 Even so, this volume has certain limitations and faces potential dangers. I consider some of these in this section. As you may have noticed by the end of Section 1, the volume has at least one important limitation: the limited selection of figures and intellectual traditions discussed. Despite the considerable range of sources discussed, none of the chapters engage with metaethical thought from (for example) sub-Saharan Africa, the Islamic tradition, indigenous traditions in Australia and New Zealand, or Black feminist thinkers. The particular sources discussed here are a function of who responded to the preparatory workshop’s call for papers and which of the invited contributors were ultimately able to contribute a chapter. Much more comparative metaethical work remains to be done in relation to many other thinkers and traditions. In the last section I mentioned the possibility that comparative metaethics might be underexplored because some earlier scholars believed that it was morally or politically problematic. Since each chapter aims to draw connections between contemporary metaethics and non-canonical figures and thoughts, there are at least two (related) potential problems the authors here face: appropriation and domination. I’ll briefly consider each. One way to understand intellectual appropriation is in terms of epistemic injustice, more specifically, in terms of inappropriately speaking for another.11 Speaking for another person or group can be an insult to their agency (implying they can’t speak for themselves), a way of blocking them from participating in ongoing conversations, and a way of wrongly essentializing them. These problems are amplified when one speaks for another inaccurately – a risk that comes with all interpretive work. As Brian Burkhart’s chapter explains, this risk is particularly important when language plays a central role in a people’s ethical system. To be sure, worries about appropriation are most pressing when one speaks for living people, but almost all the figures and traditions discussed by the contributors have living descendants. Since many of the contributors to this volume do not have such an identity connection to the figures and traditions they discuss, the interpretations they offer are meant as proposals – proposals

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which they hope others will correct as needed. By contrast, the most egregious examples of appropriation are presented as the final word on the matter, as conclusively speaking for others. While appropriation is a problem of taking, domination is a problem of imposing. On this point, Clark Donley’s chapter on Augusto Salazar Bondy is helpful. For Salazar Bondy, one of the key features of domination is how a foreign framework can stifle the authentic creativity of a people or a tradition. Applied here, one might worry that this volume’s focus on contemporary metaethics might carry the suggestion that, say, an indigenous culture’s views on value must be ‘tidied up’ using contemporary philosophy before they can be thought about seriously, so that members of indigenous groups cannot creatively engage in proper ethical thought without some Western philosophical ‘training.’ Any such suggestion is rejected by the contributors to this volume. All of them believe there can be something useful about engaging with contemporary metaethics, but none believe that anyone must engage with that framework to do metaethics. Instead, the driving suspicion in these chapters is that there are defects or gaps in contemporary metaethics, not the alternative traditions the contributors examine. Some of the chapters (including Burkhart’s and Liu’s) attempt to recover metaethical ideas from Euro-American categorizations others have applied to them. This is the opposite, then, from the project of a philosopher like David Hume, who notoriously used an empiricist framework to dismiss large swaths of non-academic thought as sophistry and illusion. All that said, there may still be politically important mistakes in this volume (including this introduction). We believe that the potential payoffs justify the risk of mistakes. Not only does contemporary metaethics stand to learn from more attention to non-canonical sources, but the chapters that follow also offer introductions to fascinating thinkers and intellectual traditions that many readers will not have encountered before.

4. Acknowledgments In closing, I would like to thank the many people who helped make this volume possible, including all those who helped with the August 2018 workshop on Lost Voices at the Foundations of Ethics. First, I’m grateful to Andy Beck from Routledge Press, for the conversation that got the project going. The workshop was made possible by the generous sponsors of the Robinson Workshop Initiative and Saari Workshop Initiative Funds, as well as Andrea Woody and the UW Department of Philosophy. Joey Miller, Megan Wu, Annette Bernier, and Bev Wessel all provided crucial logistical help with the workshop. Andrew Weckenmann at Routledge was consistently helpful and encouraging during the production of the volume. Megan Wu provided excellent comments on a number of

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draft chapters and illuminating conversations about the volume as a whole. Kyle O’Dwyer provided valuable help in preparing the index. Finally, I am personally grateful to all of the contributing authors for their contributions. It has been an honor to work with them.

Notes 1. This introduction has benefited from comments and feedback from Martijn Buijs, John Grey, David Kim, Jim Maffie, Joey Miller, Kyle O’Dwyer, and Mike Raven. Megan Wu provided not only helpful comments and discussion but also invaluable help with the background research. 2. In this introduction, I use ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ interchangeably, though these terms are sometimes used in different ways. For example, it sounds more natural to talk a club’s ethical code than about a club’s moral code. 3. Moore (1903), Ayer (1946), Mackie (1977). 4. Logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language likewise intersect with most other subfields (hence their traditional designation as ‘core’ areas in analytic philosophy). However, a significant body of work in these areas is done in relative isolation from other subfields, hence, many canonical works of (e.g.) contemporary Anglophone metaphysics say nothing substantive about epistemology or language. By contrast, nearly all the canonical works of contemporary Anglophone metaethics include substantive claims about metaphysics, epistemology, language, and philosophy of mind. 5. See, for example, Wong (1984), The Cowherds (2015), and Flanagan et al. (2019). The term ‘metaethics’ came into common use only in the second half of the 20th century, so, insofar as earlier comparative metaethics had a ‘comparative’ label, it was probably often that of ‘comparative ethics.’ 6. See O’Neill (1997) and Park (2013). 7. In a 1784 letter to Friedrich Plessing, Kant writes: “For reasons already largely anticipated by Herr Meiners, I cannot agree with your judgment concerning the great wisdom and insight of the ancient Egyptians” (Kant 1999, 212). 8. To be sure, other 20th-century philosophers such as G.E.M. Anscombe and Philippa Foot argued, sometimes influentially, against the Kantian framing of metaethical issues (see Anscombe 1958; Foot 1972). However, while some philosophers took these arguments as inspiration for moving beyond the Kantian framing, others took them as occasions for defending it. 9. Megan Wu suggested to me that discussions of (non-meta-) ethics from this period had a similar Eurocentric focus and that this may have at times ‘trickled up’ to metaethical discussions. After all, it is still common for ethics courses to give texts from Aristotle, Mill, and Kant a foundational place, whereas ‘standard’ logic, metaphysics, and epistemology courses at most use a bit of Aristotle, Descartes, or Hume to prepare students for more recent literature. Another (compatible) explanation for the prominence of the Kantian framework, of course, is that Kant got something recognizably right. 10. As the recent history of Kant interpretation has shown, there can be a productive back-and-forth between those concerned with getting Kant’s views exactly right and those looking for broadly Kantian inspiration (e.g., in the aftermath of P.F. Strawson’s Bounds of Sense). Both projects can provide the other with incentives and insights. 11. For one useful discussion, see Matthes (2016), which draws on Fricker (2007), Maitra (2009), Dotson (2011), and others.

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References Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret. 1958. “Modern Moral Philosophy.” Philosophy 33(125): 1–19. Ayer, Alfred Jules. 1946. Language, Truth, and Logic. New York: Dover. The Cowherds. (eds.). 2015. Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dotson, Kristie. 2011. “Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing.” Hypatia 26: 236–57. Foot, Philippa. 1972. “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives.” Philosophical Review 84: 305–16. Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1999. Correspondence, edited by A. Zweig. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mackie, John Leslie. 1977. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. New York: Penguin. Maitra, Ishani. 2009. “Silencing Speech.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39: 309–38. Matthes, Erich Hatala. 2016. “Cultural Appropriation Without Cultural Essentialism?” Social Theory and Practice 42(2): 343–66. Moore, George Edward. 1903. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Neill, Eileen. 1997. “Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and Their Fate in History.” In Philosophy in a Feminist Voice: Critiques and Reconstructions, edited by Janet A. Kourany, 17–62. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Owen Flanagan, Mona Letourneau, and Wenqing Zhao. (eds). 2019. “Science, Religion & Culture.” Special Issue: Cross-Cultural Studies in Well-Being 6, special issue 1. Park, Peter. 2013. Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830. Albany: State University of New York Press. Wong, David. 1984. Moral Relativity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Part I

Moral Metaphysics

1

The Metaethics of Maat Kevin DeLapp1

Maat (mꜣꜥt) was a central category in ancient Egyptian philosophy. Its extension covers the domains of both justice and truth, and it was frequently personified as a goddess with a special role in adjudicating the afterlife and justifying dynastic rule. Maat has long been recognized as integral to ancient Egyptian thought, and there have been several sustained analyses of the roles it might play vis-à-vis first-order moral principles. Yet there has been no systematic metaethical examination of it. In this chapter I argue that maat should be recovered as an important historical and cross-cultural contribution to metaethics. Specifically, I’ll suggest that maat gives us a vision of the world itself as language dependent in a way that disrupts key assumptions of the modern realist/antirealist dichotomy. Two caveats are in order. First, I dismiss from the start any prejudice that ancient Egyptian thought is not properly philosophical. Within Egyptology there has been much debate about how, or even if, we can talk about ancient Egyptian ‘morality’ in any way commensurate with modern Western sensibilities. Skeptics on this issue argue that the relevant source material from ancient Egypt belongs to the genre of ‘wisdom’ literature, in contrast with more systematic or self-aware ‘philosophy’ – somewhat along a parallel with the alleged mythos/logos distinction.2 Such skeptics forget that, for most of the history of Western philosophy, it was taken as a truism that philosophical thought originated in places like Egypt.3 For the purposes of our present analysis, I will simply assume that the material I’ll be sourcing from ancient Egypt is at least generically ‘philosophical’ enough to justify our metaethical conversation with it. When, as we shall see, Egyptian texts make claims about souls, truth and reality, political legitimacy, theodicy, and proper forms of behavior, it certainly seems prima facie that they’re doing something recognizably philosophical. The second caveat is that, as with any comparative cultural endeavor, we must resist essentialism about ancient Egypt. ‘Ancient Egypt’ spanned thousands of years, and its inhabitants may not have accepted the diachronic identity we attribute to them today.4 Moreover, the primary

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sources we’ll be looking at frequently pertain mainly to royal and scribal classes and so might not characterize the thought of laborers or other non-elites.5 Furthermore, the material that ends up getting preserved through so many generations is sometimes pretty random. But in this regard, the hermeneutic challenges facing the present project are at least no greater than those facing other Egyptological or other comparative philosophical endeavors. With these two caveats in mind, let us look more closely at maat.

1. Truth, Justice, and the Egyptian Way Egyptologists typically translate maat as ‘truth’ or ‘justice’, without much thought as to how that disjunction could be coherently inclusive or what kind of metaphysics of morals might be involved.6 The word was graphically represented in slightly different ways, most commonly as either ‘ ’ or just ‘ ’, but sometimes (less frequently) in its full phonetic form ‘ ’. In inscriptions, it is often contrasted with a category called isfet (izf.t ), typically translated as ‘chaos’ or ‘strife’.7 The etymology of maat – and we should be wary when we speak of ‘etymology’ in the context of a glyph-based script such as ancient Egyptian8 – suggests straightness, levelness, and measure, and the word might be cognate with other words meaning ‘direction/wish’ (mꜣꜥ ) and ‘sacrifice’ (mꜣꜥ ).9 10 As a personified deity, Maat is depicted as a young woman with one or more feathers (possibly of an ostrich) atop her head ( ) and often holds in her hands an animal topped scepter (wꜣs ) and an ankh-symbol of life (ꜥnḫ ). She sits with other gods during the judging of the deceased’s heartmind (ib ), an image we’ll be returning to later.11 The goddess evolves to have special connections with the pharaoh: she becomes incorporated into the name (prenomen) of the ruler and the iconography of the royal throne even seems to take on her abstracted form, making her literally foundational to the pharaoh’s political legitimacy.12 Another recurrent motif renders Maat in miniature, where she is offered by the hand of the pharaoh to other gods who ritually ingest her.13 It will bear to keep in mind such associations with names and rituals when we consider the philosophy of language that seems to underwrite maat. Independent of its deified form, maat appears prominently in moral teachings, especially in the Instructions (sbꜣyt ) genre, in lamentations about the fallen state of the world, and in evaluations of people’s moral character or the success of a pharaoh’s rule. Scribal autobiographical inscriptions frequently testify to their author’s good character by declaring that he had been reliable in speech and not quarrelsome to others – two key features of maat, as we’ll come to appreciate.14 One who would devote herself to maat is a maaty (mꜣꜥty ) – that is, a maat-aspirant. Succeeding as a maaty during one’s life is sometimes

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presented as a necessary and sufficient condition for admission to the Egyptian afterlife (dwꜣt ). As famously depicted in the Book of the Dead, when a person dies – that is, when their animating life force (kꜣ ) has vacated their physical body (ẖt ) – what remains of them, their name (rn ), is presented before the gods (amongst them the goddess Maat) who weigh the contents of their heart-mind (ib ) on a scale against the feather of maat.15 The deceased must recite a formulaic litany of offenses of which they assert themselves to be innocent, and their heart-mind grows heavier any time they lie.16 Thus, one’s name is importantly bound up with who one essentially is, and salvation is reserved for those whose name measures up to their actions in life. Precisely who could be a maaty, and how, were contested questions within Egyptian philosophy. Sometimes maat is depicted as universally attainable, and other times Egyptians use it to distinguish themselves from barbarians.17 Sometimes the pharaoh seems to occupy a special position as an earthly conduit of maat for the rest of the land.18 Other times, even lowly peasants get to wield maat to speak truth to power.19 And we find ancient dialogues that explicitly debate whether one can become maaty just through personal effort or whether some people’s natures are hopeless.20 These questions about the scope and admissions criteria for being maaty aren’t germane to our present metaethical investigation, but they do help illustrate the essentially contested and highly self-aware place of maat in Egyptian thought. What we can already appreciate metaethically is that, regardless of what special roles may have been envisioned for the pharaoh or scribal elites, maat is deeply concerned with language. To do or uphold maat, or to be maaty, is to speak and be spoken of in certain ways. As we have seen, being judged worthy of immortality is a matter of having one’s name cleared and being weighed (literally) against one’s words. The ‘vindication’ (mꜣꜥ ḫrw ) of a deceased maaty means literally “to be proven true by speech” or “to be true to one’s words”.21 Thus, in order to better understand the meaning of maat, we must try to understand the background philosophy of language that was operative in maaty contexts.

2. The Khat Is on the Maat: Philosophy of Language and Egyptian Ritual Language is the primary generative force in Egyptian metaphysics. The inaugural act of the universe is creation ex nihilo by means of speech.22 The tongue and the mouth are the dominant motifs of Egyptian cosmogony,23 with Ptah creating first by utterance and then by continuing to “control all things” by being “in their mouths”.24 Speaking is making, words constitute reality – this is performative utterance taken to an extreme.25 (We’ll be returning to speech-act theory at the end of Section 3.) The words of

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mortals can partake of these divine powers. For instance, the pharaoh is able to “fell his foe with the power of his speech”, which enables the cosmos “to glide on its way in joy”.26 Warriors are victorious when they act as “creators through speech”.27 When a maaty speaks (ḏd ), “it happens . . . such a one is like a god”.28 And all people regardless of social position are enjoined not merely to make sounds, but to use specifically “divine words” (mdw nṯr ) and thereby to “speak as magic” (ḏd m ḥkꜣ ) and “fill the ears of Horus with maat”.29 This generative power of speech extends to the physical world. Physical things decay but can be recreated through the linguistic reinvestments that are expressed in the maaty rituals. The body or khat (ẖt ) is animated by the spirit (bꜣ ) that inhabits it, and bodies are preserved and renewed when their spirits are maaty. For then they respect and ritually participate in the recreation of the primordial order. In a literal way for the ancient Egyptians, bodies are at least partially constituted by normative relations we have to them, in terms of proper ritual observance and the accuracy of our memories and linguistic attributions. Within this philosophy of language, we might say, in good Analytic idiom, that the khat is (dependent) on the maat.30 The generative dimension of speech is also evident in ancient Egyptian lamentations, where strife and disorder (isfet) are described in terms of their muting effects on language. That there ‘are no words’ to describe suffering and chaos is not platitudinous but literal – chaos disables the power of speech.31 In the Egyptian language, silence (sgr ) is related to violence (sgr ). Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be violent. This semantic interplay gives rise to all sorts of interesting metonymies in Egyptian soteriology, where the dead are ‘the silent ones’ (sgrw ), the tomb is ‘the city of silence’ (sgr.t ), etc. To die is to be silenced, to lose one’s voice, to cease being spoken of. Immortality consists in being remembered and being reborn or recreated through having one’s name preserved.32 This suggests that names enjoy a reified status in Egyptian thought. Things have ‘true’ and ‘proper’ names, the written expression of which is their mere ‘shadow’ (šwt ) but which may be damaged by external forces. As we saw earlier, it’s the name of the deceased person that waits in judgment for their heart-mind to be weighed against maat. In other texts, one of the worst fates to befall a person is for their name to ‘stink’ (mk bꜥḥ ).33 Many aspects of mortuary ritual were enactments of metaphysical preservation, with names playing an especially central role both in the funerary ceremonies themselves and in the regular liturgical observances that followed.34 To erase the name of a disgraced pharaoh from inscriptions was not simply propaganda. Such erasure was metaphysical: by causing a name to be forgotten, that name was thereby removed from membership in the ontology of things – a kind of “semantic homicide”.35

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This is a reminder that hieroglyphs, being gifts from the gods,36 were less concerned with the communication of information, which we today might see as the essence of language but were instead involved in a ‘magical’ (ḥkꜣ ) performance that was taken to bring about the very realities the glyphs expressed. To inscribe hieroglyphs was to participate in those realities. Very few Egyptians were literate, after all, and even scribes may often have not understood what they were copying, or if they did, it might not have occurred to them that the sacred words passed down to them could be recoupled in new ways to fit their whimsy.37 Writing hieroglyphs was not an act of describing or documenting, but of creative articulation.38 Such ritual words were “language offerings.”39 This ontic dimension of Egyptian language is inextricably normative. Hieroglyphs and other ritual utterances reenact the original creation of the universe – the divinely ordained way that things are supposed to be.40 For this reason there is no pattern of life that is not infused with normativity in some way; there is nothing (at least nothing that can be spoken of) to which maat is extrinsic. Speaking in ritually appropriate ways means speaking in a way that is faithful to the real established natures of things – the way that things were and are supposed to be. Speaking maat means saying that “the land is as it was at the first time”.41 Upholding maat means therefore to “speak truly” and “silence” chaos and evil.42 As we saw earlier, in the Book of the Dead, the dead person’s name is the object of the verdict and the deceased is judged according to whether their confessional assertions accurately match their past deeds and intentions. The imagery here is of the heart-mind as a kind of tablet upon which thoughts are written, thereby becoming memories. Memory is what conditions expectations of the future and what ‘should’ happen; thus, memory is closely connected to maat. Finding the right words to remember – to memorialize upon the tablet of one’s heart – is an act of moral creation. In the lamentation texts, chaos is characterized by an inability to engage in this sort of moral generation. The turbulence of the present disrupts the continuity of past to future, thereby ‘casting maat out’ and leaving the heart ‘unable to speak’. Without maat there can be no language (ḏd ), for there would be no stability (ḏd ) upon which to ground shared meaning.43 This also allows us to make more sense of the autobiographical formulae in which scribes assert that, “There is no word against me on earth among men, there is no accusation in the sky among the gods, for I have annulled the word against me”.44 It’s tempting to see such expressions as nothing more than preoccupations with the scribes’ reputations, and to read “annulling words against me” as simply having avoided or rebutted any slander against oneself. But as we have seen, within the Egyptian conception of ritual language, words have ontic repercussions; genuinely annulling a word against oneself must involve that word not actually being true to normative reality, i.e., not being in accordance

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with the ordained and eternally valid way that things once were and are supposed to be. Thus, the creative powers of maaty language can be thought of as ‘magical’ (heka), in that they are grounded in a conception of ritual as ontically efficacious.45 When a maaty speaks she speaks in a ritually appropriate way, and she speaks in a way that both hearkens to and recreates the ordained natures and true names of things.46 Such ‘magic’ connects maat to the central Egyptian ritual category of hu (ḥw ) or ‘authoritative utterance’. When “hu is in one’s mouth” then one’s speech becomes “the shrine of maat” and stability and eternity are reinforced.47 To speak with hu is to speak in a way that is unchanging, both in the sense of keeping true to one’s earlier words and in the sense of staying faithful to the natures of things as originally ordained by the gods. It is because the pharaoh speaks with hu that he has the moral authority that he does.48 Mortals can attain a similar moral authority by also channeling hu through participation in the ritual language of maat. In the Book of the Dead, the maat-aspirant is vindicated by knowing the correct ritual names for the divine aspects of maat and thus speaks with hu in a way that even the gods respect and fear (snṯ ).49 Someone’s success as a maaty may be contested or obscure during their own lifetime, but their moral virtue can be ascertained through a kind of ethical autopsy in the form of a special ceremony in which a mummy or other symbolic stand-in for the deceased would have its mouth ritually opened.50 In addition to providing a symbolic way to feed the spirit of the deceased, this ritual also let the deceased symbolically speak. And when the deceased speaks during this ceremony, it is in the voice of hu, and therefore maat.51 It’s not that everyone who dies is universally virtuous and therefore speaks with maat when their mouths are ritually opened. Rather, it’s that the ritual action of the ceremony itself plays a causal role in making the deceased a maaty. For if one was beloved enough or influential enough to have one’s descendants go through the effort of the ceremony, that very fact rebounds to one’s moral character. The attitudes and memories which others have regarding us are realities not merely of those others; they are (postmortem) realities about ourselves as well.52 This helps us see how maat can be understood as both justice and truth. Truth, on this account, is faithfulness to the primeval order. It is not correspondence to how things are but to how things were and ought to be. Truth is normative in this way, and so it takes on an aspect of justice in a coordinative sense: maat involves balancing (literally) names and deeds and (re)syncing things with their ordained natures.

3. Realist or Anti-Realist? Can such an ancient category teach us anything new today, and can contemporary metaethicists offer anything that can aid Egyptologists in the

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recovery of maat? To address these questions we shall have to see whether maat can be situated within the debates and taxonomies of contemporary metaethics. There are aspects of maat that pull in both realist and anti-realist directions. In the realist direction we have the fact that no one can really alter maat insofar as it is based in the true natures of things as ordained in the primeval creation. Maaty language and practice are always compliant recreations of this original normative order. So, in this way, maat is deeply mind-independent. Indeed, even the gods themselves are largely passive perpetuators of maat’s independent reality: they merely “pass on what has been told to them” of maat by its personified voice – a moral authority all the gods fear.53 Thus, maat seems resistant to any kind of divine command or voluntarist classification. Furthermore, maat seems an unlikely candidate for naturalistic analysis.54 As we’ve seen, maat is intimately bound up with divine forces and entities – maat was itself deified – that would seem to resist physical or scientific reduction. And if naturalism is to substantively contrast with anything, it’s gods.55 Thus, if maat pulls in the direction of realism it would seem to be a “robust” realism in virtue of its mind-independence and its non-naturalism.56 However, one of the necessary conditions for a position to be robustly realist by contemporary standards is that it adhere to some version of a correspondence theory of truth, according to which being true (for at least some moral truths) is determined by some truth-maker that is existentially prior to and independent of the content of the truth-bearer in question. This kind of correspondence is thus committed to a dyadic relationship between mind and world, a relationship that keeps separate the mind-independent truth-makers (e.g., facts) from the mind-dependent truth-bearers (e.g., propositions). All card carrying realists of sufficiently high levels of robustness agree with this priority and independence.57 If we are correspondentists, as we must be to qualify as robust realists, we should see our job as epistemic agents to be the alignment of our beliefs with the external facts. By contrast, when we think of maat as involving ‘correspondence’ to the primeval normative order, we’re no longer talking about correspondence in the same sense. For the primeval normative order is not merely inertly out there and moral agents are not ontologically passive with respect to it. Instead, the primeval normative order is itself a product of active linguistic creation and recreation. Maaty are not merely tweaking their beliefs to bring them in-sync with facts; they are also at the same time constituting (or re-constituting) those facts. This is still dyadic in a sense, but not in the robust realist’s sense. Instead of mind-independent truth-makers and mind-dependent truthbearers, with maat we have mind-dependent truth-makers (namely, the generative utterances of hu) but mind-independent truth-bearers (insofar as the language of ritual must be faithful to the natures ordained by the

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primeval creation). For example, when a tomb inscription avows that its occupant in life had acted “as a son to the aged, father to the child, protector of the poor” or had judged a dispute fairly and mercifully,58 the robust realist would view these as propositional claims that, in order to be true, would need to correspond to independent historical facts about the deceased. In the moral semantics of maat, however, the inscription itself must be treated as one of the relevant facts: it is formulated according to ritual rules and it testifies to the caring memories that ancestors (who oversee the inscription itself and also reenact it in subsequent mortuary commemorations) have about the deceased. Thus, the inscription possesses the moral authority of hu and (‘magically’) makes it true that the deceased was the good person he is being memorialized as. This reveals a way in which, despite other affinities, maat fits very awkwardly into our modern taxonomies of moral realism. Perhaps we’ll do better to see it as a kind of anti-realism. After all, maat is fundamentally linguistic, a feature more commonly associated with modern antirealism. As we’ve seen, being a maaty is at root a linguistic achievement. It involves being able to clear one’s name from imputations, successfully assert the ritual litany of negative confessions before the tribunal of the gods and have one’s mouth opened postmortem through the proper ceremony. The absence of maat is the absence of proper speech, and vice versa. In virtue of these dimensions, maat is also deeply interpersonal and relational. Being a maaty means being remembered and spoken of well by posterity. Truth, the other extension of maat, is created precisely through these linguistic and social acts: the original cosmic creation was through linguistic fiat by the divine, and mortals bring about realities through the ritual words they utter or inscribe. All of these linguistic features might suggest that maat has anti-realist contours. The modern metaethicist asks, “What specific kind of antirealism?” Given that we’ve just seen that maat has pronounced realist dimensions too, the best anti-realist analog could be so-called quasirealism, as most prominently defended by Simon Blackburn; for what’s supposed to be distinctive of quasi-realism is that it’s as close to realism as one can get without bringing in extra-linguistic moral facts. In the remainder of this section, then, I’ll briefly explicate quasi-realism and show how this makes sense of many elements of maat. The comparison will leave us with an interesting remainder, however, which I will argue reveals a neglected point of contact between realism and anti-realism. Ultimately, it’s not that maat is (or is not) a feature of a language-independent world and is therefore realist (or anti-realist); rather, in the Egyptian way of thinking, it’s that the world itself is language-dependent in a way that disrupts key aspects of the modern realist/anti-realist dichotomy. I take quasi-realism to involve three commitments. The first is a commitment to naturalism. Blackburn expresses this commitment by asserting that the raison d’être for metaethics is the “question of explanation, of

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‘placing’ our propensity for ethics within a satisfactory naturalistic view of ourselves”.59 Such a view will presuppose that “there is none except a natural science of human beings”.60 The reader may be understandably surprised here by the claim that maat may be compared to quasi-realism if we’ve already seen the ways in which maat is not naturalistic. Bear with me. As we’ll see, the fact that maat follows other key commitments of quasi-realism, even if not its naturalism, reveals something interesting about the internal logic of the quasi-realist position. The second commitment of quasi-realism is non-cognitivism. Instead of asserting propositions, moral language expresses some kind of attitudinal or affective states that may then be foisted onto the world.61 It’s quite plausible to see maat as a version of non-cognitivism. The fact that maat rejects correspondentist truth would seem to require that maat must also reject cognitivism, insofar as all cognitivists must be correspondentists. More specifically, maaty language is not engaged in asserting propositions as truth-bearers that can be true or false in relation to any facts independent of that language itself. It’s through the very act of speaking in the ritually appropriate ways (namely, with hu and heka) that moral ‘facts’ are generated. There are no truth-makers for maaty discourse outside that discourse itself.62 What distinguishes quasi-realism from other anti-realisms is its third commitment, that the expression of non-cognitive states provides an acceptable functional equivalent to realist moral discourse.63 Since realists are cognitivists their moral discourse will have a degree of logical stability and structure in virtue of its propositional content (in conjunction with rational requirements). Quasi-realism is supposed to mimic this stability and structure but without viewing moral discourse as having genuine propositional content. The functional equivalence is supposed to obtain at all levels of discourse, including the psychological level (quasirealists truly feel their moral commitments in as serious a way as do robust realists) and the linguistic level (quasi-realists can convincingly use all the same moral predicates and hortatory injunctions as realists, passing a sort of metaethical Turing Test). The mimicry of realism at all these levels is what’s quasi about quasi-realism. This preoccupation with logical stability and structure is part of quasirealism’s response to the so-called Frege-Geach Problem, the problem of explaining how moral arguments can still follow deductive inference patterns despite not being propositional.64 In this chapter I’m not interested in evaluating whether or not the Frege-Geach Problem is resolvable by quasi-realists. Rather, what’s relevant to the present discussion is that it is precisely because quasi-realists take concerns about stable moral discourse so seriously that Frege-Geach is considered a problem by them in the first place. For if we weren’t concerned with stable moral discourse then it shouldn’t bother us to concede that there is no deductive validity in the non-cognitivist readings of Frege-Geach. Moral discourse would

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just be a matter of different individuals expressing different attitudes willy-nilly. But quasi-realists do take such stability seriously, and they want to find a way of securing it without defecting to cognitivism. One of the ways quasi-realists have attempted to do this is by embracing a deflationary account of moral truth. According to the deflationary account, the invocation of truth in moral discourse adds nothing metaphysical that the discourse wasn’t already committed to. Appending ‘is true’ to a moral utterance is merely a different way of articulating that utterance, perhaps more forcefully. Quasi-realists appeal to deflationary truth in order to imitate the stability and structure of realist discourse without the metaphysical baggage of independent truth-makers for moral sentences.65 In the absence of independent truth-makers, this stability might be secured by certain epistemic and linguistic constraints – such as warranted assertibility or the satisfaction of whatever platitudes we have about the meaning of truth66 – that govern what a speaker can and cannot get away with communicating, according to whatever are the rules of the particular language game they’re playing. These rules are ultimately conventional, but they’re not arbitrary and they can’t be whimsically broken by participants, at least not if they wish to be understood by other players. The rules have all the stability and structure of the language-games of which they’re a part, and that stability is all the quasi-realist needs in order to imitate the logical stability which regular realist discourse already has in virtue of its propositional content. Appealing to such epistemic or linguistic constraints would amount to what Blackburn calls ‘fast-tracking’ quasi-realism.67 Fully fleshing out precisely how those constraints operate in the case of moral discourse will require the much wonkier ‘slow-track’ labor of developing a new logic of attitudes, since on the quasi-realist picture of moral discourse the expression of moral attitudes is supposed to replace the assertion of propositions.68 Comparing maat to this final commitment of quasi-realism – namely, the stability of moral discourse – reveals something interesting about both maat and quasi-realism. Maat shares with quasi-realism a deep commitment to stability and structure within moral discourse. However, maat secures that stability and structure in a very different way than does quasirealism. Maaty language is an enactment of ritual and, in that context, it is vitally important that the agent accurately adhere to or reproduce the specific words, glyphs, and formulae that constitute the primeval normative order. That’s the only way that moral language gets the ‘magical’ (heka) powers or moral authority (hu) that it has. This ritual adherence guarantees an analog of warranted or super-assertibility, serving as a structural constraint on discourse, which is precisely what quasi-realists wish to do. But making sense of maaty ritual constraints does not require establishing a whole new logic of attitudes. Thus, maat gives us an even greater degree of discourse stability and at a cheaper theoretic price compared to quasi-realism while keeping faith with quasi-realism’s commitments to non-cognitivism and non-correspondentism.

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What about quasi-realism’s appeal to deflationism? Recall that the whole reason quasi-realists are attracted to deflationism is that they reject cognitivism. That is, they want there to be stability and structure to our moral discourse that’s due to something other than propositional content anchored to mind-independent truth-makers. For these reasons, as we’ve seen, quasi-realism seems almost to entail deflationism. Maat, by contrast, is not so easily deflated. There is nothing minimal or antimetaphysical about maat: when a maaty speaks, the truths that result are robustly ontic. We can appreciate this distinction between maaty discourse and deflationary discourse by attending to the sorts of speech acts each discourse involves. When it comes to creating moral reality through language, quasirealists can see moral speech as illocutionary.69 When I say, ‘I do hereby solemnly swear’, I am ipso facto making a promise – that’s the illocutionary dimension of my utterance. Just so, according to quasi-realists, when I say, ‘Murder is wrong’, although the locution itself is grammatically propositional/cognitivist, that’s merely a front for the illocutionary act of expressing an attitude. And for the quasi-realist, moral truths consist just in such expression. But maaty language is not like this. When the maaty says ‘I am attentive without equal, a good listener, well spoken’70 or ‘I never let anyone spend the night angry with me about something’,71 she is not just expressing attitudes (though she may be doing that too). Her utterance has an additional ontic power that the quasi-realist cannot accommodate; for the maaty’s utterance does bring about a moral reality that is mind-independent in the sense that it recreates a primeval normative order over which the maaty ritual agent has no control. Thus, while the quasi-realist sees moral language mainly in an illocutionary light, maaty language additionally recognizes perlocutionary dimensions, in that it brings about real external effects all by itself. Illocutionary force might fail to be realized, as when someone is not successfully intimidated by your attempted intimidation. But a perlocutionary act always succeeds by definition; if an utterance didn’t have an outward effect then it simply wasn’t a perlocutionary act at all.72 To summarize, although both realism and quasi-realism approximate different aspects of maat, neither one is an exact fit. Instead, with maat, we have an exciting new metaphysical combination: it is non-cognitivist without being naturalistic, it secures the desired stability and structure of moral discourse in a theoretically simpler way than quasi-realists can, and it does so moreover without needing to either metaphysically deflate truth or invoke discourse-independent facts.

4. Lessons for Modern Metaethicists All this being said, I am not saying that maat should be the ultimately correct metaethics. The magical conception of language that undergirds maat is likely foreign and perhaps implausible to many contemporary

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metaethicists. Yet, even if we are not persuaded to adopt maaty metaethics, there are still important lessons which modern metaethicists can take away from this comparative endeavor. First, maat should remind us that metaethics need not be as disconnected from first-order normative considerations nor actual lived experience as it is sometimes taken to be. Maat, after all, intersects all levels of morality: it is metaethical in its ontic and linguistic aspects, yet it also plays roles in political critique and ethical exhortation, and it has embodied expression through ritual practices. The question of what relationship, if any, metaethical positions have or should have to normative theory, applied ethics, and moral phenomenology has been a vexing one for contemporary theorists.73 But for the most part, metaethical theorizing has tended to be unrecognizable to everyday moral agents and irrelevant to even other levels of moral philosophizing. The interpenetration of all levels of morality by a category such as maat can help modern-day metaethicists appreciate possible points of contact between a metaethical theory and other facets of moral life. Second, maat exposes many of the presumed orthodoxies of modernday metaethics to be culturally contingent. We might believe that the only way to be a non-cognitivist is to think of moral language as the expression of attitudes, but maat helps us see a different way of arriving at noncognitivism, which really does not have much to do with non-cognitivist attitudes but instead proceeds via the rejection of correspondentism. Similarly, the modern taxonomist might presuppose that all non-cognitivists are naturalists, or that all expressivists are deflationists. Taking maat seriously helps us see past these limitations, opening up possibilities for new metaethical hybrids. This can be especially attractive for anyone who might like most but not all of quasi-realism or for someone who might lean strongly toward robust realism but harbor misgivings about correspondentist truth. A third benefit modern-day metaethicists can take away from the study of maat is a new frontier for thinking about the philosophy of language. We have in ancient Egypt a very distinctive conception of the essence and purpose of language. Hieroglyphic language – the ritual language of normativity – is non-naturalistic and it is not primarily aimed at locution or the conveyance of information. Maaty discourse is perlocutionary through and through. This is not merely a conception of language as being capable of manifesting tangible extra-linguistic effects. Rather, it is a conception of language as deeply intertwined with the nature of reality and normativity. This is to view language as a kind of “material engagement . . . not merely a means but a very way of being”.74 To conclude, maat was a fascinating metaethical achievement of ancient Egypt and modern-day philosophers have much to learn by undertaking a comparative study of it. This study reveals new ways of combining alternative accounts of language, nature, and truth – the building blocks

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of metaethical positions. In seeking to recover the metaethical heritage of Egypt, we might find encouragement in Plato’s recommendation to look to history for both philosophical inspiration and humility. In the Timaeus we are told a story about Solon who, after bragging about the accomplishments of his own modern civilization, is rightly chastened by an Egyptian philosopher for his failure to appreciate the precedence of antiquity. Like Solon, by neglecting comparative philosophy we run the risk of “becoming infants all over again . . . completely unfamiliar with anything there was in ancient times”.75

Notes 1. For helpful comments on an early version of this chapter, I am indebted to Jeremy Henkel, Dave Holiday, Ben McCraw, and Casey Woodling. Colin Marshall, Megan Wu, and the other participants at the 2018 Seattle Lost Voices at the Foundations of Ethics conference also provided extremely valuable feedback. 2. Assmann (1991), for instance, argues that we differentiate ancient Egyptian morality proper from the ‘mere’ hortatory injunctions of wisdom literature. For an argument against this, and a recognition of the hermeneutic necessity of linking the two domains, see Lichtheim (1997, 89–99). For an overview of the Egyptological debate concerning how best to characterize the genres of the relevant literature, see Lichtheim (1997, 1–8). 3. See Park (2013, 70–4) for documentation about the forces and motives behind the gradual erasure of Egypt from the philosophical canon. James (1954) suggests that the ancient Greeks and Romans themselves recognized their philosophical debt to Egypt, although James contends that Hellenistic authors deliberately and systematically suppressed this fact. James’s more controversial charges are expanded in Bernal (1987) and critiqued in Lefkowitz and Rogers (1996). The James-Bernal perspective has become formative within Black Studies interventions in Egyptology, where maat in particular has received special attention (e.g., Karenga 2004). Although the present investigation of maat is not aimed at the same political or reclamation projects as these other interventions, I hope it is consistent with them. 4. For different perspectives on ancient Egyptians’ sense of their own history, see the essays in Tait (2003). 5. Maat does not, for example, seem to play a very prominent role in the archaeological materials we have from the ancient laboring community of Deir elMedina – neither in the medical evidence (Borghouts 1994) nor in the visual or decorative elements of the village (Friedman 1994). 6. Other prominent and more philosophically loaded renderings include: “world order” (Anthes 1952), “integrative harmony” (O’Connor 2001, 163), “the status quo” (Tyldesley 1998, 71), “the totality of all social norms” (Assmann 1996, 127), and “the equilibrium which the universe has reached through the process of creation, enabling it to conform to its true nature” (Grimal 1988, 47). 7. For a deeper analysis of the maat/isfet binary, see Harry Smith (1994), who makes the case that each category is the absolute negation of the other. Isfet is not the only word in ancient Egyptian for ‘bad things’ or ‘evil’, nor is it the only antonym of maat. But then again, neither is maat the only word used to refer to ‘good things’, even in a moral sense: importantly, the aesthetic category nefer (nfr ) has significant ethical extensions, ones that are also bound up with maat (see Cannon-Brown 2006, 10–18). However, isfet seems

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8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

17. 18.

19. 20.

Kevin DeLapp to have a somewhat wider and more cosmic scope than other negative terms, and it is isfet that occurs most explicitly in conjunction with maat. Hence, isfet is most germane to our present argument. See Bleeker (1966, 6n2–3) for a list of other words that occupy nearby semantic space with maat and isfet. For an analysis of some of the many ways in which Egyptian hieroglyphs defy modern Western assumptions about language, see Jespersen and Reintges (2008), who take particular aim at the Wittgensteinian tradition of treating hieroglyphs as ‘pictures’ – a tradition that has its roots in Europe’s earliest (pre-Champollion) encounters with the hieroglyphs, when it was popular to think of them as crude but perhaps mystical pictograms. Westendorf (1966, 202–25). Tobin (1989, 79) argues that the deified Maat was a later development of the basic moral category. Occasionally – e.g., Unas Pyramid Text 317 (Lichtheim 2006a, 40) and Book of the Dead 125 (Budge 1895, 193–202) – the goddess’s written name or pictorial representation is given in a double form, perhaps signifying the dualism of maat as both divinity and moral category, or the fact that maat was considered cosmically all-encompassing (Budge 1895, cxix). See, for example, the stela inscription (British Museum 142) in Kitchen (1980, 218–19). For examples of the incorporation of maat into royal names, note for instance: Hatshepsut as Maatkere, Amunhotep III as Nebmaatre, Ramesses II as Wsermaatre, etc. The graphic similarities between maat and the throne are noted by Kuhlmann (1977, 94n1). For other symbolic associations of the pharaonic throne with maat, see Kuhlmann (2011). On the ingestion iconography and theology, see Faraone and Teeter (2004) who note similarities to depictions of the goddess Metis within Greek myth. A comprehensive analysis of the changing ways this ritual was depicted throughout the New Kingdom can be found in Teeter (1997). For an opposing view, which instead sees maat largely receding in ethical significance post-Amarna, see Assmann (1993). Lichtheim (1992) provides a comprehensive analysis of the way maat is expressed in Egyptian autobiographies. The Egyptian conception of personhood is fascinating and complex, although we should not assume that there was necessarily any determinate or universally agreed upon way of organizing the different aspects of personhood that are recognized in different texts. The Book of the Dead 125 (Budge 1895, 193–202) lists the 42 ‘negative confessions’ the deceased must assert, corresponding to the 42 ‘assessors’ (šsw ) who attend Maat and feed on maat and who each represent a different particular form of isfet to be avoided, e.g., theft, murder, etc. Janzen (2013, 12–17). For instance, Pepi I Pyramid Texts 573 tells us that the pharaoh uniquely “lives on/by maat” (Lichtheim 2006a, 49). Lichtheim (1997, 12) summarizes the pharaoh’s role thus: “It was in himself that the Egyptian found the knowledge of Maat. . . . The awesome king stood for righteous government, for he desired that Maat be done; but knowledge of Maat belonged to every man”. For example, in the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant (Lichtheim 2006a, 66), a governing magistrate comes to marvel at the maat of a lowborn and unsophisticated commoner. The debate about moral meritocracy is made explicit in the Instruction of Ani, where a father defends the egalitarianism of maat (noting that even a crooked stick left on the ground can be turned into a noble’s staff) against his son, who subscribes to the more fatalistic and aristocratic view that “everyone is drawn

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21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

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by their own nature” (Lichtheim 2006b, 135–45). Similarly, the Instruction of Ptahhotep (Lichtheim 2006a, 66) asserts that one might become a “person of worth” (s-iḳr ) solely through one’s own efforts. See for instance the Amarna tomb inscription of general Ramose (Hornung 1995, 102). And see Anthes (1954) for an overview of the contested translation history of ḫrw in this context. Perhaps in anticipation of the looming ad infinitum problem here, Coffin Text 1130 describes the first speaker as “he with the secret name”. Note, for instance, the etymological associations of ‘mouth’ (rꜣ ) with the fact that temples and shrines were literally ‘mouth-houses’ (rꜣ pr ). Memphite Theology (Lichtheim 2006a, 51–7). If it helps (it very well might not!), this somewhat magical view of language that I shall be attributing to Egyptian maaty ritual might be seen as roughly similar to a variety of historical views of logos as found, for example, within Hellenistic Stoicism and Middle Platonism, or in the Gospel of John, or even the so-called ‘panlogism’ associated with Hegel. (See Williams 2016 for an overview of different historical versions of the logos doctrine, and see Eisenberg 1990 for a critical assessment of the Hegelian version.) Text from Medinet Habu VI, plates 422–3 (Hughes et al. 1963). Instruction Addressed to King Merikare (Lichtheim 2006a, 97–112). Schenkel (1965, 426). The Apophis Book, as quoted in Sethe and Helck (1958, 961.13, 1958, 1172.13). The pun works in the other direction too: the maat is also on the khat, as ‘khat’ is a homophone for the sort of place for weighing (ḫt ) upon which one’s soul was measured against the feather of maat, i.e., the mḫꜣt-scale ( ). E.g., the Lamentation of Khakheperre-sonbe: “O that I might find unknown phrases, strange expressions, new speech not yet uttered, free of repetitions” (Simpson 1973, 231). This is perhaps an unorthodox way of interpreting Egyptian mortuary religion, which has tended instead to be understood as committed to protoChristian soteriological categories such as a transcendent rebirth in an ‘afterlife’; but these latter preoccupations might reveal more about the post-Victorian heritage of Egyptology, emerging as it did out of Biblical studies, than about actual Egyptian ritual practice (Nyord 2018). This is the recurrent self-accusation voiced by the disgraced narrator in The Man Who Was Tired of Life (Simpson 1973, 205–6). Daily recitation of the deceased’s name was performed by relatives (or commissioned professionals) at the tomb itself, at home, or in community shrines. For more on the distinction between funerary as opposed to mortuary observances in ancient Egypt, see Willems (2001). This excellent phrase is from Picardo (2007). The Memphite Theology tells us that “All divine speech [i.e., hieroglyphs] originated from that which was thought up by the heart and commanded by the tongue” (Lichtheim 2006a, 51–7). For an analysis of ancient Egyptian scribal training and practices, including evidence that both teacher and student were often ignorant of the meanings of what they copied, see Williams (1972). For more on how to understand ‘literacy’ in an ancient Egyptian context, see Baines (2007, 33–62). See Roccati (2003). Assmann (1996, 208). Cf. Baines’s (1990) thesis about hieroglyphic expressibility being constrained by a principle of cosmic ‘decorum’. Sethe and Helck (1958, 2026.19). Coffin Text 1130.

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43. See Assmann (1996, 143). 44. Pyramid Text 302. 45. If the connotations of the word ‘magic’ (the traditional translation for ḥkꜣ) trouble the sensibilities of the modern secular reader, see the excellent overview of the contested nature of that term as a hermeneutic category within Egyptology in Ritner (1993, 3–13). 46. It’s important that the creative powers of specifically maaty language are not conflated with any old uttering whatsoever. Ritually efficacious utterances (heka) are ‘god’s words’ (mdw nṯr ). 47. Book of the Dead 17 (Budge 1895, 35–7). The connection with stability and eternity is expressed in Pyramid Text 255. The language about hu being in the mouth, etc., is quoted in Gardiner (1916, 50). Blackman (1945) suggests that hu in the sense of generative, divine language is semantically as well as liturgically connected with the homophone and homonym ḥw , referring to food and the sense of taste generally insofar as food offerings were sanctified with ritual language. 48. See Pyramid Text 401, where the relationship between the pharaoh and hu is also described symmetrically, with the pharaoh listening to the words that a personified deity Hu (ḥw ) speaks to him. 49. Book of the Dead 78 (Ani Papyrus, plate 25; Budge 1895, 156–7). 50. The Opening of the Mouth ceremony is described in the Book of the Dead 17 (Budge 1895, 35–7). For comprehensive documentation and analysis of the various depictions and episodes of the ceremony, see Otto (1960). 51. Coffin Text 816. 52. A plausible comparison here is to Aristotle’s famous claim about one’s eudaimonia being vulnerable to things that may outlive one or occur after one’s death (Nicomachean Ethics I.11). See also Assmann (1996), who argues that the Egyptian sense of selfhood is ‘constellational’, in the sense that a person’s metaphysical identity is intermingled with others on whom she socially depends (although Assmann does not develop that argument on the basis of either hu or the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony specifically). 53. Book of the Dead 78 (Ani Papyrus, plate 25; Budge 1895, 155–7). 54. It will depend, of course, on how we understand what it is to be ‘naturalistic’. (See Flanagan 2006 for a more comprehensive taxonomy of naturalism in ethics.) There are several ways in which, for instance, maat was taken to exist in the physical world, e.g., in the form of its incarnation as the feather against which one’s heart-mind (again, conceived as a physical thing) is weighed (again, literally) and as the audible sounds expressed when the mouth of the deceased is ritually opened. Rather than try to settle whether maat is or is not naturalistic, I suggest the real lesson here for metaethicists is to recognize the variations in how the natural world is distinguished from the supernatural in the first place, which suggests that ‘natural’ is not a natural kind. 55. Such a minimum threshold is part of what has been thought to constitute the “charm” of the naturalist program (Stroud 1996). There are, however, those who allow for theistic varieties of naturalism – Adams (1979) has referred to his divine command theory as a kind of ethical naturalism, for instance – and such a possibility is left open by Pigden’s (1991) formative definition of ethical naturalism as involving the reduction of values merely to “something else” (left unspecified). 56. See Enoch (2011, 4). ‘Robust’ realists title themselves thusly as a way of distinguishing their view from ‘minimal’ realisms that might be more consistent with naturalism, constructivism, or response-dependence. 57. Rogues’ gallery of robust realists, and where they talk about or presuppose correspondence: Shafer-Landau (2003, 15–17), Wedgwood (2004, 410–12),

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58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63.

64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

74. 75.

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Oddie (2005, 1–19), Enoch (2011, 2–8), and last and least DeLapp (2013, 18–23). Lichtheim (1992, 27–8). Blackburn (1993, 208). Blackburn (1993, 166). It’s in virtue of such foisting that quasi-realism is sometimes also described as a kind of ‘projectivism’. I’m focusing here on the fact that there are no moral truth-makers independent of maaty linguistic discourse. But we could also point to putatively cognitivist aspects of maaty discourse, such as the fact that, in addition to hu, it must involve sia, ‘understanding’ (siꜣ ). This still won’t get us cognitivism by modern standards because cognitivism implies correspondentist truth, to which maat is unsuited. But emphasizing the sia component of maat might mitigate how extreme a form of non-cognitivism we read into maat. Resolving the question of whether maat is ultimately cognitivist or non-cognitivist will come down to how we choose to divide beliefs from desires, a division which is not obviously recognized in all intellectual traditions. This at least is what ‘modest’ quasi-realists aspire to. More ‘ambitious’ quasirealists, such as Blackburn himself, aren’t satisfied merely with talking as if there were moral truths; they want to insist that there definitely are moral truths (even if those truths are given the sort of deflationary parsing discussed later). For the modest/ambitious division within quasi-realism, see Miller (2003, 77–81). For an accessible and comprehensive overview of the Frege-Geach problem, see Schroeder (2008a). Blackburn and other prominent expressivists (e.g., Gibbard 1990) embrace deflationism. Granted, Wright (1992) and Horwich (1990) both claim that their versions of deflationism (‘minimalism’) are incompatible with expressivism. But I view Michael Smith (1994), Dreier (2010), and Price (2015) as convincing arguments not only that expressivism and deflationism are compatible, but that the former actually relies upon the latter. Such constraints are most famously developed by Wright (1992). The distinction between ‘fast-track’ and ‘slow-track’ ways of working out the deflationary aspects of quasi-realism is from Blackburn (1993, 184–6). See Schroeder (2008b) and Weintraub (2011) for sophisticated efforts to develop such a logic. Searle (1975) classes the expression of attitudes as a kind of illocutionary act. Stela of Mentuhotep (Cairo Museum 20539), line 8; quoted from Lichtheim (1997, 79). Giza inscription from tomb of priest Wr-ḥww, quoted from Lichtheim (1992, 9). Austin (1955, 121) phrases this difference between perlocution and illocution in terms of the former being ‘natural’ (i.e., creates tangible effects in the natural world) and the latter being ‘conventional’. Some realists have argued for a reconnection of metaethics with these other levels of morality, e.g., Kramer’s (2009) argument that moral realism is itself a first-order moral position. Anti-realists have instead tended to embrace a disconnect with other levels of morality. The whole point of Joyce’s (2001) fictionalism, for example, is that what is metaethically fictional is nevertheless still efficacious at the first-order level. And Blackburn himself stresses that his quasi-realist can still talk, behave, and feel in ways indistinguishable (except metaethically) from individuals of realist persuasions. Elias and Gallagher (2014, 382), though they do not touch on ancient Egyptian language specifically. Plato, Timaeus 23b, translation following Zeyl (1997, 1230).

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References Adams, Robert Merrihew. 1979. “Divine Command Metaethics Modified Again.” Journal of Religious Ethics 7(1): 66–79. Anthes, Rudolf. 1952. “Die Maat des Echnaton von Amarna.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 14: 1–36. Anthes, Rudolf. 1954. “The Original Meaning of M‘ḫrw.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 13(1): 21–51. Assmann, Jan. 1991. “Weisheit, Schrift und Literatur.” In Weisheit: Archäologie der litearischen Kommunikation, vol. III, edited by Aleida Assmann, 475–500. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Assmann, Jan. 1993. “Die Geschichte des Herzens im alten Ägypten.” In Die Erfindung des inneren Menschen, edited by Jan Assmann and Theo Sundermeier, 81–112. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus G. Mohn. Assmann, Jan. 1996. The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs, translated by Andrew Jenkins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Austin, John Langshaw. 1955. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Baines, John. 1990. “Restricted Knowledge, Hierarchy, and Decorum: Modern Perceptions and Ancient Institutions.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 27: 1–23. Baines, John. 2007. Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press. Bernal, Martin. 1987. Black Athena. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Blackburn, Simon. 1993. Essays in Quasi-Realism. New York: Oxford University Press. Blackman, Aylward. 1945. “The King of Egypt’s Grace Before Meat.” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 31: 57–73. Bleeker, Claas. 1966. “Guilt and Purification in Ancient Egypt.” Numen 13(2): 81–7. Borghouts, Joris. 1994. “Magical Practices Among the Villagers.” In Pharaoh’s Workers: The Villagers of Deir el Medina, edited by Leonard Lesko, 119–30. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Budge, Wallis E. A. 1895. The Book of the Dead: The Ani Papyrus. London: British Museum. Reprinted New York: Dover Publications, 1967. Cannon-Brown, Willie. 2006. Nefer: The Aesthetic Ideal in Classical Egypt. New York: Routledge Publishers. DeLapp, Kevin. 2013. Moral Realism. London: Bloomsbury Publishers. Dreier, James. 2010. “When Do Goals Explain the Norms That Advance Them?” In Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 5, edited by Russ Shafer-Landau, 155–74. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eisenberg, Paul. 1990. “Was Hegel a Panlogicist?” Nous 24(1): 159–67. Elias, John, and Shaun Gallagher. 2014. “Word as Object: A View of Language at Hand.” Journal of Cognition and Culture 14: 373–84. Enoch, David. 2011. Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism. New York: Oxford University Press. Faraone, Christopher, and Emily Teeter. 2004. “Egyptian Maat and Hesiodic Metis.” Mnemosyne 57: 177–208.

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Flanagan, Owen. 2006. “Varieties of Naturalism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, edited by Philip Clayton and Zachory Simpson, 430–52. New York: Oxford University Press. Friedman, Florence. 1994. “Aspects of Domestic Life and Religion.” In Pharaoh’s Workers: The Villagers of Deir el Medina, edited by Leonard Lesko, 95–118. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Gardiner, Alan. 1916. “Some Personifications II.” Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 38: 43–54, 83–95. Gibbard, Alan. 1990. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Grimal, Nicholas. 1988. A History of Ancient Egypt, translated by Ian Shaw. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992. Hornung, Erik. 1995. Akhenaten and the Religion of Light, translated by David Lorton. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Horwich, Paul. 1990. Truth. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Hughes, George, Harold Nelson, Charles Nims, Richard Parker, Edward Wente, and John Wilson, eds. 1963. Medinet Habu, Vol. 6. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. James, George. 1954. Stolen Legacy. New York: Philosophical Library. Janzen, Mark. 2013. The Iconography of Humiliation: The Depiction and Treatment of Bound Foreigners in New Kingdom Egypt. PhD diss., University of Memphis. Jespersen, Bjørn, and Chris Reintges. 2008. “Tractarian Sätze, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, and the Very Idea of Script as Picture.” The Philosophical Forum 39(1): 1–19. Joyce, Richard. 2001. The Myth of Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Karenga, Maulana. 2004. Maat: The Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt. New York: Routledge Publishers. Kitchen, Kenneth. 1980. Ramesside Inscriptions, Vol. III. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Kramer, Matthew. 2009. Moral Realism as a Moral Doctrine. Oxford: WileyBlackwell Publishers. Kuhlmann, Klaus. 1977. Der Thron im alten Ägypten. Glückstadt: J.J. Augustin. Kuhlmann, Klaus. 2011. “Throne.” In UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, edited by Willeke Wendrich. Oakland: University of California Press. Lefkowitz, Mary, and Guy MacLean Rogers, eds. 1996. Black Athena Revisited. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Lichtheim, Miriam. 1992. Maat in Egyptian Autobiographies and Related Studies. Fribourg, Switzerland: Fribourg University Press. Lichtheim, Miriam. 1997. Moral Values in Ancient Egypt. Fribourg, Switzerland: Fribourg University Press. Lichtheim, Miriam. 2006a. Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. I. Oakland: University of California Press. Lichtheim, Miriam. 2006b. Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. II. Oakland: University of California Press. Miller, Alexander. 2003. An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Nyord, Rune. 2018. “‘Taking Ancient Egyptian Mortuary Religion Seriously’: Why Would We, and How Could We?” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 17: 73–87. O’Connor, David. 2001. “The City and the World: Worldview and Built Forms in the Reign of Amunhotep III.” In Amunhotep III: Perspectives on His Reign,

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edited by David O’Connor and Eric Cline, 125–72. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Oddie, Graham. 2005. Value, Reality, and Desire. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Otto, Eberhard. 1960. Das Ägyptische Mundöffnungsritual . Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. Park, Peter. 2013. Africa, Asia and the History of Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Picardo, Nicholas. 2007. “‘Semantic Homicide’ and the So-Called Reserve Heads: The Theme of Decapitation in Egyptian Funerary Religion and Some Implications for the Old Kingdom.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 43: 221–52. Pigden, Charles. 1991. “Naturalism.” In A Blackwell Companion to Ethics, edited by Peter Singer, 421–31. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Price, Huw. 2015. “From Quasi-Realism to Global Expressivism – and Back Again?” In Passions and Projections: Themes from the Philosophy of Simon Blackburn, edited by Robert Johnson and Michael Smith, 134–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ritner, Robert. 1993. The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Roccati, Alessandro. 2003. “Dall scritura al testo.” In Philosophers and Hieroglyphs, edited by Lucia Morra and Carla Bazzanella, 181–95. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier. Schenkel, Wolfgang. 1965. Memphis-Herakleopolis-Theban. Die Epigraphischen Seugnisse der 7–11 Dynastie Ägyptens. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Schroeder, Mark. 2008a. “What Is the Frege-Geach Problem?” Philosophy Compass 3(4): 703–20. Schroeder, Mark. 2008b. Being For: Exploring the Semantic Program of Expressivism. New York: Oxford University Press. Searle, John. 1975. “A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts.” In Language, Mind, and Knowledge, edited by Keith Gunderson, 344–69. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sethe, Kurt, and Hans Wolfgang Helck. 1958. Urkunden der 18. Dynastie. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs. Shafer-Landau, Russ. 2003. Moral Realism: a Defence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simpson, William, ed. 1973. The Literature of Ancient Egypt. New Haven: Yale University Press. Smith, Harry. 1994. “Ma‘et and Isfet.” Bulletin of the Australian Centre for Egyptology 5: 67–88. Smith, Michael. 1994. “Why Expressivists about Value Should Love Minimalism About Truth.” Analysis 54(1): 1–11. Stroud, Barry. 1996. “The Charm of Naturalism.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 70(2): 43–55. Tait, John, ed. 2003. “Never Had the Like Occurred”: Egypt’s View of Its Past. London: University College London. Teeter, Emily. 1997. The Presentation of Maat: Ritual and Legitimacy in Ancient Egypt. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Tobin, Vincent. 1989. Theological Principles of Egyptian Religion. New York: Peter Lang Publishers.

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Tyldesley, Joyce. 1998. Nefertiti: Egypt’s Sun Queen. New York: Viking Press. Wedgwood, Ralph. 2004. “The Metaethicists’ Mistake.” Philosophical Perspectives 18: 405–26. Weintraub, Ruth. 2011. “Logic for Expressivists.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89(4): 601–16. Westendorf, Wolfhart. 1966. “Ursprung und Wesen der Maat, de altägyptischen Göttin des Rechts, der Gerechtigkeit und der Weltordnung.” In Festgabe für Dr. Walter Will, edited by Siegfried Lauffer, 201–25. Cologne: Carl Heymanns Verlag. Willems, Harco. 2001. “The Social and Ritual Context of a Mortuary Liturgy of the Middle Kingdom (CT Spells 30–41).” In Social Aspects of Funerary Culture in the Egyptian Old and Middle Kingdoms, edited by Harco Willems, 253–372. Leuven: Peeters Publishers. Williams, Daniel. 2016. “The Career of the Lógos: A Brief Biography.” Philosophies 1: 209–19. Williams, Ronald. 1972. “Scribal Training in Ancient Egypt.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 92(2): 214–21. Wright, Crispin. 1992. Truth and Objectivity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Zeyl, Donald, trans. 1997. “Timaeus.” In The Complete Works of Plato, edited by John Cooper, 1224–91. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

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The Groundedness of Normativity or Indigenous Normativity Through the Land Brian Yazzie Burkhart

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg philosopher) and Glen Sean Coulthard (Yellowknife Dene philosopher) use the term grounded normativity in their recent essay “Grounded Normativity/ Place-Based Solidarity” to refer “to the ethical frameworks provided by . . . Indigenous place-based practices and associated forms of knowledge”. Grounded normativity is “informed by an intimate relationship to place”, they continue, and it “teaches us how to live our lives in relation to other people and nonhuman life forms in a profoundly nonauthoritarian, nondominating, nonexploitive manner” (Coulthard and Simpson 2016, 254). In Simpson and Coulthard’s essay, they use the concept of grounded normativity to critically engage with the concern that arises from “Indigenous claims to self-determination grounded in and informed by our attachments to land” as raised by “radical scholars and activists”, such as Jared Sexton and Nandita Sharma (Coulthard and Simpson 2016, 253). The worry that Sexton and Sharma raise is that Indigenous commitments to land carry an anti-immigrant and anti-Black sentiment. Simpson and Coulthard, in their essay, challenge Sexton and Sharma’s reading of Indigenous commitments to land as “perhaps unwittingly but nonetheless infected with their own brand of anti-Native sentiment insofar as they demand that Indigenous peoples separate their justice claims from the supposedly antimigrant and anti-Black character of [Indigenous] commitments to the land” because, Simpson and Coulthard argue, it is just those commitments to land “that inform [Indigenous] identities as well as ethical relationships with others” (Coulthard and Simpson 2016, 254). Simpson and Coulthard suggest that there is no meaningful way to separate Indigenous people’s ethical commitment to land from other ethical concerns such as those that arise regarding immigration and racism. To do this would be to turn away from the foundational framework of Indigenous morality, as they see it. To purposely turn away from the land as the foundation framework of Indigenous morality, “would amount to a form of auto-genocide”, since “our [Indigenous] relationship to the land itself generates the processes, practices, and knowledges that inform

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our [Indigenous] political systems, and through which we practice solidarity” (Coulthard and Simpson 2016, 254). I agree with Simpson and Coulthard’s conceptualization of grounded normativity and with its central place in Indigenous morality since it is also the land that generates the processes, practices, and knowledges that inform Indigenous morality. I also agree that it is misunderstanding of the nature and place of grounded normativity that gives rise to the concerns of those like Sexton and Sharma, but I do not think that the articulation that Simpson and Coulthard give here or elsewhere of grounded normativity does much to alleviate those concerns. This is because their articulation is too shallow, or perhaps better put, they have all the pieces of a more complete theory of grounded normativity but have not put them together to articulate the deeper nature of grounded normativity. I argue that a deeper and more complete understanding of grounded normativity would alleviate the worries that Indigenous commitments to land are supportive of or at least not incompatible with anti-immigrant and racist land-based morality and land claims, what I will call Fatherland normativity (an identification with land and a normativity that arises out of this identification with land that is authoritarian, dominating, and exclusionary). Without a deeper understanding of what groundedness might be and how normativity functions in relation to land in a more than material sense, Sexton, Sharma, and others will almost certainly miss the true meaning of grounded normativity or at least have no reason to rule out an interpretation of grounded normativity consistent with the concerns they raise. Simpson and Coulthard’s articulation of grounded normativity, as it stands, does not resolve Sexton and Sharma’s concerns that land-based identity and normativity justify problematic practices of authoritarianism, domination, and exclusion in relation to land. In this essay, I do not intend to engage directly the concerns raised by Sexton and Sharma nor directly the attempts by Simpson and Coulthard to articulate placebased solidarity and co-resistance across the broader lines of what Anibal Quijano calls the “coloniality of power” (Quijano 2000). I do think that the outlines of a deeper account of grounded normativity or what I call “morality through the land” in my recent book, Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land: a Trickster Methodology for Decolonizing Environmental Ethics and Indigenous Futures, will give a pretty clear picture of how grounded normativity or morality through the land can provide a framework for solidary across structures of coloniality (Burkhart 2019). In this chapter I merely wish to give a broad outline of an account of grounded normativity or morality through the land and why such an account cannot depend upon the ordinary English language or even more abstract settler philosophical conceptualizations of land, language, being, groundedness, normativity, and the like. Indigenous-based articulation of language, reality, being, thinking, and so on in relationship to the land is

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necessary to even begin to shape the contours of an outline of Indigenous morality through the land.

1. Decolonial Methodologies Indigenous philosophy as decolonial philosophy confronts the settler philosophical guardianship principle. The guardianship principle in settler societies, quite generally, is the legal and political doctrine that settler states have the right and obligation to protect Native people and Native tribes, particularly from themselves. This has been seen historically in the outlawing of traditional political, cultural, or religious practices that were seen as retarding the necessary progression of Native people and Native tribes from savagery to civilization, necessary in part in order to allow Native people and Native tribes to participate in civilized settler society. In historical times, the guardianship principle was used to justify the outlawing of the potlach ceremony, the sundance ceremony, the gourd dance ceremony, and the removal of commonly held tribal land in favor of individual allotment as private property. In more recent times the guardianship principles is used to justify the outlawing of traditional tribal systems of government and land management as well as the removal of tribal jurisdiction over violence against Native women on tribal land when the perpetrator is non-Native (but letting tribes retained jurisdiction over such violence if the perpetrator is a tribal citizen or Native from another Indian tribe). Even the prosecutorial power over tribal citizens was radically curtailed, using guardianship principles, in the 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act, which limited the punishments tribes could impose in criminal cases, even felonies, to six months imprisonment and a fine of $500. In the context of settler philosophy, articulations of Indigenous philosophy often trigger the operations of philosophical guardianship that force Indigenous philosophical articulations into appropriate guardianship forms, or forms that are assimilated to the dominant paradigm or at least translatable to or consistent with views of knowledge, morality, and the like that are generally acceptable within the dominant paradigm. This is often done, as with guardianship in general, with good intentions. The purpose of guardianship in the context of philosophy is to bring Indigenous philosophy into the realm of proper civilized philosophy in contrast to what is seen as mere religious thought or mythopoetics. The topic of settler philosophical guardianship for Indigenous philosophy has been studied extensively by Vine Deloria Jr. and features prominently in Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land and much of my other work. Here I only want to mention the topic of settler philosophical guardianship in order to describe one of the methods I employ for circumnavigating it. It should be clear from what I present here that I think much is lost regarding Indigenous philosophy and even regarding philosophy more

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generally when Indigenous philosophy is so constrained. The question is, though, how to avoid settler philosophical guardianship in a broader cultural context where this guardianship is seen as quite natural and even necessary. Some of the tools of decolonial resistance that I employ in the context of my practice of Indigenous philosophy are trickster hermeneutics, something that features conspicuously as the trickster methodology in Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land and decolonial phenomenology. Here I want to say a bit more about the nature and use of decolonial phenomenology. Decolonial phenomenology is described by Nelson Maldonado-Torres as a method that brackets “the assumed validity and general legitimacy of European traditions of thought” (Maldonado-Torres 11). This bracketing of European traditions of thought opens a space for Indigenous philosophy to show up in a way that is not always overdetermined by the assumed validity and legitimacy of European traditions of thought and the settler guardianship function of those traditions in relation to Indigenous traditions. In this way, Indigenous concepts are foregrounded and taken as given rather than always under suspicion, as they always are under settler philosophical guardianship. Decolonial phenomenology removes part of the power of the guardianship function without trying to reject European traditions of thought on their own terms, where, just like in the political context of the settler state, they have all the power, which in the case of the political or legal power of the settler state is plenary or absolute. Part of the function of philosophical guardianship in a settler philosophical context, just as with political or legal guardianship in a settler state context, is to hide or even erase the experiences and perspectives of Indigenous people. Indigenous experiences and perspectives are deemed relevant or even meaningful only in so far as they assimilate to or are translatable to dominant settler philosophical paradigms. This serves to hide or even erase Indigenous experiences and perspectives in general in the process of creating an Indigenous double-consciousness (to use Duboisian terminology), which exists as the felt transparency of Indigenous reality to settler consciousness that exists against a radical lack of consciousness or lived experience for Indigenous people as framed by the context of settler interpretation. In other words, Indigenous people are transparent to settler consciousness because Indigenous reality is devoid of consciousness or the lived experience that would outstrip the external projections of settler consciousness. Vine Deloria Jr., in his classic Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, begins with the problem of transparency. He opens that book with the line “Indians are like the weather. Everyone knows all about the weather” (Deloria 1969, 1). The problem that we face as Native people in the context of our struggle is “our transparency”, Deloria continues. “People can tell just by looking at us what we want, what should be done to help us, how we feel, and what a ‘real’ Indian is really like” (Ibid.). “Because people can see right

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through us”, he continues, “it becomes impossible to tell truth from fiction or fact from mythology. Experts paint us as they would like us to be. Often we paint ourselves as we wish we were” (Deloria 1969, 2). “To be an Indian” in settler America, he concludes, “is in a very real sense to be unreal” (Ibid.). Decolonial phenomenology explicitly rejects our transparency to the settler gaze. It begins with the position that we as Indigenous people will tell you (settler philosophy and the settler state) what we are experiencing, as seen in the title of another of Deloria’s classic works We Talk, You Listen (1970). This methodology takes Indigenous experience of the world in general as well as Indigenous experience of settler reality in particular as given against the bracketed settler framework of value, truth, and interpretation. In doing so, it refuses to negotiate or assimilate Indigenous experience to the dominant frameworks or perspectives of settler philosophy or the settler state. Of course, Deloria’s We Talk, You Listen is written in the English language rather than in Lakota, and this chapter is written in English rather than Cherokee (Jaligi Gawonihisdi) or Navajo (Diné bizaad). Deloria’s work (and I intentionally follow his path) is methodologically composed and stylistically written so as to expose and unsettle the implicit guardianship function of writing what is called “philosophy”, and in particular, writing it in the English language. Deloria’s “Red Power” (a term first used by Deloria during the 1966 convention of the National Congress of the American Indians and the name given to the 1970s Indian activist movement) method explicitly empowers Indigenous agency through the activation of Indigenous consciousness, which then inverts the transparency of Indigenous people by confronting settler perceptions with concrete and lived Indigenous experience in such a way that those lived experiences cannot be ignored or subsumed under the settler guardianship framework (Josephy et al. 1971,  13). The point of decolonial phenomenology, trickster hermeneutics, and Deloria’s Red Power methodology is not to end communication between Indigenous people and settlers or the settler state but simply to transform the landscape of these conversations by forcing an acknowledgment of and conversation around Indigenous lived experience on its own terms before the broader conversation is allowed to continue. This foregrounding of Indigenous experience and rejecting of settler interpretation removes the possibility of transparency as well as settler guardianship. The force of decolonial phenomenology upon settler philosophical guardianship is immediate and complete, in that from the perspective of decolonial phenomenology I can refuse to assimilate the meaning of the settler guardianship principle to the intended meaning that settler thinking and settler history have put upon it or may want to put upon it, which means that not only can I reject the application of the settler guardianship principle, I can also frame the meaning of the settler guardianship principle from within my own lived experience of its articulation and application. The forced assimilation of Indigenous

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concerns with settler principles to the meanings that settler thinking and settler history give to these principles is a classic example of the settler guardianship principle itself. Thus, a rejection of settler guardianship must also reject the settler guardianship meaning given to settler guardianship as the highest level of the framework of double consciousness for Indigenous people who live under settler rule and settler principles. The doubling of double-consciousness works like this: as Indigenous people we have experience and understanding of the world and experience and understanding of the settler world, but the settler framework coupled with the settler guardianship principle forces a rejection of both, as we are forced to act and speak in the ways that the settler world finds acceptable of us or to attempt to translate our experiences and understandings into words and actions that the settler world finds acceptable. This rejection of Indigenous experience and understanding is made so complete through the settler guardianship principle that we must finally translate even our experience and understanding of the settler world itself into terms the settler world finds appropriate for us to speak about it from our lived experience. This creates epistemic closure for settler supremacy under the settler guardianship principle. Put another way, it folds settler supremacy into itself so as to close off any critique. Thus, in order to even begin to critique settler supremacy, the settler guardianship principle must first be wholly rejected. To reject the settler interpretation even of the guardianship principle and instead express its meaning through Indigenous lived experience is to reject the guardianship principle before it has the power to act upon and close off Indigenous reality, thought, and experience. This forestalls the possibility for Indigenous philosophy to, even accidentally, fall back into the trap of transparency and settler guardianship. In addition, as will become clear, the groundedness of grounded normativity generates the refusal to assimilate experience into any kind of abstract or universal framework. Therefore, without explicitly rejecting the assimilation requirement of settler guardianship and the transparency of Indigenous experience from the start, there would be no meaningful way of getting an Indigenous theory of normativity and knowledge off the ground.

2. Grounded Normativity: The Naïve Settler Interpretation Coulthard coins the phrase “grounded normativity” in his book Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Coulthard 2014). In that work, Coulthard uses grounded normativity to refer to the “place-based foundation of Indigenous decolonial thought and practice” and the extended “modalities of Indigenous land-connected practices and longstanding experiential knowledge that inform and structure our ethical engagements with the world and our relationships with human

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and nonhuman others over time” (Coulthard 2014, 13). Grounded normativity, so understood, is central to Red Skin, White Masks because Coulthard sees the “theory and practice of Indigenous anticolonialism” as “a struggle not only for land in the material sense but also deeply informed by what the land as system of reciprocal relations and obligations can teach us about living our lives in relation to one another and the natural world in nondominating and nonexploitative terms” (Coulthard 2014, 13). The land plays a foundational role in shaping identity and ethical relations, but Simpson and Coulthard also reference a deeper normative force behind the “ethical commitments to land” that shape Indigenous identity and frame Indigenous ethical relationships with others (Coulthard and Simpson 2016, 254). These ethical commitments to land arise out of an “intimate relationship” to land that “teaches us how to live our lives” and functions with foundational normative force akin to Deloria’s Indigenous conception of reality in which “everything had the possibility of an intimate knowing relationship” (Coulthard and Simpson 2016, 254) (Deloria and Wildcat 2001, 2). Knowledge and morality, even our “ethical commitments to land” in an Indigenous context, are framed by an intimate relationship to land. It is then through land and our intimate relationship to it that knowledge and normativity both come to be and are thereby contained. Knowledge and normativity arise out of and are defined by intimate relations to land. The questions are: what is the nature of this intimate relationship to land that both grounds grounded normativity and extends grounded normativity beyond a relationship to land, and how does this intimate relationship to land and the normativity that comes out of it avoid the seemingly obvious resolution into the kind of authoritarian, dominating, and exclusionary morality (or Fatherland normativity) that identifying with land through an intimate relationship would seem to imply? The interpretation of grounded normativity that gives rise to an authoritarian, dominating, and exclusionary normativity in relation to land is actually rooted in a groundless framework of meaning, being, and knowing. Grounded normativity as seen through the casual and naïve settler interpretation transforms grounded normativity into groundless normativity. It is key to differentiate between the groundless naïve settler interpretation of grounded normativity and grounded normativity as it shows up in Indigenous philosophical frameworks, and to do so within the parameters of decolonial phenomenology, since one of the inherent projects of settler philosophical guardianship is to force a groundless framework of meaning, being, and knowing onto Indigenous philosophical concepts. The naïve settler interpretation of grounded normativity is related to the groundless settler conception of sovereignty. The fact that the use of sovereignty as a concept is ubiquitous within Native political and intellectual circles just gives further force to the naïve settler interpretation of

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grounded normativity. The foundational context of the term ‘sovereignty’ is political. Its modern meaning is shaped not by an intimate relationship to and through land but as a way of conceiving the absolute power that people have over land in the context of the modern nation-state. The conception of the absolute power over land and the denial of the deepest intimate relationship between people and land gives rise to the conceptual force necessary for coloniality and the creation of settler states in the first place. In his 1576 treatise Les Six Livres de la République, Jean Bodin argued that a sovereign must be absolute . . . the sovereign . . . must be able to legislate without his subjects’ consent, must not be bound by the laws of his predecessors, and could not, because it is illogical, be bound by his own laws. (Bodin 1576, 25) In this early conception of sovereignty we find the clearest indications that the power of sovereignty is dominating, authoritarian, and exclusionary. The sovereignty of the modern nation-state is an absolute and final authority over land as its territory. The relationship between people and land in this conception of sovereignty is domination over land and the capacity to extend that dominating power over others, particularly in excluding them from having any relation to the land one has sovereignty over. We can see this in the structure of the concept itself: ‘sover’ means “to come from above” and ‘reign’ is “to have dominating power over”. The key conceptual pieces of sovereignty are ‘over’, ‘above’, and ‘domination’. And the most important of those is domination, which comes from dominium (dominion or ownership) and dominatio (‘mastery, control, irresponsible power, despotism’), which means that the sovereign is a conqueror and subduer, as “implied in the Latin term dominus (‘he who has subdued’), which is derived from the Sanskrit domanus (‘he who subdues’)” (Newcomb 2011, 23–5). It is no wonder then that, as Steven Newcomb describes in his Pagans in the Promised Land, that it is in the sovereigns “very nature to subdue and dominate, and for this reason it would be most unnatural, even impossible . . . to not engage in such actions” (Newcomb 2011, 23). The mistake is to assume that Indigenous conceptions of relationships to land, even when using the term ‘sovereignty’, are expressions of a desire for absolute control and final authority over land and people, particularly in the context of domination over land and people. Such conceptions are in direct contrast to land as an intimate relationality that grounds knowledge and normativity in all their modalities. The groundless framework of meaning, knowing, and being sees grounded normativity as groundless, as floating free from the land in a sometimes material but always conceptual sense. This groundless interpretation of grounded normativity is automatic because from the groundless framework,

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all meaning, knowing, and being float free from the land in a sometimes material but always conceptual sense. Indigenous concepts of meaning, knowing, and being do not float free from the land but instead arise from the land in a material as well as conceptual sense. For example, in the Diné, or Navajo, picture of the world, human beings first gain the capacity for reason when they were given by White Corn Boy and White Corn Girl 12 words from saad la’i (‘first language’ or ‘the language of the land itself’). Each of these words came from the four sacred mountains that frame the physical as well as spiritual body of the Diné people. The Dził Diyinii Dį́ į’go Sinil (‘four holy mountains’) in Diné bizaad (‘the Navajo language’) are Sisnaajiní (‘Blanca Peak’), the white shell mountain to the east and of the dawn and from whence the three white shell words came; Tsoodził (‘Mount Taylor’), the turquoise “blue bead” mountain to the south and of the daylight and from whence the three turquoise words came; Dook’o’oosłííd (‘San Francisco Peak’), the abalone shell mountain to the west and of the yellow dusk and from whence the three abalone shell words came; Dibé Nitsaa (‘Hesperus Mountain’), the black jet mountain to the north and of the night and darkness and from whence the three black jet words came. These first 12 spoken words of Diné bizaad come to the people out of these mountains. Like winds out a deep mountain cave, these four mountains actually speak these first 12 spoken words. These 12 words give the people a space to begin to think and express their feelings and to further develop Diné bizaad (‘the Navajo language’) as an extension of saad la’i (‘the language of the land itself’). This is the kind of conceptualization of the relationship between language, thought, and the land that triggers the philosophical guardianship principle. In fact, Sigmund Freud, who was foundational in the development of the modern settler concepts of civilized and savage, purposefully marks off the overvaluing of psychical processes over physical ones through a study of the Indigenous Polynesian concepts of “taboo” and “mana” as the “primitive mechanism” that are the very nature of “primitive man” (Freud 1950, 64). The “savage intellect” by which “primitive man” runs together the category of things with the category of ideas or symbols of things is defined by magical thinking, which Freud claims is the “projection outward of internal perceptions” or imagining the ideas of things are actually the things themselves (Ibid.). James Frazer puts it even more succinctly: [U]nable to discriminate clearly between words and things, the savage commonly fancies that the link between a name and the person or thing denominated by it is not a mere arbitrary and ideal association but a real and substantial bond which unites the two. (Frazer 1914, 318) In the grounded context of Indigenous thought, the bond between words/ symbols and things is more than just imagined. It is at the heart of

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thousands of years of culture, language, and ceremony. In Gary Witherspoon’s study of Diné language and philosophy, he describes an understanding of symbols and reality where a symbol is not “created as a means of representing reality; on the contrary, reality was created or transformed as a manifestation of symbolic form. . . . Language is not a mirror of reality; reality is a mirror of language” (Witherspoon 1977, 34). In the grounded context of Indigenous thought, a symbol does not exist as an abstract representation. Form literally shapes and creates reality. The Yeii (‘spirit beings’) that are constructed through the colored sand in the ceremonial sandpaintings do not represent in symbolic form these Yeii. The material sand that is shaped into the forms of the Yeii are the Yeii themselves. The Yeii are made present when their precise shape is made by the painter in the ceremony and as the Yeii are present in the painting, they bring their power or medicine to heal the patient that then sits directly on them and on the sandpainting. To simply turn all of Diné thought (ceremonies, stories, operations of language, and conceptions of language) into primitive nonsense that needs correcting simply because it does not conform to the particular culture ideocracies that shape Western thinking about the nature of reality and language, as Freud and Frazier do, is just the sort of settler guardianship that ought to be avoided at all costs. In the context of settler philosophy, there is no place for this kind of groundedness (grounded meaning, being, knowing, morality, and normativity) because settler philosophy floats free from the land, and it must do so following Freud and Frazer on pain of being counted as savage by definition. In Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land, I call this groundedness ‘locality’ and this groundlessness ‘delocality’. Locality is the originary and continual manifestation of being, of knowing, of meaning, and of morality out of the land. Locality is more than an Indigenous conception of the manifestations of these through the land because, as I show in that work, it is Indigenous locality itself that is operated on by coloniality. Coloniality serves to laminate one locality (European) that has been delocalized or made groundless onto an actual locality, the Indigenous one. The goal of coloniality in the first place is to obscure (since locality can never be completely removed) the locality of the land upon which it operates, first through the creation of groundlessness or delocality itself, and second through attempting to inject the falsely unmoored European locality into the Indigenous land, which can only be accomplished by obscuring the original Indigenous locality from the land as well as the original European locality from which the settlers originate and are formed. The problem with the colonial attempt to inject itself into the Indigenous land is that a delocalized locality (such as the abstracted European cultural reality) is, in the first place, a false abstraction. In the second place, a delocalized locality can only obscure and never completely replace the locality of the land upon which it is laminated. Coloniality can never remove the Indigenous locality, so in the process of colonialism through delocality there always is left a remainder

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of Indigenous locality in the land and from the land in the form of Indigenous philosophy (stories, language, land-based ceremonies, and so on). It should be clear that the kind of authoritarian, dominating, and exclusionary relationship to land that is exemplified in settler colonialism as well as in the connected concept of sovereignty requires groundless conceptions of the human relationship to land. In contrast, in grounded conceptions of the human relationship to land it is through an intimate relationship with land that knowledge and normativity arise but are also contained. Sovereignty, as a reality that comes from above in order to have a dominating power over peoples and territories is a clear form of authoritarian, dominating, and exclusionary morality and normativity, but it is also a clear form of power and normativity that exists only in so far as it is groundless, in so far as it is able to float free from the land. The same is true of what I have called Fatherland normativity. The identification with land that gives rise to Fatherland normativity is not an intimate relationship to land that both originates and contains a grounded normativity but rather is an identification with land that floats free from it. Fatherland normativity, while claiming an intimate relationship to land, is rather like an abusive and violent relationship to land in that its primary normative force is a power over that land. In Fatherland normativity, the relationship I have to land is something that belongs to me rather than something I come out of, as an originary and continual manifestation of, and so belong to.

3. The Groundedness of Normativity: Normativity Through the Land There is a contrasting conception to the groundless settler colonial relationship to land in the claim by Lakota philosopher Luther Standing Bear that “understand[ing] America” requires being connected to “its formative processes” (Standing Bear 1978, 248). In the early 20th century, 40 years before the Red Power movement and 70 years before the Standing Rock and Idle No More Indigenous power movements, Standing Bear suggests that “the white man does not understand the Indian for the reason that he does not understand America. He is too far removed from its formative processes” (Ibid.). In saying this, Standing Bear is beginning to articulate his path for rejecting the settler guardianship principles as well as attempting to express something of both the formative and process-related nature of groundedness in the land. In order to fully understand oneself as situated in relation to a particular land, “the roots of the tree of [one’s] life”, as he puts it, must “grasp the rock and the soil” (Ibid.). The image of one’s life as a tree where the roots must find understanding in the rocks and soil has epistemological as well as moral functions in Standing Bear’s thought. I understand myself and the world around me in relationship to land as a more than material ground

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and process of knowledge but also as the more than material ground and process of my vitality or well-being and the vitality or well-being of the world around me.1 The homelessness that comes from ungroundedness in the land creates epistemological as well as moral and social ills on Standing Bear’s account. He claims that because “[t]he white man is still troubled with primitive fears” that arise from “the perils” of this land, which has not “yielded to his questing footsteps and inquiring eyes . . . the roots of the tree of his life have not yet grasped the rock and soil” (Standing Bear 1978, 248). For Standing Bear, it is the attempted domination, control, mastery, and subjugation of land – implied, as we have seen, in the conception of the sovereign or the dominus as he who subdues or has dominion – that keeps the settler from finding an epistemological and moral home on this land. This need to exercise power and authority over the land from above creates the “cast of mind” of the settler, according to Standing Bear, that is “reluctant to seek understanding and achieve adjustment in a new and significant environment into which it has so recently come” (Standing Bear 1978, 249). The settler’s desire to transform America and the Indian, according to Standing Bear, to an abstract European ideal is a “disobedience of a fundamental and spiritual law” that gives rise to “every problem that exists today”, for both Native and settler, including injury that is “more destructive than war” for Native people but also “extends to the white population as well” in the form of “tyranny” and the loss for settler society a “measure of humanity” (Standing Bear 1978, 248, 251). Contrasting the settler homelessness on this land, he writes that “in the Indian the spirit of the land is still vested” because s/he grasps and “meets its rhythm [the spirit of the land] (Standing Bear 1978, 248). In a clear expression of an intimate relationship to land that is more than material and with little authoritative, dominating, or exclusionary force, Standing Bear writes that “the man who sat on the ground in his tipi, accepting the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things” is “infusing into his being the true essence of civilization” (Standing Bear 1978, 250). The intimacy that Standing Bear speaks of between people and land originates and maintains a normative force that comes from the land and extends beyond to other humans and nonhumans. It is a normative force that comes out of the land in the sense of an intimate relationship with land but then also extends to land as an ethical commitment to land that arises out of this intimate relationship. The ethical commitments that arise out of this intimate relationship with land also extends to other humans and nonhumans through the broader framework of grounded normativity, which includes on Standing Bear’s account the “fundamental and spiritual law” of nondomination both of land and other people. The intimate relationship to land that Standing Bear describes is, also, one that requires process and so is not given, natural, or essential. Certain humans are not essentially or by nature connected to particular

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lands, while other humans are essentially or naturally excluded from this connection. The connection is one that is both created and continued through an intimate relationship with land. Standing Bear also articulated his own critique of the logic of the settler guardianship principle by explicitly reversing the polarity of civilization and savagery. His reversal of the polarity is strategic, as he is well aware of the binary nature of the concepts of ‘civilized’ and ‘savage’ as well as their absolute positive and negative values. He suggests that “all the years of calling the Indian a savage has not made him one”, but that also the years of protestation against their own savagery by the European occupiers have not made them civilized (Standing Bear 1978, 251). While strategically using the concept of civilization with its absolute positive value to describe the various features of grounded normativity, he calls into question the manner in which “[the white man [has] excused his presence here” and “absolved himself of all responsibility for his appearance in a land occupied by other men” by defining all of his actions as good and civilized over against the Indigenous people who are bad and savage. The settler uses “the Word!” as “proof that his advent into this country and his subsequence acts were the result of divine will” (Standing Bear 1978, 249). He calls out what he calls the “false reasoning” by which “the quality of human character [is] measure by man’s ability to [make] a mark upon paper: there ensued a blind worship of written history, of books, of the written word, that has denued the spoken word of its power and sacredness. The written word became established as criterion of the superior man – a symbol of emotional fineness. The man who could write his name on a piece of paper, whether or not he possessed the spiritual fineness to honor those words in speech, was by some miraculous formula a more highly developed and sensitized person than the one who had never had a pen in hand, but whose spoken word was inviolable and whose sense of honor and truth was paramount. (Standing Bear 1978, 249) The acts of those who define themselves as civilized are not made good by that marking. The lack of honesty and honoring the words that were written down in the form of treaties consistently violated by the settlers that wrote them down is proof to Standing Bear that those things that are called civilized are not good by necessity, as their claim to be civilized is supposed to denote. He claims that “humanness” is a “matter of heart and mind” that is “evident in the form of relationship with men” rather than in culture or cultural artifacts. Denying the right of the civilized, whomever goes by that name, to dominate or subdue, he claims that “kindness” is “more powerful than arrogance” and “truth more powerful than the sword” (Standing Bear 1978, 249). The final excuse for the

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settler guardianship principle or “feeble excuses for the continued subjection of the Indian” is that “he is not yet ready to accept the society of the white man”, but this is “beside the question”, according to Standing Bear because it assumes that “the external Indian” must be transformed “into the like-ness of the white race”, which is a violation of the “fundamental and spiritual law” of Indigenous morality through the land. Finally, he questions the capacity of anyone, regardless of how strongly they cling to a sense of being civilized to judge the right path of life for another people. He asks, “[w]ho can say that the white man’s way is better for the Indian? Where resides the human judgment with the competence to weight the value of Indian ideals and spiritual concepts; or substitute them for other values” (Standing Bear 1978, 251). In the end, he rejects the guardianship principle in total, regardless of who is wielding it. To the question of whether it should be “urged upon the Indian” to take up the settler ways, Standing Bear answers: “Let none but the Indian answer!” (Standing Bear 1978, 251). The settler is free to form his or her own relationship to the land, including an intimate relationship to it. The Diné, in receiving the first 12 words from the four sacred mountains, are intertwined in an intimate relationship with the formative process of Dinetah, the Diné landscape, but this does not preclude others from forming an intimate relationship to this landscape. What is precluded in forming an intimate relation to land is forming that relationship from above, floating free from the land. The necessity of forming intimate relationships with landscapes to which one is not already in an intimate relationship precludes all forms of colonialism, and settler colonialism in particular, as well as sovereignty, in the sense of exercising dominating power over the land and people. In the settler context, in order to create an intimate relationship to this land, I must acknowledge and begin to resolve the legal, moral, and material processes by which I have come to be a settler on these lands, that would, at the very least, include honoring the legal commitments made in the form of treaties and making consistent the moral proclamations of the absolute value of humanity and human dignity with our treatment of Indigenous people. In the settler context, I must also likely deal with the relational alienation that I have with land that arises from the groundless normativity that frames my thinking of land as an object to be owned or dominated. I must also deal with the historical alienation of being torn from a landscape in relationship to which my ancestors, the language I speak, and the culture I know was in intimate relationship with the formative process of creating. The English word ‘mountain’ did not come from Sisnaajiní or any such landscape upon which the word exists or is use in the American continent. The English word ‘mountain’ does not function in even the same conceptual space of the Diné word ‘dził’ – the word used to refer to places like Sisnaajiní. The Diné word ‘dził’ does not refer to a physical object, as the English word ‘mountain’ does, but rather

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to a whole set of relationships and ongoing movements inherent in these relationships, including the life cycles of animals and plants, different elevations, weather patterns, as well as human relationships of being on or with a being such as Sisnaajiní. In talking about the relational dynamic of what is called ‘mountain’ in English, one would say dził nanit’a, which translates literally into English as ‘the movement-existences of the mountain’. As a settler, using the word ‘mountain’ to refer to Sisnaajiní in the context of trying to create an intimate kinship relationship with this landscape will always result in alienation. The English words we use will always be alien to this land unless they can be remade through intimate relationship with the formative processes of the land upon which they are used. As a settler, I must develop my relationship to the land through the land itself, where the land includes the people of that land, the languages of that land, and the stories and moral and legal orders of that land since people, language, stories, morality, and law are originary and continual manifestations of the land itself as both the ground and the process of these manifestations (as we see in the first 12 Diné words that are manifestations of the four sacred mountains that frame the Diné homeland). It is only through understanding that I, as a human being, do not float free from the land and that I am always already in relationship to land, and beginning to act on that knowledge in relation to who I am and where I am – the land upon which I stand – that I can open the space of possibility for creating an intimate relationship to land that can be a force of normativity that originates out of and is contained within an intimate relationship to land. In 2000, the Treaty Elders of Saskatchewan described Indigenous sovereignty by saying “we were put here by the Creator on this Earth to live with a certain purpose” and that the relationship to this place upon which we were put and given this purpose constructs our “language, spiritual practices, and way of life” (Hilderbrandt and Cardinal 2000, 30). If we understand ourselves, our normativity, and our power (vitality, the ceremonial power for healing, as well as political power in the Indigenous conception of sovereignty through grounded normativity) as arising out of and being contained by an intimate relationship to land that is always in motion and can never be severed, only then can we being to grasp the normativity and power in that intimate relationship with the land from which we arise and are always in continued relationality. Normativity and sovereignty only exist in the grounded locality of a relationship to the landscape upon which we stand and upon which we have traveled, a relationship that is always already in motion and never severable. The assumptive force behind groundless normativity and the groundless political power of sovereignty, just as with groundless epistemology, is that only by being cut free from the land so as to exist across all landscapes or at least multiple landscapes at once is there the necessary power of normativity, knowledge, sovereignty, and the like. The assumption is

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that unless normativity, knowledge, and sovereignty exist over a landscape as well as over and across all landscapes – or at least over and across multiple landscapes at once – there can be no true normativity, knowledge, or proper political power or control. For normativity, knowledge, and proper political power or control over land and people to exist, these must float free from the land. From Indigenous experience, arising from an intimate relationship to land in its formative process, such normativity, knowledge, and political power or control are illusions; they are alienations from the always already in motion and never severable relationships we have with land. The search for normativity, knowledge, and political power that floats free from the land arises from the desire for something unchangeable or absolute by which some sense of security and control can be felt. But only by deceiving myself that I float free from the land in the first place can I think that normativity, knowledge, and political power can float with me. In grasping for groundless normativity, knowledge, or political power, I am deceiving myself that I can remove my being, my knowledge, my values, my culture, and my people from the originary and continual relationships through the land that are both the formative processes of these but also contain them in the always already in motion continuity of my relationship to the land. Moreover, there is a moral and political force in grounded normativity and grounded sovereignty that is lost when normativity and sovereignty float free from the land, as seen most conspicuously in the “sickening and deadening” operations of settler colonialism, as expressed by Standing Bear (Standing Bear 1978, 249). The moral and political force of grounded normativity and grounded sovereignty come through the land as the ground and the process by which all being, life, health, language, value, and power are manifest. In the Jalagi Gawonihisdi (the ‘Cherokee language’), a river is called yvwi ganvhida (‘long person’). A river is a person moving through the land. In so moving through the land rather than over or across it, the river contains the power of the land. The yvwi ganvhida exercises power through the land but does not carry that power as a groundless, delocalized force of domination over the land. The power of yvwi ganvhida is a power that literally comes from and moves through the land; its power originates in the land and is inseverable from the land. The river, yvwi ganvhida, carries the power of the land because it is grounded in its always already being in motion intimate kinship relationship with the land. The yvwi ganvhida carves through the mountains, creating ridges and valleys, but without this long person ever separating herself or even imagining herself as existing apart from the land. It is not strange, then, that in Jalagi Gawonihisdi ama, a word for ‘water’, can also be ama, a word for ‘valley’. It is the same power by which yvwi ganvhida carries herself across multiple landscapes without disrupting the locality of those landscapes, without operating on those landscapes as an externalized, delocalized, authoritarian, dominating, or exclusionary force. Groundless

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normativity and the groundless power of coloniality, in contrast, only carry themselves across multiple landscapes through the disrupting of locality, only by operating on these landscapes as an externalized, delocalized, authoritarian, dominating, and exclusionary force. Grounded normativity and grounded sovereignty only exist through the land and never outside of it or over it. In the end, we are unable to declare with authority a framework of normativity that exists beyond the intimate relationship with the land upon which we depend and through which we come to be. To make such a declaration would be to transform grounded normativity into groundless normativity, to transform normativity from its originary and continual manifestation through the land into a normativity that floats free from the land. The specific parameters of grounded normativity cannot be specified without transforming grounded normativity into groundless normativity, without allowing normativity to float free from the land. We can describe however the formative processes by which normativity becomes grounded or groundless: how normativity can be rooted in an intimate relationship with land that creates and contains that normativity or how normativity can become unrooted, or how it can become unmoored from the always already in motion and inseverable relationship with the land. If our identifications with land derive from and are contained within our always already in motion and inseverable relationship with land, then our relationship to land can never be one of domination, control, mastery, ownership, or subjugation. If our normativity arises out of and is contained within our always already in motion and inseverable relationship to land, then there is also no space either for the domination or subjugation of other people. Such domination or subjugation would be a violation of Standing Bear’s “fundamental and spiritual law” against seeking dominion over land or people, which has the force it does, according to Standing Bear, because understanding oneself as an individual or collectively as a people in relationship to land (the roots of our tree of life grasping the rocks and soil) requires a perspective of respect and humility in relationship to the land, a continual willingness to understand and adjust to the land, to “meet its rhythm” rather than force it to “yield to . . . questing footsteps and inquiring eyes” (Standing Bear 1978, 248). For Standing Bear, “the man who sat on the ground in his tipi” is a metaphor for the grasping of the rocks and soil that is groundedness or understanding the land as the ground and the process of oneself and the world. It is from this groundedness that one “accept[s] the kinship of all creatures” (Standing Bear 1978, 250). This is why, for Standing Bear, the attempt to makeover “the external Indian into the like-ness of the white race” is a violation of the “fundamental and spiritual law”, as such action can only arise from an imagined sense that I (who do not see myself in kinship with everything around me or who seeks to makeover others in my image) float free from the land (Standing Bear 1978, 250).

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In addition to providing a groundwork for rejecting the settler guardianship principle in total and a framework for understanding identification with land through kinship rather than domination, the groundedness of grounded normativity provides particularly fruitful ground for reflecting on traditional questions of metaethics, in particular questions about the particularity or situatedness of morality and questions about moral realism, specifically whether moral statements are true and matters of fact.2 Moral particularism is a metaethical view that rejects moral principles in the absolute sense, where moral principles are universal claims that actions of a particular type are overall right or wrong. Moral principles are deemed important, in part because they subject our moral judgement to the constraints of consistency. If I claim that lying is wrong when it applies to my relatives but not when it applies to others, I am applying the principle ‘do not lie’ inconsistently. Moral principles are also deemed important because rightness and wrongness are thought to be particular properties such that acting in relationship to them means having a principle that says which sorts of actions are right and which sorts of actions are wrong in the absolute and abstract sense. The generalist in contrast to the particularist seeks sameness through principles that pick out right and wrong actions across situations. The particularist is insistent instead on variability, but not, it seems, the variability that arises from grounded normativity, which is a variability that arises from the groundedness of human being and human morality in the land as the originary and continual source and process of human being and human morality. The variability of the particularist arises from an understanding of moral reasons, where a moral reason, like a reason for belief, can be a reason for in one situation and a reason against in another. The idea seems to be that reasons to act function generally like reasons to believe, that is to say with variability and without being principle-bound, which would then be based on invariable reasons. The particularist also might reject the generalists’ search for absolute principles because such principles do not allow for conflict (an absolute principle requires sameness across situations), and having conflict seems to be a fact of our lives and dealing with conflict seems to be a fact of our moral lives. The particularist is a pluralist, at least in the sense of allowing for a variety of properties to provide morally relevant reasons to act or not act, and in the sense that what is a morally relevant property in one situation might not be in another. Moral realism, in simple view, is the idea that at least some moral statements, such as ‘lying is wrong’, are true and true as matters of fact – in the same way that the statement ‘the tree outside my window is 9 meters tall’ is true. One of the common criticisms of moral realism is that it is unreconcilable with the nature and extent of moral disagreement. If moral statements were simply matters of fact, the worry goes, then there would be more standard agreement in the way there is regarding the height of

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the tree outside my window. This seems to be a problem for particularism as well since if the reason to act functions just like reasons to believe, it is more difficult to explain the nature and the extent of moral disagreement, which seems to go well beyond the ordinary disagreements about reasons to believe. A reflection on these metaethical discussions from the perspective grounded normativity would likely find one defending the realism of morality as well as its variability and plurality. Morality is real in the context of grounded normativity, though, not because moral statements are true as matters of fact, since that would require that any statement can be true in the abstract or floating free from the land. Morality is real in the context of grounded normativity because there is nothing that is not real and nothing that is not true, save the dishonesty that Standing Bear finds so repugnant from the mouths of the settler and the promises of the settler state in the context of treaty making. The rhizomatic nature of Indigenous language and thought sees the world and all of reality as inherently multiple. Our experiences, just like the Diné sandpaintings, are direct manifestations of the world rather than representations of it, which means there is a simple and direct realism at the heart of Indigenous metaphysics, which is why Vine Deloria Jr. claims that “the fundamental premise” of Native philosophy is “that we cannot ‘misexperience’ anything” (Deloria 1999, 45–6). Figuring out the “proper moral and ethical road”, as Deloria puts it, for me to walk is not a matter of discovering some abstract principle as the generalist claims and the particularist rejects, but it is also not finding some matters of fact, true statements, or even, it seems, reasons situated in a particular context – if by reasons we mean something defined by statements that are true as matters of fact. Figuring out the right road for me to walk is not a matter that can be constructed or solved outside of the originary and continual manifestation of my being and the being of the world around me through the land as the ground and process of being and reality. Morality through the land is real but not real based in matters of fact that float free from the land. Morality through the land is also pluralistic (not based in absolute principles), but not based in reasons, where reasons float free from the land. Morality through the land is not particular or situational in the sense that we generally construct, since a particular or a situation is still an abstraction that floats free from the land. The attempted specification of a situation to time, place, cultural context, language, particular localized reasons, and so on cannot overcome the gap of ungroundedness by which the situation is constructed. A situation so constructed is still an abstraction that floats free from the land. From the perspective of grounded normativity, I find the desires for particularism and realism to be motivated by a sense of human being and human morality through the land, but the attempt to discover the human being and human morality will always fail, I think, when attempted from above, from the experiential and conceptual position of floating free from the land.

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Notes 1. See my “Be as Strong as the Land that Made You: An Indigenous Philosophy of Well-Being through the Land.” Science, Religion and Culture, Vol. 6 Special Issue No. 1, 26–33 (2019). 2. For a fuller discussion of the implications of grounded normative for moral realism, see Chapter 5, “The Metaphysics of Morality in Locality” in my Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land (2019).

References Bodin, Jean. 1576. Six Books of the Commonwealth, translated by M. J. Tooley. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishing. Burkhart, Brian Yazzie. 2019. Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land: A Trickster Methodology for Decolonizing Environmental Ethics and Indigenous Futures. East Lansing, Michigan State University Press. Coulthard, Glen. 2014. Red Skins, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Coulthard, Glen, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. 2016. “Grounded Normativity/ Place-Based Solidarity.” American Quarterly 68(2): 249–55. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1969. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. New York: Macmillan. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1970. We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1999. Spirit and Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr., Reader, edited by Kristen Foehner, Sam Scinta, and Barbara Deloria. Golden: Fulcrum Publishing. Deloria, Vine Jr., and Daniel R. Wildcat. 2001. Power and Place: Indian Education in America. Golden: Fulcrum Publishing. Frazer, James G. 1914. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 3rd ed. London: Macmillan. Freud, Sigmund. 1950. Totem and Taboo, translated by James Strachely. New York: W.W. Norton. Hilderbrandt, Walter, and Harold Cardinal. 2000. Treaty Elder of Saskatchewan: Our Dream Is That Our Peoples Will One Day Be Clearly Recognized as Nations. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Josephy, Alvin M., Joane Nagel, and Troy Johnson, eds. 1971. Red Power: The American Indian’s Fight for Freedom, 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. Maldonado-Torres, Nelson. 2006. “Post-continental Philosophy: Its Definition, Contours, and Fundamental Sources.” Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise, Vol. 1, Dossier 3. Newcomb, Steven T. 2011. Pagans in the Promised Land: The Roots of Dominations in U.S. Federal Indian Law. Golden: Fulcrum Publishing. Quijano, Anibal. 2000. “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Nepantla: Views from South 1(3): 533–80. Standing Bear, Luther. 1978. Land of the Spotted Eagle. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Witherspoon, Gary. 1977. Language and Reality in the Navajo World View. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.

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The Nature of Mexica Ethics James Maffie

Scholars of Mexica (Aztec) philosophy widely embrace the general claim that (1) reciprocity functions at the heart of Mexica metaphysics’ understanding of the nature and continual becoming of the world as well as the role of human beings in contributing to the continual becoming of the world. They also widely embrace several more specific claims: (2) powerful creator beings engender the Fifth Age of the cosmos; (3) these same creator beings engender Fifth Age human beings; (4) they engender human beings by ‘deserving’ or ‘meriting’ humans’ existence; (5) Fifth Age human beings are therefore those ‘deserved’ or ‘merited’ into existence by creator beings; (6) Fifth Age human beings are consequently born ‘obligated’ or ‘indebted’ to creator beings; and (7) Fifth Age human beings do so by providing for creator beings’ continuing sustenance and existence. In what follows I flesh out some of the more important metaphysical and metaethical underpinnings and consequences of these claims.1

1. Human and Other-Than-Human Reciprocity and Co-Participation in the Fifth Age According to Mexica creation narratives (tlamachiliztlatolzazanilli, literally, ‘wisdom tellings’ [Bierhorst 1992, vii]), the history of the cosmos consists of a series of five Ages or Suns. The succession of the first four Ages consists of the creator beings, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, taking turns creating their own and destroying the other’s Age. Each of the four Ages is populated by its own particular kind of human being who is also destroyed. Upon the destruction of the Fourth Age, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca decide to work together in creating a final Fifth Age and fifth kind of human being. Present-day humans are of this fifth kind and inhabit this Fifth Age (Bierhorst 1992, 25–6, 146–6). Because Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, and the many other creator beings in the Mexica cosmos are neither perfect, omnipotent, benevolent, transcendent, nor ‘supernatural’, it is misleading to think of them as ‘gods’. Particularly noteworthy in this regard is the fact that they are vitally dependent upon human beings for their continuing existence (more anon).

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They are better understood as agentive beings or personified forces who possess more power and life force than humans, animals, plants, and insects. Indeed, according to Mexica metaphysics, all things are animated, empowered, and vivified by one and the same life energy – what the Mexica called teotl. One and all are also constituted by teotl. The cosmos and all its inhabitants – from earth, lightning, rivers, wind, and sun to plants, birds, animals, humans, and deceased ancestors, from buildings, cooking pots, digging sticks, and knives, to artwork, incense, and musical instruments, and from stories and songs to dance, musical performance, and ceremonies – are vivified, active, and powerful. In short, the Fifth Age is by populated by human beings as well as what I call (borrowing from Hallowell 1976) other-than-human beings (Maffie 2014, 2019a). The few Mexica ‘wisdom tellings’ that survived the Conquest do not say exactly why Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca create the first four Ages and the first four kinds of humans or why Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca destroy each of them.2 The Quiché Maya creation narrative, the Popol Vuh, however, offers us tantalizing clues. The Popol Vuh relates that creator beings sought to create a race of beings who would properly worship, respect, and care for them – i.e., nurture, nourish, sustain, and in so doing literally recreate them – through such means as well-spoken words, music, incense, foodstuffs, and ceremony. The Maya creator beings first created animals, but animals proved unable to carry out this task since they lacked the ability to speak. They next fashioned humans from clay, but they failed for lack of being able to speak properly. Next, they made humans from wood, but because they lacked hearts and understanding, wooden humans were not able to properly worship their creators. Upon their fourth attempt the creator beings finally succeeded in creating human beings capable of respecting and caring for them properly. These last humans were made of maize (see Popol Vuh 2003, 67–90, 193–200).3 Although the surviving Mexica ‘wisdom tellings’ do not tell us why Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca create and the destroy the first four Ages and first four kinds of humans, they do tell us why Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca create Fifth Age humans. As in the Popol Vuh, they create humans in order to nurture, nourish, sustain, and in so doing ultimately regenerate the creator beings. While the similarity with the Popol Vuh does not entail that Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca create and destroy the first four Ages and kinds of humans for the same reason as the creator beings do in the Popol Vuh, it does certainly suggest this as a tantalizing possibility. Both creation narratives (along with countless other Mesoamerican creation narratives) assign a unique role to humankind (see Monaghan 2000). Let’s examine further Mexica creation narratives. The ‘wisdom telling’, Legend of the Suns, tells us that as a consequence of the monumental effort (tequitl) and expenditure of life energy (chicahualiztli) involved in fashioning Sky, Earth, and moving Sun of the Fifth Age, Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, and the other creator beings become

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enervated, ‘hot’ with hunger, imbalanced, and in life-threatening need of nourishment. In order to remedy their condition, Quetzalcoatl decides to undertake a series of hardships. He travels to Mictlan (the Place of the Dead below the earth’s surface) where he successfully locates and retrieves the bones of Fourth Age humans despite the strenuous opposition of Mictlantecuhtli (Lord of the Place of the Dead). Quetzalcoatl brings the bones to Cihuacoatl, who grinds them into meal and places the meal in a jade bowl. Quetzalcoatl then fashions new human beings from the bone meal of Fourth Age humans by mixing into the meal the life energy contained in blood drawn from his virile member. The creator beings gift life to Fifth Age humans so that humans will cool, refresh, and rebalance them by nurturing, nourishing, and feeding them in return. (Hunger consists of an imbalance consisting of excessive heat, and eating food restores balance through cooling.) The Mexica see feeding and nurturing as ways of respecting, worshipping, loving, and honoring other beings (creator or otherwise). Such nourishment consists of well-spoken words (what we call ‘prayer’), song, dance, music, ceremony, incense, foodstuffs (e.g., tamales), and human or animal blood. What’s more, the continuing existence of the Fifth Age after its initial creation requires the vital energies of creator beings. Because sustaining the world continually enervates them, they are continually in need of nourishment from humans. In short, although the initial and continuing existence of Fifth Age humans (and all its inhabitants) are wholly dependent upon creator beings, creator beings themselves are subsequent to creation wholly dependent upon human beings. The continuing existence of creator beings depends essentially upon human nourishing, nurturing, and care (Bierhorst 1992, 146–6; see also Carrasco 1999; Köhler 2001; Maffie 2014, 2019a, 2019b).4 According to the ‘wisdom telling’, Histoyre du mechique (Garibay [ed] 1965b, 91–116), Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca initiate the creation of the Fifth Age by capturing and splitting into two Tlaltecuhtli (the great earth caiman, Earth Lady). In this way they form the sky and earth’s surface. Human foodstuffs such as maize, beans, and amaranth grow from her body. Water flows from her eyes. As a consequence of the initial hardship (tequitl) she endured in being split into two and continuing hardship she endures in providing humans with foodstuffs, Tlaltecuhtli demands reciprocity from humans. She demands to be fed in return; she demands human life energy. Providing for the continuing existence and reproduction of the Fifth Age (along with its human inhabitants) with their vital energies continually exhausts the creator beings. As a consequence, they depend critically upon being continually fed and nourished by human beings. Preeminent among this nourishment are the vital energies of human beings themselves (i.e., human blood and hearts). In Book VI of the Florentine Codex, Bernardino de Sahagún records a prayer to Tezcatlipoca declaring that Mictlantecuhtli ‘thirsts’, ‘hungers’, ‘pants’, and ‘cries out’ restlessly for

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human flesh day and night (Sahagún 1953–1982, Bk VI, 21). And yet this dependency is mutual. The continuing existence and continuing reproduction of Fifth Age humans – both as individuals (ontogenetically) and as a species (phylogenetically) – depend critically upon humans being continually fed and nourished by the creator beings’ energies in the form of foodstuffs (such as maize, amaranth, beans, and chia seed), sunlight, and water. Humans, too, thirst, hunger, pant, and cry out continually for the life energies of creator beings. Humans and creator beings thus feed their vital energies to one other as well as consume one another’s vital energies. Feeding and eating are prominent means of energy transmission in the Fifth Age. Contemporary Nahuatl-speakers – Nahuatl being the language spoken by the Mexica and spoken today by one to two million people – of San Miguel, Sierra del Pueblo, Mexico, express their relationship with the creator beings in this way: We live HERE on the earth (stamping on the mud floor) We are all fruits of the earth The earth sustains us We grow here, on the earth and lower And when we die we wither in the earth We are ALL FRUITS of the earth (stamping on the mud floor) We eat the earth Then the earth eats us. (Carrasco 1999, 169–70) Alternatively expressed, “We eat the gods, and the gods eat us” (Carrasco 1999, 164), “We feed ourselves to the creator beings and they feed themselves to us”,5 and “We care for the creator beings and they care for us”.6 Humans and creator beings are thus mutually dependent, their relationship being aptly characterized as ‘mutualist symbiotic’ or ‘obligate mutualist’ (meaning one or both symbionts depend entirely on the other for survival) in the terminology of contemporary biology. Fifth Age creator beings and human beings rely equally upon consuming one another’s life energies. Because they feed humans, creator beings are said to be “mothers and fathers” to humans, and because they in turn feed creator beings, humans are also “mothers and fathers” to creator beings (Sahagún 1953–1982, Bk VI, 88; see also Taggart 2007; Good Eshelman 2011). I submit this mutual dependency is not gainsaid by the obvious disparity in their respective amounts of power (contra Monaghan 2000, 37). As insignificant as it is in comparison to the world-engendering life energies of creator beings, humans’ life energy nevertheless suffices to sustain creator beings. Each depends upon the other for its continuing existence. In short, reciprocity, mutualism, and symmetry do not demand quantitative equality.

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Since creator beings sustain the Fifth Age and all its inhabitants, and since humans sustain creator beings, the Mexica regarded the ongoing reproduction of the Fifth Age as a social process involving the contribution of both human and creator beings as well as their mutual cooperation and ‘co-activity’ (see Pitrou 2016, 2017). The Fifth Age is the joint product of their social and interactive relationship of mutual feeding and eating. By participating in the ongoing existence and reproduction of one another, humans and creators co-participate in the ongoing existence and reproduction of the Fifth Age. Humankind, therefore, has a unique task, a unique load (tlamamalli) to bear, and a unique responsibility among inhabitants of the Fifth Age, viz. to sustain creator beings and the entire world. Indeed, this is precisely why creator beings create humans in the first place. Yet as we will see, the unique responsibility of humans to sustain the world does not confer upon humans a privileged or superior moral status vis-à-vis other inhabitants of the world. Humans are not given dominion over the world nor does creation exist for their benefit. What’s more, by reciprocally feeding their life energies to one another and by reciprocally consuming one another’s life energies, humans and creator beings actively “participate in each another” (see Tambiah 1990, 108). Adopting for heuristic purposes the potentially misleading parlance of Western metaphysics and theology, humans become ‘divine’ and creator beings become ‘human’ (misleading because Mexica metaphysics does not see creator beings as divinities and does not see humans and creator beings as distinguished by a qualitative ontological gap); humans become ‘supernatural’ and gods ‘natural’ (misleading because Mexica metaphysics does not distinguish between the ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’). The conceptual repertoire of Mexica metaphysics does not include the concepts of nature, the supernatural, or the environment (as standardly employed by Western metaphysics and theology). Humans and creators consume and share one another’s vital energies. While they differ in terms of the quantity of energy they possess, they do not differ in terms of the quality of energy they possess. Both consist entirely of the single, dynamic, vivifying, eternally self-generating and self-regenerating, sacred power, energy, or life force that is teotl. Their reciprocal eating and feeding result in an ontologically mixed and ambiguous, human-divine tertium quid: a human being-creator being unified duality and dual unity. This result fully accords with the Mexica’s ontological claim that everything consists of teotl (see Maffie 2014, chs. 1 & 2). By dint of their reciprocal feeding and eating, humans and creators behave as mutually interdependent, mutually arising, alternatively dominating, complementary pairs – what Mexica referred to as inamic pairs or ‘matched partners’ (Maffie 2014, ch. 3). Humans and creators act as inamic partners alongside other more commonly recognized inamic partners such as life~death, light~darkness, male~female, hot~cold, order~disorder, and above~below. (I use the tilde, ‘~’ to designate this

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relationship.) Indeed, the ongoing becoming of the cosmos is characterized by the ceaseless, cyclical processing of inamic partners. What’s more, the ceaseless, cyclical processing of inamic partners creates a tertium quid: a unified duality and dual unity whose character derives from both partners in a non-mutually exclusive manner. For example, in sexual intercourse, male and female unite to form a single male~female duality and dual male~female unity that is neither male nor female, yet at the same time both male and female. I propose we add to the previous list of inamic pairs: feeding (feeder)~being fed, eating (eater)~being eaten, consuming~being consumed, nurturing~being nurtured, and giving care~receiving care. Humans and creator beings alternately actuate their inamic roles as feeder~being fed and nurturer~being nurtured in the same way that husband and wife and parent and child alternately actuate their roles as feeder~being fed and nurturer~nurtured. The human~creator being relationship of mutual feeding and eating is captured by the semantic cluster of nepan-stem-constructed words of which nepantla is the best known. The processes designated by nepanstem- constructed words include sexual intercourse, weaving, getting married, friendship, and reciprocal greeting, love, respect, and agreement. I call these nepantla-defined processes. Such processes are betwixt-andbetweening, back-and-forthing, and mutually reciprocating, middling, and intermixing. Furthermore, these processes create a tertium quid: e.g., the nepantla-defined confluence of rivers A and B creates river C, where C is neither A nor B yet at the same time both A and B. Reciprocal feeding~eating operates the same way as weaving (which middles, unifies, and transforms warp and weft into woven fabric) and as sexual commingling (which transforms male and female into male~female reproductive unity). Just as male and female cooperate and co-participate as inamic partners in the continuing reproduction of humankind, so likewise humans and creator beings cooperate and co-participate as inamic partners in the continuing reproduction of the Fifth Age (see Maffie 2014, chs. 3, 6, 8). The ongoing reproduction of the Fifth Age is not only consequent upon but also constituted by human~creator beings’ nepantla-defined reciprocal eating and feeding. As the constitutive product of their co-activity, the Fifth Age consists of an interwoven fabric of human and creator being energies. Or, adopting for heuristic purposes the misleading parlance of Western metaphysics and theology, the Fifth Age consists of a dual creator~human unity and unified creator~human duality that is neither human nor ‘divine’, yet at the same time both human and ‘divine’, and neither ‘natural’ nor ‘supernatural’ yet at the same time both ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’. This result, once again, is fully in keeping with Mexica metaphysics’ ontological claim that everything consists of teotl (see Maffie 2014 passim). In sum, reciprocity is central to Mexica philosophy’s understanding of the nature and continual becoming of the world

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as well as the essential participatory role of human beings in the continual becoming of the world. Reciprocity acts “like a pump at the heart of the life” of the Fifth Age (to borrow from Allen 2002, 73; see also Maffie 2014, 2019a, 2019b).

2. The Metaphysics of Normativity: The Fifth Age as Moral Community According to the Legend of the Suns, creator beings bring about the existence of the Fifth Age and Fifth Age human beings by means of a process referred to as macehua, meaning “to merit, deserve, attain, be worthy of, or acquire that which is deserved”, and by tlamacehua, “to deserve or merit something” (Bierhorst 1992, 146; see also León-Portilla 1993; Karttunen 1992; Köhler 2001; Molina 2001 [1571]; Lockhart 2001, 223). Kelly McDonough glosses macehua as “obtaining that which is desired through merit, of giving as part of the action of receiving” (McDonough 2017, 18). Let’s examine these two notions, as they are central to Mexica metaphysics and the normativity of the Fifth Age. Macehua designates an activity undertaken by an agent who aims to bring about a desired outcome (event, process, activity, or arrangement). The Mexica conceived an agent (chihuani)7 as an animate, vivified, and empowered being, one who is sensitive to the surrounding world and who also acts upon and responds to the surrounding world. Linda Brown and William H. Walker (2008, 298) write, “this agency is autonomous, purposeful, and deliberate, and arises from sentient qualities possessed by [animate beings], such as consciousness or a life-force” (see also Good Eshelman 2004, 2007, 2011; Maffie 2014). Agents differ from one another in terms of their degree of power, their ability to act upon and respond to the world, their histories, the scope and intensity of their social relationships (or active interrelatedness) with other agents, and their ‘personalities’ (i.e., their degree of consciousness, purposes, intentions, likes and dislikes, etc.). Agents possess the ability to act and respond socially to those around them. They have the capability of entering into reciprocal relations with other agents and may be more or less social in this respect. Agents may be human, but most are other-than-human: e.g., creator beings, earth, sun, rain, rivers, lakes, mountains, gemstones, animals, plants, gemstones, feathers, agricultural fields, and incense along with spoken words, dancing, singing, music, buildings, statues, and cooking, fishing, hunting, and farming tools. Deceased human ancestors are also agents. All agents are ontologically on a par with one another, seeing as one and all are transitory, concentrated stability patterns in the energyin-motion of teotl. One of the principal ways by which agents make their way in and interact with this social world is by offering gifts to, accepting gifts from, and responding to gifts from other agents. Macehua is a purposeful activity initiated by an end-seeking agent, an activity involving of effort, work, labor, suffering, or hardship (tequitl)

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that, in turn, consists of expending vital life energy (chicahualiztli).8 Macehua consists of undertaking hardship (tequitl) in order to induce another agent into cooperating or co-participating with oneself in bringing about some desired end, and it involves transmitting an effortful expenditure of life energy (be it tonalli or chicahualiztli) as an offering (tlamanaliztli) or gift to another agent. By virtue of this expenditure of vital energy, one attains merit, becomes worthy, and comes to merit or deserve the outcome one seeks from the other agent. Although macehua involves an exchange, it should not be understood as a market-style exchange of commodities (as commonly occurs) (see Köhler 2001; Lupo 1995; Sandstrom and Sandstrom 2017 for discussion). What’s more, macehua must not also be confused with making amends, making atonement, or doing penance (as commonly occurs). Atonement, making amends, and doing penance are backward looking. They are related to past misdeeds or wrongdoings. Macehua, by contrast, is not conceptually related to wrongdoing (past or otherwise). Because it operates as a component in a process of cyclical reciprocity, macehua is simultaneously backward and forward looking. It is backward looking because it aims at giving thanks, gifting back, fulfilling the obligation to gift back, and restoring balance. It is forward looking since by gifting back one obligates the recipient to a future iteration of the gifting cycle and thus to give back to oneself (for discussion of making amends, see Radzik 2009). Macehua is ex hypothesi an inter-agent process that takes place between two (or more) agents, one that engenders a social relationship between agents. One seeks to engender this social relationship by extending an offering (tlamanaliztli) or gift to the intended agent. This metaphysically conveys life energy from donor to recipient. (It is this process that Western scholars, students, and History Channel viewers typically misconstrue as ‘sacrifice’. The concept of sacrifice per se plays no role in Mexica metaphysics or ethics.) The fact that humans and a variety of other-thanhumans such as tools, weapons, labrets, houses, and cooking pots participate in macehua-defined interrelationships further supports the idea that tools, houses, and so forth are agents; as does also the fact that obligating others and being obligated to others are central to macehua, and these relationships apply to agents (and not lifeless things). Macehua is a social process by which one agent tries to bring about movement, conduct, or change in another agent – by which one agent tries to get another agent to do something, to become something, or to metamorphosize in some way. Creator beings and humans, for example, endeavor to bring about desired outcomes from one another by means of deserving or meriting the outcomes. Macehua also aims at coaxing another agent into cooperating with oneself in achieving some end and thus into becoming a social agent (see Magazine 2012; Maffie 2019a, 2019b; Lupo 1995; Sandstrom 1991, 2003, 2008a, 2008b; Sandstrom and Sandstrom 2017, unpublished manuscript, and Pitrou 2016, 2017). Macehua thus requires what we might call social ‘know-how’. That is, it requires knowing how

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to get along with other agents in a social world – i.e., one populated by a variety of different agents, both human and other-than-human, who are embedded in different social relationships and who possess different personalities and varying degrees of power) so as to induce them into cooperating with oneself. For example, Mexica farmers sought to merit and induce an agentive ensemble consisting of digging sticks, maize kernels, and agricultural fields along with earth, rain, wind, and sun into cooperating with them in producing an abundant maize harvest, and they did so by means of tonalli- and chicahualiztli-rich gifts including ‘prayer’, dance, music, song, incense, foodstuffs (e.g., tamales), pilgrimage, sexual abstinence, and human blood and hearts. In addition to the effort and expenditure of energy, social ‘know how’ also requires adopting an appropriate attitude of humility, honor, love, or respect toward the intended agent (see Heyden 1989, 1994; Good Eshelman 1996, 2004, 153–76, 2005, 2011; Sandstrom 1991, 2003, 2008a, 2008b; Sandstrom and Sandstrom 2017; Taggart 2000, 2007, 2017, 2018). Social ‘know how’ does not involve manipulation or coercion. In short, being practically effective in realizing one’s ends requires that one be socially effective. The concept of macehua is a normative concept associated with similar normative concepts such as desert, earn, deserve, merit, reward, and due. Macehua refers to a normative process – not a descriptive, causal process in the sense of ancient Greek philosophy’s efficient causality or Newtonian-style, mechanical push-and-pull, cause-and-effect. I understand normativity as that which concerns how one ought to act, how one is obliged to behave or conduct oneself, what is appropriate or fitting for one to do, and so on. Normative facts, statements, and relationships possess an oughtiness that descriptive ones lack. For the Mexica, facts about agents’ interrelationships are simultaneously descriptive and normative (or prescriptive). For example, that Elaine is my mother not only tells me of my descriptive genealogical relationship to her; it also tells me of my normative macehua-generated relationship to her (viz. that she merited my birth through labor) and that I am obligated to behave toward her in certain ways. This genealogical fact prescribes how I ought to act.9 Macehua is a process by which one agent tries to induce another agent(s) into entering into a normative relationship, one that binds, obligates, or indebts the intended agent(s) into responding by doing something. The concepts of being bound, obligated, and indebted to another agent are normative. As Alan Sandstrom and Pamela Sandstrom explain, one does not petition another agent to do something; rather, one extends a gift or offering (tlamanaliztli) that obligates the other to return the gift in the form one seeks (Sandstrom and Sandstrom 2017, 110–12; see also Sandstrom 2008a, 2008b; Köhler 2001; Lupo 1995, 99). The transaction “creates a bond between the two that sets up a flow of power between donor and recipient”, writes Frank Lipp (Lipp 1991, 83; see also Good 1993; Good Eshelman 1996, 2004; Sandstrom 1991, 2003, 2008a, 2008b;

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Sandstrom and Sandstrom 2017, unpublished manuscript). In this manner agents seek to “bind” the future actions of other agents within a normatively ordered fabric, according to William Hanks (Hanks 1990, 364). Through acts of meriting-cum-obligating that transmit energy and bind other agents, one attempts to arrange the future behavior of other agents in some desired way. It appears to be a brute metaphysical fact about Mexica cosmos that a donor’s appropriate gifting and consequent meriting together with the recipient’s subsequent accepting of the donor’s gift and becoming obligated to gift back generates a tertium quid, viz., a normative relationship that binds donor and recipient – a normative relationship of mutual and cyclical obligation and attendant ‘ought’s’. By accepting the donor’s gift, the recipient binds herself normatively to the donor and becomes obligated to gift back. At the same time, the donor’s original gifting commits her to a normative relationship of mutual gifting with the recipient, since the recipient’s obligatory reciprocal gift, in turn, obligates the donor to gift back to the recipient, and so on, through countless cyclical iterations of reciprocal gift exchanging. (This cycle continues after death, as the living continue to interrelate with the deceased who, despite having died, remain agents.) Humans settling their obligation vis-a-vis the creator beings and the creator beings accepting this repayment thus obligates creator beings, in turn, to gift back to humans and so on. The alternating cycle of human~creator being mutual feeding and eating is therefore not merely a descriptive phenomenon. It is also a normative phenomenon since it entails the normative obligation to reciprocate. When conceived in terms of macehua (i.e., merit achieved via appropriate and respectful gifting and regifting), the dialectic of mutual feeding and eating has both descriptive and normative dimensions. In this manner, the alternating cycle of humans and creators feeding and eating weaves together humans and creators into cyclical normative interrelationships, and in doing so, both weaves the cosmos into a well-ordered fabric and fuels the ongoing becoming of the Fifth Age. It is in this way that life energy keeps circulating throughout the Fifth Age and keeps fueling its continual processing. In addition to fulfilling their obligation to creator beings for their existence (both ontogenetically and phylogenetically), humans also engage in macehua-defined activities in hopes of inducing and obligating creator beings into acting in various other ways, e.g., putting an end to drought by bringing rain for their crops. More broadly, in this manner humans attempt to weave the behavior of creator beings, other human beings, and other-than-human beings into a well-ordered, normative, cosmic, social fabric. The activity of macehua consists of giving in order to receive something in return by way of reciprocal gifting. One gifts something of value in order to receive something of value. By virtue of her gifting, the donor

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merits or deserves what she seeks from the recipient. This activity is commonly characterized as “giving to receive”, “giving so that you will give”, or “giving to have” (Deloria 1998, 68). The normative principle ordering the relationship between giver and recipient may be expressed as: “To give a gift is to obligate the receiver”,10 “A gift implies an obligation to return”, and “To accept a gift is to assume an obligation to reciprocate”. By receiving the initial gift, the recipient obligates herself to reciprocate by providing the donor with what she seeks. In receiving a gift, one obligates oneself to the donor. The Legend of the Suns tells us that Quetzalcoatl and other creator beings merited Fifth Age human beings into existence by means of macehuaactivities that involved expending their life energies (Bierhorst 1992, 145–6). But if so, doesn’t this contradict the foregoing analysis of macehua according to which macehua is an inter-agent or social process that takes place between two (or more) agents? After all, Fifth Age humans did not exist prior to being merited into existence by creator beings and therefore could not have acted as recipient agents in the social relationship of gifter~recipient. So we seem to have a problem. Is the initial creation of humankind a counterexample to the foregoing analysis, an acceptable exception to the foregoing (since perhaps it concerns the unique process of bringing into existence Fifth Age humankind)? Or do we not yet properly understand the bringing into existence of humankind? I suggest the latter. Quetzalcoatl adds his energy-rich blood upon the ground bones of Fourth Age humans. The stealing of bones, grinding of bones, and giving blood to mix with bone meal count as tequitl. But who is the recipient of the energy conveyed via this macehua-defined transaction? Who is the intended subject of this meriting? I submit the bones of Fourth Age humans. Like other Mesoamericans past and present, the Mexica regarded the bones of the dead not only as alive but as active and agentive – i.e., as agents. Jill McKeever Furst writes, “Skeletal remains were – and in fact continue to be – regarded as the seat of the essential life force and the metaphorical seed from which the individual, whether human or animal or plant, is reborn” (McKeever Furst 1978, 318; see also McKeever Furst 1982). I thus suggest that it is the bones of Fourth Age humans who as agents receive the creator beings’ life energy gifts, obligating them to metamorphosize into Fifth Age human beings, and that Fifth Age humans are as a consequence born obligated to reciprocate with their own life energy. This interpretation has the additional virtue of upholding the key Mexica metaphysical thesis that there are not absolute creations (beginnings) or absolute destructions (endings), i.e., no creations from nothing or destructions into nothing. There are only transformations.11 In the socially woven world of the Fifth Age, successfully attaining one’s ends and accomplishing one’s goals requires that one enter into macehua-defined, normative relationships with other agents that induce their cooperation and co-participation. In order to get things done in the

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Fifth Age, humans must engage in such relationships not only with creator beings but also with other humans, deceased ancestors, mountains, rivers, agricultural fields, plants, seeds, houses, cooking pots, fishing nets, and digging sticks. Humans must know how to get along with all other actors in order to farm, hunt, fish, spin, weave, cook, rear children, make war, and construct houses, temples, and cities successfully. If one fails to respect one’s obligations to others – which Mexica philosophy readily acknowledges as being far too easy for humans to do, likening it to “slipping in mud”12 – then one’s efforts will certainly fail. One’s crops fail, one’s house collapses, one’s food spoils, one’s tools break, one’s water dries up, one’s health declines, and one’s children die. Indeed, there is no clear separation between economic, material, utilitarian, religious, and moral dimensions of life, seeing as Mexica philosophy weaves all together into single, holistic fabric. Prudence and morality overlap – if not collapse into one another. It is always prudent to meet one’s macehua-generated obligations to others. (I argue that these obligations are moral obligations.) In sum, initiating and maintaining well-balanced social relationships is essential to getting things done in the Fifth Age. It is also essential to the continuing existence of the Fifth Age. By such means humans also seek to weave the actions of creator beings, human beings, and other-thanhuman beings into a well-ordered, Fifth Age, normative social fabric. Having said this, however, we need to avoid the error of emphasizing the normative and social to the exclusion of the descriptive, causal, and non-social (as Stanley Tambiah [1990, 108] rightly warns). After all, the latter also plays an indispensable role in getting things done in the Fifth Age. For example, successful farming requires that a farmer intelligently and vigorously apply his own life energy when sowing, irrigating, weeding, and harvesting. If he lacks the willingness to work hard or lacks the practical skill needed for successful sowing, weeding, and harvesting, then he will certainly fail – all the gifting in the world notwithstanding. No amount of gifting will induce maize seeds to sow, weed, irrigate, and harvest themselves. The normative-social, on the one hand, and the descriptive-causal-non-social, on the other, are therefore both individually necessary for successfully attaining one’s ends in the Fifth Age. Macehua-defined processes consist of actions that engender relationships defined by nepantla-defined cycles of reciprocal offering or gifting that are both social and normative. Reciprocal feeding-and-eating, for example, weaves together participants into a social fabric and in so doing socializes them. It transforms eater and eaten, feeder and fed into socialized agents who become creative participants in a tertium quid: an inter-agent or social relationship characterized by dual unity and unified duality (see previous section). At the same time, reciprocal feedingand-eating also weaves together participants into a normative fabric and in so doing norms them (in the sense of binding them together in a normative relationship). It transforms eater and eaten, or feeder and

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fed into normed agents who become creative participants in a tertium quid: a normative relationship characterized by dual unity and unified duality. More generally, macehua-defined processes transform participating agents into normed beings who are bound together by normative interrelationships of meriting~being merited, gifting~receiving, and obligation-creating~obligation-incurring. In sum, macehua-defined processes engender a quintessentially social and normative relationship of mutual obligatedness – one which is not reducible to either individual agent in isolation. Reciprocal gifting~receiving, meriting~being merited, and obligationcreating~obligation-incurring function as normative inamic pairs alongside descriptive inamic pairs such as life~death, male~female, hot~cold, and order~disorder. Reciprocal gifting~receiving and so forth are instances of agonistic inamic unity, i.e., the alternating struggle between paired, interdependent, complementary opposites that results in the creation of a tertium quid: a unified duality and dual unity. The Fifth Age is therefore characterized by the ceaseless, cyclical processing of descriptive inamic partners such as male~female and hot~cold as well as normative inamic partners such as gifting~being gifted and meriting~being merited. Humans and creator beings act as agonistic inamic partners when enacting and participating in reciprocal processes such as meriting~being merited. Indeed, the continuing reproduction of the Fifth Age is consequent upon humans’, creator beings’, and other-than-human agents’ co-active participation in these nepantla-defined processes. Participating in these processes helps maintain the balance of oneself and of others within the Fifth Age while also helping to maintain the balance of the Fifth Age itself. The Legend of the Suns tells us that humankind is born obligated or indebted to creator beings because creator beings merited its existence. As we saw, creator beings expend effort (tequitl) comprised of their own life energy in meriting humankind. By dint of this, humankind is born obligated to reciprocate. Indeed, this condition both defines what it is to be human as well as what distinguishes humans from animals, plants, insects, etc. In short, it expresses the raison d’etre of humankind (Bierhorst 1992, 146). Animals, plants, birds, and insects, by contrast, apparently fulfill their obligation ‘naturally’ as it were in the course of their normal daily activities and biological life~death cycles. What’s more, their repayment apparently does not suffice to nourish and replenish creator beings for their efforts in creating the Fifth Age. In addition, extrapolating from the Popol Vuh, plants, animals, and so forth are unable to worship and thus nourish creator beings properly because they lack the ability to speak properly. Speaking Nahuatl (literally “audible, intelligible, clear, agreeable sound” [Karttunen 1992, 156–7]) enables humans to nourish creator beings with properly spoken words. As we’ve seen, Fifth Age humans are created expressly for this purpose. They are ex hypothesi obligated to provide for and hence participate in the continuing existence

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of the creator beings and hence the continuing existence of the Fifth Age. It is this load (tlamamalli) that they alone carry. Humans are accordingly aptly characterized as “those made worthy [of existence] by divine sacrifice” (León-Portilla 1993; see also Köhler 2001), “those deserved through sacrifice” (Matos Moctezuma 1995, 42), and “the merited ones” (León-Portilla 2001 [1956], 384).13 Finally, satisfying the demands of this collective burden requires both individual and collective action on the part of humans. In sum, humans are born into and defined by a preexisting web of normative relationships with creator beings that entails their normative obligations to those creator beings. Humans are also born into a preexisting web of descriptive relationships with creator beings since they depend upon their life energies for their continuing sustenance and survival. The Fifth Age consists of a vast, all-encompassing social fabric of descriptive and normative interrelationships and interdependencies. Creator beings, humans, and other-than-human beings conduct their lives within this normative-cum-descriptive ontological fabric. The Legend of the Suns and other ‘wisdom tellings’ function both descriptively and prescriptively for the Mexica. They tell the Mexica: (1) how they came to exist: by being merited by creator beings; (2) how they continue to exist: by meriting the life energies of the creator beings through fulfilling their obligations to reciprocate with the creator beings; (3) how the Fifth Age continues to exist: by creator beings and humans coparticipating in a normative relationship of mutual gifting; (4) that moral obligations such as to respect, care for, nourish, gift-back, and reciprocate with others emerge from relationships such as being mothered, fathered, and provided for by others; (5) who they are: they are those deserved into existence by creators in order to nourish creator beings and consequently those born obligated to creator beings; (6) how they ought to behave toward creator beings: they ought to meet their obligation by reciprocating, honoring, respecting, caring for, and worshipping them, i.e., by recycling life energies; (7) how they ought to go about getting things done in the social world of the Fifth Age: they ought to merit what they seek by inducing the cooperation of other agents by undergoing effort, hardship, and struggle that convey vital energy to other agents. The creators’ originary acts of macehua serve as prescriptive models for human behavior, examples to be emulated by humans in bringing about what they seek in everyday life. Here we see, once more, the overlapping (if not blurring together) of morality and prudence. And finally, they tell the Mexica (8) how one ought to act in order to become a well-ordered, well-centered, well-balanced, and morally upright, genuine human being (neltlacatl, nelli tlacatl) – as opposed to a deranged, disordered, uncentered, wild, and unbalanced anti-social “not-human, inhuman, morally bad human” (atlacatl) (Molina 2001, 8r), “bestial human” (atlacaneci) (Molina 2001, 8r), “lump of flesh, lump of flesh with two eyes” (tlacamimil, tlacamimilli

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[Sahagún 1953–1982, Bk X, 11) or “a great piece of meat with two eyes” (Sahagún 1953–1982, Bk IV, 95, note no. 4). Humanness, moral goodness, and participation in reciprocal relationships are isomorphically interrelated for the Mexica. The more one participates in reciprocal relations with others, the more human and more morally upright one becomes. The newborn child is only potentially human or “humanoid”.14 She is not yet truly or completely human. In order to become truly human, she must not only be passively woven into the social fabric of the community by her family by means of such activities as feeding, caregiving, and education, but she must also actively weave herself into the social fabric of the community by participating in reciprocal relationships with others (e.g., beginning at an early age by carrying out age-appropriate chores such as carrying water, cleaning house, and washing clothes; see Sahagún 1953–1982, Bk VI, chs. 30, 37–40; Berdan and Anawalt 1997, folios 56v–63r, Eberl 2013; Joyce 2000; Good Eshelman 2011; Maffie 2019a, 2019b; Pitrou 2016, 2017). Participating in nepantla-defined social relations with others contributes to the child’s transformation from potential to genuine human. In so doing, she also becomes morally upright. By failing to do so she fails to develop into a true human. Similarly, in order to continue being genuinely human one must continually renew existing and initiate new reciprocal relationships – on pain of slipping into inhumanness. Socially isolated and antisocial individuals are (in varying degrees) poorly woven into the social-cultural-normative fabric and consequently (in varying degrees) neither truly human nor morally good. Humanness occurs only within the dynamic fabric of socially and culturally defined practices of reciprocity. As such, humanness is therefore neither fixed nor given; like existence itself, humanness is dynamic and relational. In brief, the genuine human is the socially acculturated human is the moral human is the reciprocating human. One is defined by one’s activities and one’s social relationships. The creators’ originary, Fifth Age macehua-defined activity serves as the objective, non-anthropocentric source of ethics, ethical obligation, and ethically appropriate behavior in the Fifth Age. Through their macehuadefined activities they weave morality into the very fabric of the Fifth Age and weave human beings into that moral fabric. Morality is not imposed upon humans by means of top-down edicts or commandments, nor is it the product of a covenant with creator beings (contra Monaghan 2000, 38). The scope of Mexica ethics includes all living things and as such is non-anthropocentric. It focuses on maintaining well-ordered and wellbalanced transmission of energy throughout the Fifth Age world community and on maintaining a fabric of well-balanced, reciprocal social relationships in the Fifth Age. Since all human activities sooner or later affect other agents and world balance, all fall under the scope of ethics (from how one walks, talks, eats, dresses, sings, dances, and plays music

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to how one cooks, farms, weaves, constructs buildings, parents, governs, and makes war). While human well-being is a consequence of humans maintaining well-balanced reciprocal relationships with other members of the Fifth Age moral community, neither human well-being generally nor individual human well-being specifically are the primary aims of Mexica ethics. What conclusions may we draw from the foregoing regarding the Mexica’s understanding of the nature of normativity in the Fifth Age? Normativity is a brute fact about how the Fifth Age works. The creators’ originary macehua-defined activity serves as the objective, non-anthropocentric source of normativity in the Fifth Age. Their originary macehua-defined activity and the relationship it engenders introduce normativity into the Fifth Age. As a species, human beings are therefore born into and defined in terms of a world that is already normatively ordered. As we’ve seen, normative processes contribute vitally to the continuing regeneration and becoming of the Fifth Age. Normativity is neither reducible to nor eliminable in favor of some set of descriptive facts, properties, relationships, or activities. Normative processes, facts, and relationships exist alongside descriptive ones in the Fifth Age – the two do not occupy distinct nonnatural and natural ontological spheres (respectively). On this view, normativity is essentially relational and inter-agentive, like parenthood, sisterhood, and friendship. It is not a property of isolated agents, actions, states of affairs, events, or ends. Normativity is also non-anthropocentric in the sense that it is conceptually independent of human choices, decisions, interests, conventions, and indeed, even human existence. While human actions may engender and sustain normative relationships, humans are not the sole source of normativity in the world. As we’ve seen, the actions of other-than-humans also engender normativity. As individuals (ontogenetically), human beings are born into and defined in terms of a world that is always already interwoven with normative actions and relationships. Fulfilling their normative obligations to others enables humans to maintain well-balanced life-world Normativity is consequent upon what agents do, i.e., upon the normative activity of macehua (‘deserving and indebting’). Creator beings weave normativity into the ontological fabric of Fifth Age in the very process of fashioning the Fifth Age – not via commandments, covenants, or edicts. Normativity emerges in the creating-meriting of humans. It is bottom-up and immanent – not top-down or transcendent. Human and other-than-humans contribute to weaving the fabric of the Fifth Age by initiating, responding to, and maintaining well-balanced normative relationships. As a consequence, both the weaving of the Fifth Age and the Fifth Age itself qua woven product are normatively ordered and arranged. Creator beings and humans (along with all other Fifth Age other-than-human agents) function as members of a single cosmic fabric of normative interrelationships.

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Notes 1. This chapter has benefited from conversations with Alan Sandstrom, Pamela Sandstrom, James Taggart, R. Joe Campbell, Cecelia Klein, Markus Eberl, Laura Speckler Sullivan, John Milhauser, Richard Conway, Julio Covarrubias, and audience members at the Lost Voices at the Foundations of Ethics conference, University of Washington, 2018. Special thanks go to Colin Marshall for his very helpful comments on an early version of this chapter. 2. See Bierhorst (1992), Garibay (ed.) (1965a, 1965b). 3. Seeing as Mexica and Quiché Maya philosophies – like those of other Mesoamerican cultures such as Classic Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec, and Toltec – spring from the common well of Mesoamerican philosophy, we may reasonably expect them to voice similar themes – what López Austin (1997, 5) calls the “hard nucleus” of Mesoamerican myths, beliefs, practices, and values. Despite 500 years of settler colonialism, contemporary indigenous peoples in Mexico continue to draw from this same well in constructing their philosophies. For further defense of this view, see Sandstrom (2017), Good Eshelman (2005, 2011). 4. James Taggart shows how contemporary Nahuat-speakers understand care, respect, and love in terms of feeding and nurturing (Taggart 2000, 2007, 2017, 2018; see also Good Eshelman 2011). 5. Read (1988, 268) refers to this as the “phagocentric character” of Mexica cosmology. Hunt (1977, 89) characterizes the Fifth Age as a “phagohierarchy”. Unlike Hunt, I do not see this arrangement as hierarchical or asymmetrical since humans and creators depend equally upon consuming one another. 6. See Good Eshelman (2011, 198). 7. Chihuani is an agentive noun that derives from chihua (“to make something, do something, engender, perform”) (Karttunen 1992, 51). 8. Tequitl involves expending life energies (such as chicahualiztli and tonalli) and includes work, playing music, singing, dancing, ‘praying’, preparing foodstuffs, making pilgrimages, conducting ceremonies, fasting, curing, childrearing, giving advice, and crying (Good Eshelman 2007, 2011; see also Good 1993; Good Eshelman 1996, 2004, 2005; Sandstrom 1991, 2003, 2008a, 2008b; Maffie 2019a, 2019b). 9. As Winona LaDuke (White Earth Ojibwe) remarks, “Genealogical bonds are normative bonds, generating moral responsibilities to the natural world and the living beings it sustains; they give rise to ‘reciprocal relations’” that define “responsibilities . . . between humans and the ecosystem” (quoted in Whitt et al. 2001, 10). LaDuke’s remark sheds light on the kind of view I attribute to the Mexica. I do not mean to suggest that all Native peoples hold identical views. 10. Sandstrom (2003, 61). Sandstrom adds that contemporary Nahuatl-speakers regard “spirit beings as social beings who respond to the normal exchanges that lie at the heart of all human interaction”. See also Sandstrom (1991, 2008a, 2008b), Sandstrom and Sandstrom (2017, unpublished manuscript), Watanabe (2007). 11. See Maffie (2014). One may similarly address the ontogenetic problem that humans are born obligated to creator beings, parents, and ancestors. The Mexica understanding of gifting and obligation differs from that commonly embraced by modern Western liberalism since the latter requires that one actively consent to receiving a gift before incurring an obligation to reciprocate. For defense of the latter, see English (1991). 12. Sahagún (1953–1982, Bk VI, 228); see Taggart (2007) for a contemporary discussion.

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13. Contra León-Portilla (1963, 111, 1993, 43), the word commonly applied to humans, macehualtin (‘commoner’), does not mean “those deserved into existence by the gods” (see Karttunen 1992, 127, 130, and Lockhart 2001, 223). 14. Talk of potentiality is mine. I borrow “humanoid” from Cordova (2007, 147).

References Allen, Catherine J. 2002. The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural identity in an Andean Community, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books. Berdan, Frances F., and Patricia R. Anawalt. 1997. The Essential Codex Mendoza. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bierhorst, John. 1992. “Legend of the Suns.” In History and Mythology of the Aztecs: The Codex Chimalpopoca, translated by John Bierhorst, 139–62. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Brown, Linda, and William H. Walker. 2008. “Prologue: Archaeology, Animism, and Non-Human Agents.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 15(4): 297–9. Carrasco, Davíd. 1999. City of Sacrifice. Boston: Beacon Press. Cordova, Viola F. 2007. “What Is It to Be Human in a Native American Worldview?” In How It Is: The Philosophy of V.F. Cordova, edited by Kathleen Dean Moore, Kurt Peters, Ted Jojola, and Amber Lacy (foreword by Linda Hogan). Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Deloria, Ella. 1998. Speaking of Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Eberl, Markus. 2013. “Nourishing Gods: Birth and Personhood in Highland Mexican Codices.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 23(3): 453–76. English, Jane. 1991. “What Do Grown Children Owe their Parents?” In Aging and Ethics, edited by Nancy Silbergeld Jeckler, 147–54. Clifton: Humana Press. Garibay K., Angel María, ed. 1965a. “Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas. 1965.” In Teogonía e historia de los mexicanos: Tres opúsculos del siglo XVI, 1st ed., 23–79. México, DF: Editorial Porrúa. Garibay K., Angel María, ed. 1965b. “Histoyre du Méchique.” In Teogonía e historia de los Mexicanos: Tres Opúsculos del siglo XVI, 1st ed., 91–116. México, DF: Editorial Porrúa. Good, Catherine. 1993. Work and Exchange in Nahuatl Society: Local Values and The Dynamics of an Indigenous Economy. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Good Eshelman, Catherine. 1996. “El trabajo de los muertos en la Sierra de Guerrero.” Estudios de cultura náhuatl 26: 275–87. Good Eshelman, Catherine. 2004. “Trabajando juntos: los vivos, los muertos, la tierra y el maíz.” In Historia y vida ceremonial en las comunidades mesoamericanas: los ritos agrícolas, edited by Johanna Broda and Catharine Good Eshelman, 153–76. INAH: México. Good Eshelman, Catherine. 2005. “Ejes conceptuales entre los Nahuas de Guerrero: expresión de un modelo fenomenológico mesoamerican.” Estudios de cultura náhuatl 36: 87–113. Good Eshelman, Catherine. 2007. “El concepto de fuerza y la constitución de la persona entre Nahuas de Guerrero.” Paper presented at La noción de vida en Mesoamerica. Ethnoclasificación y teorías de la persona Colloquium. UNAM. Good Eshelman, Catherine. 2011. “Una teoría Náhuatl del trabajo y la fuerza: sus implaciones para el concepto de la persona y la noción de la vida.” In La

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Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo. 1995. Life and Death in the Templo Mayor. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. McDonough, Kelly S. 2017. “Plotting Indigenous Stories, Land and People: Primordial Titles and Narrative Mapping in Colonial Mexico.” Journal of Early Modern Cultura Studies 17: 1–30. McKeever Furst, Jill Leslie. 1978. Codex Vindobonesis Mexicanus: A Commentary. Albany: SUNY and Institute for Mesoamerican Studies. McKeever Furst, Jill Leslie. 1982. “Skeletonization in Mixtec Art: A Revaluation.” In The Art and Iconography of Late Post-Classic Central Mexico, edited by Elizabeth P. Benson and Elizabeth H. Boone, 2007–95. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks. Molina, Alonso de. 2001 [1571]. Vocabulario en Lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 4th ed. México DF: Porrúa. Monaghan, John. 2000. “Theology and History in the Study of Mesoamerican Religions.” In Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 6., edited by John D. Monaghan, 24–49. Austin: University of Texas Press. Pitrou, Perig. 2016. “Co-activity in Mesoamerican and in the Andes.” Journal of Anthropological Research 21(1, Winter): 465–82. Pitrou, Perig. 2017. “Life Form and Form of Life within an Agentive Configuration.” Current Anthropology 58(1, June): 360–72. Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya. 2003. Translated by Allen J. Christenson. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Radzik, Linda. 2009. Making Amends: Atonement in Morality, Law, and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read, Kay Almere. 1988. Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sahagún, Bernardino de. 1953–1982. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, 12 vols., edited and translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles Dibble. Santa Fe: School of American Research and University of Utah. Sandstrom, Alan R. 1991. Corn Is Our Blood. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Sandstrom, Alan R. 2003. “Sacred Mountains and Miniature Worlds: Altar Design Among the Nahua of Northern Veracruz, Mexico.” In Mesas and Cosmologies in Mesoamerica, edited by Douglas Sharon, 51–70. San Diego: San Diego Museum of Man Papers 42. Sandstrom, Alan R. 2005. “The Cave-Pyramid Complex among the Contemporary Nahua of Northern Veracruz.” In In the Maw of the Earth Monster, edited by James E. Brady and Keith M. Prufer, 35–68. Austin: University of Texas Press. Sandstrom, Alan R. 2008a. “Ritual Economy among the Nahua of Northern Veracruz, Mexico.” In Dimensions of Ritual Economy, edited by E. Christian Wells and Patricia Ann McAnany, 93–119. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing, Ltd. Sandstrom, Alan R. 2008b. “Blood Sacrifice, Curing, and Ethnic Identity among Contemporary Nahua of Northern Veracruz, Mexico.” In Ethnic Identity in Nahua Mesoamerica: the View from Archaeology, Art History, Ethnohistory, and Contemporary Ethnography, edited by Francis Berdan, John K. Chance, Alan R. Sandstrom, Barbara L. Stark, James M. Taggart, and Emily Umberger, 150–82. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

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Etemeyaske Vpokat (Living Together Peacefully) How the Muscogee Concept of Harmony Can Provide a Structure to Morality Joseph Len Miller1 And now we had no place to live, since we didn’t know How to live with each other. Joy Harjo, “Once the World Was Perfect”, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

For the Muscogee (Creek) peoples,2 their relationships to their surroundings is essential to moral knowledge, including determining the moral status of actions. Maintaining and sustaining these relationships requires having knowledge of how the land operates and how people effect and are affected by the land (i.e., how people are a part of the rest of the natural world), cultural norms, and individuals’ place in culture. Knowledge and understanding of those things with whom we share a relationship is morally relevant because it provides a way of promoting harmony. Promoting harmony, then, is a normative principle that serves as the foundation for moral knowledge and the guide to morally worthwhile action. Moral knowledge is knowledge about promoting harmony, and morally worthwhile actions are those actions that promote harmony. For example, given the importance indigenous peoples place on living in, and as a part of, the natural world, knowledge of the land is essential for living in and promoting harmony. Knowledge of traditions and cultural practices also become morally relevant because people live within, and are a part of, groups of other people.3 Thus, promoting harmony requires knowledge of both the land and their culture. And, given that people live with, and as a part of, the land and a culture, living a good life requires promoting harmony within these necessary components of life.4 There are, thus, at least three identifying features of this indigenous account of ethics (i.e., indigenous metaethics) that I will be focusing on: (1) the foundational role of the concept of harmony; (2) the view that existing necessarily means having and interacting with one’s surroundings; and (3) the role that non-normative knowledge plays in determining the moral status of an action.

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Drawing primarily from the cultural traditions and beliefs of the Muscogee peoples, I will provide an account of how harmony can play a foundational role in providing a structure to morality.5 In the process of providing this account, I will begin (Section 1) by defining two key Muscogee concepts: ‘energy’ (Section 1.1) and ‘harmony’ (Section 1.2). I will also explain how the relationship between these two concepts can provide a structure for morality. Then I will explain the conditions that make promoting harmony a normative principle (Section 2) by explaining why promoting harmony is relevant to humans (Section 2.1) as well as a providing a prudential reason to promote harmony (Section 2.2). Finally, I will explain how harmony can be achieved (Section 3) by explaining two examples that highlight the importance of non-moral knowledge in promoting harmony. I will then conclude with some remarks about how the Muscogee concept of harmony relates to some contemporary metaethical concerns (Section 4).

1. Energy and Exchange: The Foundational Role of Harmony Before providing an account of how harmony can play a foundational role in understanding morality, some definitions and concepts need to be explained. Before turning to these explanations, there are a few things that need to be clarified. First, there is no Mvskoke word that directly translates to the English word ‘harmony’. The relevant concept of harmony can be understood as ‘living together peacefully’ and is expressed in Mvskoke by the phrase ‘etemeyaske vpokat’.6 Second, I will only be drawing on Muscogee resources.7 While there may be a lot of similarities between different indigenous or Native American groups regarding their understanding of ethics, I’m hesitant to label this as a broadly ‘indigenous’ or ‘American Indian/Native American’ approach because I worry it would be a form of ignoring the perhaps subtle, but important, differences between various indigenous groups. Although the Muscogee understanding of ethics may resemble other indigenous or Native American understanding of ethics, I want to maintain its independence from other indigenous approaches.8 Relatedly, there are accounts of Muscogee living from the perspectives of white people and colonizers, but for this paper I won’t be using these accounts. Although they may be interesting or even accurate, they are still outsider accounts, and I’m trying to lessen the possibility of my explanations of Muscogee concepts being altered by the influence of other cultures. Finally, understanding harmony requires an understanding of some basic elements of Muscogee cosmology and religion. Though I can’t provide a comprehensive explanation of these topics, my hope is to provide enough of an explanation to understand the concept of harmony.

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1.1. Some Key Descriptive Elements of the Muscogee Belief System For the Muscogee, everything is linked by a single unifying source: energy.9 Energy flows through all things. This concept of energy may be further explained by, or reduced to, some more basic or simple property, but doing so seems unnecessary to provide an account of how harmony can play a foundational role for morality. For the purposes of this paper, I’m going to be working with the understanding that ‘energy’ is something that is common amongst all things. Collectively, all energy forms a single entity known as Ibofanga (Epohfvnkv) – which is the most sacred thing/being in all existence. Although Ibofanga is the most sacred being in existence, prayers are never addressed to Ibofanga. It’s believed that Ibofanga is too busy and too sacred to disturb with our prayers. Instead, prayers and thanks were shared with Hesagedamesse (hesaketvmese) – the Maker of Breath. Hesagedamesse is one of Ibofanga’s four assistants, or instruments, and helps to connect Ibofanga to the empirical world. In this case, Hesagedamesse represents wind while fire, water, and earth are represented by Pojasa, Wewafulla (Yewvfullv), and Igana Jaga (Ekvnvvcakv), respectively.10 Prayers may be made to any of the assistants, but they are most often directed to Hesagedamesse since it is The Giver and Taker of Breath (i.e., life), thereby controlling the energy that connects all living things. These assistants are not static entities. As they are instruments of Ibofanga, the ultimate collection of energy, they are changed by energy. In other words, energy flows through wind, fire, water, and earth, and these can take many different forms/shapes. As Jean and Joyotpaul Chaudhuri (2001) state: The dynamics of Ibofanga’s energy operate through four major elements: air, fire, water, and earth. These elements are not material atoms. The form of the energy gives them their personality. These four fundamental elements, with different combinations of energy running through them, account for all the phenomena of the universe. These elements, in turn, are not fixed material entities because they are constantly transformed by energy – the principles of transformation and reciprocity are important keys to the Creek mind.11 This explanation of these sacred figures and relationships is meant to emphasize the importance of the concept of energy. While there may still be metaphysical questions concerning the exact nature of such figures and their relationships, the fact that the totality of energy (Ibofanga) is held to be the most sacred entity, and its ways of interacting with the empirical world (the four assistants: wind (via Hesagedamesse), fire (via Pojasa), water (via Wewafulla), and earth (via Igana Jaga)) are also considered sacred highlights the importance of the concept of energy.

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Interactions between things are explained as exchanges of energy. Taking food from the land and eating it, for example, is the taking of energy. Relatedly, planting food, caring for the land, and appropriately cultivating it is the giving of energy. This relationship is an example of how energy is exchanged. We are sustained and nourished by exchanging energy with the land. When interacting with our surroundings, we are exchanging energy. For the purposes of this chapter, the phrase ‘exchanging energy’ can be thought of as referring to interactions with other things. Thus, there is no need for a more basic or reductive definition. 1.2. A Foundational Normative Element of the Muscogee Belief System So far these are just descriptions or explanations of features of the world. Nothing explicitly normative comes from these descriptions alone.12 In order to account for the existence of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ways of behaving or interacting within the world, there needs to be some explicitly normative principle that provides a standard by which we can measure behaviors and interactions as good or bad. Such a principle is provided with reference to the concept of harmony. I’m going to refer to this principle as ‘The Principle of Harmony’: The Principle of Harmony: Harmony ought to be promoted, and disharmony ought to be avoided. When energy is exchanged, there ought to be balance, and balancing energy means reciprocating. Reciprocation can take many forms, such as prayers, gift giving, cultivating, and providing care, which may or may not involve nonviolence or peace. In other words, talk of reciprocity and balance is not synonymous with talk of any particular ritual or action, or with talk of peace. Given that humans have relationships with many different aspects of their surroundings (e.g., other humans, nonhuman animals, plants, inanimate objects, etc.), and these aspects have various characteristics (e.g., the different tribal memberships or languages of humans, the various kinds and ages of nonhuman animals, differing roles of inanimate objects in their ecosystems, etc.), no particular ritual or act is going to always appropriately reciprocate the energy exchanged in the interactions with these different aspects of one’s surroundings. How one reciprocates with a human may not be an appropriate way of reciprocating with a tree. This is primarily because of the different kinds of thing a human and a tree are, and, as such, the different relationships a human shares with each of those entities. Humans and trees require different things to survive and live well. Therefore, what counts as reciprocation is going to differ

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given the kind of existence these entities are displaying. Even amongst entities of the same class (e.g., humans), the different characteristics that each human possesses are going to influence their relationship with that person and what counts as reciprocation. The relationship I have with my parents differs from the relationship I have with my siblings, and each of these differs from the relationships I have with other people in my life (friends, coworkers, students, people from differing tribes, states, and countries, etc.). These differing relationships affect what qualifies as reciprocation. As an analogy, just because something is a good gift for one person doesn’t mean it’s an appropriate gift for everyone – a sensual or romantic gift may be a good way of acknowledging your love and appreciation of your partner, but it’s probably not a good gift to give your mother. Since reciprocity is a way of balancing energy, then reciprocating could conceivably sometimes take the form of actions that would otherwise, or most of the time, seem bad. Actions that may be bad most of the time may be justified if that action balances energy. For example, if a transgression (e.g., an act of war, assault, the taking of hostages, etc.) has occurred, then reciprocation may require similar actions (that would otherwise be bad) as a way of balancing energy.13 In other words, seemingly bad actions may be justified if these actions balance an exchange of energy. As an example, consider an explanation involving corporal punishment from Sarah Deer’s (2015) discussion of gendered violence against American Indian/Native American women. To show federal officials that the Muscogee were law-abiding, they began writing down their laws earlier than most tribes. In 1825, 56 criminal laws were written down with the 35th law addressing gendered violence: And be it farther enacted if any person or persons should undertake to force a woman and did it by force, it shall be left to woman what punishment she should satisfied with to whip or pay what she say it be law.14 As Deer (2015) points out, there are several important concepts highlighted in this law: The word “force” (used twice) is an important clue that this passage describes a physical attack and the law clearly refers to women as victims (although it does not indicate the gender of perpetrators). There is a clear reference to corporal punishment (“whip or pay”) – which is consistent with observed Mvskoke law in practice in the early nineteenth century. Perhaps most remarkable component of this law is the last six words: “what she say it be law.” This phrase, suggesting a . . . victim had legal standing to participate in sentencing

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While the actions that are done in the name of corporal punishment aren’t usually permitted, they’re permitted as a punishment to rectify a wrong that has occurred (such as gendered violence). Given the Principle of Harmony, the severity of acts of gendered violence may be rectified by similarly severe (corporal) punishment. One important concept that I’d like to point out in this law deals with the implied role of harmony in deciding on the punishment. As is stated, women (the victims) participate in decisions about punishment. The victim being given a say in punishment may be done as a means of promoting harmony. The woman wronged gets to decide which punishment would best rectify the wrong done to her.16 Although balancing energy exchanges requires taking into account our relationships with the various kinds of entities (as well as the varying characteristics between those entities), and although this is sometimes done using seemingly bad actions, these actions are all acts of love. Harmony is a tolerance, a forgiving, a blending – subtle, soft, but very strong. In order to live in harmony, the common denominator that binds is ‘loving one another’ in its truest form.17 Love is an act, and acts that promote harmony are acts of love. In other words, when there’s harmony, there’s love. Love is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for harmony. When things are in a state of harmony, or when an act promotes harmony, that act is then an act of love, or things are in a state of love. As was previously mentioned, seemingly bad actions can be justified if they are an act of love. For example, parents may discipline their children because they love them, and though this discipline may be unpleasant for the parents, it may still be necessary as a way of instilling certain values or behaviors or as a way of rectifying disharmony created by the child. However, disciplinary actions should only be taken when a wrong has occurred. Or, in other words, when an act by the child needs to be reciprocated. The discipline may be bad in the absence of any wrongdoing on behalf of the child, but in order to balance the energy created by the child’s wrong – to reciprocate the wrong done by the child – discipline may be necessary. If the act of disciplining the child promotes harmony, then it’s an act of love. When energy is balanced – i.e., when an exchange of energy has been reciprocated – there is said to be harmony, and harmony is a state where living things live together peacefully. What it means to live together peacefully is to love one another. Again, what it means to live together peacefully or “love one another” differs based on the relationship that is shared with a particular entity. Loving a tree is very different from loving your father,

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and loving your father is very different from loving your coworker. A sign of love for my father may be giving him tickets to a sporting event because he loves attending sporting events, but this doesn’t mean tickets to a sporting event are a sign of love for my coworker if they don’t love attending sporting events (and giving a tree tickets to a sporting event is just stupid). However, harmony is realized when love is successfully shared and conveyed. To live in harmony with a tree, I have to love the tree. If I love a tree – meaning, I reciprocate with it (e.g., care for it by watering it, protecting it, nurturing it, etc.) – then the tree will provide love back. To summarize, we interact with our surroundings, and these interactions involve an exchange of energy. Harmony is present when an exchange of energy is balanced. Balancing energy means reciprocating an exchange of energy. Reciprocation takes different forms depending on the kind of relationship that’s shared between two entities. However, all forms of reciprocation involve love. Therefore, harmony is present when love is shared in a particular relationship.18 While promoting harmony makes actions morally good, conversely, creating disharmony makes actions morally bad. Since there may be numerous different actions that could equally reciprocate and balance energy, then any one of those actions would be permissible as a way of promoting harmony. In other words, of the actions that are available, as long as those actions promote harmony, then choosing any of them would be a permissible means of promoting harmony. However, there’s a question concerning whether the goodness of promoting harmony itself implies that not promoting harmony is bad. For this implication to follow it has to be the case that every action is either good or bad. Or, in terms of harmony, every action would have to either promote or disrupt harmony. Just because promoting harmony is good doesn’t, by itself, entail that not promoting it is bad. It could be neutral. The question becomes: are actions that fail to promote harmony, or actions that create disharmony, bad or merely neutral? It seems to make more sense to think that all actions are either good or bad instead of all actions being either good or neutral. In other words, there are no morally neutral actions.19 Since harmony exists when energy is balanced, and energy is balanced when reciprocation has taken place, then harmony exists when exchanges of energy have been reciprocated. Given energy exchanges occur when we interact with our surroundings, then taking energy without reciprocating creates an imbalance. So long as every interaction is an exchange of energy, then every interaction either takes or reciprocates energy. There isn’t a third option. That being the case, if we’re trying to judge the moral permissibility of an action and we know that promoting harmony is good, that means that disrupting harmony (i.e., unbalancing energy, or taking energy without reciprocating) is either considered to be neutral or bad. Since it would be really unintuitive to claim that there are no bad actions,

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I’m inclined to think disruptions of harmony are bad instead of merely neutral.20 None of this, however, tells us what kind of property harmony is, nor does it tell us from whence the Principle of Harmony gets its normative force. Harmony itself, as described earlier, is a property of the natural world. Since harmony is a relational property between exchanges of energy, and energy is a part of the natural world, then harmony is a property of the natural world that exists when energy is balanced. Since ‘harmony’ is a property of the natural world, the Principle of Harmony can be seen as a kind of natural law. Similar to Aristotelean natural law theory in contemporary metaethics,21 wherein goodness is non-subjective and the parameters for practical rationality (i.e., what is practically rational) are set by nature, the Principle of Harmony is nonsubjective and helps sets the parameters of practical rationality with reference to the natural world. The Principle of Harmony is non-subjective in that it is a fact of the natural world that energy is exchanged and our intertwinement with our surroundings makes it such that our well-being is dependent on the well-being of our surroundings. The parameters of practical rationality are set by nature since every action is an exchange of energy and what practically ought to be done, given our intertwinement with our surroundings, depends on our surroundings (which can change and differ for groups of people). In this regard, it gets its normative force from the same place that other natural laws get their force: the natural world.22 In summary, harmony is a relational property of the natural world, and the Principle of Harmony is akin to a natural law. It’s a brute fact of the world that doesn’t have a justification.23

2. Situations and Surroundings: The Need for Harmony Although the Principle of Harmony provides a structure to morality by providing a standard by which we can assess the moral permissibility of actions, it hasn’t yet been justified. In other words, it’s not yet clear why we ought to promote harmony and avoid disharmony. This ‘ought’ can be understood as a moral-ought or a prudential-ought. When understood as a moral-ought, then the question concerning the normative force of the Principle of Harmony is nonsensical. It’s just a brute fact of the world. However, even if the Principle of Harmony is a brute fact of the world, we can still explain why the Principle of Harmony is relevant to us (humans). This won’t provide a moral justification for the Principle of Harmony; however, it can provide us with a prudential justification and help to explain how such a principle could exist. To that end, I will provide an argument that we have a prudential reason to follow the Principle of Harmony. Although this prudential reason is

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not meant to be a moral justification of the principle, it’s still morally relevant because it can motivate people to act on the Principle of Harmony. 2.1. Conditions for the Principle of Harmony The Muscogee healer Bear Heart provides the beginning of an explanation of a prudential reason to follow the Principle of Harmony when he states: “Our existence is so intertwined that our survival depends upon maintaining a balanced relationship with everything”.24 In this section I will elaborate upon the idea that the Principle of Harmony is relevant to us because of some essential conditions of existence. These conditions concern relationships that are inevitable for any human. For humans, to exist requires being in some surrounding, and it requires interacting with that surrounding. The nature of that surrounding can differ, but existence entails existing somewhere. I cannot conceive of what it would mean to say that something exists absent of any surrounding. We have a necessary relationship with our surroundings – our place of existence (whatever or wherever that surrounding may be). And, existing in that surrounding entails that we necessarily interact with or in that surrounding. Thus, there are two essential conditions of existence for humans: Condition 1: Surroundings – to exist requires you to exist somewhere; or, to exist means you have some surroundings. Condition 2: Relationships – to have surroundings requires you to interact with that surrounding; or, to have a surrounding means you have some relationship with that surrounding. Given that these relationships (the ones with our surroundings) are inevitable, promoting harmony helps us to survive. Since we necessarily exchange energy by existing, our survival, as well as every other living thing’s survival, depends on promoting harmony. If our surroundings are destroyed, we may be negatively affected. Likewise, if our surroundings are doing well, we’re more likely to do well. The well-being of the things we’re in relationships with is tied to our own well-being. This isn’t meant to be an egoistic or individualistic justification.25 In other words, the idea isn’t that each individual will live their best life by promoting harmony. Rather, ‘us’, ‘our’, and ‘we’, refer to the collective of things within the surroundings. So, it’s not that it’s in our individual best interest; it’s in the best interest of the collective. These situations and relationships that we inevitably find ourselves in help to provide a structure to morality. However, these conditions by themselves don’t entail anything about how we ought to react to our surroundings or how we ought to interact in our relationships. Since existence entails existing somewhere (i.e., having surroundings), and having surroundings entails having relationships or interactions with

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those surroundings, it is necessary to care for those surroundings in order to collectively live well. ‘Care’, in this case, means promoting harmony.26 This means that promoting harmony (following the Principle of Harmony) is constitutive of living a good life or living well.27 Living well entails promoting harmony because of what it means to ‘live’ or ‘exist’. To exist requires that you exist somewhere, and existing somewhere requires that you have a relationship with that surrounding. These requirements, by themselves, don’t entail anything specific about how that relationship ought to function (or, how we ought to conduct ourselves in that relationship). However, given the assumption that someone wants to live well, the Principle of Harmony arises as a means of how to live a good life. Living well means living in harmony with your surroundings.28 2.2. Prudential Reason to Follow the Principle of Harmony The normative force of the Principle of Harmony isn’t a command that comes from sacred beings (e.g., Ibofanga or Hesagedamesse), nor does it issue from those things with which we exchange energy (e.g., the land, ourselves, or other animals). It’s just a brute demand that is relevant for us because we exist in the world. However, we can still provide an argument for why individuals ought to follow or be motivated by the Principle of Harmony. Considering the points made in Section 2.1, we can provide the following argument (the brackets contain the justifications for the premises): Premise 1: We interact or have a relationship with our surroundings. [Given the conditions for existence] Premise 2: We want to live well. [Assumption] Premise 3: If we interact or have a relationship with our surroundings, and want to live well, then we ought to promote harmony. [Our living well depends on our surroundings doing well – given the intertwinement of our existence] Therefore, we ought to promote harmony. [From premises 1, 2, and 3] As was mentioned at the beginning of this section, the justification just offered is meant to offer a prudential reason for people to accept the Principle of Harmony that can motivate us to act. What motivates people to act on the Principle of Harmony is a distinct question that can be separated from the question of the moral grounds of the principle. So, there’s a prudential reason to follow the Principle of Harmony that provides the principle with one type of normative force, but this doesn’t qualify as a moral justification for the principle. In other words, although this argument may provide some normative force to support actions in

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accordance with the Principle of Harmony, this normative force isn’t necessarily a moral force. As was mentioned in endnote 25 of Section 2.1, this may be an egoistic reason to follow the Principle of Harmony. It may be egoistic because the normative force comes from an appeal to what’s in the agent’s own best interest. Since I have a relationship with my surroundings, then I ought to promote harmony. This is what makes it a prudential reason. However, ‘self-interest’, in this case, means something different than what it means in other discussions of egoism because there’s a different conception of the self. Part of what constitutes the self, in this conception, is the surroundings. I am not separable from my surroundings. And, since having surroundings entails having relationships, I am not separable from my relationships. Therefore, at least part of what constitutes the self is our relationships with our surroundings. Appealing to this wholistic conception of ‘self’ may still be a type of self-interest, but since the self is partly made of surroundings and relationships in those surroundings, considerations of harmony will appeal to those surroundings and relationships. In other words, if someone’s interest in harmony stems from self-interest, she must also be interested in her surroundings and relationships since they are constitutive of the self. Given the explanations in Section 2.1 and Section 2.2, promoting harmony is constitutive of a good life in two ways. First, it’s constitutive of ‘living well’ because our existence is so intertwined with our surroundings. Second, since our existence is so intertwined with our surroundings, it’s also constitutive of the ‘self’. Taken together, our living well and our self are partly constituted by relations to our surroundings. This makes it so that it’s hard to separate oneself and one’s life from its surroundings. In some sense, explaining ourselves independently of our surroundings (or vice versa) doesn’t make sense. What it means to live well is to have your surroundings do well, and you don’t have a self without surroundings. Similarly, it doesn’t make sense to talk of our living and our self as if these were two separable concepts. What it means to live is to have a self, just like what it means to have a self is to live.29 I’ve tried to appeal to each of these as separate entities or concepts, but I’ve only done so in order to explain the existence and force of the Principle of Harmony. To do that in terms of contemporary terms, I have to explain how these separable, Western concepts are related. To conclude this section, the explanations in the Section 1 show that the Principle of Harmony can play a foundational role in providing a structure to morality, and the explanations in Section 3 show that actions recommended by using the principle are prudentially rational given the situations and relationships we find ourselves in. One way of understanding the structure of this paper is that Section 1 defines the Principle of Harmony, Section 2 prudentially justifies the Principle of Harmony, and Section 3 will explain how to use the Principle of Harmony.

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3. Nature and Normativity: The Way to Achieve Harmony The previous two sections were about the first two of three core features of this account of indigenous metaethics: (1) the foundational role that the Principle of Harmony plays in providing a structure to morality, and (2) that our relationships – which result from situations that we necessarily find ourselves in – prudentially justify the Principle of Harmony. This section is about the third core feature of this account of indigenous metaethics: (3) the role that non-moral knowledge plays in determining the moral status of an action. In order to bring about harmony, one has to know about one’s relation to the thing they’re reciprocating, or in a relationship, with. In other words, knowing how to bring about harmony requires knowing how to reciprocate, and knowing how to reciprocate depends on knowing about the relationship. To illustrate the role of non-moral knowledge in bringing about balance and reciprocating, I will explain two examples: hunting and the practice of medicine. Achieving harmony when hunting is encouraged by hunting for the right reasons. Hunting is supposed to be done out of necessity for the purpose of providing nourishment. As such, actions during a hunt that don’t aim toward these purposes are actions that aren’t taught or encouraged because they didn’t encourage good skills. And these skills are those that promote harmony. Hunting for anger, sport, or pride was not something that was taught by Muscogees. Never kill out of anger, nor for sport to see how many animals you can kill. Take just enough for survival and always be respectful of the four-leggeds. If you must kill, present an offering and talk to the animal, explaining, ‘I need you for my family.30 Having and developing the right reasons can promote harmony by helping to establish good traits or practices. Those traits or practices, then, help to ensure that when hunting occurs the actions taken are those that are done with love and promote reciprocity. In other words, the actions that result from having the right reasons are traits or practices that help promote harmony each time a hunt occurs. That’s what makes them the right reasons: they are the reasons that help to promote harmony. The ritual and process of how one ought to hunt is explained by Bear Heart: Children were not allowed to hunt until they became skilled with their weapons. We were taught the anatomical structure of each animal and exactly where to hit so it would die quickly and not suffer more than it had to. When we brought back the kill, even that was a ceremony. We gave an offering to the animal, honoring it and explaining why we took its life.

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Young boys were taught never to eat their first kill – they were to give it to an elder. If you just killed and ate it yourself, that’s about all you’d be able to do – you would not become a great hunter because you weren’t showing much respect for the animal that you killed. But if you killed and made a sacrifice, giving that meat to others, then the motive for taking that life was based on generosity and respect. Those were the traits of a good hunter.31 The thing I want to emphasize about this description of how to hunt is the importance of non-moral knowledge in developing the right reasons. To be a good hunter, the hunter needs to be motivated by generosity and respect. In order to develop these as motives a few different practices were encouraged. Before discussing these practices, however, I want to point out an important assumption here: that a person can develop certain motives by acting in certain ways. This is a non-moral belief regarding how humans learn and how they develop motivations. By encouraging and teaching young boys to hunt in certain ways, those young boys would then develop the appropriate kinds of motives. This is a distinctive assumption: actions can be used to develop motives. While motives can influence actions, the ability of actions to influence motives creates a feedback loop. Good actions and behaviors are encouraged and supported until good motives are developed. Then those good motives make it more likely that good actions occur. The practices that were used to develop the motives of respect and generosity required only non-moral knowledge. These practices included being skilled with weaponry, minimizing suffering, giving the first kill to an elder, and making an offering to the animal. Being skilled with weaponry requires knowing about the weaponry (e.g., how it’s constructed, how to store it, how to repair it, etc.), and knowing the human body well enough to know how use the weapon (e.g., how to move the body in such a way – the motions and forms – as to use the weapon). These are both non-moral beliefs. Minimizing suffering requires knowing how to most efficiently and effectively use weaponry as well; however, it also requires knowing the anatomy of the animal being hunted. Since hunting was done out of necessity, and the pain of the hunted animal was an unfortunate side-effect of this necessity, the pain that accompanied the death of the hunted animal was to be minimized. To do this, a hunter had to know how to effectively use their weaponry to strike the hunted animal in such a way as to end its life as quickly and painlessly as possible. After an animal had been killed, there was a ceremony and offering as a sign of gratitude toward the animal (and Ibofanga). Since the hunted animal is a part of the natural world, as was Ibofanga and other sacred entities or concepts, the knowledge required to appropriately conduct a ceremony and make an offering was natural knowledge. The first kill

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for a young boy was given to an elder because it encouraged the motives of respect and generosity. As was mentioned earlier, this is a non-moral assumption or belief about human psychology and how to best instill, teach, or encourage particular motivations. It helped develop generosity in the hunter. Killing an animal for yourself isn’t done out of generosity and respect. However, killing an animal as quickly and painlessly as possible out of necessity for others demonstrates generosity and respect toward the animal. Let me summarize the hunting example by using terms from earlier in the chapter. All this non-moral knowledge is for the purposes of developing the right reasons or motivations when hunting, and the right reasons or motivations when hunting are generosity and respect, and these motives encourage acting in the right ways. These are the right reasons because actions done while hunting for these reasons promote harmony. Taking the life of an animal creates an imbalance of energy, but this imbalance can be minimized by killing the animal quickly and as painlessly as possible. To fix the remaining imbalance killing the animal creates, there are ceremonies and offerings made to the animal. These ceremonies and offerings are means of reciprocating to the deceased animal for giving its life for others’ survival. In Muscogee medicine, a medicine person’s role is to help sick people bring themselves back into balance.32 They do this by helping to lead the sick in prayers, speaking through songs and chants, and applying herbal remedies (made from local resources) to ailments.33 Sickness occurs because there’s some sort of imbalance in the individual, and the way of treating the sickness is to do things to bring them back into balance.34 “If we [medicine people] are to do the complete good, we must harmonize ourselves, make ourselves sensitive to the powers, energies, and influences of creation”.35 This quote illustrates the role of Muscogee medicine people, but it also illustrates the importance of the medicine person living in harmony with their surroundings. Individuals should be in harmony, and medicine people help individuals with that task. Sickness is the result of disharmony or imbalance, and medicine people help individuals get back into balance by using and applying their knowledge of medicine to an individual. For the medicine person to fulfill their role they need knowledge of their surroundings, as well as knowledge of practices, rituals, songs, and prayers that are used in a variety of contexts. Different roots and herbs, for example, are used for different ailments – as are particular songs and chants.36 Using the appropriate roots and herbs requires nonmoral knowledge about the land (the roots, herbs, and other plants), how people respond to certain remedies, and how the human body operates. Using the appropriate songs and chants requires non-moral knowledge concerning cultural practices and rituals. Both of these kinds of knowledge are examples of medicine people needing to understand and practice

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medicine within their surroundings. They have to be able to locate and recognize the plants that are used as remedies, they have to make remedies with what they have available, and they have to know what the ailment (diagnosis) is so that they can apply the appropriate remedies (ingestible and spoken). For the medicine person to fulfill their role, they need to work with their surroundings. As David Lewis Jr. (2002) states: [C]reation is here for us to use, not to misuse, not to conquer. It is half the way, for it already has its powers, energies, and intelligence. We humans must align ourselves through fasting, prayer, and taking the cleansing medicines to come half the way with all respect, for it is sacred. For the Indians, the words have already been told and are to be passed along but with the same preparation. By this we do our part and come half the way. This is like an agreement with creation and when we do this, we are in harmony and can have good success.37 For the medicine person to have success, they need to be in harmony with their surroundings. Harmony is emphasized in at least two ways in this example. First, the understandings of the medical concepts sickness and medicine make reference, or are defined by reference, to the concept of harmony. Second, for the medicine person to fulfill their role they need to be in harmony with their surroundings. To bring about harmony, in others as well as their surroundings, the medicine person needs to understand and work with their surroundings.

4. Concluding Remarks While this chapter only provides a brief sketch of one tribe’s – the Muscogee’s – approach to indigenous metaethics, my hope is that it helps to highlight some distinctive features that are either lacking or underemphasized in contemporary accounts of metaethics. Trying to explain an indigenous approach to ethics within the framework of contemporary metaethics (i.e., trying to answer questions of contemporary metaethics in indigenous terms) may lead to misconstruing the indigenous approach. For example, some distinctions in contemporary metaethics (e.g., between moral and non-moral knowledge) may not make sense when the domain of morality is so closely related to the “non-moral” domain. Similarly, being unable to distinguish between moral and non-moral domains may make it more difficult to distinguish between various competing views in metaethics (e.g., naturalism and non-naturalism, non-cognitivism and cognitivism, realism and anti-realism, etc.). However, there are at least three implications that I think follow from the three core features of this indigenous account of metaethics. First,

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given the Principle of Harmony, more things are worthy of moral consideration. In contrast with social contract theories (or other metaethical accounts that place an emphasis on cooperation), moral consideration is tied to more than just rational agents. Harmony, being a more wideranging concept than something like cooperation, is something that would apply to the land, ecosystems, nonhuman animals, and collectives. While social contract theories can find indirect ways of explaining why these things get moral consideration, focusing on harmony provides a more direct explanation. Second, harmony, unlike ‘goodness’, is a transparently relational property. Like the concepts of ‘taller’, ‘to the left of’, etc., harmony requires more than just one entity.38 Bringing about harmony requires that there is something to be in harmony with. That’s what relationships bring about. To be in a relationship, there has to be something to be in a relationship with. The same goes for harmony. To live in harmony means there has to be something that is being lived with. Harmony, then, differs from simple, irreducible, unanalyzable properties, like G.E. Moore’s concept of goodness.39 Third, the dependency of moral facts on non-normative facts differs in the kinds of natural facts that the moral facts are tied to. The degree or level of influence that non-moral facts or judgments have on moral facts or judgments differs because other naturalistic accounts don’t, for example, require the same kind of knowledge of nonhuman animals, plant life, the components and workings of ecosystems, interactions between plants and humans, the land, etc. This dependency is not reductive in the sense that the concept of harmony is reducible to some natural kind, phenomena, or property, but particular facts about harmony are grounded in the natural phenomena that we are born or placed in (i.e., certain kinds of situations and relationships). In this way, knowing that something is morally right or wrong requires knowing the natural world sufficiently to know how to reciprocate and bring about harmony. While each one of these implications is only briefly mentioned here, more robust arguments would be needed to justify or substantiate these claims. However, I think these implications are interesting enough that they warrant further investigation. One of my hopes, in addition to bringing to light an indigenous, particularly Muscogee, account of metaethics, is that these implications receive more attention in discussions of contemporary metaethics.

Notes 1. I am especially indebted to my grandmother, Lillian Miller, for encouraging and supporting my journey to understand Muscogee culture and our family’s history. Mvto (thank you), Grandma. 2. I have chosen to use ‘Muscogee’ to refer to members and descendants of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation because it is more familiar and easier to sound out

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than other spellings/pronunciations. ‘Muscogee’ is how the people refer to themselves, and ‘Creek’ is a name given to them by colonial settlers because of their location near prominent creeks in the southeastern part of North America. The traditional Muscogee spelling is ‘Mvskoke’ (which refers to the language or the people) or ‘Mvskokvlke’ (which refers to the Creek people) (Chaudhuri and Chaudhuri 2001). As an example of one aspect of the structure of Muscogee societies, Sarah Deer (2015) – in her book on sexual assault against Native women – describes the structure as consisting in a “division of various powers, functions, and privileges” along gendered roles. These roles can be considered a “nonbinary complementary dualism, wherein binary gender lines are fluid without fixed boundaries. This is evidenced by the role that Two-spirit or gender nonconforming people played. Sometimes a man would perform a woman’s role, and vice versa. In a gendered epistemology, all persons have valued roles and duties, which balance one another” (p. 19). There are other aspects of life where promoting harmony is important, but for the purposes of this chapter I’m using the land and culture merely as two examples. I’d like to say something about my place in this kind of conversation. I am an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, but I do not claim to speak for all Muscogee peoples. Although I am an enrolled member, I did not grow up on a reservation (because our tribe doesn’t have a reservation) or in Oklahoma (where our tribe is headquartered), nor do I speak the language (my grandmother remembers pieces of the language, but she, like many others, had her language stolen from her during her school years). There are people more familiar with, who have more direct, firsthand knowledge of Muscogee culture, but this is an opportunity where I think I can use my training in Western philosophy (and my experiences) to help share Muscogee beliefs. I see my role in this conversation as filling in argumentative gaps. My hope is to state some core features of (mostly) pre-colonial Muscogee beliefs – features from accounts that have been gathered by other Muscogees – and show how they could be justified or explain how they can be related or connected to one another. I am not trying, or claiming, to provide new, or firsthand, knowledge of Muscogee beliefs. In Mvskoke, the letter ‘v’ is pronounced like the letter ‘u’. I have chosen to use the word ‘harmony’ because I think it’s the most familiar term in English that captures the concept of etemeyaske vpokat. It’s also the word most used by the Muscogees cited in the references. Mvto (thank you) to Rebecca Barnett at the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Mvskoke Language Program for helping me with this translation. Since most American Indian history was transmitted orally, there are comparatively few first-person, written sources on Muscogee beliefs. The sources I’ll be drawing from, though few, offer a rich collection of oral stories and histories. Though only a few names will be credited in the citations, it should be noted that many more are responsible for the transmission and development of these beliefs. As Bear Heart is a healer, and David Lewis, Jr. is a medicine person, their knowledge of Muscogee healing and medicine was orally passed down. Joyotpaul Chaudhuri (2001), in the acknowledgments section of his and Jean Chaudhuri’s book, A Sacred Path: The Way of the Muscogee Creeks, states, “I have depended considerably on oral history in this work. The majority of the informants as well as the primary author (Jean Chaudhuri) have passed away. . . . Because many of the contributors have passed away, part of the reason for writing this work is to ensure that this body of shared knowledge does not disappear” (p. vi; emphasis mine). They go on to

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Joseph Len Miller name many more Muscogee and Seminole elders who contributed to their ability to share this knowledge. Although I want to maintain that this is a Muscogee account without generalizing to other indigenous or American Indian/Native American accounts, there are resources that identify common themes in American Indian/Native American philosophy. These include Brian Yazzie Burkhart’s (2019b) chapter in this collection, “The Groundedness of Normativity or Indigenous Normativity through the Land” as well as Burkhart’s (2019a) book, Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land: A Trickster Methodology for Decolonizing Environmental Ethics and Indigenous Futures; Shay Welch’s (2019), The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System: Dancing with Native American Epistemology; Viola Cordova’s (2007), How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V.F. Cordova; Thomas M. Norton-Smith’s (2010), The Dance of Person and Place: One Interpretation of American Indian Philosophy; and Anne Waters’s (2004) collection, American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays. Most of the knowledge in this section comes from Chapters 2, 4, and 10 of Jean and Joyotpaul Chaudhuri’s book, A Scared Path: The Way of the Muscogee Creeks. This book as a whole has served as an invaluable resource on Muscogee beliefs and practices. Additionally, Pojasa is known as ‘Grandfather Sun’ or ‘Grandfather Fire’, Wewafulla is known as ‘Water Spirit’, Igana Jaga is known as ‘Holy Mother Earth’, and, as was previously stated, Hesagedamesse is known as ‘The Giver and Taker (The Maker) of Breath’. Chaudhuri and Chaudhuri (2001, 24–5). There may be some inferences about normativity that can be drawn from the existence of sacred entities. In other words, the very fact that some of these things are taken to be sacred may imply that they ought to be treated in some ways rather than others. If this is the case, the term ‘sacred’ can be removed from the preceding explanations, and the account of Muscogee worldview or their conceptual toolbox can be seen as purely descriptive of how the world is. This seems similar to Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1887/1991) explanation of the origin of guilt in the second treatise of On the Genealogy of Morality. Moral behavior is a kind of creditor/debtor relationship. When someone does something wrong, it’s as if they’re indebted to the person they wronged. Guilt arises when someone is in debt. Whereas Nietzsche was discussing the evolution of guilt and other morally relevant emotions, he wasn’t explaining the justification of any actions – i.e., he wasn’t explaining how some actions could be justified by appealing to the existence or evolution of certain emotions. As opposed to Nietzsche, I’m explaining how certain actions can be justified by appealing to harmony or reciprocity. Waring (1960, 24). As cited in Deer (2015, 17). p. 17. Deer (2015) goes on to point out, “For most of American legal history, [gendered violence] was framed as a property crime perpetrated against men. . . . Yet the 1825 Mvskoke law – in the same era – ends with the phrase ‘what she say it be law.’ Somehow, despite the persistent effort and pressure to develop an American-style government and legal system, the Mvskoke law suggests a legal tradition that acknowledged the decision-making capacity of women” (p. 17). Heart (1996, 152). There may be a concern that love can come in degrees. For example, I may love a plant, but I don’t love it as much as I love my family. However, with love being a state or an action, love either exists or it doesn’t. It’s binary. Like playing basketball, you either are or are not playing basketball. It doesn’t

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come in degrees (e.g., you don’t play basketball a little). I’m inclined to think loving something is similar. You either do or don’t love something. However, how that love is expressed varies depending on the other entity involved and what kind of relationship is had with that entity. I can still love something poorly (e.g., by not providing care or upholding my commitments to what is loved), in the same way that I can play basketball poorly; but loving poorly still requires love to be present. So, with love being an action, it is either present or it’s not. One interesting implication that I won’t be exploring in this chapter is whether this means that nonhumans can behave rightly or wrongly; or, whether the actions of nonhumans are good or bad. Since all interactions are exchanges of energy, and all exchanges of energy either promoting harmony or create disharmony, then it seems like the actions of nonhumans would similarly be good or bad depending on whether they promote harmony or create disharmony. While I won’t be offering an argument in support of this claim, I’m inclined to think this is correct. In other words, I’m inclined to think that the actions of nonhumans are good or bad as well. In an attempt to explain how morally neutral actions could exist, it may be appealing to think that actions that promote harmony are good, actions that create disharmony are bad, and actions that merely fail to promote harmony (without creating disharmony) are neutral. However, as was just explained, since all actions involve exchanges of energy, there are no actions that merely fail to promote harmony without creating disharmony. All actions either take or reciprocate energy, thereby either promoting harmony or creating disharmony. As such, there are no actions that count as neutral. For examples of these kinds of accounts, see Philippa Foot’s, Natural Goodness and Michael Thompson’s, Life and Action: Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought. I take the question of normative force to be a question about why we ought to follow or adhere to the principle. As will be discussed in Section 2, this ‘ought’ can be understood morally or prudentially (i.e., it can be a moralought or a practical-ought). In Section 2 I will offer an argument for why, prudentially, one ought to follow the Principle of Harmony. As opposed to Aristotelean natural law theories of, e.g., Foot (2001) and Thompson (2012), natural law theories that make reference to God (see Aquinas 2014) may not claim that natural laws are brute facts. Instead, the natural laws are issued from God. Given that the Muscogee conception of God (either Ibofanga or Hesagedamesse) is constituted by the natural world, it could be said that the natural laws issue from God (since Ibofanga and Hesagedamesse are part of the natural world – not removed from it). However, given these differing conceptions of God, it can also be said that the natural laws (e.g., the Principle of Harmony) are just brute facts of the natural world since they aren’t issued from a God that is removed from the natural world. Overall, like natural law theories that make reference to God, the Principle of Harmony is a normative principle that is based in the natural world, but, unlike natural law theories that make reference to God, this principle is simply a brute fact (though, again, it could be said to issue from divinity given the intertwinement of divinity and the natural world). p. 190 As will be explained in Section 2.2, this view is tied to a non-Western conception of ‘self’. Using this non-Western conception of ‘self’, we are able to offer a prudential reason to act on the Principle of Harmony. This could be seen as a kind of egoism; however, the conception of ‘self’ in this case makes it a different view than what we may normally consider ‘egoistic’.

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26. This emphasis on care is similar to some approaches in feminist ethics. As an example, see Nel Noddings’s (1984), Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. 27. This is a similar claim to Philippa Foot’s argument in Natural Goodness. According to Foot, moral goodness is constitutive of being good at being human. What is good for humans is objective and descriptive and being morally good is part of what makes us good at being humans. On the account I’m explaining, living in harmony is constitutive of living well. What it means to live well, at least partly, is to promote harmony. 28. Although Bear Heart merely mentioned ‘existence’ and ‘survival’, I think his claim is best understood as a claim about existing or surviving well. It seems plausible that someone could live for awhile without being in harmony with their surroundings. However, it’s less clear how long someone could live well without being in harmony with their surroundings. Additionally, his claim could be about our species as a whole rather than individuals (e.g., for humans to survive they need to be in harmony with their surroundings). Presumably, this implies the survival of our species over an extended period of time – which would seemingly require, however, our species to live well. Again, it’s plausible that a species can exist for a while without being in harmony with their surroundings. As such, I think his claim is best understood about the quality of existence rather than mere quantity. 29. My use of the concept of ‘self’ is meant to capture individuation. I don’t intend for ‘self’ to indicate some psychological capacity or a sense of self. By ‘self’ I am referring to individuals as distinct from their surroundings. 30. Heart (1996, 22). Emphasis not mine. 31. Ibid. 32. This knowledge about the function and workings of Muscogee medicine comes from David Lewis Jr. and Ann T. Jordan’s (2002) Creek Indian Medicine Ways: The Enduring Power of Mvskoke Religion. 33. The concept, ‘medicine’, for Muscogees, refers to more than just ingestible remedies. Songs, prayers, fasting, water, and other things used for promoting balance within an individual are considered medicine. 34. ‘Health’, on this understanding of sickness, can be understood as existing when a person’s body and mind are in balance or harmony with other parts of their body and mind. 35. Lewis and Jordan (2002, 119). Clarification mine. 36. For a list of herbal remedies that the Muscogee use, see chapter 7 of Lewis Jr. and Jordan (2002). 37. p. 118. 38. In this way, something can’t be in harmony with itself. To use the concept of health mentioned earlier, humans are healthy when the components of their bodies are balanced. In other words, when the components of our bodies are in harmony, there’s health. But, the components of our bodies can’t be in harmony by themselves. There needs to be other components to be in harmony with. We could say that are bodies are in harmony with themselves, but this would just be a way of saying that the components that make up our bodies are in harmony with one another. 39. Moore (1903/1994).

References Aquinas, Thomas. 2014. Aquinas: Basic Works (The Hackett Aquinas), edited by Jeffrey Hause and Robert Pasnau. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

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Burkhart, Brian. 2019a. Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land: A Trickster Methodology for Decolonizing Environmental Ethics and Indigenous Futures. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Burkhart, Brian. 2019b. “The Groundedness of Normativity or Indigenous Normativity through the Land.” In Comparative Metaethics: Neglected Perspectives on the Foundations of Morality, edited by Colin Marshall. New York: Routledge. Chaudhuri, Jean, and Chaudhuri, Joyotpaul. 2001. A Sacred Path: The Way of the Muscogee Creeks. Los Angeles: UCLA American Indian Studies Center. Cordova, Viola F. 2007. How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V.F. Cordova, edited by Kathleen Dean Moore, Kurt Peters, Ted Jojola, Amber Lacy, with Foreword by Linda Hogan. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Deer, Sarah. 2015. The Beginning and end of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Foot, Philippa. 2001. Natural Goodness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harjo, Joy. 2015. Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Heart, Bear, and Larkin, Molly. 1996. The Wind Is My Mother: The Life and Teachings of a Native American Shaman. New York, NY: The Berkley Publishing Group. Lewis Jr., David, and Jordan, Ann T. 2002. Creek Indian Medicine Ways: The Enduring Power of Mvskoke Religion. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Moore, George Edward. 1903/1994. Principia Ethica, 2nd ed., edited by Thomas Baldwin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1887/1991. On the Genealogy of Morality, translated and notes by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Noddings, Nel. 1984. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Norton-Smith. Thomas M. 2010. The Dance of Person and Place: One Interpretation of American Indian Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Thompson, Michael. 2012. Life and Action: Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Waring, Antonio J., ed. 1960. Laws of the Creek Nation. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Waters, Anne, ed. 2004. American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays. Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Welch, Shay. 2019. The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System: Dancing with Native American Epistemology. Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan.

5

Species and the Good in Anne Conway’s Metaethics John Grey

Many Neoplatonist thinkers hold that moral facts are, in the first instance, evaluative facts about states of being rather than deontic facts about actions. At least for a human, being wise is good; being “thoroughly mixed with the body” is bad (Enneads I.2, 135); being rational is better than being irrational; and so on. As these examples indicate, such evaluations are most easily construed in relation to a particular kind or species. What is a defect in a human may not be a defect in another sort of being. As Plotinus observes, “living” means different things in different contexts; it is used in one way of plants, in another of irrational animals, in various ways by things distinguished from each other by the clarity or dimness of their life; so obviously the same applies to “living well”. (Plotinus, Enneads I.4, 181) This suggests an account of an important set of evaluative facts, namely those regarding what states are good or bad (or better or worse) relative to a given species. It is worse for a human to be blind than to be sighted, but the same does not hold for a deep-sea lobster. Why? Being sighted is in the nature of human life and not in the nature of deep-sea lobster life. Moreover, an account along these lines has the advantage of being connected to ordinary experience. We derive our knowledge of the nature of a species or kind by observing lots of individual members of that species or kind. Insofar as the facts about what states are good or bad for an individual follow from what kind of thing it is, our knowledge of these evaluative facts does not require any special form of perception or intuition.1 It is not all smooth sailing. Neoplatonist authors typically endorse some version of the ‘great chain of being’, and on such a picture at least some evaluative facts about states of being are not merely relative to the kind or species of thing that has that state.2 Being human is better than being a deep-sea lobster – full stop. Two metaethical difficulties are posed by such absolute evaluative facts about states of being. Prima facie, such facts cannot be grounded in the natures of the individuals possessing or

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lacking those states, since the individuals could hardly have had a different (better!) nature. Nor can we learn about such things by observing what is normal or natural for the individual or for its species. On the face of it, it is entirely normal and natural for a lobster not to be a human. Why then is this state worse for it than being human would be? What sense can be made of such a claim, and by what mode of inquiry could we come to learn whether it is true or false? Here I examine the way that these questions arise for Anne Conway, an early modern philosopher heavily influenced by Neoplatonism. Her strategy for addressing these issues is noteworthy because it is derived from a sophisticated theory of essence.3 Conway recognizes that in order to make sense of species-independent facts about which states of being are better or worse than others, she must deal with the modal issues that are involved in making sense of statements such as, ‘It would be better for this deep-sea lobster to be a human’. I will argue that Conway rejects essentialism about species membership primarily because it would entail that “no creature could attain further perfection and greater participation in the divine goodness” (CC 32) than the limits of their species permitted.4 As a consequence, the essence of a particular human being does not include her humanity. And once essentialism about species membership is off the table, there is no problem with taking species-independent facts about an individual’s good to be grounded in that individual’s nature after all. Concerns such as these may seem quite distant from current metaethical interests, and in many ways they are. Nevertheless, I will conclude by arguing that Conway’s work bears on a prominent family of contemporary views about an individual’s good that draw on the notion of an ideally rational, ideally informed version of that individual. As I shall argue, the construction of such an ideal counterpart typically involves essentialist presuppositions similar to those that Conway identifies and rejects in her investigations into species and the good.

1. Background: Conway’s Metaphysics Since Anne Conway has not (yet) been widely included as part of the canon of early modern European philosophers, a brief overview of her biography and philosophical system will be helpful.5 Conway, née Anne Finch, was born in 1631 to Sir Heneage Finch and Elizabeth Cradock. Heneage Finch was the Recorder of the City of London – a senior judge and high-level government functionary – as well as Speaker of the House of Commons. We know little of Conway’s education, but based on the testimony of those familiar with her, she was fluent in Latin and had at least some knowledge of Greek. Her education took a distinctively philosophical turn in 1650, when – at the age of 19 – she began a correspondence with Henry More. Although Henry More is little studied today, he was the most prolific of the Cambridge Platonists;

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indeed, some scholars have made the case that More was the most influential living philosopher in the latter half of the 17th century (read: after Descartes’s death).6 Under More’s tutelage, Conway studied the works of Plato and Plotinus, and is thanked in More’s own works as having provided constructive but penetrating criticism of his arguments. She also learned the intricacies of Cartesian philosophy, though she did not herself become a Cartesian. Her correspondence with More indicates that she frequently raised objections to both Morean and Cartesian philosophy. In the earliest biography of Henry More, the author recalls More describing Conway as “one, that would not give up her Judgement entirely unto any” (cited in the appendix to L 237). In spite of the fact that she was often critical of More’s views, the two remained close friends for almost Conway’s entire life. After her death in 1679, More and another of Conway’s close friends, Francis Mercury van Helmont, worked to have her philosophical notebook translated into Latin and published. This was finally accomplished in 1690, when the translated contents of the notebook were published as the Principles of Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy. The work is short – the Latin text runs 82 pages with modern typesetting – but extremely dense. Here I will not canvas the whole of her Principles, though I might note by way of advertisement that, among other points of interest, she provides a number of striking objections to both substance dualism and property dualism and anticipates a version of Leibniz’s argument against absolute space and time. My focus here will be on the root structure that feeds into Conway’s metaethics. Conway’s system presupposes a form of Christian Theism, although her Christianity is an unorthodox fusion of Platonism, Kabbalism, and early Quakerism.7 Much of her metaphysics aims at drawing out the consequences of her conception of God and God’s relationship to creation. On the view she develops, God is a unique, purely spiritual substance with a number of fairly traditional divine attributes: “God is spirit, light, and life, infinitely wise, good, just, strong, all-knowing, all-present, allpowerful, the creator and maker of all things” (CC 9). No attempt is made in the Principles to justify or argue for the claim that God exists; no attempt is made to show that God is unique; and no attempt is made to show that God has this particular list of attributes. This conception of God is a foundational element of Conway’s system. It is important for us because, as the list of God’s attributes reveals, God has a number of paradigmatically moral properties. Conway also holds that God is really distinct from, but intimately connected to, creation: [God] is also in a true and real sense an essence or substance distinct from his creatures, although not divided or separate from them but present in everything most intimately in the highest degree. (CC 9)

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Both the real distinction of God from creation and God’s intimate presence in creation are important foundational elements of her system. The fact that God is really distinct from any created substance serves to distance Conway from substance monists such as Spinoza, who “confuse God with his creatures” (CC 31). Yet the intimate presence of the divine in all creatures is also crucial for Conway’s picture. It leads her to the view that all things must inherit certain of God’s attributes, at least in some degree. This point is of particular importance for Conway’s metaethics. She holds that in any act of creation, there are certain attributes that the created thing can inherit from the creator (or ‘communicable’ attributes), and others that cannot be so inherited (or ‘incommunicable’ attributes). Her examples of incommunicable attributes include the attribute of being a self-subsisting entity or “ens per se subsistens”, being immutable and being most perfect (CC 45; L 108). By contrast, “The communicable attributes are that God is spirit, light, life, that he is good, holy, just, wise” (CC 45), and so on. Notably, although God has numerous attributes that creatures do not – and cannot – inherit, these are in the first instance purely metaphysical features of God. The attributes that creatures can and at least to some degree do inherit from God include his moral properties: being good and being just. Thus, as Sarah Hutton (2018) has recently argued, there is a sense in which Conway construes properties such as goodness and justice as specific forms of Godlikeness.8 Perhaps the most distinctive element of Conway’s system, however, is her monistic view of the created world. She reasons on the basis of the fact that God’s immutability is not communicable to creatures that there can be at most “three kinds of being [Triplex . . . Entium classis]” (CC 24, L 82): The first is altogether immutable. The second can only change toward the good, so that which is good by its very nature can become better. The third kind is that which, although it was good by its very nature, is nevertheless able to change from good to good as well as from good to evil. (CC 24) Conway’s inference to this tripartite ontology presupposes, first, that although God has many attributes, immutability with respect to the good is the attribute that defines the kind of being he is. She also presupposes that there are only two ways for a being to be changeable or mutable with respect to the good. Either (1) it has the potential to change only for the better, or (2) it has the potential to change both for better and for worse. (The possibility of a being that can change only for the worse, only becoming less perfect ad infinitum, she rules out as incompatible with the premise that all creatures inherit some degree of God’s goodness.) Given these presuppositions, however, we arrive at Conway’s tripartite ontology.

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She interprets this ontology as describing the following situation. There is a divine substance, God, which produces “by generation or emanation [generatio vel emanatio]” (CC 25, L 84) a mediating substance, a being mutable in the sense that it can always become better or more godlike.9 The divine substance then works through the mediating substance to produce created substances – including ourselves and other finite individuals – which are mutable in the sense that they can always become better or worse, more or less godlike. The most significant consequence of this ontology is that all created individuals are of the same kind. As many scholars have observed, this is the central part of Conway’s case against the various forms of mind-body dualism that she considers and rejects in the course of her Principles.10 The dualism of Descartes fails, for example, because the distinction between thought and extension does not mark an ontological difference; both spirits and bodies are created substances, and any further differences among them are mere a matter of modes or properties, rather than of substance.11 And the fact that a substance bears some extended modes does not entail that it bears no modes of thought. Thus: [C]reation is one entity or substance in respect to its nature or essence, as demonstrated above, so that it only varies according to its modes of existence, one of which is corporeality. There are many degrees of this so that any thing can approach or recede more or less from the condition of a body or spirit. Moreover, because spirit is the more excellent of the two in the true and natural order of things, the more spiritual a certain body becomes . . . the closer it comes to God. (CC 42) Conway is thus an essence monist: she holds that all created individuals have the same nature or essence.12 She relies upon this point throughout the remainder of the Principles to undermine a variety of different forms of dualism or materialism.13 Conway wields this monistic conception of the created world in surprising and powerful ways, and it is without a doubt one of the most interesting parts of her metaphysics. Strangely, though, she does not appeal to monism when she makes her case against essentialism about species membership. There, as I will argue, she relies upon metaethical considerations instead.

2. The Participation Argument Conway describes her target as the view that we must assign “specific entities . . . their own distinct essences and attributes [specificas rerum Entitates in distinctis suis Essentiis & Essentialibus attributis]” (CC 32; L 92). She says little more than this to characterize the view she has in mind, but it is clear from her examples – which range from humans and horses

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to ice and stones – that the species in question need not be biological. We might more broadly understand her concern to be with natural kinds, or sortal properties that carve the created world into two or more nonempty classes.14 With this caveat in place, the view at issue can be called Essentialism about species membership: The essence of a created individual includes that individual’s species. Now, one very straightforward reason Conway has for rejecting this view is that, as we have seen, she is an essence monist: she believes all creatures share the same essence. Insofar as she allows for the existence of more than one species, she has reason to reject the claim that the essence of a created thing refers to any species more fine-grained than being a created thing. The interpretation of Conway’s monism has been the subject of much recent debate, but all parties to the debate concur on this point.15 I agree that Conway’s ontology gives her reason to reject essentialism about species membership. Strikingly, though, the passage in which Conway actually does reject that thesis explicitly appeals only to the fact that it would place limits on creatures’ “participation in divine goodness” (CC 32), which Conway regards as potentially “infinite” or unlimited. That is, although Conway has ontological resources to reject essentialism about species membership, the argument she actually uses is one that provides metaethical reasons for rejecting that view instead. To understand these reasons, it will be helpful to examine more closely her conception of the good. On Conway’s view, strongly influenced by her studies of Plato and Plotinus, all creatures participate to some extent in divine goodness.16 For all creatures are created by one and the same divine substance, and as we have seen, Conway takes this to imply that all creatures inherit that divine substance’s communicable attributes in a limited degree – including, among other things, goodness and justice. Now, the manner in which any individual creature participates in these divine attributes at any time during its existence will be contingent upon its species. For instance, Conway writes that a horse is “a creature endowed by its creator with different degrees of perfection, such as not only bodily strength but also certain notions, so to speak, of how to serve his master” (CC 32).17 Presumably a good human life will involve activities quite different from those involved in a good horse life. But both forms of life are ways of participating in the good. Taken on its own, this is not a particularly novel view. It recalls Plotinus’s conclusion at Enneads I.4, already quoted, that ‘living’ .  .  . is used in one way of plants, in another of irrational animals, in various ways by things distinguished from each other by

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However, Conway holds not only that all creatures participate in divine goodness, but that all creatures have an unlimited potential to increase their degree of participation in the good. It is this view, I argue, that motivates her to reject essentialism about species membership. The explicit rationale that Conway provides for rejecting essentialism about species membership is, as I noted already, that it places limits on a creature’s potential to participate in divine goodness. As she sees it, carving up the created world as the species essentialist does “obscures the glory of the divine attributes so that it cannot shine with its due splendor in creatures” (Ibid). Her argument runs as follows: For if a creature were entirely limited by its own individuality and totally constrained and confined within the very narrow boundaries of its own species to the point that there was no mediator through which one creature could change into another, then no creature could attain further perfection and greater participation in divine goodness [nec ulla ad ulteriorem perfectionem, majoremque divinae bonitatis participationem evehi], nor could creatures act and react upon each other in different ways. (CC 32) I take it that in this passage Conway is offering us a modus tollens with an implicit premise: 1. If the essence of a creature includes its species, then its species would place limits on its potential to “attain further perfection and greater participation in divine goodness” (CC 32). 2. There are no limits to a creature’s potential to attain further perfection and a greater degree of participation in divine goodness. 3. So, the essence of a creature does not include its species. The thought seems to be that if the species of a creature were essential to it, this would impose a fixed limit on that creature’s degree of participation in the good. But this would be in some sense to limit “the glory of the divine attributes” insofar as they are manifest in creation, or so Conway seems to think. Call this the Participation Argument against essentialism about species membership. The justification for the first premise in the Participation Argument is straightforward enough. Even the best and noblest horse remains stymied by principled moral reasoning, or for that matter by the use of a doorknob. The form of a horse, the shape of its body, the structure of its brain:

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all of these characteristics serve both to define and to constrain its potential to participate in the good. Thus, if the essence of a particular creature includes being a horse, inscribed within its very nature are certain limits on the degree to which that creature can participate in the good. This thought is clearly connected to the problem I described at the outset. What Conway has recognized is that if essentialism about species membership is true, there could be no genuine facts about whether an individual would be better off if it were in a state that is incompatible with its species.18 A frustrated pet owner, after her dog steals a chocolate bar from the table, says, ‘If only I could make you understand that chocolate will hurt your stomach! It would be so much better for you to be able to talk’. The owner is imagining a world in which her dog is able to understand her warning about the deleterious effects of chocolate. Yet the dog’s inability to understand such things is part and parcel of his canine nature. The species essentialist concludes that the owner is imagining an impossible world. For the dog to understand his owner’s warning, he would have to be something different from what he is and must be: a dog. However, where many today might be inclined to accept the antecedent and infer the consequent – concluding, among other things, that the highest good of a horse is essentially different from the highest good of a human – Conway runs the argument in a different direction. She holds that a creature’s potential for participation in the good must be unlimited. A fortiori, a creature’s potential must not be limited by constraints imposed by its species. If the highest good of the horse is not constrained by its horseness, it must be capable of transcending its species. Or, again, to make sense of the fact that the dog would really be better off with a degree of understanding that surpasses what any dog is capable of, we must deny that he is essentially a dog. That is the logic of Conway’s argument. Still, we might reasonably wonder why a creature’s potential for goodness is supposed to be unlimited in this way. What justifies this claim? I can find little in the text to motivate this premise besides a piece of text that Conway includes in the section immediately following the presentation of the Participation Argument. There, she writes, [S]ince the divine power, goodness, and wisdom has created good creatures so that they may continually and infinitely move towards the good through their own mutability, the glory of their attributes shines more and more. And this is the nature of all creatures, namely that they be in continual motion or operation, which most certainly strives for their further good (just as for the reward and fruit of their own labor), unless they resist that good by a willful transgression and abuse of the impartial will created in them by God. (CC 32)

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The reference here to God’s power, goodness, and wisdom may be shorthand for a further argument that the possibility of a creature that can attain no further perfection is incompatible with God’s nature. There is no indication of how this further argument might go, except that the continual improvement of creatures serves to glorify the divine attributes. What is clear is Conway’s conclusion: there are in principle no limits to the degrees of goodness or perfection that individuals could attain. This is the way that each individual manifests divine goodness, and the way that each individual is godlike.

3. Metaethical Consequences of the Participation Argument The immediate metaethical consequence of the Participation Argument is straightforward: it allows us to make sense of facts about the good of a created individual that are independent of its species. What is good for an individual is not indexed (solely) to its present species or form; thus, there is no special problem posed by evaluative facts about whether it would be good or bad for that individual to have a different species or form. Would I be better off with a dog’s life or not? On Conway’s view, this is a fair question, not a request for a vacuous frivolity, as an essentialist about species membership would suppose. One objection that might be raised here, however, is that on this view it is unclear what the content of an individual creature’s nature consists in, given that it does not include facts about the species to which that creature belongs. A human isn’t essentially human; but then what is her essence? This may sound like a purely metaphysical concern about essences, but it leads directly to a metaethical concern as well. For we might have hoped that knowledge of a creature’s essence would allow us to make judgments about its good. Most pressingly, we might have hoped that knowledge of human nature – our own nature – would lead us to knowledge of what is good for us. Conway’s view seems to imply that this sort of inference will not work. The fact that I am human is not part of my essence; so it is quite possible that what is good or bad for me cannot be discerned on the basis of my humanity alone. I think this problem is less significant than it seems. The main response is simply that Conway does allow that a great many facts about what is good or bad for an individual are determined on the basis of its present species (or form, or kind). An individual’s good is grounded both in its essence, that of a created individual, and in its present species. For example, when considering her famous example of a horse, Conway writes: Now, I ask, to what further perfection or degree of goodness of being or essence does or can a horse attain after he has performed good

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services for his master and has done what was and is appropriate for such a creature? (CC 32, emphasis added) This quote indicates that the horse’s good includes facts about what is “appropriate” given its species, even if these do not exhaust its good. There are facts about what is good for a horse insofar as it is a horse, and also facts about what is good for a horse (what “further perfection” it can attain) insofar as it is a created individual. A similar implication is present in one of Conway’s few first-order moral discussions: [A] man who has a tree in his orchard that is fruitful and grows well fertilizes and prunes it so that it becomes better and better. But if it is barren and a burden to the earth, he fells it with an ax and burns it. (CC 35) This is an odd passage, but I suggest we read it as a reflection of both facets of Conway’s conception of the good. On the one hand, there are facts about what is good for the tree insofar as it is a tree – that it is good for the tree to be fruitful and fertilized, for example. On the other hand, there are facts about what is good for the tree insofar as it is a created individual – in this case, that it be cut down and thereby transformed when it can no longer reach further excellence as a tree. In light of this distinction, then, Conway can grant that many of the facts about our good are indeed grounded in our humanity. There is another metaethical consequence of this argument – or at least Conway takes it to be a consequence of the argument – that is perhaps harder to swallow. On Conway’s view, the rejection of essentialism about species membership leads to a view we might call the universality of moral subjecthood, according to which all creatures are moral subjects. That Conway accepts the universality of moral subjecthood is clear from her discussion of “the justice of God”: We already see how the justice of God shines so gloriously in this transmutation of one species into another.  .  .  . When they become better, this justice bestows a reward and prize for their good deeds. When they become worse, the same justice punishes them with fitting penalties according to the nature and degree of their transgression. The same justice imposes a law for all creatures and inscribes it in their very natures. Whatever creature breaks this law is punished accordingly. But any creature who observes this law receives the reward of becoming better. (CC 35)

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The moral law that humans must abide by is not unique to humanity but inscribed in the nature of all creatures – and all creatures are rightly subject to reward or punishment according to their behavior. Why accept such a view? Notably, this passage comes shortly after Conway’s discussion of the Participation Argument; it seems to be a continuation of her thinking about the consequences of the view that all creatures can “attain further perfection and greater participation in divine goodness” (CC 32). The connection may seem oblique, but I think Conway has in mind something like the following line of reasoning. Once we open up questions about what a creature would be like if it were a spiritually and morally improved version of itself – treating such counterfactuals as genuine metaphysical possibilities – there is no reason to treat humans alone as subject to morality. For humans are responsible for failing to act in accordance with the divine law because (1) they have access to the law (it is inscribed in their nature) and (2) they could have acted in accordance with it. Given that the nature or essence of a human does not include her humanity, however, it cannot be her humanity that gives her access to the divine law. As the passage just quoted indicates, the divine law is imposed upon us not in virtue of our humanity but simply in virtue of our nature as created beings. Moreover, on Conway’s view, the species of an individual does not determine what it could or could not do; thus, even when an individual actually lacks psychological features we might take to be prerequisites for morality, nevertheless that individual could have had those features.19 So it is true not only of humans, but of all creatures, that they could have both (1) recognized and (2) acted in accordance with the divine law. While this interpretation involves some rational reconstruction, it would explain Conway’s readiness to consider all creatures as moral subjects, taking actions for which they may rightly be rewarded or punished.

4. Lessons for Metaethics Conway’s willingness to endorse the universality of moral subjecthood, if nothing else, should highlight for us the distance between her metaethical views and those in vogue today. This may make it seem as though the study of her system has little to offer the contemporary metaethicist. However, I will conclude by outlining one way in which Conway’s system draws our attention to some hidden assumptions about essentialism that are at work in an influential family of contemporary metaethical views about the good. A number of authors over the past 40 years or so have developed versions of the view that a person’s normative reasons – loosely, the practical or moral reasons that count for or against that person’s acting in certain ways – are (or are determined by) facts about an idealized version of that person. (I’ll use ‘reason’ as shorthand for ‘normative reason’ from here

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on.) This literature is likely more familiar than the scholarly conversation on Anne Conway, so a few key examples should suffice to illustrate the general strategy. Peter Railton (1986, 16) writes, [A]n individual’s good consists in what he would want himself to want, or to pursue, were he to contemplate his present situation from a standpoint fully and vividly informed about himself and his circumstances, and entirely free of cognitive error or lapses of instrumental rationality. On the assumption that a person has a reason to do what it is good for him to do, this suggests that we have a reason to do what this ideal version of ourselves would want to want in our situation. In a similar vein, Michael Smith (1994, 151) proposes that [W]hat it is desirable for us to do in certain circumstances – let’s call these circumstances the ‘evaluated possible world’ – is what we, not actually as we are, but as we would be in a possible world in which we are fully rational – let’s call this the ‘evaluating possible world’ – would want ourselves to do in those circumstances. Thus, Smith continues, “facts about what it is desirable for us to do are constituted by the facts about what we would advise ourselves to do if we were perfectly placed to give ourselves advice” (152). Again, given the assumption that we have a normative reason to do whatever it is desirable for us to do, this suggests that we have a normative reason to do what we would be advised to do by an idealized version of ourselves. Without worrying too much about the differences among such views – which are important when weighing them against one another but are not so important for my purposes here – we can characterize the strategy in Smith’s terms. Call it the Ideal adviser strategy: x has a normative reason to A if a perfectly rational counterpart of x would advise x to A. The ideal adviser strategy has a number of benefits, not least of which is that it is a naturalistic way of generating normative reasons. It also makes easy sense of many ordinary cases. (We do not typically even need to resort to a strictly ideal version of ourselves, either. Although that neck tattoo really seemed desirable when I was drunk, in the sober light of day I see that it is not really so.) There is a significant literature raising difficulties for such accounts.20 My aim here is more modest: I want to show that those who pursue the ideal adviser strategy must either accept essentialism about species membership or the universality of moral subjecthood. I will focus on

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biological species in developing this point, but recall that ‘species’ here could include all natural kinds – not only such biological kinds as being human but also such kinds as being rational.21 The dilemma may therefore be reframed as follows: if the ideal adviser theorist wishes to reject the universality of moral subjecthood he must hold that an individual’s essence includes some natural kind (humanity, rationality, or whatever) that moral non-subjects lack. Although Conway’s metaethics is steeped in religious concerns and motivations that may seem distant from the ideal adviser strategy, notice that her basic insight is at its core a version of that strategy. Our good is determined at least in part by facts about more perfect versions of ourselves – the better creatures we may yet become. And, given that essentialism about species membership is false, the more perfect version of ourselves need not share our current traits (e.g., the irrationality of the drunk), or even be human at all. It is this basic line of thinking that leads Conway to accept the universality of moral subjecthood. The connection Conway draws between the metaphysics of essence and the metaethics of moral agency therefore raises the question of whether a similar dynamic may be at work in the ideal adviser strategy. It seems that it is. If we deny essentialism about any species membership, it seems that it would be arbitrary to deny that nonhuman creatures such as dogs or horses have ideally informed counterparts. Given the ideal adviser strategy, we would then be forced to say of these nonhumans that they have normative reasons to do, or not to do, certain things, even if they would not normally be reckoned as agents at all. Conway, as we have seen, endorses this conclusion. I expect most contemporary metaethicists will be eager to choose differently, accepting essentialism about species membership and thereby shutting the door on Conway’s menagerie of dubious moral subjects. This is an open and perfectly legitimate response. But I do not think there are other ways out that are not objectionably arbitrary.22 For example, you might be tempted to propose a restriction on the domain of individuals considered in the ideal adviser strategy, a restriction that does not rely on essentialism about species membership. Following Connie S. Rosati (1995, 301), for instance, we might require not only that the idealized version of x would recommend something but also that x herself is “capable of caring under ordinary optimal conditions about the fact that she would care about [something] for her actual self under a specified set of ideal conditions”. In other words, it is not enough that the ideal adviser would make a certain recommendation. You must also be able to care about that recommendation – and Conway’s menagerie cannot do that. In this way, we might try to restrict moral subjecthood to humans (and perhaps a few other very similar creatures) without accepting essentialism about species membership. Yet without essentialism about species membership to back it up, this proposal is arbitrary. Whether x could care about the advice of her ideal

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counterpart “under ordinary optimal conditions” depends on what such conditions are, and it seems that what ‘ordinary’ and ‘optimal’ here must mean is ordinary and optimal for a member of this species. The idea is to exclude dogs, for example, as moral agents because it isn’t possible for a dog to care about what his ideal adviser would recommend, even under ordinary and optimal conditions for a dog. But then – given that essentialism about species membership is not supposed to be on the table – it is hard to see what justification there could be for tacking this requirement onto the ideal adviser strategy.23 One lesson of Conway’s reflections on the good, then, is that our views about the good may involve us in a great deal more metaphysical presupposition about our capacities and limits than we typically appreciate. While it is always open to us simply to accept these presuppositions when they are pointed out to us, they nevertheless represent a cost of such views that is often left hidden.

Notes 1. Over and above the basic questions about what these evaluative facts are and how we learn of them, a contemporary metaethicist might also ask what reason there is to think that such evaluative facts are prior to other sorts of moral facts, such as facts about how we ought to act. Authors such as Conway do not directly address this question, as far as I can see, so I pass over it. For an overview of the metaethical issues involved in the relationship between the evaluative and the deontic, see Michael Smith (2005, 10–21). 2. A clear example of this sort of picture can be found in, e.g., Book III of Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology; see Ficino (2001). 3. See Peter Loptson (1982) for extensive discussion of Conway’s peculiar form of essentialism; I focus in what follows only on those aspects of Conway’s view that pertain to the metaethical issues raised earlier. 4. Citations of Allison P. Coudert and Taylor Course’s translation of Conway’s Principles are to Conway (1996), hereafter ‘CC’. Where the Latin translation of the lost original manuscript is consulted, citations are also provided to Peter Loptson’s edition, Conway (1982), hereafter ‘L’. 5. For more detailed discussion of Conway’s life and her interactions with other philosophers and figures of interest, see Loptson (1982) and Sarah Hutton (2004). Useful discussions of Conway’s shifting intellectual relationship with More over the years may be found in Allison Coudert (1975) and Jasper Reid (2012, 255–78). 6. Reid (2012, 1). 7. On Conway’s Platonism, see Hutton (2018, 242–6); on her Kabbalism, see Coudert (1975); on her Quakerism, see Hutton (2004, ch. 9). 8. Notably, Hutton holds that, “Conway’s conception of goodness is primarily metaphysical rather than moral” (230). Her main argument for this claim is that Conway’s account of the good focuses so much on its ontological or metaphysical side that it is not usefully action-guiding; it “brings us no nearer to knowing what kind of conduct incurs punishment” (241). This highlights a genuine difficulty in understanding Conway’s treatment of the good and somewhat undermines my proposal to examine her as a metaethical thinker. However, I suspect that this also overstates the problem a bit; given Conway’s

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lengthy list of God’s attributes, it seems possible to make reasonable inferences about how an individual ought to strive to emulate the divine in at least some cases. For example, in virtue of the fact that God is life, we might expect Conway to see the promotion of life, whether one’s own or another’s, as good. Acts of violence and self-harm, on such a view, would qualify as sinful and worthy of punishment. The mediating substance she usually calls ‘Christ’, and not merely as a metaphor. She takes the mediating substance to be the historical Jesus; see CC Chapter 5. However, this fact does not seem to play much role in the development of her system, which relies more on a priori argument than an appeal to biblical authority. Some valuable discussions of the connection between Conway’s ontology and her philosophy of mind appear in Jane Duran (1989), Jennifer McRobert (2000), and Julia Borcherding (forthcoming). I develop one of Conway’s versions of this argument at length in John Grey (2017). There are stronger and weaker readings of Conway’s claim that creatures do not differ in their ‘substance or essence’. On one reading – endorsed primarily by Hutton (2004) and Christia Mercer (2012 and 2015) – Conway is committing herself to a form of existence monism about created substance. On another reading – endorsed by Loptson (1982), Duran (1989), Jacqueline Broad (2002), Marcy Lascano (2013), and Grey (2017) – Conway merely intends to claim that creatures are not individuated from one another by their essential features (since their essence is to be a created individual), leaving open the possibility that individual creatures are individual substances. For an alternative to these two readings, see Jessica Gordon-Roth (2018). This disagreement may be relevant insofar as Conway’s metaethics is founded upon her metaphysics of essence; however, I aim to sidestep this issue as much as possible. Notably, Conway also recognizes that some forms of materialism are consonant with the rejection of species essentialism; see her comparison of her view to Hobbes’s materialism (CC 65). The interpretation of ‘species’ in this context as referring to natural kinds is shared by Marcy Lascano. Lascano (2013, 335 n. 10) develops the reading as clearly as I have seen. Loptson suggests in his Introduction to the Principles that we should understand Conway’s view as the thesis that there are no natural kinds; see his 1982, 17. However, he takes this to require Conway to accept a haecceitistic theory of individuation and identity. The rejection of species essentialism as defined here does not in fact force Conway to accept haecceities, and I want to be clear that I am not attributing such a view to her. Emily Thomas (2018) develops a persuasive alternative to Loptson’s haecceitistic interpretation. See note 12. In his Preface to the Principles, CC 4, Henry More writes of “her persuing . . . of both Plato and Plotinus” in Latin translation. At CC 32, Conway attributes a variety of paradigmatically human mental states and cognitive abilities to nonhuman animals: “In addition, a horse exhibits anger, fear, love, memory, and various other qualities which are in human beings”. Strictly speaking, all such conditionals would be vacuously true, since their antecedents would be necessarily false – hence my use of the weaselly ‘genuine’ in describing the problem. One objection here is that Conway’s view renders useless the principle that ought implies can. For it seems that there are almost no moral demands

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that a creature could not have satisfied, on Conway’s extremely permissive notion of what a creature can do or become; thus, creatures seem destined not only to be moral subjects but to be terrible moral subjects. There are two points to make in reply to this apt concern. First, the idea of the created world as fallen and corrupt would be in keeping with Neoplatonism. I do not think she would find this implication of her view to be objectionable, even if we find it uncomfortable. And, second, I would suggest that we see Conway’s view as adding a further condition for using ought-implies-can. To use that claim in an appropriately rigorous way, we would first need a principled account of what an individual can do or become. Thanks to Joseph Len Miller and Kevin DeLapp for discussion of this issue. David Sobel (1994, 793), nicely captures the central difficulty for the ideal adviser strategy: “The idealization process turns us into such different creatures that it would be surprising if the well-being of the two of us, my informed self and my ordinary self, consisted in the same things”. The difficulty is figuring out just what criteria one ought to seek in an ideal adviser. Thanks to Colin Marshall for raising this point. I suspect that any attempt to fix the problem by restricting the modal accessibility relation at issue in the ideal adviser strategy will introduce some degree of arbitrariness. For instance, we might naturally want to restrict the domain of counterparts to those, roughly speaking, accessible from here and now – that is, those at suitably close possible worlds. Under this restriction, most nonhumans will lack relevantly informed and rational counterparts, so the dilemma appears to vanish. However, the restriction requires us to decide what counts as accessible from here and now, and it seems inevitable that this decision will be somewhat arbitrary. What counterparts are too distant to make the cut, and why? It is hard to see how a principled line could be drawn. Thanks to Alex King for pressing me to think more carefully about this approach. A similar concern afflicts other, even more carefully targeted versions of this approach. Suppose we modify the ideal adviser strategy as follows: x has a normative reason to A if a perfectly rational counterpart of x – who is of the same species as x – would advise x to A. The problem is that there is no reason to add the extra clause unless we take x’s species to characterize the ideal version of x, a claim that seems once again to be drawn from essentialism about species membership.

References Borcherding, Julia. Forthcoming. “Loving the Body, Loving the Soul: Conway’s Vitalist Critique of Cartesian and Morean Dualism.” Oxford Studies in the History of Early Modern Philosophy, Vol. 9. Broad, Jacqueline. 2002. Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Conway, Anne. 1982. Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, translated and edited by Peter Loptson. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Conway, Anne. 1996. The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, translated and edited by Allison P. Coudert and Taylor Corse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coudert, Allison. 1975. “A Cambridge Platonist’s Kabbalist Nightmare.” Journal of the History of Ideas 36(4): 633–52.

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Duran, Jane. 1989. “Anne Viscountess Conway: A Seventeenth Century Rationalist.” Hypatia 4(1): 64–79. Ficino, Marsilio. 2001. Platonic Theology, Vol. I, translated by Michael J. B. Allen and John Warden, edited by James Hankins and William Bowen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gordon-Roth, Jessica. 2018. “What Kind of Monist Is Anne Finch Conway?” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 4(3): 280–97. Grey, John. 2017. “Conway’s Ontological Objection to Cartesian Dualism.” Philosophers’ Imprint 17(3): 1–19. Hutton, Sarah. 2004. Anne Conway: A Woman Philosopher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hutton, Sarah. 2018. “Goodness in Anne Conway’s Metaphysics.” In Early Modern Women on Metaphysics, edited by Emily Thomas, 229–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lascano, Marcy. 2013. “Anne Conway: Bodies in the Spiritual World.” Philosophy Compass 8(4): 327–36. Loptson, Peter. 1982. “Introduction” to The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, by Anne Conway. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff. McRobert, Jennifer. 2000. “Anne Conway’s Vitalism and Her Critique of Descartes.” International Philosophical Quarterly 40(1): 21–35. Mercer, Christia. 2012. “Knowledge and Suffering in Early Modern Philosophy: G. W. Leibniz and Anne Conway.” In Emotional Minds, edited by Sabrina Ebbersmeyer, 179–206. Berlin: De Gruyter. Mercer, Christia. 2015. “Seventeenth-Century Universal Sympathy: Stoicism, Platonism, Leibniz, and Conway.” In Sympathy: A History, edited by Eric Schliesser. New York: Oxford University Press. Railton, Peter. 1986. “Facts and Values.” Philosophical Topics 14: 5–29. Reid, Jasper. 2012. The Metaphysics of Henry More. London: Springer. Rosati, Connie S. 1995. “Persons, Perspectives, and Full Information Accounts of the Good.” Ethics 105(2): 296–325. Smith, Michael. 1994. The Moral Problem. Oxford: Blackwell. Smith, Michael. 2005. “Meta-ethics.” In Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Frank Jackson and Michael Smith, 3–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sobel, David. 1994. “Full Information Accounts of Well-Being.” Ethics 104(4): 784–810. Thomas, Emily. 2018. “Anne Conway on the Identity of Creatures over Time.” In Early Modern Women on Metaphysics, edited by Emily Thomas, 131–49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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The Art of Convention An Aesthetic Defense of Confucian Ritual Irene Liu

1. A Worry About Confucian Ritual One of the most distinctive features of Confucian ethics is the prominence it accords to rites or rituals (li) passed down from the Western Zhou dynasty (c. 1122–771 BCE). Often likened to manners, rituals are conventional codes of behavior that organize how people live. The Zhou codes covered everything from funerals and feasts to workaday life, and they specified propriety in the domains of action, speech, clothing, utensils, settings, and more. During the time of Confucius, people were freely altering these traditional practices; some were even actively challenging their value. Confucians saw these developments as evidence of moral degeneration. They deemed training in ritual, and culture more generally, to be central to moral education. Saying that “returning to the rites constitutes Goodness (ren)”, Confucius went so far as to make the mastery of rituals central to virtue (A 2.4, 12.1).1 Thus it has been said that, on the Confucian view, “the only moral and social necessity is . . . to shape oneself and one’s conduct in li” (Fingarette 1972, 57). The Confucian view on ritual will be perceived by many as questionable. Rituals are conventions, and conventions are typically not considered promising standards for morality. For one thing, conventions differ greatly across cultures, whereas morality seems universal. Moreover, the prescriptions of conventions strike many as arbitrary and groundless, while those of morality are thought to be based on objective principles; thus, even sympathizers agree that Confucian concern for traditional rituals can seem “arbitrary and unsophisticated”, marred by “parochialism” and a “lack of justification” (Eno 1990, 32; Sim 2007, 3, 36–9). And a common complaint is that “Confucius’ allegiance to tradition was largely unexamined, motivated by his belief in a past Golden Age which relied upon a cultural system sanctioned by Heaven” (Ivanhoe 1990, 31). In this light, the Confucian position on ritual appears, at best, a quaint traditionalism that complements moral life and, at worst, a view that mistakes politeness for goodness. The goal of this paper is to defend the ethical significance of Confucian ritual by explaining how rituals are based in some objective ground. After

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a brief account of the Confucian view on the relationship between rituals and moral goodness, I consider three sorts of potential grounds. The first, associated with Mencius, appeals to a conception of flourishing that is derived from human nature. The second, associated with Xunzi, looks to how ritual leads to social order. I argue that both of these approaches are misguided because they fail to account for the normative fineness of rituals or the precision and detail of ritual propriety. As an alternative, I look to Xunzi for a justification of ritual in terms of the beautification of human nature. Only the last view, I argue, provides an objective ground for ritual while preserving its normative fineness. I conclude with some lessons for contemporary metaethics, arguing that a sort of Xunzian aesthetic justification is potentially useful for illuminating areas of moral life that are normatively fine.2

2. Ritual and Goodness In a famous passage of the Analects, Confucius claims that restraining oneself and returning to rituals constitutes Goodness (ren) (A 12.1). Goodness is the highest Confucian virtue. In the narrow sense, it refers to benevolence or kindness. But in the broad sense being employed here, Goodness represents moral perfection, or the comprehensive virtue of being “most fully and perfectly a human being” (Fingarette 1983, 339). By affirming the connection between ritual and Goodness, Confucius gives ritual a prominent place in his moral theory. In this section I lay out the basic contours of his claim.3 To begin, one must recognize that Goodness is an essentially social achievement. Confucians take for granted that humans are social and, moreover, that humans necessarily exist within some community. A person is placed into a social context with parents, grandparents, and others from birth. Confucians hold that these relationships form the rudimentary structure of moral life. Ideally, a person learns how to relate to others in this original context, and subsequent moral development extends these skills and habits of relating to those outside the home. For this reason, filial piety – the virtue of children in relating to their parents – is said to be the root of Goodness (A 1.2). By extending and developing this virtue, the Good person excels in all the distinct roles that he occupies in society – as a filial son, a respectful brother, a just minister, a deferential subject, and the like. Successfully navigating one’s social roles requires making appropriate distinctions, and this is where rituals come in. The relationship between parent and child is decidedly not like that between, say, brothers or a ruler and his ministers. Rituals are distinction-making practices (X 5.115–21).4 They make distinctions by articulating the various responsibilities and privileges accorded to different parties in a relationship. Through ritual, it becomes possible for parties to mutually recognize and play their roles,

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as well as to express and receive love, respect, and consideration. As such, these practices determine what counts as acting well within particular relationships in highly specific and precise ways. One sort of acting well is filial piety, and rituals governing the treatment of parents delineate this virtue. Through practicing certain forms of address, manners of greeting, forms of mourning, and so forth, one becomes a filial child. Entirely different sets of rituals apply in the relationships between brothers, a ruler and his ministers, and so forth. Learning the rituals appropriate to one’s roles and stations constitutes “taking one’s place in society” (A 2.4, 16.13). But Confucians are not interested in mere compliance, empty formalities, or “foppish pedantry” (A 6.18). The simple performance of ritual is not the same as its mastery. Rituals are practices that can be perfected. Beyond external measures, the proper performance of ritual involves having the right attitudes, emotions, and thoughts. The person who has mastered ritual acts out of a second nature, according to which he spontaneously and with pleasure does what ritual requires. This person is Good, and he is able to “follow his heart desires without overstepping the bounds of propriety” (A 2.4). Thus, in perfecting rituals, individuals can connect with others in meaningful and emotionally satisfying ways. Through shared rituals, individuals weave a rich tapestry of bonds with others. They become linked to ancestors, joined with their contemporaries, and connected to future generations. Fingarette notes that the resulting community exemplifies what is most human about us: “Shared tradition brings men together, enables them to be men. Every abandonment of tradition is a separation of men. Every authentic reanimation of tradition is a reuniting of men” (Fingarette 1972, 69). On the Confucian view, this social achievement is distinctively human. While other animals may be social, only humans can achieve community and, hence, Goodness (X 9.316–38). Observing the Zhou rituals is the way to achieve Goodness and, thus, to live up to the promise of humanity. But there is reason to be skeptical of these practices. Confucians attribute rituals to the ancient sage kings. This is, in part, how they explain the goodness of these practices, and they do not seem to be bothered by the fact that rituals are human inventions. However, the sages were human beings and, thus, despite their wisdom and success, not infallible. For this reason the Confucian view is vulnerable to the objection that rituals are not based in any more fundamental reality than mere tradition or human agreement. There is no obvious objective standard against which to evaluate these practices; thus, there is no clear way of knowing whether any given ritual is worth following. On this score some have worried that rituals simply serve to entrench authoritarian power or to promote pernicious social hierarchies. While Confucians are optimistic about the legitimacy of Zhou rituals, optimism alone is unconvincing.

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If ritual is grounded in nothing other than mere tradition or agreement, their view is far less attractive as a viable ethics. In the following sections I draw on Mencius and Xunzi, two of Confucius’s most influential followers, to consider three ways to justify the Zhou rituals. A successful justification must explain the normative authority of ritual by appealing to more objective grounds than mere tradition or agreement, while also maintaining the integrity of Zhou rituals as such.

3. Mencian Naturalism Scholars such as May Sim and Jiyuan Yu have attempted to defend Confucian ritual by appealing to a metaphysics of nature. This approach, which is attributed to Mencius, is based on extracting a teleological view of human nature from Confucian texts: One can perceive an inchoate view of nature and teleology in Confucius because he is quite clear that there is an excellence that all are to attain, that this is fulfilling for the human being, and that a certain sort of culture is required for its cultivation. (Sim 2007, 169) On this view, Zhou rituals are justified insofar as they contribute to realizing an ideal of human excellence or flourishing that is derived from human nature. In this section I offer a reconstruction of this view, which might be described as a sort of Mencian naturalism.5 Mencian naturalism holds that human nature provides the end or telos of normal human development.6 On this view, humans have certain capacities by nature, and these capacities determine how they should develop. Many human capacities, such as those for movement, perception, and digestion, are shared with nonhuman animals. But humans are also distinguished from other species by rational and emotional capacities. Specifically, Mencius asserts that it is part of human nature to have “hearts” (xin) of compassion, disdain, deference, and approval and disapproval (M 2A6, 6A6).7 These “hearts” are natural dispositions for otherregarding feelings that arise spontaneously in reaction to events such as the suffering of children or animals (M 1A7, 2A2). Their existence does not require training, and they are uniquely human. On this view, these natural dispositions point the way to a distinctively human good that is based in objective facts about our nature. That does not mean, of course, that all or even most humans are good. It is necessary to cultivate one’s nature in the proper way. Mencius illustrates this thought with the agricultural image of growing grain (M 2A2). The “hearts” of virtue are likened to “sprouts”, or incipient buds of moral growth (M 2A6). Just as seedlings can grow into flourishing trees when

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properly cultivated, people can grow into flourishing humans when their hearts are properly tended. Training and nurture can create the right habits of action and feeling. Mencius refers to a process of reflection (si) and preserving one’s “hearts”, which means building on natural emotional dispositions in order to realize human excellence (M 4B28, 6A6, 6A15). A certain amount of effort, working with the grain of nature, is necessary for proper human development. On Mencian naturalism, moral perfection is the fullest realization of human nature, and moral failing is tantamount to natural defect. Extending the tree analogy, one could say that “[j]ust as we take healthy specimens as the ideal for oak trees, [Mencius] took the sages as providing a normative standard for human beings” (Ivanhoe 2002, 12). The sages were morally perfect human beings. On this view, they were also ideal human specimens. Moral perfection is what happens when an individual develops according to his nature and achieves flourishing. Individuals who fail to achieve the virtues are, like the deformed tree, naturally defective. For Mencius, “our genuine human nature is something the maturity of which leads to Confucian virtues” (Yu 2007, 68). Thus the fullest realization of our human capacities results in virtues such as benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom (M 2A6). Importantly, this conception of human flourishing is “highly general” and represents only a “generic map of the human ‘way’” (Sim 2007, 158, 163). At this level of description, we can say that human flourishing requires attaining generic virtues that apply across cultures and history. So, for example, Aristotle’s andreia and Confucian yong correspond to courage, while phronesis and zhi correspond to wisdom. Since human flourishing is derived from human nature, and human nature is the same for all humans, the basic content of human flourishing will be the same for all humans. But exactly how individuals realize human flourishing will depend on the culture in which they live. Practically speaking, virtues must be realized in determinate contexts, and the cultivation of virtue necessarily bears the stamp of some culture (Yu 2007, 99–100). Given the nature of human development, some generic family values, say, will be universally required for human flourishing. Rituals that govern proper forms of address, greetings, and mourning periods embody ways to make those values determinate. In this way, rituals serve to “specify a generic, specieswide moral content” that is based on human nature (Sim 2007, 113–14).8 Accordingly, it is possible to justify the Zhou rituals by reference to a natural ideal of human flourishing. This ideal is supported by a metaphysical account that “yokes principles of human nature with principles of nature [that] generally helps us to understand that there is an objective basis for the human good above and beyond custom or ritual” (Sim 2007, 14). Rituals are justified to the degree that they help realize this ideal. This approach grounds ritual on an objective standard for human

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flourishing. So, if a particular ritual is not adequately contributing to human flourishing, it should be altered or eliminated for one that does. The proof of the superiority of the Zhou rituals, then, lies in the fact that the “Zhou overcame the shortcomings of the two preceding dynasties and developed culture to a flourishing state” (Yu 2007, 41).

4. Normative Fineness Something close to Mencian naturalism is endorsed by many contemporary virtue ethicists.9 This view has its critics, and some of their criticisms will extend to the Mencian account of ritual.10 But I do not wish to consider those objections here, for it is more important to see how this approach fails to provide an adequate defense of the normative authority of ritual in particular. On the Mencian view, normativity is based on human flourishing and the standard virtues. Rituals are not themselves conceived as a source of normativity. What makes a particular ritual morally necessary has nothing to do with the ritual itself but rather with its relation to a formal ideal. That is why Yu goes so far as to claim that: [A]lthough Confucius gives a central place to the general values and spirit implied in these ritual forms and systems, he does not pay much attention to specific rites. It is the spirit and essence of the ritual system of the Zhou on which he focuses. (2007, 102) Accordingly, Yu claims that Confucius does “not [require] us to adhere to every detailed regulation” because the customs are relatively “minor matters” (Yu 2007, 102). This is not just a throwaway remark. The attitude Yu recommends is a logical consequence of the Mencian view. Rituals are necessary because human life is lived in terms of concrete particulars and virtues must be instantiated in determinate ways. But it is the determinable “spirit and essence of the ritual system” that counts, not the specific practices. While this is certainly a possible view on rituals, it is incompatible with seeing ritual as having robust ethical significance. To do that, one must appreciate what I will call the normative fineness of rituals. What this means is that rituals prescribe very determinate, highly specific ways to behave, and the details of these prescriptions matter. Thus Confucius gives advice such as, “Do not look unless it is in accordance with ritual; do not listen unless it is in accordance with ritual; do not speak unless it is in accordance with ritual; do not move unless it is in accordance with ritual” (A 12.1). The attitude expressed here certainly shows concern about adherence to detailed regulations. The point of discouraging looking, listening, speaking, or moving without ritual is to convey a sense of

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comprehensiveness and precision. It matters, say, that one should mourn for three years rather than one, that one should bow once before entering a staircase rather than after, and that one should use six rows of dancers rather than eight (A 17.21, 3.1, 9.3). An adequate justification of Confucian ritual needs to explain why a particular ritual should be done this way rather than that. However, a general account of flourishing and the virtues cannot explain how or why these sorts of details could have ethical significance. All the Mencian view can do is acknowledge a general need for some expressions of respect, care, and the like. In this way, the view fails to account for one of the most distinguishing features of ritual. The details of ritual appear arbitrary. Perhaps the Mencian naturalist can say that ritualistic details are determined by considerations of “ease and convenience” (Nussbaum 1988, 44). These considerations are not ethically significant, but they will impact the shape that rituals take. To support this point, this theorist might look to rare cases in which Confucius accepted certain alterations to tradition. For instance, he endorsed the use of silk caps for a ceremony that traditionally called for linen caps because they were more economical (A 9.3). This revision to ritualistic detail is judged appropriate in light of extraethical considerations. Accordingly, the proponent of Mencian naturalism can say that the details of ritual are not arbitrary, but their normative significance is based on considerations outside of her purview. However, this account cannot explain why considerations of ease and convenience are not always overriding. Why would the economic considerations that applied in the adoption of silk caps not apply to rituals governing the employment of dancers, the thickness of coffins, or the length of mourning periods? Confucius was not sympathetic to shortening the length of a mourning ritual despite being apprised of the economic inefficiencies of this practice (A 17.21). So what is the difference between the use of silk caps and the shortened period of mourning? The standard of flourishing is unable to make this distinction. On this standard, a silk cap is just as good as a linen cap, but so is one year of mourning rather than three. Nature, which is a general and universal concept, is not a precise or fine-grained enough source for making these sorts of distinctions.11 Thus the main problem with Mencian naturalism is that it cannot account for the normative fineness of ritual. While this view describes a possible position on ritual, it is not a position that explains the Confucians’ specific devotion to the Zhou practices. And that, as I understand it, is the Confucian position that needs elucidating.

5. Xunzian Consequentialism The problems with Mencian naturalism suggest taking a look at Xunzi. Less admired than Mencius, Xunzi is far more concerned with emphasizing the need for culture and learning in moral development. Xunzi

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denies that moral goodness can be conceived as the fulfillment of natural development. Instead, goodness is a product of deliberate human effort (wei) to artificially transform the “raw material” of human nature (X 19.359–60). As scholars have noted, Xunzi’s views on ritual are complex and multifaceted, and no one interpretation clearly captures all strands of his views (Cua 1979, 1989).12 In this section I lay out the contours of a Xunzian view according to which the “Way of the sage kings is correct because of its consequences, in particular because of its unique ability to produce social order” (Robins 2018). This view might be described as a sort of Xunzian consequentialism. While it ultimately falls short, the view may be especially tempting to those from the Western tradition of moral philosophy.13 To appreciate Xunzi’s view, we must begin with his claim that human nature is “bad” (X 23). As many have cautioned, this claim should not be understood to mean that humans are evil, sinful, or immoral by nature. Rather, it would be more accurate to say that “we begin life in a state of utter moral blindness”, filled with emotions and desires that tend toward chaos and strife (Ivanhoe 2000, 32). Xunzi thinks that humans naturally desire profit, that they naturally tend toward cruelty when they dislike others, and that their desires for sensual pleasures have no natural limit (X 23.1–18). These features tend toward conflict, which is harmful in rather obvious ways. But the human tendency toward strife has no moral significance in and of itself. Indeed, Xunzi also recognizes primitive social inclinations in human nature: humans naturally form attachments and feel grief at the loss of loved ones, and they can be moved to feel joy in the presence of others (X 19.467–77). These features foster peaceful coexistence and cooperation, which are clearly beneficial for social animals like us. Nevertheless, the positive aspects of human nature tend to be outweighed by the negative aspects, and that is why human nature is bad. Against this background, one response to the justification question is suggested by Xunzi’s famous account of the origins of ritual: Human are born having desires. When they have desires but do not get the objects of their desires, then they cannot but seek some means of satisfaction. If there is no measure or limit to their seeking, then they cannot help but struggle with each other. If they struggle with each other then there will be chaos, and if there is chaos then they will be impoverished. The former kings hated such chaos, and so they established rituals and yi [righteousness] in order to divide things among people, to nurture their desires, and to satisfy their seeking. (X 19.1–9) Building on the idea that human nature is ‘bad’, this passage emphasizes the role of rituals in promoting individual satisfaction and social harmony. Rituals ensure that we will get along with each other and facilitate

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the distribution of goods, both material and non-material, in ordered ways. Rituals also work internally by regulating our desires and emotions such that we come to feel satisfied with our lot: “More than merely rationing goods to equalize satisfaction, [Xunzi] hopes actually to achieve general satisfaction of desires by directly manipulating the dispositions to fulfill those desires” (Hansen 2000, 311–15). The view expressed in this passage resembles rule consequentialism, according to which a set of rules is justified by the overall benefit that adherence to those rules would produce. Rule consequentialism differs from act consequentialism in that the subject of calculation is act types rather than specific acts. For example, rule consequentialists might generally prohibit murder, theft, and lying, and offer injunctions to keep promises and help those in need. These rules describe general categories of actions, whose contribution to the general good is rather obvious. Rituals specify act types that are arranged in complementary ways by roles and relations.14 By following these rules, individuals can avoid conflict and sustain cooperative relationships. In this case, “[c]ontention among men is regarded here as a disvalue, and orderly conduct a value” (Cua 1979, 376). Thus, the justification of rituals can be based in their instrumental contribution to social order. Unlike Mencian naturalism, this view can explain why rituals are normatively essential. What makes a particular ritual morally necessary has to do with the consequences of rituals themselves. One acts rightly when one follows the rules of ritual and wrongly when one breaks them because these rules bring about social order. While a particular ritual violating act may actually contribute to social order, this act would still be wrong on the rule consequentialist approach. The rightness of an act consists in the general tendency of the rule under which it is done to bring about good consequences. Thus, on this view, there is no temptation to dismiss customs as relatively “minor matters” (Yu 2007, 102). But while it captures the normative necessity of ritual, Xunxian consequentialism still fails to capture ritual’s normative fineness. Social order is a rather generic goal that is potentially maximized through a variety of means. In contrast, the rules of ritual specify behavior at a very fine-grained, detailed level. Rituals require having a certain number of dancers, mourning for a certain number of months, and the like, and the relation between these detailed requirements and social order is not at all obvious. It is critical, on the Confucian view, to maintain ritualistic details and to preserve the ways of propriety. But according to rule consequentialism, it is not clear why one particular set of rituals rather than another should be followed. It seems likely that a multitude of rituals varying in detail could equally promote social order. Perhaps a rule consequentialist could give a consequentialist rationale for preserving ritual in its normative fineness. After people have done things a certain way for a certain amount of time, there is a benefit to

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preserving those ways. Updating the rules of ritual to maximize benefit would cost time and energy. And there are positive benefits to continuity and tradition. People like to feel connected to the past and the future. Thus, the consequentialist could agree that there is a presumption in favor of preserving existing rituals in all their fine-grained detail. A change is necessitated only when the benefits of change outweigh the benefits of preserving continuity. The normative fineness of ritual is, thus, explained through a presumption in favor of tradition as an efficient way to maintain social order. This response essentially admits a fundamental arbitrariness of ritual. On this view, the sages could have made the period of ritualistic mourning one year rather than three. In terms of procuring social order, there is no difference between these periods, and the choice of one or the other is arbitrary. But now that the three-year ritual has been established, that is what it should be, so long as evidence of bad consequences outweighing the benefits cannot be produced. The arbitrariness of the original decision no longer matters. But it is unclear whether a proponent of Confucian ritual would accept this account. It does not accord with the sense, voiced by various Confucians, that the Zhou rituals were superior to others (A 3.14). And it is undermined in places where Confucius suggests that the ability to understand and explain specific sacrifices constitutes a grasp of moral reality (A 3.11). On the face of it, justifying rituals seems to require providing an account of their normative fineness. When one seeks to explain why a mourning ritual is a specific length of time, it does not suffice to be told that there are general benefits to preserving tradition. An account that justifies ritual in its normative fineness would be preferable to one that explained normative fineness under the generic good of tradition. None of this is to deny that rituals have beneficial consequences. These practices likely do contribute to maintaining social order and harmony. But these beneficial consequences might not exhaust their ethical significance. That is to say, these consequences might simply be desirable side effects rather than justificatory grounds. Perhaps Xunzi found it necessary to adopt this approach against the criticisms of people like Mozi, who argued on consequentialist grounds that Confucian rituals were impractical and useless.15 But at other points, such as when he claims that logicians and pragmatists fail to understand ritual, Xunzi suggests that this way of justifying ritual is wrong (X 19.147–54). In the following section I propose another Xunzian approach meant to capture the normative fineness of ritual forms.

6. Xunzian Aestheticism A better justification for ritual looks to the content of rituals rather than an external good they are supposed to promote. Accordingly, the

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justification I propose focuses on rituals as art, a comparison invited by Xunzi’s account of moral education. Xunzi likens moral education to the process of bending a straight piece of wood into a wheel or a chunk of metal into a blade, images that underscore the artificiality and difficulty of becoming good (X 1.3–11; 23.19–22). In crafting wheels and blades, humans impose artificial forms onto rigid and unyielding natural materials. Similarly, in moral education, humans impose artificial forms onto a difficult and unruly human nature. As Xunzi puts it, “human nature is the original beginning and the raw material, and deliberate effort is what makes it patterned, ordered, and exalted” (X 19.359–61). The patterns referenced here are rituals, which can be understood as forms imposed on the raw material of human nature. In this section I draw on material from both the Xunzi and the Analects to elucidate what might be described as a Xunzian aestheticism, according to which the justification of ritual is based on certain aesthetic properties.16 Xunzian aestheticism is predicated on the observation that ritual gives shape to the raw material of human nature. Recall that Xunzi views humans in their natural state as animals with desires, emotions, and attachments that tend toward chaos. However, these natural impulses are also susceptible to formation and regulation. Rituals reform human nature by specifying behaviors that “cut”, “polish”, “carve”, and “grind” natural tendencies in particular ways (A 1.15). For instance, rituals can cut or curtail selfish inclinations through behaviors that privilege the comfort of others, and they can polish or enhance natural attachments through behaviors that express consideration and care. They can amplify pleasures through ceremonies that bring people together and release the grief of loss through observances that express the depth of our attachment to others. Through the performance of ritual, one’s natural desires and emotions take on new forms. The question of justification requires establishing legitimacy for the new forms introduced by ritual, and an aesthetic justification is not far in the offing. In one illustrative exchange, Confucius and a student compare rituals to makeup on a beautiful woman’s face (A 3.8). Makeup enhances and accentuates features of the human face – eyeliner defines the contours of the eyes, lipstick augments the color of the lips, and powder minimizes blemishes on the skin. The function of makeup is not merely decorative, and makeup is not applied to the face in any way whatsoever. So, while blue and green are beautiful colors, they are (traditionally) not applied to the lips. This is because makeup is supposed to create an idealized human visage, and to do this, its application must reflect certain truths about the natural structure of the face. The application of makeup is both bounded by the contours of nature and aimed at improving it. The beautified face is an artificial creation that improves upon how the face looks in a natural or unadorned state, and an application of makeup is successful to the degree that the face is beautified.

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In a thematically similar passage, Xunzi claims that “ritual cuts off what is too long and extends what is too short. It subtracts from what is excessive and adds to what is insufficient. It achieves proper form for love and respect” (X 19.304–6). This passage also suggests that rituals impose artificial forms on human nature to produce a beautified humanity. In producing new forms, rituals cannot prescribe behaviors that are strongly contravened or made impossible by human nature. A ritual that prescribed the suppression of an inexorable need for sleep, say, could not work. At the same time, rituals seek to improve natural desires, emotions, and attachments. Desires or emotions that are naturally favorable can be accentuated, intensified, and shaped in ways that are more attractive. Desires and emotions that are naturally destructive can be minimized, redirected, or suppressed. The forms prescribed by ritual are truthful to the degree that they reveal an idealized humanity, which is an elevated version of what a human being is. As an example of how ritual creates a beautified humanity, consider the mourning ritual that requires a person to refrain from work and pleasure for three years after the death of a parent. Confucius explains that the mourning period is this length of time because “a child is completely dependent upon the care of his parents for the first three years of life” (A 17.21; see also X 19.448–66). Thus the length of mourning mirrors the years of life during which a person is completely dependent on his parents. The period of dependency and the sadness in death are based in nature: birds and beasts also have parent-child relationships, and their children may even feel pain at the loss of their parents (X 5.115–21; 19.467–78). However, for human beings, rituals that govern interactions between parents and children transform the natural relationships into “intimate relationships” (X 5.115–21). So, when one’s parents die, mourning rituals, in particular, give form to natural grief, thereby elevating the emotion to express something about the deepest attachments in human life. The enhanced grief reflects a truth about how values and meaning are embodied in the lives of limited, natural creatures like us. The person who performs this ritual well does not merely refrain from work and pleasures for three years. He also experiences the appropriate emotions in a way that emphasizes his existential debt to his parents. In practicing the ritual, his natural emotions and attachments are transformed to embody an idealized, beautified humanity. It is important to underscore that this aesthetic justification is objective. The beauty of the three-year mourning ritual is not a matter of purely subjective taste. This beauty is grounded in features of human nature, both what it is like and what it could be. There are facts, known through experience, about what human nature is like, and aesthetic truths about how features of human nature can be enhanced or degraded. Similar kinds of judgments can be made about how successfully an artisan, say, works with wood to create a piece of furniture.17 The beauty of the furniture

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depends, in part, on how well the wood is used, and this evaluation must take into account physical features such as the grain, color, and hardness of the wood species. In at least this sense, there is an objective truth about whether or not the artisan’s work is beautiful. That is not to suggest, of course, that the judgment of beauty is a straightforwardly empirical matter. The evaluation of ritual requires the sort of attention and sensitivity that is used in evaluating art. A judge of ritual must be able to elucidate how the new forms constitute an improvement over or enhancement of raw human nature, and there are no mechanical formulae for this sort of evaluation. Nonetheless, these judgments can be made and assessed in a way that has a claim to objectivity. Thus the Zhou rituals may be justified insofar as they beautify human nature. These conventions transform human animals that are needy, destructive, and only erratically oriented to others into beings capable of meaningful relationships and communities (X 5.104–21). This artificial achievement features the most distinctive and appealing of human capabilities, elevating us from merely animal to an ennobled humanity. This sort of justification is not meant to convince the immoralist, and those who are not equipped or inclined to participate in moral life will not, upon hearing this justification, be convinced of the normative authority of ritual. That is why Confucius does not even bother explaining the three-year mourning ritual to the student who claims to need only one year to mourn the death of his parents (A 17.21). But for those who are, however imperfectly, participants in moral life or those who want to be beautiful, the fact that rituals beautify human nature has normative force.

7. Normative Fineness, Revisited Xunzian aestheticism, unlike Mencian naturalism and Xunzian consequentialism, can account for the normative fineness of rituals. The aesthetic appreciation of a work of art requires considering its particular, distinguishing features. The Mona Lisa, for example, is not just a painting of a woman, and an adequate appreciation of this work requires careful attention to the particular details that make it distinctive. Similarly, the aesthetic appreciation of rituals will appeal to their distinguishing features and details. The example of the three-year mourning ritual shows how this approach is particularly suitable for accounting for normative fineness. Confucius explains that three years has symbolic value as the number of years that infants are completely dependent on their parents. Through (or, perhaps, despite) its particularity, this symbol is able to convey meaning and significance that extends beyond itself. So while the three-year period may appear random to the untrained observer, an expert would be able to appreciate its significance.18 From the aesthetic standpoint, the detailed prescriptions of ritual are not at all arbitrary.

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Yet it may appear that this response still leaves room for some degree of arbitrariness. Why could one year not suffice for symbolizing our dependence on parents? A person is even more dependent on his parents during the first year of life, and this length of time could be an equally appropriate symbol of dependency. Contingent circumstances in the original formation of particular rituals resulted in their having some aesthetic features, but different circumstances could have produced different results. Once we acknowledge this possibility, the details of ritual again seem arbitrary. This objection is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of art. Great works of art arguably have a kind of necessity that issues from an artist’s intentions. Interpretation of these works rests on the assumption that an artist had reasons for choosing certain details over others. There would be no sense to interpreting the product of arbitrariness. Thus, Alexander Nehamas describes the necessity of literary characters in the following way: Every detail concerning a character has, at least in principle, a point; it is to that extent essential to that character. In the ideal case, to change even one action on the part of a character is to cause both that character and the story to which it belongs to fall apart . . . if anything were different, indeed everything would have to be different. (1985, 164) Like a literary character, a work of art has aesthetic value as a whole, with every detail being necessary to its value; thus, even to the extent that some detail could have been different, it must be understood as having been chosen by the artist for a reason. So, too, rituals have aesthetic value as wholes, and appreciating them requires the assumption that there is sufficient reason for them to be one way rather than another. These aspects are not arbitrary, even though another person who was formulating that ritual for the first time could have made different decisions. One might worry that this response requires treating rituals as deliberate inventions. While Confucians do credit ancient sage kings with the invention of rituals, it is not very plausible to see rituals in this light. More likely, rituals came about, like most other conventions, through some combination of need, chance, and decision. Thus, to the degree that it depends on treating rituals as products of deliberate invention, Xunzian aestheticism strains credibility. Fortunately, it is not necessary to accept the narrative of sage kings or deliberate invention to see ritual in terms of art. The claim that rituals should be seen through the lens of art is not an historical claim but rather an assertion that rituals are the appropriate target of appreciation, criticism, and rational scrutiny more generally. Despite the fact that they are, in large part, products of contingency and accident, rituals still exist

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within the space of reason. They are practices that we learn, perform, and seek to perfect over the course of a lifetime. To see rituals through the lens of art is to recognize that they are not random codes of conduct. We have responsibility for practicing them, as well as revising and improving them when needed. But this point raises a second worry about Xunzian aestheticism. While this view is better able to capture normative fineness than the alternatives, one might wonder whether this improvement represents an overcorrection. If the analogy to art means that every aspect of ritual is made necessary, how can rituals be improved or, at least, altered in light of changing circumstances? Even Confucians, who were notably conservative, allowed for some alterations to ritual form. Since they appealed to external standards of success, Mencian naturalism and Xunzian consequentialism can allow for change. But it is unclear how an aestheticism that treats every aspect of ritual as being internally necessary could do the same. This worry is resolved by recognizing that rituals are patterns for performances, and changes to ritual are possible in the same way as in the performative arts. Musicians, dancers, and actors work with templates, but they can also depart from these templates to accommodate novel circumstances. To be successful, any change to a performance must be based in sound aesthetic considerations, not in mere whims or a simple desire for novelty. In the case of ritual, changes or adaptations must be grounded in considerations of how to beautify human nature in light of shifting historical contexts, technological developments, and so forth. These decisions are subject to evaluation, in the same way that an art critic can evaluate the success of changes made to a performance. Successful changes improve or support the performance while maintaining the integrity of the work. Thus Xunzian aestheticism can account for the normative fineness of ritual while also accommodating the possibility of change.

8. Aestheticism Beyond Confucian Ritual At this point I have considered three ways of justifying Confucian rituals. Mencian naturalism and Xunzian consequentialism have familiar analogs in major Western moral theories, but Xunzian aestheticism does not.19 The latter derives a standard of goodness from human nature that is not, like Mencian (or Aristotelian) naturalism, based on treating human nature as an ideal form. Instead, human nature is material out of which a beautified humanity can be created. I want to conclude with some speculative remarks on how this approach might be helpfully applied to other aspects of moral life.20 In particular, I suggest that Xunzian aestheticism, or something like it, may be promising for understanding aspects of moral life that exhibit some degree of normative fineness. Which aspects of moral life exhibit normative fineness? Manners, which are not unlike rituals, are one such aspect. These codes articulate

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proper behavior in detailed and specific ways, and failure to conform to them constitutes, to some degree, mistreatment of others. I think that virtues also exhibit normative fineness. These dispositions are individuated in extremely subtle and precise ways. To be generous, say, is not to simply give but rather to give “when one should, at the things one should, in relation to the people one should, for the reasons one should, and in the way one should” (Aristotle, NE 1106b21–23). Indeed, the virtues require a sensitivity to context that is so particularized that many scholars deny that there can be any rules or codes for virtues at all.21 One could say that the virtues require a kind of hyperbolic sense of normative fineness. The kinds of prescriptions involved in manners and virtues can be contrasted with moral principles that are maximally independent of culture, such as the prohibition on the killing of innocents. Generally speaking, the areas of moral life that exhibit normative fineness are those closest to custom or convention.22 Like styles of dress and cuisine, manners and virtues differ, sometimes quite widely, across cultures. These areas of moral life are shaped by history and contingent circumstance, and so they are not usually, if ever, established through rational means. That is to say, they have a conventional aspect. Stuart Hampshire describes the need for these conventions here: Exactly in those areas of experience where natural impulses and emotions are strongest, and where rational control and direction are weak, distinctive and conventional moral prohibitions are naturally in place and naturally respected: and they are respected for reasons largely independent of justice and of the avoidance of harm and the promotion of welfare. (Hampshire 1983, 137–8) Among the experiences where “natural impulses and emotions are strongest” and most in need of conventional regulation are sex, death, friendship, love, and war, and this is the way it will be “until humanity is transformed” (Hampshire 1983, 134–5). The existence of convention in these areas is not necessarily evidence of human deficiency, nor is it something to be overcome. Human beings are rational animals – both rational and embodied in a physical form that entails brutally given needs, desires, and impulses. As such, conventions are part of what it means to be human, and moral life will reflect this fact. Partly due to historical contingencies, the conventional aspects of moral life have tended to be overlooked by Western ethicists.23 Somewhat surprisingly, even most virtue ethicists are relatively silent on the matter of cultural practices.24 This means that collective understanding of moral life is incomplete. While rational morality has been analyzed with a refinement and subtlety that exceeds anything found in moral experience, conventional morality remains mostly un-dissected. For those interested

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in addressing this lacuna, recent work on the morality of manners is a welcome development, as is work on virtues in other moral traditions.25 But it is not just that attention should be focused on neglected areas of moral life. The dominant modes of moral theory are not designed to engage conventions and culture. As new projects call for new tools, new forms of ethical understanding are also needed. If what I have presented in this chapter is correct, Xunzian aestheticism might be useful in just that regard.26

Notes 1. All references to Confucius are taken from the Analects (A). The numbers refer to book and section. The translations come from Slingerland (2003). 2. In presenting these sources, my aim is not historical accuracy or fidelity to the text so much as extrapolating a novel angle on a topic of contemporary metaethical interest. Accordingly, my discussion glosses over some important interpretative controversies and nuances, but I hope that the result vindicates my procedure. 3. The view offered here is roughly based on Xunzi, who shows the most concern for ritual among ancient Confucians. This account has also been influenced by the work of Fingarette (1972, 1983). However, there are many questions about the exact relation between rituals and Goodness; see, for example, Shun (2002) and Li (2007). 4. References to the work of Xunzi are taken from the Xunzi (X). The numbers refer to chapter and line numbers as they appear in Hutton (2014). The translations are Hutton’s. 5. Sim and Yu also attribute this view to Aristotle. As they see it, the “ethics of Aristotle and Confucius are concerned with the development and realization of what is human qua human”, and this shared concern for the human is the basis of a common view of flourishing (Yu 2007, 23). See also Sim (2007, 163–4), Ivanhoe (2002, 37–46), Graham (1989, 117–32). The Aristotelian counterpart to Mencian naturalism is alive and well in contemporary metaethics, and this association lends a certain amount of credibility to the Mencian view. 6. Telos is obviously an Aristotelian term. Sim’s argument draws heavily from Aristotle, indeed more than from Mencius. Yu offers an extensive comparison between Mencius and Aristotle on human nature that stresses their similarities (2007, 53–67). 7. References to Mencius are taken from the Mencius (M). The numbers refer to book, part, and chapter. 8. The same idea is expressed by Martha Nussbaum (1988, 44). Nussbaum’s article represents the perspective of an Aristotelian naturalist who tries to accommodate pluralism about cultural practices. Most Aristotelians are not interested in pluralism or cultural practices. As I discuss in the conclusion, I think they should be. 9. See, for example, Philippa Foot’s Natural Goodness, Rosalind Hursthouse’s On Virtue Ethics, Alasdair MacIntyre’s Dependent, Rational Animals, and recent articles by Michael Thompson, John Hacker-Wright, and Micah Lott. 10. Famous critics of Aristotelian naturalism include Bernard Williams (Ch. 3 of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy) and John McDowell (“Two Sorts of Naturalism”). Principally, there is a worry that human nature and human flourishing are ethically inert or irrelevant concepts. In that case, the fact

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that rituals are grounded in human nature would not provide an ethical justification. To get normative fineness from the metaphysics of nature, one needs a more detailed conception of nature than it is possible to extract from human nature. Some have argued that the concept of the Way (dao), which is often likened to cosmic nature, could serve this function within Confucianism. The Way is the supremely correct pattern of Heaven, and rituals could be seen as the unique earthly analog to this pattern (see Kline 2000, 164–6; Eno 1990, 132; Martin 1995). Accordingly, the normative fineness of rituals would be anchored in the finely detailed workings of the Way. But this approach takes Confucian thought in a less plausible or, at least, less accessible direction. Since there is no independent method of knowing the Way, this approach amounts to a simple assertion of the unique superiority of Zhou ritual. A.S. Cua distinguishes the functions of Xunzian ritual in several ways. In one rendering, he contrasts a negative and a positive account. The negative account, which he elsewhere associates with the “moral” dimension of Xunzi’s view, features the role of ritual in restraining and reshaping desires to achieve social order (1979, 375–80). The positive account features the role of ritual in “ennobling” or bringing about human excellence: “the ennobling function of li is primarily concerned with the development of beautiful virtues (meide), or of goodness (shan), which is essentially the outcome of transformation (hua) of human nature (xing), our basic motivational structure (feeling and desires” (1989, 219). My discussion of Xunzi in this paper will, to some degree, follow these two parts. Describing it as one on which “Western scholarship has understandably lavished attention”, Paul Goldin suggests that this view is a standard interpretation of Xunzi (2011, 73). Somewhat oddly, he describes this view as “contractarian”, though the passages he cites and his description of the view indicate that consequentialism is the more appropriate theory. Thus, Dan Robins contrasts rule consequentialism with Xunzi’s ‘daoconsequentialism’. He claims that Xunzi is “focused not on actions or rules, but on institutions and practices – on the various ways of organizing human action that sum up to form the Way” (Robins 2018). Mozi argued, for instance, that Confucian funeral rites and musical performances were too elaborate and did not contribute to benefiting society. See Mozi, “Moderation in Expenditure” (Sec. 20), “Moderation in Funerals” (Sec. 25), and “Against Music” (Sec.32). Xunzi’s chapters on rituals and music (Chs. 19 and 20) clearly target Mozi and Mohism. The aesthetic aspect of Xunzi’s account of ritual, and Confucianism more generally, is commonly acknowledged among scholars, and references to aesthetics in Confucian thought are too numerous to cite. However, these accounts rarely go beyond saying that aesthetics are significant for Confucian thinkers. The account I offer in this section extends what is found in Confucian texts. This kind of evaluation pertains to the concept of ‘truth to materials’, which is especially important for arts that feature craftsmanship. I discuss this concept and its application to human nature in Liu (2017). That is not to suggest that all rituals are symbolic, though many do seem to have symbolic value. See Xunzi’s “Discourse on Ritual” (Ch. 19) for explanations of various rituals that invoke symbolic meaning. One interesting point of comparison with Xunzian aestheticism is Nietzsche, though his thought is not typically viewed as a major moral theory. I have offered something like a Xunzian analysis of practices and character traits in other places. Liu (2017) employs an aesthetic approach to consider virtues, and Liu (2018) uses the approach on practices.

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21. Most virtue ethicists deny that there are rules for virtue, claiming instead that the standard of correctness is the virtuous person’s perception of what a situation requires. This is known as the ‘thesis of uncodifiability’. For a classic discussion, see McDowell’s 1979 article “Virtue and Reasons.” 22. Much of this paragraph draws on the work of Stuart Hampshire’s Morality and Conflict, in particular the chapter “Morality and Convention”. 23. Ancient Sophists famously used the opposition between convention (nomos) and nature (physis) to undermine confidence in traditional morality, and philosophical efforts to counter this movement historically took the form of linking morality to nature. However, ‘nomos or physis’ represents a false choice, and the fact that conventions fell by the wayside in moral theory says nothing about their ethical relevance. 24. Choosing to focus on ‘standard virtues’ that are common across cultures, these theorists downplay obvious differences between moral traditions. Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue is a notable exception. 25. Examples of work on manners include Karen Stohr, On Manners (New York: Routledge, 2012); Sarah Buss, “Appearing Respectful: The Moral Significance of Manners,” Ethics 109, no. 4 (1999): 795–826; Cheshire Calhoun, “The Virtue of Civility,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 29, no. 3 (2000): 251–75; and Nancy Sherman, “Of Manners and Morals,” British Journal of Educational Studies 53, no. 3 (2005): 272–89. Of particular note is the work of Amy Olberding, who brings insights of Confucianism to bear on contemporary ethics: see “Etiquette: A Confucian Contribution to Moral Philosophy,” Ethics 126, (2016): 422–46, and “From Corpses to Courtesy: Xunzi’s Defense of Etiquette,” Journal of Value Inquiry 49, (2015): 145–59. 26. I am grateful for the insightful comments of participants and audience members of the Lost Voices at the Foundations of Ethics conference at the University of Washington, Seattle, held in August 2018. Their comments have improved the paper immeasurably. I am particularly indebted to Colin Marshall and John Monteleone for their helpful written feedback.

References Cua, Antonio. 1979. “Dimensions of li (propriety): Reflections on an Aspect of Hsun Tzu’s Ethics.” Philosophy East and West 29(4): 373–94. Cua, Antonio. 1989. “The Concept of Li in Chinese Moral Theory.” In Understanding the Chinese Mind: The Philosophical Roots, edited by Robert Allinson, 209–35. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. Eno, Robert. 1990. The Confucian Creation of Heaven: Philosophy and the Defense of Ritual Mastery. Albany: SUNY Press. Fingarette, Herbert. 1972. Confucius: The Secular as Sacred. Long Grove: Waveland Press. Fingarette, Herbert. 1983. “The Music of Humanity in the Conversation of Confucius.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 10(4): 331–56. Goldin, Paul. 2011. Confucianism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Graham, Angus. 1989. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. Peru: Open Court Publishing. Hampshire, Stuart. 1983. Morality and Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hansen, Chad. 2000. A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Hutton, Eric. 2014. Xunzi: The Complete Text. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ivanhoe, Philip. 1990. “Reweaving the ‘One Thread’ of the Analects.” Philosophy East and West 40(1): 17–33. Ivanhoe, Philip. 2000. Confucian Moral Self Cultivation. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Ivanhoe, Philip. 2002. Ethics in the Confucian Tradition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Kline, T. C. 2000. “Moral Agency and Motivation in the Xunzi.” In Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, edited by T. C. Kline and Philip Ivanhoe, 155–75. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Li, Chenyang. 2007. “Li as Cultural Grammar: On the Relation between Li and Ren in Confucius’ Analects.” Philosophy East and West 57(3): 311–29. Liu, Irene. 2017. “Elevating Human Being: Towards a New Sort of Naturalism.” Philosophy 92(4): 597–622. Liu, Irene. 2018. “Ethical Pluralism and the Appeal to Human Nature.” European Journal of Philosophy 26(3): 1103–19. Martin, Michael. 1995. “Ritual Action (li) in Confucius and Hsun Tzu.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 73(1): 13–30. Nehemas, Alexander. 1985. Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 1988. “Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 13: 32–53. Robins, Dan. “Xunzi.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2018 ed., edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum 2018/entries/xunzi/. Shun, Kwong-Loi. 2002. “Ren and Li in the Analects.” In Confucius and the Analects: New Essays, edited by Bryan Van Norden, 53–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sim, May. 2007. Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Slingerland, Edward. 2003. Confucius: Analects with Selections From Traditional Commentaries. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Yu, Jiyuan. 2007. The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue. New York: Routledge.

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Matilal’s Metaethics Nicolas Bommarito and Alex King

Bimal Krishna Matilal was born in India in 1935, a dozen years before India gained its independence. By the time he passed away in 1991, he had a named chair at Oxford University. For those who work in Indian philosophy he is a figure that looms large, but for those working in other areas of philosophy he’s largely unknown. That’s unfortunate because he was a brilliant and thoughtful philosopher who produced interesting work on a wide range of subjects. Matilal initially made his name working in logic, first on Indian logic then later on Western logic. That by itself was not so revolutionary; what was revolutionary was his approach to the subject. Rather than treating Indian logic as a kind of historical curio, he treated it as relevant to contemporary philosophical work on universal questions. He inspired generations of scholars to approach texts of classical Indian thought as containing living ideas.1 So why should metaethicists care about Matilal? Classical Indian philosophy has very little explicit normative ethical theorizing, let alone obviously metaethical theorizing. Flip through any overview of classical Indian philosophy and you’ll find a lot of epistemology, logic, and metaphysics but little, if any, metaethics. This is not to say that there isn’t any metaethics, but finding it takes some looking. And this kind of looking is difficult and time consuming. This is why Matilal is a good figure to start with for metaethicists interested in Indian philosophy. He engages directly with the traditional founders of analytic metaethics: people like Bernard Williams, Gilbert Harman, and R.M. Hare. He studied at Harvard under Quine, and so he knows how to write like a 20th-century analytic philosopher. At the same time, Matilal draws on classical Indian philosophy. He picks out the texts and ideas that are relevant to metaethical questions. In this respect he’s similar to another philosopher of his generation: Philippa Foot. Foot’s work in metaethics develops ideas from Aristotle, Aquinas, and Nietzsche in interesting ways that make one reconsider those historical figures.2 In the same way, Matilal’s work develops ideas from Nāgārjuna, the Mahābhārata, and Jainism into a novel and interesting

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metaethical view. This makes Matilal an ideal figure for metaethicists curious about Indian philosophy. He has linguistic and cultural expertise but writes in English and engages with foundational figures in Western metaethics. Just as Foot’s work responded to then-popular trends in expressivism, Matilal’s deals with the once-dominant cultural relativism. Since the clash of cultures and the hazards of relativism were a lived reality for him, he has many sensible things to say about them. But implicit in these responses is an interesting metaethical view. Our aim here is to explain this view and its roots in classical Indian philosophy.

1. Matilal Contra Relativism Matilal argues against cultural relativism, which he characterizes essentially as the view that there are no cross-cultural moral standards. He bases his objections on two principles. The first he calls the Impossibility of the Individuation of Cultures (or IIC). Real cultures, Matilal thinks, are not “dead watertight compartments”; rather, they flow into each other. The second principle is a relatively familiar one. It says that, if relativism were true, we would have to call the intuitively worst moral offenses morally right, as long as the offenders behaved according to the norms of their own culture. The best we can do is to call them wrong “from our point of view”. Matilal calls this the Repugnant Consequence (or RC). Matilal distinguishes two species of cultural relativism, which he calls soft relativism and hard relativism. Both claim that there are no crosscultural moral standards. He sometimes puts this in terms of mutual incommensurability: there is no fact about whether one culture’s standards are superior to another’s. So both forms of relativism share an antirealist metaphysics of value. They are differentiated by their epistemic claims. According to soft relativism, the moral standards set in a culture different from one’s own are nevertheless still intelligible or comprehensible. According to hard relativism, moral standards in different cultures are mutually incomprehensible. The hard relativist thinks that the moral standards of a culture different from our own are forever foreign objects, untranslatable into our own concepts or paradigms. On such a view, this mutual unintelligibility underwrites the mutual incommensurability. We cannot rank one culture’s moral standards against another’s because we cannot even get the two to be talking in the same terms. Matilal’s two main targets are the sophisticated versions of relativism endorsed by Bernard Williams and Gilbert Harman.3 Before really addressing these, though, he first dispenses with a form of relativism that Williams calls vulgar relativism. Vulgar relativism claims that (1) we ought to tolerate other cultures’ moral perspectives, since (2) terms like ‘right’ just mean ‘right for a given society’ – in other words, ‘right for them’. Matilal here simply defers to Williams’s own refutation of vulgar

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relativism, one that contemporary readers will likely recognize. In saying (1), we implicitly endorse a universal, non-relative moral claim, namely that we should tolerate the views of other cultures. But (2) bars us from endorsing any non-relative moral claims. So the view looks incoherent. The version of relativism that Williams defends is more restricted. For Williams, there are two ways in which cultures confront or come into contact with each other.4 There are real confrontations and notional confrontations. A real confrontation occurs when one culture’s moral system is a real option for members of another culture. And a moral system counts as a real option for someone when they could adopt that system and “not engage in extensive self-deception”,5 “retain their hold on reality”, and perhaps even make retrospective sense of their conversion.6 What Williams means here is not at all clear, but that need not distract us, as this is not the point that Matilal takes issue with. What is important is that, if one culture’s system is not a real option for members of another culture, then those two cultures can confront one another only notionally. As examples, Williams offers the moral systems of bygone eras: Bronze Age chiefs and medieval samurai, as well as traditional societies whose systems and ways of life are incompatible with current, irreversible technological advancements. Whatever exactly counts as a real option, those moral systems are simply inaccessible to us.7 Finally, it’s only in the context of notional confrontations that we face relativism. When two cultures can really confront each other rather than merely notionally confront each other, we aren’t pushed to relativistic conclusions. Williams writes that it is only in real confrontations that the language of appraisal – good, bad, right, wrong, and so on – can be applied to [the other moral system]; in notional confrontations, this kind of appraisal is seen as inappropriate, and no judgments are made.8 He calls his view the relativism of distance.9 Matilal counts this view as a form of relativism because two moral systems that can only notionally confront each other are incommensurable, that is, we cannot think that one is better than the other. Furthermore, he counts it as a form of soft relativism, since Williams nowhere claims that systems that allow for only notional confrontation must also be mutually unintelligible. Matilal presents two worries for this view. First, he argues that it’s unclear why we should think that any moral system is not a real option for any culture. We can’t literally go back and be Bronze Age chiefs. But surely that isn’t all that Williams means. He seems to be saying something stronger, such as that some cultures are so conceptually or socially distant that only notional confrontation is possible. But why think that we couldn’t, for example, disavow our modern technologies and opt for life in a traditional society? The only barriers to this are practical (if there

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actually aren’t any such communities left) or epistemic (if we don’t know enough about its moral system). Aside from these philosophically uninteresting senses in which bygone cultures are inaccessible, there’s no further sense in which they are. Moreover, any living culture is a real option for any other living culture. No actual culture is a windowless monad perfectly sealed off from the rest of the world. This is Matilal’s IIC principle, the Impossibility of the Individuation of Cultures. His second objection provisionally grants that some cultures can only confront each other notionally but denies that this entails their mutual incommensurability. First, it is question-begging to suppose that such cultures couldn’t apply non-relative standards to each other. Moreover, this supposition conflicts with the linguistic data: we do in fact apply appraising language when talking about bygone moral systems. We say that slavery was wrong, for example, and that our current system is better. And if we deny this, we must face RC, the Repugnant Consequence. Matilal then turns to Harman’s relativism, according to which our judgments (and statements) about how people ought to act or which actions are wrong are relativized to groups that have formed agreements or have come to understandings with each other.10 Harman offers a few examples, involving Martians, a band of cannibals, a mob-like group called ‘Murder, Incorporated’, and Hitler. Harman thinks that, whatever we might say of members of these groups – that they behave unjustly, that it is a bad thing for them to go around killing others, even that they are evil – we fall short of saying that they ought not kill others or that it is wrong for them to do so. Such statements strike Harman as sounding very odd because such agents are “beyond the motivational reach of the relevant moral considerations”.11 They are simply beyond the pale – creatures that we, in some deep way, just cannot make sense of. There are three objections Matilal offers here. First, he thinks that Harman, like Williams, unfairly represents the linguistic situation. We hear people call Hitler’s and the mob’s actions wrong all the time. More importantly, though, Matilal argues that Harman runs afoul of both IIC and RC. Harman’s choice of Martians is telling. As others have more recently argued,12 it’s hard to know what to make of these bizarre cases. It’s not clear how reliable our linguistic or metaethical intuitions concerning them are. This is because real cultures are not hermetically sealed things, and imagining cultures this way will not, Matilal thinks, be philosophically revealing. In order to get Harman’s relativist intuitions we have to imagine cases of Martians, that is, literal aliens, or else “monsters (Hitler), mentally deranged or impaired persons (Murder, Inc), or subhumans”.13 In short, these cases implicitly try to circumvent IIC. But real cultures do flow into each other, and no culture is so sealed off that we have no moral purchase on it. Last, Harman effectively attempts to avoid RC by allowing that we can call a figure like Hitler evil – it’s just that

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we can’t call his actions wrong or say that he did things that he ought not to have done. But in giving up these latter claims, Harman still says something quite repugnant.

2. Emptiness and Culture Matilal’s insights about culture draw on an important concept from classical Indian philosophy, the Buddhist notion of emptiness (in Sanskrit, śūnyatā). Matilal draws on this idea in claiming that it is impossible for any culture to be completely isolated and self-reliant. Emptiness is most closely associated with the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism and its founder Nāgārjuna (~150–250 CE), who makes frequent appearances in Matilal’s writings.14 Nāgārjuna famously claimed that everything is empty. But what does that mean? Being empty does not mean simply not existing; emptiness is not to be understood as nothingness. To be empty is to be empty of something. The mug on my desk is empty of coffee but not of air. In the context of Buddhist philosophy, what all things are empty of is a static and independent nature (in Sanskrit, svabhāva). One way that a thing can be empty is temporal. Think of the spoke on a bicycle wheel. Though it may seem to be a singular object, it is really a collection of particles organized in a certain way. So to say that it has no static essence isn’t just to say that it is, for example, slowly corroding or turning to rust. There is no spoke to corrode, a spoke just is the relational interplay between the particles that make it up. What appears to us as the spoke rusting is just the particles that make it up changing their relations. There’s nothing that went from shiny to rusty. But there is also another, non-temporal way in which the spoke is empty. Even at any instant, it exists only relationally. To be a spoke is to have a kind of relational identity, one that is dependent on other things. What it means to be a spoke is to play a certain role in a wheel and in a bicycle. And what it means to be a bicycle is to play a certain role for humans, to ride around and travel places. So a spoke, to be what it is, depends on its relations to other things, on its place in a larger content. This, according to Madhyamaka philosophy, is true of everything: spokes, the particles making it up, bicycles, people, toads, helium, even emptiness itself. Everything depends on everything else to be what it is. This is not to say that Matilal fully endorses this Buddhist view. You can, however, see the influence of this idea of emptiness in his discussion of culture. Just as a spoke is a constantly changing collection which depends on other things to be what it is, so too do cultures. So we find Matilal taking Bernard Williams to task for assuming that cultures interact like billiard balls, as independent things that occasionally crash into each other.15 As someone with a multicultural background, Matilal saw clearly

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that though the atomistic, billiard ball way of seeing things might be useful, it isn’t how reality works: But in practice, in today’s world, cultures and sub-cultures do flow into each other, interacting both visibly and invisibly, eventually effecting value-rejection and value-modification at every stage. This shows the vitality of cultures, which are like living organisms, in which internal and external changes are incontrovertible facts. (1991a/2002, 253) To be clear, Matilal does not explicitly claim that cultures are empty, but the lesson is similar. His choice of metaphor is telling; he pictures cultures as liquids flowing into each other. Cultures, like liquids, are dynamic, changing entities with vague borders. Thinking of ‘Indian’ or ‘Italian’ culture as something singular, static, and independent, as something with a non-relational essence is a mistake. Not only do they change over time, but they are deeply relational, intertwined and dependent upon other cultures in ways that are subtle and difficult to see. Views about cultures that ignore these facts are doomed to fail because they treat a complex living thing as if it were a fossil. Matilal uses this insight to highlight how philosophers wishing to see cultures as static and independent must lean heavily on semi-fictionalized examples of past cultures and science fiction examples.16 These artificial examples of cultures with independent essences are then generalized, giving the illusion that all cultures work this way. One need not accept Nāgārjuna’s more radical metaphysical stance to see this, though it can help illuminate Matilal’s lesson: real-life cultures just don’t work that way.17

3. Matilal on Singularism and Realism Given his denial of relativism, it may be unsurprising that Matilal endorses a version of moral realism, according to which there are universal moral facts. Matilal does not, however, consider other views that have become commonplace in contemporary metaethics, views like speaker subjectivism, error theory, or expressivism. Instead, he contrasts cultural relativism with what he calls singularism, the view that there is only one set of moral standards for everyone, and introduces his rival view, pluralism, in terms of this contrast. He characterizes singularism (sometimes calling it monism) as the view that there is only one set of moral standards to which everybody should conform, and it is possible to discover this singular standard of universal morality through rational means. (1986/2002, 218)

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Like soft and hard relativism, singularism consists of both a metaphysical and epistemic thesis. Metaphysically, it posits a set of standards that apply to everyone, making it a view sometimes called absolutism in contemporary parlance. Epistemically, it claims that this set of standards is rationally accessible to us all. In essence, if we each thought about morality long enough and clearly enough, we would discover the universal moral truth of the matter. He has in his sights arch rationalists, and in this he follows fellow pluralist Isaiah Berlin, who characterizes singularism in the following way: first, that all men have one true purpose, and one only, that of rational self-direction; second, that the ends of all rational beings must of necessity fit into a single universal, harmonious pattern . . .; third, that all conflict, and consequently all tragedy, is due solely to the clash of reason with the irrational.18 Rejecting singularism makes Matilal sound like a relativist. Though we won’t cover all of the details here, it’s worth noting that he argues that not all divergence is the result of irrationality. Sometimes it is the result of completely reasonable, understandable diversity of moral opinion. In fact, Matilal is keenly concerned to take seriously the fact of moral diversity. It’s this seriousness that leads him to pluralism. Pluralism holds that there are multiple, potentially incompatible, moral standards. Still, it’s possible that some are better, i.e., to be prioritized, over others. In other words, Matilal accepts a certain amount of diversity of moral standards but denies that this commits him to relativism. He takes diversity to be compatible with an underlying moral realism. This metaphysical picture may sound a bit like W.D. Ross’s view.19 For Ross, there is a listable plurality of goods, and these different goods are not reducible to one another. We can even think of Matilal’s standards as continuous with Ross’s goods (justice, non-maleficence, etc.). However, Ross thinks that there is always, in each situation, a particular right thing to do. Matilal disagrees. First, Matilal leaves it open that these different standards or goods are simply incompatible. That is, there might be cases where we cannot comply with all of the standards or realize all of the varying goods. Second, Matilal leaves it open that these different standards or goods cannot be prioritized – that they are incommensurable. So he thinks that we might be unable to fully realize all of the plural goods, and that we might furthermore be unable to even weigh the different goods against each other. By contrast, while Ross thinks it doesn’t make sense to prioritize the goods in the abstract, he thinks that they can be properly ordered in any particular situation. In these ways, Matilal’s form of pluralism is more thoroughgoing than Ross’s. Matilal doesn’t claim that moral standards definitely are incompatible. Instead, he leaves these possibilities open. This brings us to Matilal’s

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epistemic thesis, which unfortunately is not always clear. He generally sounds quite skeptical about compatibility and commensurability, denying that there is any way to determinately rank moral standards. But even though we might never be certain about our rankings, they are (justifiably) important to us.20 That said, he does offer an account of how we come to know the different particular moral standards, as well as how we can come to know the universal moral standards. Given all this, it’s still not clear how exactly we should understand his pluralist account. Fleshing it out will be the job of the rest of the chapter.

4. Dharma Morality Matilal’s pluralism appears in an incipient form in the Indian notion of dharma. The term dharma is one of the most important in Indian philosophy; it is also one of the most complex, having many, many meanings. Built on a root meaning to hold up or to support, it sometimes means teachings or instructions; this sense is typically capitalized in English, as when people write about the Buddhist Dharma. It is also commonly used in a metaphysical way, referring to something like instantaneous experience events. The term also has an important normative sense, referring to social, ritual, legal, and moral obligations.21 There are many distinctions made within this sense, but here we will focus on one that distinguishes two different levels of obligation. One level is contingent and specific; these are called viśeṣa dharmas, literally particular or individual dharmas. These include one’s obligations to a particular ruler, one’s wife, or duties specific to one’s role in society.22 One feature of this class of dharma is that the associated obligations do not apply to everyone. Citizens of the United Kingdom may have special obligations to the Queen that citizens of other countries do not. The person next to you on the bus has obligations to their partner and children that you do not. Similarly people in certain roles, police officers, soldiers, judges, and fire fighters can have special duties that people not in those roles lack. In this sense, the obligations are contingent and arise on in the context of particular relationships, roles, or situations. These contingent and particularized viśeṣa dharmas are contrasted with universal duties, known as sādhāraṇa dharma. Literally meaning general or common dharma, these are obligations that apply to all people everywhere. As you might imagine, what exactly is included in this category is a substantive ethical question. It commonly includes things like telling the truth, not stealing, and not hurting others.23 These apply to everyone regardless of their job, social role, or relationships. As we’ll see, Matilal has this in mind when he talks about the ‘basic moral fabric’ – general obligations that are not relativized to any particular person or place.24 It’s not that sādhāraṇa dharma is real and viśeṣa dharma is not, nor do viśeṣa dharmas always reduce to sādhāraṇa dharmas. Many Indian

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philosophers assume that there are multiple distinct types of value.25 Naturally, there are disagreements about whether different values can conflict and, if they can, which ones override others. The classic example of this comes from a critical scene in the Bhagavad Gītā, a part of the much longer epic called the Mahābhārata. In it Arjuna, the best archer in the world, finds himself looking out over a battlefield just before the fighting is about to start. Because of a complicated web of promises, he must fight against his relatives and teachers. Arjuna experiences intense inner conflict. As a warrior and as royalty it is his duty to fight. On the other hand, he also feels the more general duty to avoid bloodshed.26 Matilal often wrote about this famous scene, particularly in the context of moral dilemmas.27 So we find him writing: The situation is this: As a human being, as a loving member of the royal family, he feels that the killing of a grandfather and other relatives is bad; but as a kṣatriya [member of the warrior caste] he is told that it is his sacred duty to fight and kill – a classic case of moral conflict, which tends to inspire moral skepticism. (1989b/2002, 14) A full understanding of the scene would require contextualizing it in the much longer epic. What is important for our purposes is that Matilal reads this scene as demonstrating a case of a genuine moral dilemma. The conflict is not merely apparent and the values in question cannot be satisfactorily reconciled. He finds that accepting the possibility of such a case does not threaten moral realism. It highlights that values and duties must be flexible and dynamic but nevertheless real. To see why, it is helpful to look to his discussion of metaethics itself.

5. Matilal’s Pluralism Matilal’s discussion of the Mahābhārata reveals a deep sympathy to the relativist’s recognition of moral diversity. So while he doesn’t think that diversity proves relativism true, Matilal thinks the relativist gets some important things right. Recall that on Matilal’s pluralist picture, there are multiple potentially incompatible moral standards, a fact we see revealed in Arjuna’s dilemma. How this could be compatible with realism, however, is not obvious. To elucidate his view, he draws on the notions of sādhāraṇa dharma and viśeṣa dharma, which he compares to Stuart Hampshire’s “two faces of morality”.28 For Hampshire, morality admits of a rational side and a less-than-fully rational side. The former side is broadly continuous with singularist views, such as the familiar Kantian view on which morality is both rational and absolute. The latter side involves those aspects of morality that are contingent: historically, geographically, and

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perhaps in other social ways. This side of morality is typically not fully articulated and may not be fully articulable, whereas the rational side is at least articulable. Matilal does not think Hampshire’s categories map onto his own, but he wants to draw out a common thread they share. Hampshire’s view shares with dharma morality the thought that there are different, possibly conflicting, but nevertheless bona fide moral standards. They also share the idea that some moral standards are contingent, but that contingency doesn’t undermine a standard’s normative force or status. Sometimes Matilal refers to these as two “layers” or “aspects” of morality (1986/2002, 232), though most frequently as its two “sides” (1986/2002, 232). He calls one “particularizing” side, and the other the “universalizing” side, which he sometimes refers to as the basic moral fabric. In an attempt to clarify the more contingent and particular side of morality, he writes: Our supposition is that there may indeed be some sort of incommensurability, or ‘undercommensurability,’ and hence a sort of relativism among cultural norms as far as the ‘particularizing,’ the historically conditioned, and therefore in some sense contingent, side of morality, is concerned (cf. viśeṣa dharma). (1986/2002, 232) So this side of morality presents a genuine source of moral value in spite of contingency. This side of morality is also where Matilal tries to accommodate the truth he sees in relativism. There is some fundamental moral diversity, which may give rise to truly incommensurable moral standards. However, that’s not all there is to Matilal’s metaethical picture. There is also a universalizing side to morality. This side doesn’t depend on our actual culture or on historical contingencies. Of course, we may give different accounts of what is universal in morality – common options appeal to our fundamental needs as human creatures, facts about happiness and suffering, what is required for human flourishing, or our shared rational capacities. While Matilal expresses some sympathies with these options, he does not commit to any particular account. Before providing a more detailed analysis of Matilal’s two-sided view, it’s worth briefly considering his moral epistemology. Because he thinks that there are two sides to morality, he needs to offer an account of how we know each side, as well as the extent to which we can meaningfully and truthfully say that some moral standards are better than others (something that itself, it would seem, belongs to the universalizing side). We come to know the particularizing side in a straightforward and often anthropological way. We simply see diversity of moral standards. Admittedly, it’s sometimes difficult to tell when a culture’s standards count as moral, but that’s a matter for the sensitive anthropologist, he thinks.29 He is less clear about how we come to know the universal side. He sometimes suggests that we do (or can) know these empirically, although he

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also mentions the possibility of using a priori methods. Take, for example, the following passage: If any human society is discovered by anthropologists where one or more of the above concerns is proven to be absent, then this notion of the universal moral fabric should be modified. I concede this possibility. Proceeding in a different vein, one may develop the notion of general morality by taking the happiness of all creatures, and the alleviation of their pain or suffering, as basic, and then recommend action-guides which must be obeyed by all. (1991a/2002, 259) In the first half he seems to be recommending empirical methods; in the second, a priori ones. The worry is that it may be incoherent for Matilal to simultaneously endorse empirical and a priori approaches to moral knowledge. However, one way to read his seeming indecision or incoherence about moral epistemology is just as a presentation of the different epistemological accounts that could accompany these different substantive views about moral standards. After all, Matilal isn’t committed to any substantive account of what the universal moral standards are. He claims only that acknowledging a plurality of moral standards need not lead to relativism, i.e., that such an acknowledgment is compatible with realism and the existence of some universal standards. This is, then, the first attempt at a more filled-in picture of Matilal’s positive view. Still, there are some lingering questions. How exactly do these two sides of morality fit together? How is it possible that one side can be more or less relativist and the other side more or less absolutist? Doesn’t this view just seem like Matilal trying to have his cake and eat it too? In order to better understand Matilal’s pluralism, it’s important to look at another Indian philosophical tradition, the one that most conspicuously inspires his moral and metaethical views.

6. Jainism and Anekānta-vāda In giving this dual-level realist account, Matilal draws on ideas from a tradition in Indian philosophy called Jainism. A renunciant religious movement appearing around the same time as Buddhism (~500 BCE), Jainism is a living tradition most well-known for its nonviolence.30 Though it has not been studied as much as Buddhism in the West, Jainism also has a rich philosophical tradition. Of particular interest is the concept of non-onesidedness or anekānta. In his book on Jaina philosophy, Matilal focused on anekānta, claiming that it is equally as important as the Buddhist concept of emptiness.31 Anekānta-vāda literally means the doctrine of not being one-sided. It is a conceptual tool to make sense of conflicting viewpoints while still

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accepting realism. The best way to see what it means is through a classic image. Imagine several people, all blind from birth, are presented with an elephant. They each reach out and touch different parts of it and so, when asked what an elephant is like, they each give very different answers. The one who touches the leg says it’s like a big tree, the one who touches the trunk says it’s like a snake, the one who touches the tusk says it’s like a spear, the one who touches the tail says it’s like a broom, and so on. Hearing all of these different answers they begin to fight with each other, each denying the claims of all the others.32 The person who says the elephant is like a spear does not say something false, after all the elephant does have a tusk and it is sharp like a spear. But that is only part of the story; if he says that the elephant is only like a spear his claim is one-sided (or ekānta). This person mistakes part of the story for the whole story, a partial truth for the whole truth. Anekānta-vāda is a collection of tools that allow one to acknowledge partial truths without mistaking them for the whole truth. So some one-sided views do really get at one aspect of reality. But reality, on this picture, is complex and multifaceted, so getting at the whole truth requires various conceptual tools to synthesize these various one-sided views. These tools involve logic, philosophy of language, and epistemology.33 In the philosophy of language there is theorizing about implicit indexical modifiers: each of the claims about the elephant is true if it includes an implicit “from my point-of-view”.34 In epistemology there is formal development of the different points of view that claims are indexed to.35 Finally, there is a work on the logical relations between these claims and standpoints.36 Historical and technical issues aside, a few features of the Jaina view are worth emphasizing. First, the strategy of defusing disagreement by indexing claims to points of view resembles strategies used by moral relativists. In the same way that apparently conflicting claims about the elephant are resolved by indexing them to the points of view of the different people, cultural relativists resolve apparently conflicting value claims by indexing them to different cultures. Unlike relativist views, however, the Jaina picture is at heart a realist one. There is, after all, an objective, mind-independent fact of the matter about how the elephant is. The relativizing makes their respective claims true but only in a limited way. One reason not to interpret Anekānta-vāda as a kind of relativism is that it would be self-undermining (Is Anekāntavāda itself only true from a certain point of view? Is its negation also true from some points of view?). There is an objective truth, but it is complex and hard (if not sometimes impossible) to assert; as Matilal puts it, “The total truth, the Jainas emphasize, may be derived from the integration of all different viewpoints.”37 After all, integrating the claims of the different blind people can produce a pretty accurate picture of the elephant. Matilal’s approach to logic embodies this Jaina inspiration. His approach was revolutionary in part because it did not treat Indian and Western

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logics as making claims entirely relativized to their own systems. Instead he treated them as offering different perspectives on the same reality. Drawing on Jaina thought he has a similar approach in metaethics, one that acknowledges plurality at one level but also allows for a deeper mind-independent reality. Of course, the Jaina doctrine was typically used in the context of different metaphysical views, not for value disagreements between cultures. Nevertheless, Matilal’s view suggests that a similar framework can be used in the ethical domain to produce a view that is both realist and sensitive to cultural differences.

7. A Jaina Pluralism Thinking through the elephant analogy in the moral case will give us a better picture of Matilal’s pluralism. Like blind men, members of different cultures grope around for the basic moral fabric, the universal moral standards. The fabric is quite large, though, and each of us can only access a part of that fabric. The part that members of our culture can touch feels very different from the part that members of distant cultures can touch. Though there is a basic moral fabric, it’s possible that some of us fail to touch the fabric at all – in the same way that some blind man may actually be touching a broom rather than the elephant. Perhaps we can talk to each other and form theories, either of expanded regions of the fabric or even of the whole thing. And nothing either precludes or guarantees the possibility that some of us might eventually get it right. Given this inspiration, the best way to think about Matilal’s metaethical view is that, at one level, there really are universal moral standards. We try, to varying degrees of success, to capture those universal standards in our culture’s moral outlooks, and the confrontation of cultures (analogous to a meeting of two of the blind men) may improve and expand those outlooks. We also try, to varying degrees of success, to describe the basic moral fabric through theories involving things like happiness and suffering, basic human needs, or our rational capacities. While Matilal seems to think it’s possible that some such view in fact provides a full picture of the basic moral fabric, it would be very hard – or maybe even impossible – to be certain whether any view gets it right. That said, Matilal also appears open to the possibility of genuine incommensurability and genuine moral conflict. Perhaps the best way to square this with his pluralist realism is to say that genuine moral conflicts only (but inevitably) exist given our actual, limited epistemological situation. Matilal may leave room for incommensurability because he thinks it could be impossible for us to grasp the entire moral fabric at once. Think of the elephant analogy, but modify it so that no single person can touch the whole thing, and so each one extrapolates a best explanation, but one which is fed by their own limited perspective. On that view, incommensurability and conflict could be inevitable, but wouldn’t undermine the core realist thought.

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Ultimately, Matilal’s view seems to be that morality exists at both the universal level and the particular level. Our best substantive account of what exists at the universal level will probably be quite meager. Maybe all we can get is a luckily correct but impossible-to-verify picture of what goes on there. More optimistically, we might be able to get a justified but only rough picture of the basic moral fabric – like a hazy outline of the elephant. But like Kant’s view of the noumenal realm, Matilal’s view allows us to be aware of the existence of a universal moral standard, even if we don’t know what it’s like.38 Though Matilal himself doesn’t say this, we can see the distinction between sādhāraṇa dharma and viṣeśa dharma in a similar light: individual viṣeśa dharmas are particular takes on the universal sādhāraṇa dharma, which we can only piece together in a limited way. So Arjuna’s specific duties as a warrior are indeed part of the universal fabric of morality, just seen from a particular point of view. His particular obligations, though not universal, are real but not the whole story.39 Matilal’s pluralism, in the end, takes the form of metaethical realism, but with a somewhat novel moral epistemology, and combines it with normative or first-order pluralism. His view is not thoroughly pluralist at the metaethical level. A thoroughly pluralistic metaethics would hold that, for example, realism and cultural relativism were somehow both ultimately correct. Matilal accepts realism but wants to reject singularism. For Matilal, the existence of multiple, possibly incompatible, and incommensurable moral standards is intimately intertwined with his metaethical view. Though relativism is a mistake arising from our limited knowledge, it has a core truth that a sophisticated pluralist realism can capture.

8. Lessons We haven’t presumed to say all there is about Matilal’s pluralist metaethics. We have hoped, however, to suggest that there is an interesting and underexplored account here, one that is inspired by classical Indian thought as well as 20th-century debates in metaethics. He suggests, first, that realism is not the same as moral singularism or absolutism. An identification of realism with singularism still seems to motivate many people to adopt relativism. Realism seems to be in some way insufficiently compatible with the facts of moral diversity. Matilal offers a view that explicitly takes this into account, unlike some contemporary views that merely gesture at the fact that realism is not committed to singularism. Second, Matilal offers us a different and more sensitive account of what we as theorists are responsible for. He claims that singularism encourages moral jingoism, that singularists are more likely to be nationalistic and xenophobic. Similarly, he thinks that relativism promotes moral insouciance, that relativists are more likely to be indifferent to real moral wrongs. He sometimes goes even further, arguing that relativism at its

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worst encourages liberal colonialism and oppression. He argues that what motivates the relativism of liberal colonialists is the thought that their own culture is fundamentally different from foreign cultures. A now common concern for cultural criticism is that this liberal perspective gives with one hand what it takes with the other: it offers tolerance but at the price of radical Othering. Matilal sees precisely this problem in Harman’s cases. Unfamiliar cultures are seen as analogous to Martians: an otherworldly group whose values are utterly unrecognizable. Buoyed by this view, we may start to form “a love of exotic rituals” and even “resist the liberal forces in the native’s own tradition and let superstitions, conservatism and fundamentalism take over” (1991a/2002, 260). Of course, he doesn’t contend that singularism entails jingoism, nor that relativism entails insouciance or Othering. But, Matilal is aware that, as humans, theorists do not always believe precisely in proportion to what is entailed. We slip too easily into nearby views and too easily fall into patterns of unlicensed attitude and feeling. As theorists, we can take his suggestion to heart, not only in thinking about the connections between these different views but in thinking about how we treat cultures themselves in metaethical discourse. In the contemporary world, cultures simply are not isolated things. And even if we were to encounter a heretofore unknown culture, that encounter would itself be a confrontation of two cultures. Cultures change each other – even colonizers are changed by the colonized. With these thoughts in mind, we can see why Matilal thinks that many examples used to support cultural relativism are at best imperfectly imagined and at worst betray a false and offensive Othering.

Notes 1. See Ganeri (2017) and Chakravarti (2017) for more on Matilal’s life and philosophical approach. 2. See especially Foot (2001). 3. Matilal’s critiques of Williams and Harman are primarily drawn from Matilal’s 1986 essay “Ethical Relativism and the Confrontation of Cultures”. Citations to Matilal’s work are drawn from two essay collections edited by Jonardon Ganeri and published in 2002: Ethics and Epics and Mind, Language, and World. To maintain a sense of historical context, we have used the dates of the original publications for each essay, but page numbers will refer to these 2002 collections. 4. Williams does not mean ‘confrontation’ in any combative sense. 5. Williams (1985, 160). 6. Williams (1974, 223). 7. For his defense of relativism, see Williams (1974, 1985). 8. Williams (1985, 161). 9. For more on Williams’s relativism of distance, see Fricker (2010). 10. Harman (1975, 5). 11. Harman (1975, 8). 12. See Dowell (2016).

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13. Matilal (1986/2002, 224). 14. See, for example, Matilal (1973/2002, 1975). 15. Matilal writes, “For the Williamsian kind of notional confrontation, we have to imagine two self-contained and totally isolated cultures with guaranteed immunity from external influence and hence with guaranteed immunity from evaluation and criticism from outside. Such cultures are mostly theoretical constructs, which sustain a defensible type of relativism” (1991a/2002, 253). 16. See Matilal (1986/2002, 224). 17. Matilal’s invocation of Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka when concluding his discussion of moral realism and relativism is telling: “it is a new open-ended way of dealing reality without the usual dogmas of empiricism. The Mādhyamikas do not give up the world” (1986/2002, 239). That is to say, we can reject static essences, even in the moral domain, without thereby giving up on realism. 18. This is Matilal (1991a/2002, 244) quoting Berlin (1969, 154). 19. Ross (1930). For a more recent version of metaethical pluralism, see DeLapp (2013, 80ff). 20. Matilal (1986/2002, 218). 21. The domains are not always clearly separated and are disambiguated contextually. This is also true of the English word ‘wrong’. A protester, for example, might do something legally wrong but not morally wrong. It can also be used in the domain of etiquette (‘It was so wrong of him to wear that to the wedding!’) or aesthetics (‘Pineapple on pizza is just wrong!’). Like ‘wrong’ the term ‘dharma’ is also used in different normative domains. See Davis (2017) for background on the legal sense of dharma. See Krishan (1989, 52–5) and Perrett (2016, 24ff.) for an overview of the moral and religious senses. 22. These are called rājadharma, strīdharma, and svadharma (sometimes also called varṇāśramadharma) respectively. See Sharma and Bharati (2000, 106ff.) for an overview of these distinctions. 23. These are known as satya, asteya, and ahiṃsā respectively. 24. Matilal (1991a/2002, 255ff.). 25. For an overview see the discussion in Perrett (2016, 29ff.) of what he calls Value Pluralism in Indian philosophy. Though his focus is on the puruṣārthas, the four main goals in life (morality, wealth, pleasure, and spiritual liberation) the point about a plurality of values is the same. 26. Spoiler alert: Arjuna’s charioteer is the god Kṛṣṇa, who convinces him that he should fight after all. 27. See, for example, Matilal (1983/2002, 6ff., 1986/2002, 227, 1989a/2002 and 1989b/2002, 138ff.). Matilal also edited an entire volume on the subject entitled Moral Dilemmas in the Mahābhārata, (1989c) that begins with his own essay “Moral Dilemmas: Insights from Indian Epics”. This is not the only way the text has been read; see Dalmiya (2014) for a care-based alternative. 28. Hampshire (1983, 2–3). 29. His views seem consistent with, for example, the thought that the inherent motivational force of moral judgments could help us determine when we are encountering a moral standard. 30. Nonviolence here meaning ahiṃsā. For an overview of Jain philosophy, see Long (2009) and Fohr (2015). 31. Matilal (1981, 1). Matilal’s comments seem to have gone unheeded; while there has been much interest in Buddhist emptiness among contemporary analytic philosophers, few works focus on anekānta. 32. This is our own paraphrase of the story; there are many, many versions. The earliest written version is found in a Buddhist text called the Tīttha Sūtta (Udāna 6.4), though the story is likely older and not exclusive to either the Buddhists or the Jainas.

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33. See Ganeri (2001, 128–50) for a philosophical explanation of these developments and Balcerowicz (2008) for a more historical treatment. 34. This idea, called syādvāda, is a way of diffusing surface-level disagreements by adding an implicit modifier (syāt) to claims that indexes them to certain points of view. See Gokhale (1991) and Matilal (1991b). 35. Traditionally the types of standpoints are divided into seven classes. See Cort (2000, 325–6) and Ganeri (2001, 134 ff.) for accessible overviews. 36. See Ganeri (2002), Priest (2008), and Gorisse (2017) for more detailed discussions of Jaina logic. 37. Matilal (1977/2002), 58; see also the discussion in Ganeri (2001, 147–9). Cort (2000) and Long (2009, 119) also point out that Anekānta-vāda was historically used to assert Jaina superiority over other schools, so it’s unlikely that it was intended as just another point of view among many. 38. Matilal frequently talks of ‘levels’ or ‘sides’ of morality. This evokes the Jaina claim that reality is multifaceted, with different sides having seemingly contradictory properties. The analog in value here is incommensurability; though Matilal doesn’t assert that the values are incommensurable, he leaves it open that they are. 39. Thanks to Jonardon Ganeri for drawing our attention to this connection.

References Balcerowicz, Piotr. 2008. Jaina Epistemology in Historical and Comparative Perspective. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Berlin, Isaiah. 1969. Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chakravarti, Ram-Prasad. 2017. “Philosophy, Indian and Western: Some Thoughts from Bimal Matilal.” APA Newsletter: Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies 17(1): 7–10. Cort, John E. 2000. “‘Intellectual Ahiṃsā’ Revisited: Jain Tolerance and Intolerance of Others.” Philosophy East & West 50(3): 324–47. Dalmiya, Vrinda. 2014. “Care and Epistemic Justice: Some Insights from the Mahābhārata.” In Mahābhārata Now: Narration, Aesthetics, Ethics, edited by A. Chakrabarti and Sibaji Bandhopadhyay, 115–31. Delhi: Routledge. Davis, Donald R., Jr. 2017. “An Indian Philosophy of Law.” In The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy, edited by Jonardon Ganeri, 507–21. New York: Oxford University Press. DeLapp, Kevin. 2013. Moral Realism. New York: Bloomsbury. Dowell, Janice. 2016. “The Metaethical Significance of Moral Twin Earth.” In Oxford Studies in Metaethics 11, edited by Russ Shafer-Landau. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fohr, Sherry. 2015. Jainism: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Bloomsbury. Foot, Philippa. 2001. Natural Goodness. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Fricker, Miranda. 2010. “The Relativism of Blame and Williams’ Relativism of Distance.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 84: 151–77. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2001. Philosophy in Classical India. London: Routledge. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2002. “Jaina Logic and the Philosophical Basis of Pluralism.” History and Philosophy of Logic 23: 267–81. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2017. “An Exemplary Indian Intellectual: Bimal Krishna Matilal.” APA Newsletter: Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies 17(1): 3–7.

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Gokhale, Pradeep. 1991. “The Logical Structure of Syadvada.” Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 8: 73–81. Gorisse, Marie-Hélène. 2017. “Logic in the Tradition of Prabhācandra.” In The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy, edited by Jonardon Ganeri, 486–506. New York: Oxford University Press. Harman, Gilbert. 1975. “Moral Relativism Defended.” The Philosophical Review. 84: 3–22. Krishan, Y., 1989. “The Meaning of the Puruṣārthas in the Mahābhārata.” In Moral Dilemmas in the Mahābhārata, edited by Bimal Krishna Matilal, 53–68. Delhi and Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study and Motilal Banarsidass. Long, Jeffery D. 2009. Jainism: An Introduction. New York: I.B. Tauris. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. 1973. “A Critique of the Mādhyamika Position.” In Mind, Language, and World, edited by Jonardon Ganeri, 203–13. New York: Oxford University Press. Matilal, Bimal Krishna.1975. “Mysticism and Reality: Ineffability.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 3: 217–52. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. 1977. “The Logical Illumination of Indian Mysticism.” In Mind, Language, and World, edited by Jonardon Ganeri, 38–64. New York: Oxford University Press. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. 1981. The Central Philosophy of Jainism (Anekānta-vāda). Ahmedabad: L.D. Institute of Indology. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. 1983. “Moral Dilemmas and Religious Dogmas.” In Ethics and Epics, edited by Jonardon Ganeri, 3–13. New York: Oxford University Press. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. 1986. “Ethical Relativism and the Confrontation of Cultures.” In Ethics and Epics, edited by Jonardon Ganeri, 218–41. New York: Oxford University Press. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. 1989a. “Kṛṣṇa: In Defence of a Devious Divinity.” In Ethics and Epics, edited by Jonardon Ganeri, 91–108. New York: Oxford University Press. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. 1989b. “Caste, Karma, and The Gīta.” In Ethics and Epics, edited by Jonardon Ganeri, 136–44. New York: Oxford University Press. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. 1989c. Moral Dilemmas in the Mahābhārata. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. 1991a. “Pluralism, Relativism and Interaction Between Cultures.” In Ethics and Epics, edited by Jonardon Ganeri, 242–62. New York: Oxford University Press. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. 1991b. “Anekanta: Both Yes and No?” Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 8: 1–12. Perrett, Roy W. 2016. An Introduction to Indian Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Priest, Graham. 2008. “Jaina Logic: A Contemporary Perspective.” History and Philosophy of Logic 29(3): 263–78. Ross, William David. 1930. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sharma, Arvind, and Ray Bharati. 2000. Classical Hindu Thought: An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1974. Morality: An Introduction to Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1985. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Part II

Moral Experience

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Goblet Words and Moral Knack Non-Cognitivist Moral Realism in the Zhuangzi? Christopher C. Kirby

As Whitehead once intimated, philosophers tend to speak in half-truths, though very few do us the courtesy of admitting it (cf. Whitehead 1956, 14). Fortunately for us, the Daoist thinker known as Zhuangzi is one of those few. As I hope to show, his philosophy could be a boon to Western ethics because it challenges two long-standing metaethical assumptions. The first is the supposed link between moral realism and moral cognitivism, i.e., the idea that “the cognitivism/non-cognitivism and realism/ anti-realism distinctions in metaethics are really just two different ways of marking one and the same distinction” (Adams 2014, 39). But what if someone deems moral notions unevaluable in terms of propositional, justified true belief and yet sees them as nonetheless beholden to reality? What if there are mind-independent norms that can be felt/intuited? Is such a non-cognitivist moral realism plausible?1 I will suggest it is, if one is willing to adopt a non-propositional account of moral beliefs like the one found in the text associated with Zhuangzi and his followers.2 The alleged link between cognitivism and realism seems to underwrite a second assumption about moral skill – i.e., if there could be something like true moral expertise, it must require “articulacy in explanation, the ability to convey why what is done is done” (Annas 2011, 20).3 Since Socrates, virtue has often been thought to imply the ability to build justified true beliefs about the rational principles that motivate action. And so, articulate ‘skill’ gets contrasted with dumb ‘knack’; if one has the (technē) of an expert, one must be able to give an account (logos) of what one is doing. And so, as the story goes, no account, no expertise.4 But what if one believes the absence of rational thought is a defining characteristic of expertise?5 Once more, the Zhuangzi may be of service, as it presents inarticulate ‘knack’ as precisely what qualifies someone as a sage who has discovered ‘the secret of nourishing life’. It is full of stories about various sorts of skillful artisans, which, following Joseph Needham (1954), have come to be known as the ‘knack passages’ and suggest “that wonderful skills cannot be taught or transferred, but are attainable by minute concentration on the Tao running through natural objects of all kinds” (Ibid., 121). I will suggest the constellation of virtues these passages illustrate

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offers us a unique theory of moral expertise built on a notion of emergent normativity in mutual co-adjustment with an ever-changing world. The Zhuangzi, however, is notoriously difficult to pin down, and its obscurity has been well documented in recent literature. I will build on key passages from the text as well as recent scholarship focusing on Daoist praxeology in order to show that the Zhuangzi offers something of a moral philosophy built on the seemingly paradoxical notions of ineffable moral truths and non-transferable moral knack.6 While such entities may not be accessible as objects of knowledge, the text nonetheless demonstrates that they are practicable and that much can be communicated about them. What is interesting about the Zhuangzi, in this regard, is how it undermines the assumed distinction between an agent and the world by placing the explanatory grounds for action as much in the world as in the agent. So if the Zhuangzi’s presentation of knack is coherently prescriptive, perhaps something like moral expertise, understood in terms of a “multi-stranded, domain limited” field of experts, is plausible (Jones and Schroeter 2012). The interpretation I am attempting here is somewhat unorthodox, as most Anglophone scholars tend to view Zhuangzi as some sort of mystic, relativist, or skeptic. Suffice it to say, I do not entirely disagree with such readings, which is to say I do not exactly agree. First, if Zhuangzi really was a mystic, he appears to have been of the holistic variety that sees an immanent continuity in the totality of nature. But this is a position that looks compatible with realism. Second, if the text promotes a brand of relativism, it is not likely the kind that would make Hitler and Gandhi moral equivalents (cf. Allinson 2015) but instead a pluralistic acknowledgment of the efficacy of different perspectives (cf. Wong 2006). Such perspectivalism leads to the insight that some values might be multiply realizable, not “that all values exist on the same axiological plane” (Allinson 2015, 272). Third, if something like skepticism can be found in his writings, his doubts appear aimed mainly at the philosophical methods of his contemporaries. Simply put, there is reason to believe Zhuangzi was neither a transcendental mystic, a jejune subjectivist, nor a moral skeptic. For three decades now, Western commentaries on the Zhuangzi have largely been focused on epistemological issues.7 The central interpretive question seems to boil down to accounting for the ineffability that it advances. Yet the traditional mystical, subjectivist, and skeptical readings do not square with what the text has to say about goblet words or the other sānyán. This may be due to the fact that the sānyán are never explicitly referenced in the inner chapters of the text and almost undoubtedly were named much later by authors from either the ‘School of Zhuang’ or ‘Huang-Lao’ sects.8 Nonetheless, there are numerous examples of the sānyán rhetorical styles in the inner chapters and even the passages of the Zhuangzi that have figured most prominently in recent scholarship offer insight into a goblet word strategy.

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Before turning my attention to the goblet words themselves, some preliminary remarks may be necessary about the notion of truth as it appears in the Zhuangzi. One of the more salient features of a Zhuangzian non-cognitive moral realism would have to be a conception of truth largely unfamiliar to the Western philosophical tradition insofar as it is non-propositional. In fact, many comparativists agree that pre-Qin thought (before 221 BCE) either operated without the true/false distinction or at least held it to be philosophically unimportant (e.g., Munro 1969; Hansen 1985). But this should not imply that works like the Zhuangzi operate completely detached from the real world, only that the way such texts present their doctrines looks very different from that with which we are accustomed. In the case of the Zhuangzi, I should like to introduce the phrase ‘tipping toward truth’ to characterize its distinctively metaphorical moral discourse. One character frequently appearing in English translations as ‘truth’ is 真 (zhēn). It has come to mean ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ in modern usage, but its usage in the Zhuangzi is more multifarious. Interestingly, the character appears only three times in the Laozi and not at all in Confucius or Mencius, which may indicate it was a Daoist neologism employed as a foil to Confucian concepts (Moeller and D’Ambrosio 2017).9 For instance, in the 31st chapter there is a story about a fisherman who questions Confucius and his students about their philosophy. After hearing Confucius’s prized benevolence and ritual propriety over all else, the fisherman laughs and says, 仁則仁矣，恐不免其身，苦心勞形以危其真。嗚乎，遠哉其分於道也. Benevolence schmenevolence! I fear he won’t get out of this alive. All this effort and trouble just to endanger truth [zhēn]. Phew! He’s far away and totally cut off from the Dào! [Zhuangzi, Ch. 31]10 After a lengthy discussion, an exasperated Confucius finally asks what the old man means by ‘truth’. In his response, the fisherman explains that zhēn consists in sincerity, but it is a sincerity toward one’s own inner nature, out of which filiality, kindness, appropriateness, loyalty, and honesty all grow. The fisherman goes on to explain that, 禮者, 世俗之所為也; 真者，所以受於天也，自然不可易也. 故聖人法 天貴真，不拘於俗. Those rites [that Confucius prized] were made up by the vulgar; truth is what is received from nature [tīan]. Its spontaneity can’t be changed. That’s why the sage prizes the patterns of nature [fă tīan] as truth, and isn’t cramped by convention. [Zhuangzi, Ch. 31] The concept of zhēn looks like a direct challenge to the Confucian ethical system. The author(s) of the Zhuangzi viewed the Confucian emphasis on

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ritual propriety and benevolence as officious and too easily corruptible. The ‘truth’ they sought to recover was not a propositional truth of sentences but rather “the natural state of a thing and what it is natural to do, or, simply, what is natural” (Chong 2011, 324). This is best illustrated in the way zhēn is contrasted with the artifice of wéi (‘human effort/action’) in the Qíwùlùn chapter.11 As those familiar with Daoist thought will recognize, one of that chapter’s central ideas is the importance of wúwéi, often translated as nonaction. Thus the kind of truth toward which Zhuangzi’s goblet words tip is meant to be something fluid, dynamic, and ever-changing – something realized only through an effortless, spontaneous praxis.

1. Goblet Words: Tipping Toward Truth Translators have long noted the unique challenges of rendering Zhuangzi’s deeply poetic and metaphorical style into English.12 He employed the language of his day in ways that had never been seen and was thus able to create “semantic paradoxes, infinite regresses, irony, wordplay, and fables” that made it possible to “hint at certain things . . . without being forced (logically) to assert or to adhere to anything” (Chong 2006, 382). This is noteworthy because if one is to locate in his view anything like a cognitively inaccessible moral ‘real’, i.e., a mind-independent norm, it obviously could not be stated directly. One major theme in the text is the limitation of language in capturing reality. Several of its chapters are devoted to the subject – the most prominent among them being the second of the ‘inner’ chapters, the Qíwùlùn. But it is in the 27th chapter, entitled Yùyán (often translated simply as ‘Metaphorical Words’), that the text offers an explicit account of the language it employs. It refers to its language as yùyán [寓言], zhòngyán [重言], and zhīyán [卮言], which might be translated, respectively, as ‘attributed words’, ‘endorsed words’, and ‘goblet words’.13 The yùyán are ‘attributed’ in two senses. On one hand, they mock the Confucian rhetorical strategy of citing well-known texts to support an idea. On the other hand, they reference the way a metaphor can often point to the attributes of something else not obviously related. Similarly, the zhòngyán can be seen as a parody of the flowery language of the elders that the Confucians often endorsed in their rhetoric. The Zhuangzi frequently puts its zhòngyán in the mouths of the bizarre and/or repugnant to great effect. In fact, both the yùyán and the zhòngyán are sometimes treated as subspecies of the zhīyán, or goblet words, since the text makes a point to say how often each appears: 寓言十九，重言十七，卮言日出，和以天倪. 寓言十九，藉外論之 . . . 重言十七，所以已言也，是為耆艾 . . . 卮言日出，和以天倪，因以 曼衍，所以窮年. Yùyán are nine of ten. Zhòngyán are seven of ten. Zhīyán circulate daily and harmonize nature’s cycles. The yùyán that comprise nine of ten pay

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tribute to the sayings of others. . . . The zhòngyán that comprise seven of ten are intended to end disputes, for these are the words of revered elders. . . . The zhīyán that circulate daily and harmonize nature’s cycles effuse through the region and thoroughly extend the years. [Zhuangzi, Ch. 27] This tripartite discourse, called the sānyán [三言] by later thinkers, developed as a comedic cure for an era that had become “blinkered by the darkness of [Confucian and Mohist] ‘chop logic’” (Lee 2000, 530). The Zhuangzi’s advice in such a time was to follow the dào, which all things unerringly follow . . . except that inveterate analyser and wordmonger man, who misses it by sticking rigidly to the verbally formulated codes which [those] other philosophical schools present as ‘the Way of the sage’ or the ‘Way of the former kings’. (Graham 2001, 7) In this vein, the Zhuangzi’s sānyán are at once satirical and instructive. The most detailed description of the goblet words can be found in the final chapter of the text. It reads: 以天下為沈濁, 不可與莊語; 以卮言為曼衍 . . . 其書雖瑰瑋而連犿無 傷也, 其辭雖參差而諔詭可觀. 彼其充實不可以已. Since the whole world acts as if mired in a bog, Zhuangzi could not speak directly. So he used ‘goblet words’ [zhīyán] to effuse meaning . . . Though his writings seem fantastically gaudy and howlishly entertaining, no harm comes from them. Even though they seem mere folly they are worth observing, for through them he brings forth evercascading truths. [Zhuangzi, Ch. 33]14 The zhīyán name is a reference to an ancient irrigation vessel known as the qīqí [欹器], which tipped and spilled its contents once it reached capacity (Fried 2007). Like that ancient practical joke known as the Pythagorean cup, Zhuangzi’s goblet words are drained of their content once their usefulness has been exceeded. As the text states elsewhere: 荃者所以在魚，得魚而忘荃; 蹄者所以在兔，得兔而忘蹄；言者所以 在意，得意而忘言。吾安得忘言之人而與之言哉? Traps are for fish; once the fish is caught, the trap can be forgotten. Snares are for rabbits; once the rabbit is caught, the snare can be forgotten. Words are for meaning; once the meaning is caught, the words can be forgotten. Where can I find someone who has forgotten words so I may have a word with him? [Zhuangzi, Ch. 26]

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Thus, the Zhuangzi admits to employing words as tools, bound to be dismissed as soon as one has captured their meaning. Those (like the Confucians and Mohists) who become enamored with words are rather like a traveler who cannot disembark from the ship. What the Zhuangzi seems to suggest is that it is better to allow for semantic properties to shift so one can ‘forget’ the vessel and focus on the journey. Simply put, his goblet words are intentionally open-ended.15 So, what should be made of the text’s numerous metaphors? What does it mean to say they ‘tip toward truth’? Interpreters have a few options available to them. Some have chosen to see Zhuangzi’s style as the musings of a metaphysical mystic committed to a quasi-religious ineffability (Chan 1963; Watson 1968; Creel 1970; Roth 2000). Others tend to view his writings through the lens of classical Western skepticism and relativism (Wong 1984; Hansen 1992; Eno 1996; Kjellberg and Ivanhoe 1996). However, most mystical interpretations invoke a notion of ineffability wherein some anointed class of people gain access to esoteric, transcendent truths through some special aptitude. On the other hand, skeptical readings usually depend, rather conversely, on a universal ineptitude to do so (Kukla 2004). Both readings are problematic. As shall become clearer later, it is more likely that Zhuangzi saw sagehood and the moral lessons it provided as multiply realizable and quite commonplace, i.e., as ‘nothing special’. Recent literature has treated Zhuangzi’s use of metaphor along different lines – focusing more on existential and normative concerns. One camp tends to see Zhuangzi’s main goal as one of intellectual liberation. For instance, Robert Allinson has called it “transcendent freedom” – in a more Kantian than religious sense – and Kim-chong Chong refers to it as freedom from epistemic “boundedness” (Chong 2006; Allinson 2015). Both reject the Davidsonian take on metaphor and agree there is at least some cognitive content that is lost in paraphrase, though each is decidedly murky on the details.16 Alternatively, as Youru Wang has noted, “the philosophical notion of metaphor implied in the Zhuangzi is quite different from the philosophical conception of metaphor in Western metaphysics .  .  . there is no fixed meaning behind a metaphor”, no “notion of the proper meaning of words and [no] separation between the sensible and the intelligible” (Y. Wang 2004, 203). On his view, the author(s) of the text employed a strategy of “indirect communication”, which “considers meaning to be open-ended and indeterminate” (Ibid., 195). In this way, the Zhuangzi’s use of metaphor seems to dissolve the distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive content on which most Western commentaries have been built. And this links up nicely with Edward’s Slingerland’s research (2014) on the Daoist notion of spontaneity, or zìrán, which he connects to neuro-scientific theories like Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis:

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There is now general agreement that human thought is characterized by two distinct systems that have very different characteristics. The first and most important of these (tacit, hot cognition, or “System 1”) is fast, automatic, effortless, and mostly unconscious, corresponding roughly to what we think of as “the body” and what Zhuangzi calls the “Heavenly mechanism.” The second (explicit, cold cognition, or “System 2”) is slow, deliberate, effortful, and conscious, corresponding roughly to our “mind” – that is, our conscious, verbal selves. (Ibid., 27) Perhaps access to what Zhuangzi deemed “true” requires calming the reflective mind in order to employ the reflexivity of the body. In this way, Zhuangzi’s goblet words, much like a Zen koan, ‘tip toward truth’ while remaining empty of any set content. Their meaning must be felt and whatever one finds there swells from what one has already brought with them. But, what does it mean to call such truths ‘ever-cascading’ [chōng shí 充實]?17 In order to flesh that out, something must be said about the comingling of cosmology and morality in pre-Qin China.

2. Ever-Cascading Truths and Transformation Many scholars have made reference to the continuity between humanity and nature found within the pages of the Chinese classics. Tu Wei-ming summed it up best when he described the Chinese vision as “all modalities of being organically connected .  .  . integral parts of a continuous process of cosmic transformation” (Tu 1989, 75). As he put it, to understand this point is to realize that “we are consanguineous with nature. But as humans, we must make ourselves worthy of such a relationship”, through our own transformations and attunement with the processes of nature (Ibid., 78). Attunement with nature is another major theme in the Zhuangzi. While it may be tempting to see this as a mystical and spiritually charged moral notion, there is good reason to see it more naturalistically. J.H. Lee calls it a “poetics of normativity”, which emphasizes the use of metaphorical language in the text and “rests on the Daoist understanding of the Way (Dào) as the ultimate source of normativity” (Lee 2014, 43). On this view, the language of the Zhuangzi is implicitly normative precisely because it is poetic, as in the original sense of the Greek poiesis – or ‘bringing forth’ – which produces in the sage both a heightened awareness (míng) and responsiveness (yìng) described as mirroring “the workings of the Way itself in Nature” (Ibid.). This is an aspect of Zhuangzi’s thought that often strikes Western philosophers as very strange. But Zhuangzi inherited an alternate view of human action that did not rely on a Platonic psychology, wherein the mind is a set of representations, truth is measured according to correspondence, and knowledge acquisition is considered a

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passive affair. In this ‘intellectualist’ psychology, there is a sharp contrast between inner and outer (agent and world) and the causal arrows of experience tend to be drawn from the external world of ‘objects’ toward an internal, knowing ‘subject’. Intelligent action, then, is thought to originate in the mind and to be oriented toward the external world. By contrast, Zhuangzi’s ‘poetics of normativity’ imply that thoughtful human actions can shape nature just as much as nature shapes human action and thought. In other words, for someone like Zhuangzi, what we might call ‘thinking’ is not physically delimited by our brains or even our bodies, but instead is found in a dynamic interplay and continuity between humanity and nature, or, as Lee puts it elsewhere (borrowing the words of Henry James) it is to be “finely aware and richly responsible” (Lee 2000, 2014). These lines of thought help explain why the Qíwùlùn chapter – which features the lengthiest discussion of language in the text – might begin with a dialogue regarding attunement between the pipes of humanity, earth, and nature [人; 地; 天] and end with an allegory in which Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly and learned a lesson about the ever-changing cosmos. The concluding lines of this chapter read: “Between Zhou and a butterfly there is certainly some difference. This is called transformation of things [wùhuà]”. This is important as it suggests the point of the butterfly story is not to advance some skeptical thesis – à la the Cartesian dream argument – but rather to illustrate the dynamic holism of the dào. From a broader perspective, the fleeting distinctions between small things like people and butterflies should indicate fluidity in the transformation of nature. For Zhuangzi, human beings, like the other myriad things of the world, are points of focus (dé 德), which are inextricably linked to the field of nature. This field is both functionally constitutive of its foci and the sum total of such functioning. Dào, then, might be understood as a sort of tapestry, rewoven constantly, of which the pattern is not some preordained telos but rather an emergent property, and in which the various threads are relations among the pattern’s constituents.18 This is the Zhuangzi’s chosen metaphor for describing those elders who the Confucians and Mohists revered and that he lampooned in his zhòngyán style of goblet words: Grown old! And never went through the warp and woof from root to tip as befitting an “elder,” has neither progressed nor is an advanced elder nor a person of dao, and thus is a stale obsolete oldster. (tr. Morrow 2016, 184, emphasis added) The prescription, then, is one of self-growth, or transformation, not some ab extra enlightenment. Both may be a kind of transcendence but only the former stays connected to the transformation of the natural realm.

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The butterfly passage calls for a more fluid kind of discourse than the Confucian and Mohist disputers of the day could offer – one that might be more suitable in conveying truths that constantly spill over and cannot be stated directly. In this vein, one might view the Qíwùlùn chapter itself as an extended account of ‘goblet word’ strategy. Angus Graham perhaps anticipated such a connection between the Qíwùlùn, goblet words, and the knack passages: For [Zhuangzi] the fundamental error [of his contemporaries] is to suppose that life presents itself with issues which must be formulated in words so that we can envision alternatives and find reasons for preferring one to the other . . . People who really know what they are doing, such as a cook carving an ox, or a carpenter or an angler, do not precede each movement by weighing the argument . . . “the tongue cannot put it into words”. (Graham 2001, 6)

3. Conveying What Cannot Be Said and Thick Moral Concepts Is there a concept in Western philosophy that is open-ended and dynamic enough to apply to Zhuangzi’s goblet words? Perhaps moral thickness can answer the brief. Some proponents of morally thick concepts see in them a propositionally ineffable content that tends to run through one’s fingers and cannot quite be grasped. Taking aesthetic metaphors as his leaping off point, Nick Zangwill has argued that the fact-value-bridging thick concepts that many theorists have in mind are more easily found in colloquial metaphorical language – i.e., in “evaluative animal descriptions, swearwords, and gestures” (Zangwill 2013, 201). For example, calling someone a ‘chicken’, ‘rat’, or ‘lion’ in English has clear moral content, and although other languages have idioms involving these creatures, the metaphorical meanings there are radically different. More importantly, while a foreign speaker may learn the proper usage of a particular culture’s animal descriptions or swearwords, the attending praise or disgust is often felt only faintly. Neuroscientists call this phenomenon reduced emotional resonance of language and it is one reason why most people feel differently about using profanity in their second language – either they find it far easier or avoid it altogether because they cannot judge the intensity of what they are saying (Ivaz et al. 2018). The content such metaphors and idioms express resists propositional unpacking and paraphrasing such content likewise strips it of its evaluative import. So, contra Davidson, it appears certain metaphors are not empty, that they convey something that cannot otherwise be said.19 In other words, there appears to be some propositionally ineffable, evaluative content in such metaphors and, contra Allinson and Chong, this

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content looks to be non-cognitive, or in the very least accessible only through the faculties of ‘hot-cognition’. The Zhuangzi is chock full of animal descriptions and shocking profanity that could serve as stellar examples of Zangwill’s point about morally thick metaphors. Some examples: the text begins with a story about an incredibly large fish that transforms into a phoenix-like bird, moving from abundant yin to the utmost yang and back again. Zhuangzi himself is referred to as a turtle happily dragging its tail in the mud. A friend and philosophical rival, Huizi, is likened to a greedy owl protecting a meal of rotten rat from an uninterested phoenix. A criminal who is agitated by Confucius’s yammering is called an untamable tiger. And, in the 22nd chapter, when a Mohist scholar asks Zhuangzi where dào exists, he replies, “There is nowhere that it doesn’t exist . . . It is in the tiles and shards . . . It is in the piss and shit” [zaì shĭ nì 在屎溺] (tr. Watson 1968, 241). Another example that has been largely glossed over by translation is that of Butcher Ding in the third chapter. His occupation is filthy and disgusting, yet he performs his task with such elegance and grace that the lord of the estate claims to have learned from him yāng shēng zhu˘ – i.e., “the secret of nourishing life”.20 In this brief parable, Zhuangzi employs the zhòngyán form of his goblet words and puts the wisdom in the mouth and the hands of someone his Confucian and Mohist counterparts would have deemed profane. In Kuang-ming Wu’s pioneering essay on Zhuangzi’s goblet words we already find a description that anticipates moral thickness: We use a word adverbially when we ourselves move, shifting our perspective into the mode of that word. A noun describes a thing. An adverb describes, or even prescribes, a way of life . . . Chuang Tzu’s goblet words are words requesting us to change, to be judged and transformed, so that we become as nothing, absolutely nimble and – flexing with things. (Wu 1988, 2; emphasis added) This emphasis on change, transformation, and personal growth in the goblet words is echoed in Daniel Fried’s analysis of the temporality imbedded in the way the Zhuangzi describes them: The zhiyan is thus being figured as a mode which is ineffably ancient, yet fit for commonplace, everyday usage. It is something which is unstable, certainly, which owes its essence to a constant tipping and consequent overflow – but which is unstable in cycles, and which has a rhythmic, eternal quality tied to the cycles of heaven and earth. Day in and day out, from the heavenly beginnings to the end of years, properly unstable speech carries the power to irrigate the seeds of the ten thousand things, to cooperate with nature in the metamorphoses of forms. (Fried 2007, 168; emphasis added)

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The thick moral dimension of Zhuangzi’s words, then, should not be seen as directly answering ‘What is the right way to act?’ but rather as indirectly guiding us toward the best sort of life. Where the former seeks a static, universal rule, the latter seeks dynamic transformation.

4. Moral Knack: Listening Without Words If Zhuangzi’s moral ‘reals’ cannot be stated directly, the question remains how they could ever guide ethical action. The answer to that question might be the second most distinctive feature of a Zhuangzian noncognitive moral realism. The foregoing points regarding ineffability, attunement, and transformation are important for those who discern a kind of ethical prescription from the text’s various moral exemplars – particularly those skilled artisans who possess uncanny knack in their trade equated with ‘the secret of nourishing life’. This suggests the author(s) viewed such values as both real and attainable, albeit neither through formal discourse nor lengthy tutelage. These ‘knack passages’, then, may be seen to invoke a unique notion of moral expertise. More importantly, when asked about the Way of their technique, these knacky artisans can offer demonstration, and some can even talk about what they do, but they are quite at a loss for words when it comes to giving an account of the knack itself. As we have seen, the Zhuangzi’s advice for self-cultivation was set up in opposition to the rigid practices of the Confucians and Mohists. As such, the attunement the Daoist sage sought is considered formless and ever-changing. In this vein, Zhuangzi’s goblet words appear intimately connected to the Daoist wu-forms21 (or ‘non’ forms), particularly the practice of wúmíng [無名], or ‘referring without affixing a name’. Again, returning to the Qíwùlùn, we find this discussion initiated not by advice about speaking properly but rather by listening to the pipes of heaven, earth, and humanity. Zhuangzi saw transformation as “the coordinating of the patterns (li 理) of continuity that emerge and persist in the natural, social, and cultural flux in which we are radically and resolutely embedded” (Ames 1998, 226). In other words, human beings can contribute to the formation of the contexts they inhabit through interaction with other contributing factors. If there is anything like our conception of knowledge to be distilled from this, it will not be straightforwardly cognitive because it involves non-propositional and situational elements due to its concomitance with emerging patterns in the world. According to Zhuangzi, this kind of transformation can either accord with dào or work against it; it can be either harmonious or cacophonous (cf. Cook 2003). The individual who could achieve a harmonious transformation is Zhuangzi’s ‘person of the dao’, and would be called the zhēnrén [真人], or ‘genuine person’. Interestingly, the characters presented in the knack passages who possess a skill supremely attuned to the dào pay deep attention to the body,

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not merely to cognition. With regard to the expertise of ‘the craftsman’, Richard Sennett has stated, “all skills, even the most abstract, begin as bodily practices”, which find both thinking and feeling in the process of making (Sennett 2008, 10).22 Sennett makes reference to the ancient art of the Chinese cleaver chef, who worked out a different way to use the combined forearm, hand, and cleaver in order to cut food finely. . . . The idea of minimum force as the base line of self-control is expressed in the apocryphal if perfectly logical advice given in ancient Chinese cooking: the good cook must learn first to cleave a grain of boiled rice. (Sennett 2008, 167) Sennett connects this sort of embodiment to the expert’s virtue of situational awareness through the Butcher Ding story. “Cleave a grain of rice” thus stands for two bodily rules intimately connected: establish a base line of minimum necessary power, and learn to let go .  .  . The Chuang-tzu advises, do not behave like a warrior in the kitchen, from which Taoism derives a broader ethics for Homo faber: [viz.] an aggressive, adversarial address to natural materials is counterproductive. (Sennett 2008, 168; emphasis added) So, the knack craftsmen all appear to be chasing the same thing, i.e., a way to attune with “a universe of emergent situations rather than a universe of entities located in time, space, and vector motion”, or, in a word, dào (Eno 1996, 139; emphasis added). As Butcher Ding puts it, this goes a ‘step beyond skill’ [進乎技矣] or merely using one’s hands effectively. The word Butcher Ding uses is jì [技], which can also be translated as ‘craft, talent, or ability’, and has a meaning similar to shù [術], which can be translated as ‘artistic avenue/strategy’. In the 19th (Dáshēng) chapter, Carver Qing claims not to have any ‘artistic avenue’ (shù) beyond focusing only on the task at hand. Each craftsman follows dào but does not possess it in such a way that can be put into words.23 The kinds of practices that attune to dào are extremely diverse, yet each shares a stake in some larger notion of efficacy. If not yet rising to the level of a full-fledged ethics, the embodied responsiveness [yīng] and situational awareness [míng] of these knacky artisans could all be said to offer, in the very least, something of a philosophy of action. But this is one reason the concept zìrán [自然] is so central to getting a handle on the text’s normative themes. As Livia Kohn has put it, “Skillful spontaneity, then, means the integration of two abilities: first, to correctly read – intuit and interpret – the dynamics of any given situation; and second, to act in precise response to it” (Kohn 2014, 218).

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Reaching such heightened acuity requires a kind of intellectual modesty that allows for adaptability to changing circumstances and therefore fosters growth. In this way, the text holds up an ethics of απορια, in which “one acts on the basis of what one does not know, what one cannot control, what one cannot contain, rather than fixed rules, determinate principles, or clear imperatives” (Lusthaus 2003, 164). This sort of intellectual modesty links up with psychological studies on expertise and metacognition. Those who possess expertise in a given field are more likely to have a knack for metacognition – the ability to recognize one’s own limitations through careful deliberation: “Good singers know when they’ve hit a sour note; good directors know when a scene in a play isn’t working” (Nichols 2017, 45). Or, as Butcher Ding puts it, “whenever I come to something intricate, I see where it will be hard to handle and cautiously prepare myself, my gaze settles on it, action slows down for it, you scarcely see the flick of the chopper” (Graham 2001, 64). Such practical wisdom is “based on softness, emptiness, nonaction, and spontaneity” and falls under a general heading: dàoshù, or “dào strategy” (R. Wang 2012, 127). Thus, the path to moral excellence espoused in the Zhuangzi appears to be a kind of “situational ethics” that “means matching attitudes and actions to situations” (Kohn 2014, 237). Experts in various fields also often possess a willingness to bend or break rules in service of a higher value. For example, in his 2010 work on Practical Wisdom, Barry Schwartz lauded the efforts of wise public schoolteachers to act as “creative saboteurs” in the face of “lockstep curricula” (Schwartz and Sharpe 2010, 171). Standardization was robbing them of the freedom to pursue this higher value and by choosing to not simply go along with the rules these ‘canny outlaws’, as Schwartz calls them, modeled for their students the virtue of ethical subversion. Like expert jazz musicians, canny outlaws recognize when to ignore the rules. Similarly, throughout the Zhuangzi there are stories of physically deformed figures, particularly disfigured people and crooked trees, who bring forth the virtues of the sage precisely because they rest at ease within their own unconventional natures – e.g., Huizi’s tree in Chapter One, the Holy-tree and Sage-tree in Chapter Four, the ‘madman’ Jie Yu and the numerous instances of criminal amputees in Chapter Five. According to the Zhuangzi it is better to have a crippled form than to have one’s vitality crippled by convention. Unfortunately, the models of expertise with which philosophers are most familiar tend to run along two problematic lines: intellectualist and phronetic (Jones and Schroeter 2012). The former places emphasis on professional ethical training while the latter is typically presented within a framework of Aristotelean virtue ethics, in which practical wisdom (phronesis) is paramount. But, recent research indicates that professional training in moral philosophy does not reliably make one less prone to errors or inconsistencies (Schwitzgebel and Cushman 2012). In

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fact, in certain scenarios, professional training in ethical theory made philosophers more susceptible to post-hoc rationalizations of their choices. As the research team concluded: “even professional philosophers’ judgments about familiar types of cases in their own field can be strongly and covertly influenced by psychological factors . . . and [these] can in turn strongly influence the general principles which these philosophers endorse” (Schwitzgebel and Cushman 2012, 150). So it would seem the intellectualist model of moral expertise has some significant shortcomings. Likewise, traditional phronetic models of moral expertise typically require some teleological account of the ‘unity of the virtues’ – the Aristotelian belief that one cannot have some virtues and not others – a longstanding theoretical difficulty among contemporary virtue theorists (Jones and Schroeter 2012, 218). Zhuangzi’s notion of moral knack seems to avoid these pitfalls because it does not “share the assumption that expertise is primarily about the capacity reliably to deliver action-guiding verdicts that will settle [once and for all] what we are to do in particular circumstances” (Jones and Schroeter 2012, 219). Instead it takes moral judgment as situational, tentative, and inherently incomplete, the resulting action-guiding principles as emergent, and the moral progress an agent makes in her life as non-linear. As such, his conception of moral knack is neither foundationalist nor relativistic and the expertise the knacky artisans display is ‘domain-limited’. Given that the world of value is complex and the capacities needed to navigate in it many and various, it is more realistic to expect that such human moral expertise as exists would take patchwork form rather than the idealized form hypothesized in the simple statement of the [intellectualist and phronetc] models. (Jones and Schroeter 2012, 223) Perhaps this could be another way to make sense of the multiplicity of efficacious exemplars presented in the text. Since a plausible response to the problem of how to identify who has expertise abandons the thought that expertise is shown only or primarily in all-in judgments about rightness and instead looks for more piece-meal context dependent expertise with particular thick moral concepts. (Jones and Schroeter 2012, 219) As I have proposed elsewhere (Kirby 2017), passages like the ones involving Butcher Ding, Wheelwright Bian, and Carver Qing seem to suggest that each has found a unique way to tap into the same sort of expertise – i.e., ‘the secret of nourishing life’, or yăng shēng zhu˘ – though none can

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be said to have taken final possession of that expertise. In other words, it appears knack is dào-tracking insofar as it is domain-limited, and the strategies it offers must remain indirect and incomplete. In this way, the paradox and denegation of Zhuangzi’s goblet words can be tied directly to the wu-forms of Daoist practice.

5. In Lieu of a Conclusion In summary, I have tried to show the plausibility of reading the Zhuangzi in terms of non-cognitive moral realism. Key passages in the text suggest Zhuangzi believed moral reals (i.e., attitude-independent norms) exist, but they are propositionally ineffable because they emerge in a dynamic world. Because of this, Zhuangzi employed goblet words as signposts pointing to the moral lessons he sought to convey – despite the factual inaccuracies of the words themselves. These ‘truths’, which Zhuangzi’s goblet words ‘tip toward’, might be accessed non-cognitively through attuning with the natural world, listening to one’s body, and refining technical skill. The goal of these practices is the transformation of the self in harmony with the constant changes of nature – an emergent ‘bringing forth’ of normativity that cannot be put into words. Yet the author(s) of the Zhuangzi could not write a book without words. The goblet words of the text, therefore, convey what cannot be stated directly by relying on metaphor, allegory, paradox, and denegation. Metaphors, especially the sort Zhuangzi employed, are powerful examples of moral thickness because they resist reduction to morally thin concepts. Since they are non-propositional, situational, and open-ended, what is grasped through Zhuangzi’s goblet words (and the practices of the knacky artisans) appear to correspond with what might be called non-truth-apt moral beliefs. But it would be inaccurate to say the Zhuangzi employed metaphor, paradox, and allusion as a ladder to be ‘kicked away’ once the desired insights are achieved, since such a ladder would need to extend endlessly in order to keep up with a continuously evolving destination. In this way, the agent who transforms herself into a sage can be said to have ‘listened without words’. For Zhuangzi, this kind of knack is not a matter of epistemic ‘knowing that’ but one of noetic ‘knowing how’. In other words, the goal of Daoist wu-form strategy, which includes the wú míng of Zhuangzi’s goblet words and the wú wéi of the knack passages is not enlightenment but edification – not clarity but growth. Those whose growth never ceases may gain expertise in their chosen field and, ipso facto, a glimpse of something larger – viz. the dào. However, there are still some difficulties in this realist reading. One involves the fact that Zhuangzi does not seem to believe there will be any convergence among experts. Moral disagreement is often seen as a strike against moral realism (cf. Mcgrath 2010, 2011). One way of side-stepping

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the convergence issue might involve highlighting the value pluralism of the Zhuangzi, which holds up numerous forms of life that might be considered equally viable candidates for strategically coping with a delusional society. David Wong (1984, 2006) uses such a strategy in connection to what he calls pluralistic relativism: The idea is that once we are able to suspend looking at people through our evaluative categories, we will be able to accept them for what they are, see them as beings like ourselves, and care for them as we care for ourselves. (1984, 208) But perhaps there is a non-relativistic alternative here. A synopsis of the Zhuangzi’s first two chapter, taken together, might read: Chapter 1: There’s all manner of perspectives both large and small, so don’t be a tool for someone else. Transform oneself through the wu-forms to discover attunement with the world. Chapter 2: While most people can hear things only in their own terms, a sage can listen to something on its own terms. How much better would it be to listen without any terms? If one could attain such fine awareness [明 míng] and rich responsiveness [應 yìng], it would be like continuously waking from a dream. In this regard, the kind of clarity of vision and effortless action demonstrated in the dàoshù (dào-strategies) of the knack artisans seems indicative of an external moral reality, albeit one so complex that different experts are attuned to different aspects which explains their non-convergence. As the opening passage of the final chapter – itself composed of the zhòngyán style of goblet words – states: 天下之治方術者多矣，皆以其有為不可加矣。古之所謂道術者，果惡 乎在？曰：無乎不在. Many are the shù of those trying to regulate the whole world, and each claims to be something that cannot be improved upon. But, what the ancients called dàoshù, where has it gone?! We say: “It is everywhere”. (Zhuangzi, Ch. 33)

Notes 1. I am indebted to Colin Marshall’s “Schopenhauer and Non-Cognitivist Moral Realism” (2017) for framing the issue in these terms. 2. I maintain conventions in referring to Zhuang Zhou, the man, as Zhuangzi and the text associated with him as the Zhuangzi. The received version of the text is a recension from the Jin dynasty that grouped 33 chapters into ‘inner’ (1–7), ‘outer’ (8–22), and ‘miscellaneous’ (23–33). Zhuang Zhou has been

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4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

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traditionally viewed as the author of the inner chapters, while later chapters are held to contain the ideas of various sects of his followers. Annas later writes, “The learner in virtue, like the learner in a practical skill, needs to understand what she is doing . . . This comes about when the virtue is conveyed by the giving and receiving of reasons, in contrast with the nonrational picking up of a ‘knack’” (Ibid.) It is important to note that empirical studies regarding expertise do not bear this out. On the contrary, it seems deliberation occurs early on in the development of a skill but falls away at the highest levels of achievement (cf. H. Dreyfus 2014). Normally an expert does not calculate. He or she does not solve problems. He or she does not even think” (S. Dreyfus 2004, 180). The sort of ineffability to which I refer has been called ‘unrepresentability’ by Kukla (2004). In the body of the essay, I will use ‘propositionally ineffable’ when referring to the sorts of moral truths Zhuangzi sought to convey. Alternatively, there are a handful of authors seeking to coalesce the mystical and perspectival elements of the text (cf. Yearley 1982; Roth 2000; Ziporyn 2003). For more detail on chapter groupings, see Steve Coutinho’s An Introduction to Daoist Philosophies (2013). Moeller and D’Ambrosio write, “It is noteworthy that one of the three occurrences in the Daodejing associates it with fluidity or differentiation . . . and it is quite conceivable that a correspondingly paradoxical meaning of zhen, which takes change and transformation as the basis for genuineness or realness, has informed the terminological creation of zhenren in the Zhuangzi” (2017, 127–8). The first four characters intend something like a mockery by contrasting benevolence with itself (rén zé rén yĭ). “道惡乎隱而有真偽?” “How has the dào become obscured such that there is zhēn and wéi?” As one put it, “No other text of early times . . . so fully exploits the beauties of ancient Chinese – its vigor, its economy, its richness and symmetry” (Watson 1968, xxiv). These are variously translated as ‘imputed/lodged/dwelling words’, ‘repeated/ weighty/opalescent words’, and ‘goblet/spillover words’ respectively (cf. Wu 1988; Lin 2016; Morrow 2016). The first reference to such words appears in what scholars call a ‘school of Zhuangzi’ chapter (27). As such, it was likely written shortly after the second chapter (Qíwùlùn) of the ‘inner chapters’ attributed directly to Zhuangzi (cf. Lin 2016, 248). Chapter 33 is considered a ‘Syncretist’ chapter and was probably written some time later. According to André Kukla’s work on ineffability, such open-endedness of languages should be apparent since, “One can . . . introduce new expressive devices into English without its ceasing to be English. Moreover there is no definite, sharply marked degree or type of novelty beyond which a linguistic innovation results in our speaking a different language” (2004, 14; emphasis added). Allinson calls it ‘preconceptual cognitive content’ and Chong refers to it as ‘non-propositional content’. Interestingly, most commentators in the comparative literature seem to reject the Davidsonian theories of metaphor and translatability. In modern Mandarin 充實 is a combination that indicates ‘rich, full, or substantial’, but in keeping with the metaphor of the tipping goblet, I have translated them in their individual meanings, using ‘ever-cascading’ as a metaphorical replacement of chōng, ‘to fill; full; to substitute; replace’, and using ‘truth’ to stand for the ‘real, honest, true’ meaning of shí.

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18. Much of the argument for understanding Zhuangzi in these terms draws upon a reading of Daoism which could be called the focus-field model established by Ames and Hall in their translation of the writings of Laozi titled Dao De Jing: Making This Life Significant (2003). 19. Zhuangzi may have agreed with Davidson that “Words are the wrong currency to exchange for a picture” (1978, 46–7). But Zhuangzi would have seen this as a problem for words, not pictures. As Kukla rightly points out, “Davidson thinks that the notion of an inexpressible feature of the world is empty. But that is what he’s supposed to be proving as a consequence of the translatability thesis. My point is that the argument begs the question” (Kukla 2004, 35; emphasis added). 20. As Edward Slingerland points out, “Zhuangzi was hanging out in woodshops and kitchens . . . [and] [t]his world revealed to him artisans and butchers, ferryman and draftsman, whose effortless ease and responsiveness to the world could serve as a model for his disaffected fellow intellectuals” (Slingerland 2014, 143). 21. As Roger Ames and David Hall have noted, “In Confucianism, self is determined by sustained effort in deferential transactions guided by ritually structured roles and relations that project one’s person outward into society and into culture. . . . Daoism, on the other hand, expresses its deferential activity through what [are called] the wu-forms. The three most familiar articulations of this pervasive sensibility are: wuwei, wuzhi, and wuyu. These are, respectively, non-coercive actions in accordance with the de of things; a sort of knowing without resort to rules or principles; and a desiring which does not seek to control its ‘object’” (2003, 38). 22. Among the numerous studies and examples Sennett offers to support his thesis is research on attention deficit disorder and expertise. Contra prevailing presuppositions about leading students to attention through emotional investment and entertainment, research indicates the inverse to be true – viz. that emotional investment and enjoyment actually follow from the acquisition and refinement of the skill in question (cf. Sennett 2008, 172). 23. Compare this with other stories from the Dáshēng – the cicada catcher and the old swimmer – to see further diversity in explanations. One claims to have a dào [yǒu dào 有道], the other says he has none [wú dào 無道].

References Adams, Zed. 2014. “Against Moral Intellectualism.” Philosophical Investigations 37(1): 37–56. Allinson, Robert E. 2015. “How to Say What Cannot be Said: Metaphor in the Zhuangzi.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 41(3–4): 268–86. Ames, Roger, ed. 1998. Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi. Albany: SUNY Press. Ames, Roger and David Hall. 2003. Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine Books. Annas, Julia. 2011. Intelligent Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chan, Wing-Tsit. 1963. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chong, Kim-chong. 2006. “Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor.” Philosophy East and West 56(3): 370–91. Chong, Kim-chong. 2011. “The Concept of Zhen 真 in the Zhuangzi.” Philosophy East and West 61(2): 324–46. Cook, Scott. 2003. “Harmony and Cacophony in the Panpipes of Heaven.” In Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi, edited by Scott Cook, 64–87. Albany: SUNY Press.

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Coutinho, Steve. 2013. An Introduction to Daoist Philosophies. New York: Columbia University Press. Creel, Herlee G. 1970. What Is Taoism? Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Davidson, Donald. 1978. “What Metaphors Mean.” In On Metaphor, edited by Sheldon Sacks, 29–45. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dreyfus, Hubert. 2014. Skillful Coping: Essays on the Phenomenology of Everyday Perception and Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dreyfus, Stuart. 2004. “The Five-Stage Model of Adult Skill Acquisition.” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 24(3): 177–81. Eno, Robert. 1996. “Cook Ding’s Dao and the Limits of Philosophy.” In Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi, edited by Paul Kjellberg and Philip J. Ivanhoe, 127–51. Albany: SUNY Press. Fried, David. 2007. “A Never-Stable Word: Zhuangzi’s Zhiyan and ‘TippingVessel’ Irrigation.” Early China 31: 145–70. Graham, Angus C. 2001. Chuang-tzu˘ , 4th ed. London: Allen & Unwin. Hansen, Chad. 1985. “Chinese Language, Chinese Philosophy, and ‘Truth’.” The Journal of Asian Studies 44(3): 491–519. Hansen, Chad. 1992. A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ivaz, Lela, Kim L. Griffin, and Jon Andoni Duñabeitia. 2018. “Self-bias and the Emotionality of Foreign Languages.” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology June(2018): 1–14. Jones, Karen and Francois Schroeter. 2012. “Moral Expertise.” Analyse & Kritik 34(2): 217–30. Kirby, Christopher C. 2017. “Naturalism and Moral Expertise in the Zhuangzi.” Journal of East-West Thought 7(3): 13–27. Kjellberg, Paul and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. 1996. Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi: The Control of Meaning in an Institutional Setting. Albany: SUNY Press. Kohn, Livia. 2014. Zhuangzi: Text and Context. St. Petersburg: Three Pines Press, Inc. Kukla, Andre. 2004. Ineffability and Philosophy. New York: Routledge. Lee, Jung H. 2000. “Finely Aware and Richly Responsible: The Daoist Imperative.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 68(3): 511–36. Lee, Jung H. 2014. The Ethical Foundations of Early Daoism: Zhuangzi’s Unique Moral Vision. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lin, S. 2016. “Chuang Tzu.” In Masterworks of Asian Literature in Comparative Perspective: A Guide for Teaching, edited by D. Y. Miller, 245–58. New York: Routledge. Lusthaus, Dan. 2003. “Aporetics Ethics in the Zhuangzi.” In Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi, edited by Scott Cook, 163– 206. Albany: SUNY Press. Marshall, Colin. 2017. “Schopenhauer and Non-Cognitivist Moral Realism.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 55(2): 293–316. McGrath, Sarah. 2010. “Moral Realism Without Convergence.” Philosophical Topics 38(2): 59–90. McGrath, Sarah. 2011. “Skepticism about Moral Expertise as a Puzzle for Moral Realism.” The Journal of Philosophy 108(3): 111–37. Moeller, Hans G. and Paul J. D’Ambrosio. 2017. Genuine Pretending: On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Morrow, Carmine M. 2016. “Metaphorical Language in the Zhuangzi.” Philosophy Compass 11(4): 179–88. Munro, Donald J. 1969. “The Concept of Man in Ancient China.” Stanford 63: 105–6. Needham, Joseph, and Ling Wang. 1954. Science and Civilisation in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nichols, Tom. 2017. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roth, Harold D. 2000. “Bimodal Mystical Experience in the ‘Qiwulun’ Chapter of Zhuangzi.” Journal of Chinese Religions 28(1): 31–50. Schwartz, Barry, and Kenneth Sharpe. 2010. Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to do the Right Thing. London: Riverhead Books. Schwitzgebel, Eric, and Fiery Cushman. 2012. “Expertise in Moral Reasoning? Order Effects on Moral Judgment in Professional Philosophers and Nonphilosophers.” Mind & Language 27(2): 135–53. Sennett, Richard. 2008. The Craftsman. New Haven: Yale University Press. Slingerland, Edward. 2014. Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity. New York: Crown Publishing. Tu, Wei-ming. 1989. “The Continuity of Being: Chinese Visions of Nature.” In Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, edited by J. Baird Callicott and Roger T. Ames, 67–78. Albany: SUNY Press. Wang, Robin. 2012. Yinyang: The Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wang, Youru. 2004. “The Strategies of ‘Goblet Words’: Indirect Communication in the Zhuangzi.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 31(2): 195–218. Watson, Burton. 1968. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. New York: Columbia University Press. Whitehead, Alfred N., and Lucien Price. 1956. Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead as Recorded by Lucien Price. New York: New American Library. Wong, David B. 1984. Moral Relativity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wong, David B. 2006. Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wu, Kuang-ming. 1988. “Goblet Words, Dwelling Words, Opalescent WordsPhilosophical Methodology of Chuang Tzu.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 15(1): 1–8. Yearley, Lee H. 1982. “Three Ways of Being Religious.” Philosophy East and West 32(4): 439–51. Zangwill, Nick. 2013. “Moral Metaphor and Thick Concepts: What Moral Philosophy Can Learn from Aesthetics.” In Thick Concepts, edited by Simon Kirchin, 197–208. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ziporyn, Brooke. 2003. “How Many Are the Ten Thousand Things and I? Relativism, Mysticism, and the Privileging of Oneness in the ‘Inner Chapters’.” In Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi, edited by Scott Cook, 33–63. Albany: SUNY Press.

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Constructing Morality With Mengzi Three Lessons on the Metaethics of Moral Progress Jing Hu and Seth Robertson

1. Introduction It is in some ways surprising to include the early Confucian philosopher Mengzi (Mencius) [372–289 BCE] in a volume devoted to neglected voices in metaethics, and in other ways, not surprising at all. It is surprising in that in contemporary East Asian cultures and philosophy, Mengzi is not neglected. He is one of the most prominent and influential philosophers in East Asia, and in terms of relative impact both on philosophical traditions and on public life, he has been one of the most influential philosophers in history. It is not surprising to include Mengzi in this volume, however, for at least two reasons. First, despite being one of the most influential philosophers in history, Mengzi is largely ignored in contemporary Anglo American moral philosophy. Second, Mengzi himself seemed less interested in questions we might think of as metaethical and much more interested in theoretical questions at the intersection of moral psychology and normative ethics, as well as in practical and normative questions about moral development, virtue, political legitimacy, and good governance. But, despite his limited interest in metaethical issues, we will argue here that there are several valuable insights for contemporary metaethics that we can draw from Mengzi’s work – especially concerning moral change, discovery, and progress.1 There seem to have been genuine instances of progressive moral change, which we will call ‘moral progress’ (e.g., a person in the mid-19th century coming to believe that slavery is wrong, or that it is impermissible to limit educational opportunities by gender). This progress could be understood as agents acquiring knowledge of objective, mind-independent moral facts (realism) or as agents merely somehow improving their morally relevant beliefs or desires (constructivism and some other forms of anti-realism). Insofar as any metaethical view is committed to the possibility of moral progress, however, that view owes us an explanation of how this progress can occur (Kitcher 2011; Campbell and Kumar 2012, 2013; Kurth 2017; Arruda 2017). The issue we address in this paper is how Mengzian ethics could help anti-realists better explain moral progress. A growing number of philosophers have defended anti-realist accounts of moral progress, according

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to which moral progress amounts to developing processes, systems, and attitudes in which our moral values are applied more broadly, consistently, or successfully rather than, as moral realists believe, uncovering mindindependent objective moral truths.2 Somewhat surprisingly, proponents of these accounts argue that they have several advantages over realist accounts of moral progress. Most obviously, in rejecting or ignoring the existence of objective moral facts, they are ontologically more parsimonious. But they may also provide better explanations of moral progress than realist views. This paper does just that – we argue that Mengzian ethics can help us build better accounts of moral progress than realist accounts. More specifically, we’ll offer one general lesson and two smaller, particular lessons for moral anti-realists looking to provide explanations of moral progress (though they aren’t limited in interest to anti-realists). Our goal is not to develop and argue for a single complete Mengzian account of all relevant forms of moral progress, but instead to show how extant accounts of moral progress can be helpfully supplemented by some key ideas in Mengzi’s ethical system.3 We also want to showcase some especially nice features of what a broadly Mengzian account of moral progress might have. The first, more general lesson is that accounts of personal moral progress should focus on improving and shifting perspectives over and above mere changes in beliefs. We will say more about perspective shifting in Section 3, but suffice it to say for now that in addition to containing beliefs, perspectives also structure them according to salience and centrality, and beyond beliefs, perspectives include patterns of perception, interpretation and inference, attitudes, emotions, and associations (Camp 2006, 2013; Riggs 2016; Elgin 2002, 2010). Mengzian theories of moral psychology and moral development are especially well-suited to provide useful insights on eliciting and facilitating changes of perspectives that amount to moral progress. The second and third lessons concern Mengzian applications of the first lesson and are drawn from case studies of two key passages in Mengzi: (1A7 and 3A5 respectively).4 The second lesson is that analogical reasoning, namely using pre-cognitive associations between similar matters/situations, facilitates changes in one’s perspectives and thus enables moral progress. The third lesson is that anti-realist accounts of moral progress can be helpfully supplemented by exploring how emotions that become prominent in certain situations can lead to moral progress. Mengzi’s text provides several useful examples of this. We should emphasize here, at the outset, that we are not claiming that Mengzi should be interpreted as an anti-realist or a constructivist but instead that aspects of his moral theory can be utilized by moral anti-realists and constructivists to improve their accounts of moral progress.

2. Moral Progress Intuitively, there are instances of moral progress. Moral progress can happen in our personal lives – when we come to realize that something

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we didn’t think of as immoral actually was, or that something we thought of as immoral really wasn’t. It can also happen in society at large – think of the shifts in moral opinions after the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin or the media coverage of the Selma marches. Both moral realist and nonskeptical anti-realist metaethical theories should explain both what that progressive moral change amounts to and how it can happen. Moral realist theories, according to which there are objective moral facts, can perhaps provide the most straightforward account of such progress: moral progress works like epistemic progress in other objective domains of inquiry. Progressive moral change happens when people learn or discover new objective moral facts. Yet, in a fascinating recent development in metaethics, several philosophers have argued that some anti-realist theories can explain moral progress as adequately or even better than realist theories can (Kitcher 2011, 2012; Campbell and Kumar 2013; Kurth 2017; see Arruda 2017). These arguments typically function by examining paradigmatic cases of moral progress and finding that straightforward realist explanations seem to capture the moral change in question very poorly. As Richard Campbell and Victor Kumar (2013) gloss Philip Kitcher’s (2011) version of the argument: Moral innovators who push towards progressive moral change . . . do not enter into psychological processes that give any indication that they are responding to mind-independent moral facts that would make the changes objectively progressive on the supposed conception of objectivity. Indeed, if we suppose the reformers to be sincere, they view the reasons for moral change in ways that are entirely mind-dependent. (Campbell and Kumar 2013, 447) Thus error theorists and fictionalists such as J.L. Mackie (1991) or Richard Joyce (2007), pragmatic naturalists such as Kitcher (2011) or Owen Flanagan et al. (2016), and constructivists such as Sharon Street (2006) have developed broadly anti-realist accounts that might better capture what really happens in cases of moral progress. In this chapter we will be most interested in anti-realist constructivist accounts of moral progress. Street (2006, 2010) has described metaethical constructivism as claiming that “the truth of a normative claim consists in the claim’s being entailed from within the practical point of view” (Street 2010, 367) and “the subject matter of ethics is the subject matter of what follows from within the standpoint of creatures who are already taking this, that, or the other thing to be valuable” (Street 2006, 367). Caroline Arruda provides a helpful ‘ecumenical’ description of metaethical constructivism as “the view that morality is underwritten by the practical attitudes of agents” and constructivist moral progress as “changes in the way that an agent relates to those attitudes that do the work of underwriting moral claims” (Arruda 2017, 18). In short, for constructivists the justification of moral

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claims does not come from their correspondence with mind-independent objective facts but from their relation to the moral perspectives, attitudes, and values of actual or counterfactual agents. Thus moral progress does not consist in learning new objective facts but instead in bringing our moral beliefs into better alignment with relevant actual or counterfactual perspectives, attitudes, and values.

3. Lesson One: Progress in Perspective The first lesson is that moral progress involves shifting between and improving perspectives and should not be limited to changing moral beliefs. In this section, we will first discuss what a perspective is in this context, and with help from Mengzi, we will begin to make the case why understanding moral progress in terms of changing of perspectives has advantages over focusing only on the changing of beliefs. Standard characterizations of constructivism (Street 2010; Arruda 2017) explicitly refer to standpoints or perspectives, but a standpoint or perspective is not just a set of beliefs. Elisabeth Camp, who argues that perspectives cannot be reduced to sets of propositions (Camp 2006), treats perspectives as “ongoing dispositions to structure one’s thoughts”, including dispositions “to notice and remember certain types of features rather than others” and “to treat some classes of features as more [causally, motivationally, or explanatorily] central” (Camp 2013, 336). Intuitively, perspectives include patterns of association and inference and they can be shaped not only by our beliefs but also by values, emotions, attitudes, basic evaluative tendencies, and moods. This raises the tantalizing possibility of accounting for moral progress in terms of improved perspectives rather than merely in terms of improved beliefs. Insofar as a perspectival model of our minds is more psychologically accurate than a purely propositional model, and insofar as some moral perspectives intuitively are better than others, we have good reasons to pursue a perspectival account of moral progress. Importantly, moral progress on such an account could occur not only from small improvements in individual components of perspectives (such as in one’s moral beliefs) but also in wholesale perspective shifts. Consider Catherine Elgin’s discussion of how perspectival models of the mind are generally epistemically superior to belief-oriented models: Human beings [we might think] seem to gather information in the way that squirrels gather nuts. Bit by bit, we amass data and store it away against future need. Many epistemologists and laymen take cognitive progress to consist in data gathering . . . [but] this conception of cognitive progress both constricts and distorts the subject . . . it cannot even make sense of a variety of cognitive innovations that figure in the advancement of science. (Elgin 2002, 1–2)

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Though Elgin here is interested in general epistemic progress and epistemic progress in science, the point applies to morality as well. In fact, there is an even stronger case for perspectival models of progress in moral domains since our moral concerns are not limited to our moral beliefs. Moral progress solely in terms of changes in moral beliefs without concomitant changes in our emotions and emotional dispositions, and patterns of association, interpretation, or perception would be quite limited. Mengzi certainly seemed to think so: in the two passages we’ll examine soon (1A7 and 3A5), his strategy can be seen as attempts to shift his interlocuters’ moral perspectives.5 In particular, Mengzi utilizes patterns of emotive association and interpretation to prepare his interlocutors for the appropriate perspective shift. As we’ll see, in 1A7 Mengzi prepares King Xuan for a perspective shift concerning his obligations to his citizens by reminding the king of an emotionally laden decision he made to spare a sacrificial ox, and in 3A5 Mengzi prepares his interlocutor Yi Zhi for a perspective shift concerning moral theories by reminding Yi Zhi of an emotionally laden decision to provide a lavish funeral for his parents. In light of recent scholarship on Mengzi, it is clear that Mengzi takes our moral minds to include more than sets of beliefs and rational inferences. Mengzi employs a famous botanical metaphor to illustrate his view of the goodness of human nature. He claims that all human beings possess four sprouts (or beginnings): the sprout of ceyin (a compassion-like emotion 惻隱), xiuwu (a shame-like reaction or emotion 羞惡), cirang (a sense of deference 辭讓), and shifei (a sense of right and wrong 是非). These four beginnings, on Mengzi’s account, have the potential to mature into his four cardinal virtues: ren (benevolence, humaneness 仁), yi (righteousness 義), li (propriety, observance of rites 禮), and zhi (wisdom 智). The four moral beginnings are multifaceted mental processes that include cognitive, affective, and motivational aspects (Van Norden 1991; Flanagan 2014; Wong 2015) that are governed by one’s heart/mind (xin 心), an organ that is simultaneously cognitive and volitional. This psychological framework helps us see that propositional beliefs and rational inference are, according to Mengzi, merely one part of moral deliberation. Mengzian moral deliberation also includes (and even focuses on) one’s affective and motivational responses. For example, when highlighting the altruistic nature of human beings, one of Mengzi’s key arguments is based on people’s immediate natural affective and motivational response to a child falling into danger (1A7), as opposed to people’s general, abstract moral principles and reasoning. In contemporary scholarship, excellent work has been done on the rich terrains of the Mengzian moral mind, especially work on moral sensitivity and connoisseurship (Hutton 2002; Ivanhoe 2011), on Mengzi’s theory of moral development (Flanagan 2014; McRae 2011; Wong 2015; Shun 1997), on the psychological mechanisms by which Confucian ritual is taken to promote moral growth (Sarkissian 2010; Slingerland 2011), and on Mengzi’s views in light of dual process theories of moral judgment or moral foundations theory (Kim 2016;

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Luo 2015). Clearly, Mengzi is concerned with moral epistemic improvement across a much wider variety of dimensions than moral belief. This is why reading Mengzi is tremendously helpful for thinking about moral progress in terms of perspective: in doing so we do not restrict ourselves to focusing exclusively on abstract rational inferences and beliefs. For Mengzi, legitimate moral progress can be initiated by changes in nonabstract mental states: by visceral bodily and emotional reactions, or by seeing one thing as another (e.g., seeing an ox being led to sacrifice as an innocent prisoner being led to execution). This is not to say that Mengzi (or a Mengzian-inspired account of moral progress) is unconcerned with improving our moral beliefs. If this were the case, there would be an obvious objection: improvements in our moral beliefs are part of moral progress. We claim that Mengzi is especially helpful for anti-realist and constructivist accounts of moral progress because his accounts of moral development and moral psychology show how legitimate moral progress can both occur in and be prompted by changes in our non-propositional mental states, structures, and processes. Justified improvements in our moral beliefs might ride on the coattails of changes and improvements in the rest of our moral perspectives. According to Mengzi, moral development happens primarily by developing and ‘extending’ one’s basic moral capacities or dispositions: the four sprouts/beginnings. We have these beginnings as part of our human nature, and moral development consists in cultivating them through a variety of means. However, many types of moral development are not particularly relevant to the debate between realists and anti-realists about the best accounts of moral progress. One site of disagreement in that debate concerns cases that realists accounts of moral progress seem to explain especially well: cases in which a person’s moral beliefs change from being apparently incorrect to apparently correct. Thus we’ll focus here on two famous passages in Mengzi that do fit this mold. In these passages, Mengzi seems to be applying his theory of moral development to cases of changes in moral belief or perspective. In the first (1A7), Mengzi attempts to elicit a change in King Xuan’s moral perspectives concerning his citizens, and in the second (3A5), Mengzi describes people coming to believe that they were obligated to bury their parents.

4. Lesson Two: Analogical Reasoning Campbell and Kumar (2012, 2013) develop one anti-realist account of moral progress: consistency-based reasoning, which takes as a paradigm case the reasoning implicit in Peter Singer’s famous famine relief argument (Singer 2016). Their basic idea is that we can convince someone to change her moral belief from “Φ is not wrong” to “Φ is wrong” by pointing to an action that is similar in all morally relevant respects and which that person already thinks is wrong. Refusing to save a drowning

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child because doing so would cause one’s suit to get wet, so the argument goes, has no morally relevant differences from refusing to donate to famine relief. Such consistency-based reasoning is a familiar form of ethical argument. Campbell and Kumar point out, however, that, since people tend to be motivated to be morally consistent, and not for purely epistemic motives (e.g., for social motives such as not wanting to be seen as a hypocrite), consistency-based reasoning can produce progressive moral change. We see this when we look at other paradigmatic cases of progressive moral change such as the abolition of slavery and the expansion of civil rights to women: certain people applied their moral principles inconsistently to different groups of people, realized this, and then adjusted their moral beliefs. And thus, according to Campbell and Kumar, we can account for many paradigm cases of moral progress without appeal to the new discovery of any fully mind-independent moral facts. In short, the idea is that we can spot an inconsistency in someone’s overall moral beliefs and convince that person to make amendments accordingly. In this section we argue that what appears to be consistencybased reasoning induced moral progress may sometimes in fact be a result of other methods, such as analogical reasoning (which we will introduce shortly). Understanding alternative forms of moral reasoning can help enrich anti-realist accounts of moral progress. We can see this by considering the case of “the king and the ox” (1A7), one of the most frequently discussed passages in Mengzi. At first glance, readers might think that in this passage Mengzi is appealing to consistency-reasoning. However, on a closer reading, we can see that there are equally plausible alternatives explanations of Mengzi’s strategy for inducing progressive moral change: Mengzi said, “I heard your attendant Hu He say, While the king was sitting up in his hall, an ox was led past below. The king saw it and said, ‘Where is the ox going?’ Hu He replied, ‘We are about to ritually anoint a bell with its blood.’ The king said, ‘Spare it. I cannot bear its frightened appearance, like an innocent going to the execution ground.’ Hu He replied, ‘So should we dispense with the anointing of the bell?’ The king said, ‘How can that be dispensed with? Exchange it for a sheep.’” Mengzi continued, “I do not know if this happened.” The king said, “It happened.” Mengzi said, “This heart is sufficient to become King. The commoners all thought Your Majesty was being stingy. But I knew that Your Majesty simply could not bear the suffering of the ox.” The king said, “That is so. There were indeed commoners who said that. But although Qi is a small state, how could I be stingy about one ox? It was just that I could not bear its frightened appearance,

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Jing Hu and Seth Robertson like an innocent going to the execution ground. Hence, I exchanged it for a sheep.” Mengzi said, “Let Your Majesty not be surprised at the commoners taking you to be stingy. You took a small thing and exchanged it for a big thing. How could they understand it? If Your Majesty was pained at its being innocent and going to the execution ground, then what is there to choose between an ox and a sheep?” The King laughed, saying, “What was this feeling really? It’s not the case that I grudged its value and exchanged it for a sheep. But it makes sense that the commoners would say I was stingy.” Mengzi said, “There is no harm. This is just the way benevolence works. You saw the ox but had not seen the sheep. As for the relation of gentlemen to birds and beasts, if they see them living, they cannot bear to see them die. If they hear their cries, they cannot bear to eat their flesh. (Mengzi 1A7)6

In this passage, King Xuan remembers ordering a sacrificial ox to be spared because its (apparently) frightened expression reminded him of an innocent person going to the execution ground. Mengzi praises King Xuan for this moment of compassion, but then presses the king to see his people as proper objects of compassion too. Shortly thereafter (1A7.10), when the king responds that he is unable to do, Mengzi scoffs that this response is like being able to lift 500 pounds while claiming that one could not lift a feather; the King was clearly able to feel compassion and be benevolent toward his subjects. There have been many interpretations of this passage. Many readers naturally interpret Mengzi’s strategy here as a straightforward example of consistency-based reasoning: if the king feels compassion for the ox, the king should also feel compassion for his subjects. Thus, Mengzi’s strategy, on this view, is to elicit moral change in King Xuan by showing him that he has inconsistent beliefs concerning who and what the King should show compassion toward. Kwong-loi Shun (1989) has defended just such an interpretation. But while Mengzi’s intention here is not explicitly documented in the text, some scholars interpret Mengzi’s strategy as instead using “analogical reasoning” coupled with the “method of extension”. Some interpreters (Van Norden 1991; Ihara 1991; Wong 2002; Hu 2018; Im 1999) have provided or come close to providing what David Wong calls “emotive” interpretations of Mengzi’s strategy, whereby Mengzi is trying to extend the king’s antecedent compassion (including the cognitive, affective, and motivational aspects of the emotional response) so that he is “impressed with sufficient force and vividness” by his moral emotions applied in new situations and to new targets (Wong 2002, 191). This happens through making the king recall what it was like when he felt compassion toward an object he spared and growing from there. The

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ox’s frightened expression, as King Xuan recalls, reminded him of an innocent person going to the execution grounds. In recalling this memory, Mengzi is also priming Xuan to recall the feeling of compassion and the motivation for acting on it: for Mengzi these are all psychologically bound together. Instead of appealing solely to consistency (which has trouble accounting for why Mengzi ignores the sheep that was sacrificed in the ox’s stead), Mengzi focuses on the king’s association between the ox’s fear and an innocent person’s fear toward death. He tries to extend this association to additional innocent but suffering objects; the king’s own citizens.7 As Wong explains: In 1A7, there are two associations between two pairs of cases. Each comparison involves not only a comparison of the cases but of the agent’s reactions to the cases. Within the first pair, the King likens the eyes of the innocent man to the eyes of the ox, likens the compassion he feels for the innocent man to his feeling for the ox. Within the second pair, Mengzi urges him to compare the plight of the ox to that of his people and to compare his compassionate reaction to the ox to what ought to be the compassion he feels for his people. In both pairs, reflection on the two cases involves the perception of relevant similarity. (Wong 2002, 197, emphasis added) Thus analogical reasoning does not consist in realizing that one is applying some moral principle or commitment inconsistently. Emily McRae explains, “the moral agent judges one case to be relevantly analogous to another prior to formulating an abstract principle stating that relevant characteristic” (McRae 2011, 592–3, emphasis added). The implications for an anti-realist account of moral progress are straightforward – we can simply adjust Campbell and Kumar’s account. Recall that on their account, sometimes moral progress occurs because a person realizes they are applying their antecedently held moral beliefs, principles, or values inconsistently. On the present account, people immediately come to see certain cases as being morally alike. This illustrates a further difference between (and advantage of) analogical reasoning: consistencybased reasoning requires one to have an articulated general moral belief or principle with which to compare to antecedently held moral beliefs and principles. However, we do not always have such fully articulated general moral beliefs and principles: sometimes our moral opinions are more inchoate and nebulous. Moreover, analogical reasoning is capable of generating perspective shifts even in cases of consistent but misguided systems of moral beliefs. In such cases, it elicits changes in patterns of interpretation and association that can then change beliefs or principles. For example, King Xuan may have previously held a consistent view according to which being compassionate to his people will not help his

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political agenda, and this view may be more vulnerable to analogical challenges than to consistency-based ones. For us, analogical reasoning is especially interesting for developing an account of moral progress in terms of improving moral perspectives rather than merely improving our moral beliefs. Analogical reasoning is better suited to describing the change of perspectives: to come to see and feel one thing as another thing. Further, since patterns of association and interpretation are key components of perspectives, analogical reasoning can directly work on greater portions of our perspectives than consistency-based reasoning alone. This means that analogical reasoning can often be more effective in generating large perspective shifts. Further, a better understanding of analogical reasoning can explain why certain ethical arguments works better than other arguments, since their employment of emotionally laden language helps facilitate analogical reasoning. Examples of analogical reasoning can be found in well-known and powerful ethical arguments in contemporary ethics. Let’s consider just one – Peter Singer’s famous case of Bob’s Bugatti (based on a case developed by Peter Unger): Bob is close to retirement. He has invested most of his savings in a very rare and valuable old car, a Bugatti, which he has not been able to insure. The Bugatti is his pride and joy. In addition to the pleasure he gets from driving and caring for his car, Bob knows that its rising market value means that he will always be able to sell it and live comfortably after retirement. One day when Bob is out for a drive, he parks the Bugatti near the end of a railway siding and goes for a walk up the track. As he does so, he sees that a runaway train, with no one aboard, is running down the railway track. Looking farther down the track, he sees the small figure of a child very likely to be killed by the runaway train. He can’t stop the train and the child is too far away to warn of the danger, but he can throw a switch that will divert the train down the siding where his Bugatti is parked. Then nobody will be killed – but the train will destroy his Bugatti. Thinking of his joy in owning the car and the financial security it represents, Bob decides not to throw the switch. The child is killed. For many years to come, Bob enjoys owning his Bugatti and the financial security it represents. (Singer 2016, 38–40; Unger 1996, 135–6) The argument that Singer eventually develops is normally seen as a consistency-based argument – that if one believes Bob’s decision here was morally vile, one should (to be consistent) also think that refusing to donate to charity to save starving children is morally vile. But, upon closer examination, the argument is more complex. Singer’s description of the vulnerable child on a railway track brings out the urgency of the matter and accentuates one’s anxiety and concern for the child’s life: “[Bob]

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sees the small figure of a child very likely to be killed by the runaway train” (Singer 2016, 39). Singer may intend for readers to draw interpretive and emotional associations between the imaginary child on the track and between suffering children in the real world. The force of this argument depends not only on its logical soundness but also on the associations the audience draws between saving a child’s life at the expense of a luxury car and saving many children from terrible life conditions at the expense of other luxuries. The analogy highlights certain similarities between the two cases: the urgency, the vulnerability of the children, and the grave potential consequences. A different scenario that appealed to consistency but did not highlight these similarities might be less persuasive. Vitally, analogical reasoning can work more directly on our motives than consistency-based reasoning typically does. In both the ox case and the Bugatti case, the argument begins with considerations for which the interlocutor already had strong emotional and motivational reactions. This is not merely an attempt at emotional appeal; these arguments aim to improve not just our moral beliefs but also our moral perspectives: how we perceive, interpret, understand, and react (emotionally and motivationally) to certain circumstances. To genuinely instantiate moral progress via a moral perspective shift, patterns of reasoning beyond abstract consistency-based reasoning can be essential. Therefore, here is our second lesson for anti-realist accounts of moral progress: analogical reasoning is a powerful tool for moral progress – it can not only help us improve upon our moral beliefs, but it can also help us shift into better moral perspectives.

5. Lesson Three: Moral Emotion-Elicited Moral Progress We now move to lesson three, according to which moral emotions, instead of mind-independent moral facts, are main sources of moral progress. Of course some realists would accept this claim too if they believe that moral emotions can point to or make salient certain objective moral facts. Mengzi might believe something like this – but here we will focus on features of his view that are useful for anti-realists.8 Further, we should note that the role of emotions is especially important for a perspectival account of moral progress: emotions are, in part, salience and motivation generators (see Lance and Tanesini 2004), and part of what perspectives do is structure the salience of our beliefs and the urgency of our motivations (Camp 2006; Riggs 2016). Against accounts like Campbell and Kumar’s, Kurth (2013, 2017) has argued that a consistency-based reasoning model fails to adequately explain certain paradigmatic cases of moral progress: cases where a person felt visceral moral anxiety at the prospect of some action and thus came to believe that it was wrong. For example, the influential 17thcentury Quaker abolitionist John Woolman claimed that the key catalyst

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in his realizing the evils of slavery was that he suddenly felt ‘so afflicted in my mind’ when he was asked to write a bill of sale for one of his employer’s slaves (this case is prominent in the anti-realist literature on moral progress; see Kitcher 2011, 158–61; Kurth 2017, 1–2). It therefore seems that some cases of moral progress are best understood not as a discovery of new mind-independent moral facts, but as a response to moral emotions prompted by certain situations. Similarly, Mengzi discusses how moral emotions led people to realize that they must properly bury their dead parents’ bodies instead of leaving them to be devoured by wild animals: Now, in past ages, there were those who did not bury their parents. When their parents died, they took them and abandoned them in a gulley. They next day they passed by them, and foxes were eating them, bugs were sucking on them. Sweat broke out on the survivors’ foreheads. They turned away and did not look. It was not for the sake of others that they sweated. What was inside their hearts broke through to their countenances. So they went home and, returning with baskets and shovels, covered them. If covering them was really right, then the manner in which filial children and benevolent people cover their parents must also be part of the Way. (Mengzi 3A5; emphasis added) The protagonist in the last part of this passage first abandoned his parents’ bodies in a gulley. No one instructed him about the rightness or wrongness of this action, but when he passed by the scene on the next day he had a series of physiological and psychological responses, such as sweat breaking out on his forehead and a compulsion to avoid directly looking at the scene. Mengzi further emphasizes that these responses are not for show; they come directly from the heart – meaning that these reactions are from innate emotions and not particular beliefs one may have acquired through learning.9 Mengzi did not specify in the text exactly which emotion he is discussing here. Shame, compassion (for the parents), and deference are all good candidates. Some commentators argue that this passage is discussing the origin of rituals associated with the moral emotion of deference (Hansen 1992). One could also argue that Mengzi has in mind compassion that originates from filial love, especially since the passage ends with the claim that “filial children and benevolent people cover their parents” (3A5). Shame seems relevant too, since this passage deals with what is right and what is wrong, which is associated with the moral emotion of shame in Mengzi (Chong 2003), and since the phenomenology described matches the phenomenology of shame. The consensus is that Mengzi is discussing one of the four sprouts/beginnings here. Setting aside which emotions are involved in this case (though, we’ll return to the emotion of shame

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shortly), the general point is that leaving one’s parents’ corpses unburied brings out strong emotional reactions, which according to Mengzi not only compelled people into “returning with baskets and shovels, cover[ing] them” but also leads to the conclusion that burying one’s parents’ corpse is right, or “part of the Way”. Some anti-realists have argued that their accounts of moral progress are more descriptively accurate than moral realists’ accounts, that when we pay close attention to paradigmatic cases of personal moral progress, the changes do not appear to be discoveries about some mind-independent objective morality. Mengzi’s text provides an example of how moral progress can occur not through discovering mind-independent moral facts but through the emergence of moral emotions in particular situations. Mengzi is not the only philosopher who makes such a claim: sympathy, shame, and (as in Kurth) moral anxiety are each seen as causes of moral progress (in addition to Kurth 2013, see Boxill 1995; Jacquet 2016; Manion 2002; Appiah 2011). To take a familiar example, consider Martin Luther King Jr.’s shaming of white moderates in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, where he suggests that the “great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice” (King Jr. 1963). Since many would be ashamed to be considered worse than the Ku Klux Klan, by claiming that ‘white moderates’ were more problematic for black people than the Ku Klux Klan, King may have been (in part) attempting to shame certain people into moral progress and being more active in their support of civil rights. One may wonder: since shame is widely considered a destructive, burdening emotion that targets the most vulnerable individuals, should we rely on it to make moral progress? The Mengzian system offers some guidance on this point. First, Confucian shame is a foreword-looking emotion that focuses on preempting situations that violate one’s ethical standards. Hence, one often should not feel shame over violations of conventional standards, nor should one dwell on past experiences (Seok 2017; Shun 2013, 2015, 1997; Van Norden 2002).10 Second, many besides Mengzi recognize the importance of shame at the foundations of morality: recall Protagoras’s speech in Plato’s Protagoras, in which he claims that Zeus gave all human beings a sense of justice and of shame so that cities and societies could exist (Protagoras 320c–328d). C.C. Raymond has shown shame’s positive function in the work of Plato and Aristotle generally (Raymond 2017, 2013). That being said, shame and other moral emotions cannot be expected to produce adequate responses in all moral situations. Shame is only one of the four important moral emotions in Mengzi. The Mengzian system utilizes a multi-factor account of moral psychology which has a unique advantage in the interpretation of moral progress. One challenge for anti-realist accounts of moral progress that prioritize some highly particular function of morality, such as

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counteracting the negative consequences of our limited sympathies (see Mackie 1991, 107–111) or minimizing the damage from altruism failures (see Kitcher 2012), is that they seem overly narrow. Morality concerns issues of justice, truth-telling, loyalty, honor, respect, and civility, and these do not neatly reduce down to one narrow function. It is not hard to find counterexamples that are intuitively immoral but would not be treated as so on those fairly narrow accounts.11 Kitcher, for example, faces potential counterexamples concerning, say, dictators minimizing conflict that could lead to altruism failures (on his view, an instance of moral progress) via brutal repression (see Kitcher 2011, 225–9). Now, whether Kitcher can accommodate such cases is an important question, but we should appreciate how Mengzi’s sprout system simply avoids the issue: it does not try to reduce morality to any one particular function or value. Thus Mengzian-inspired anti-realist or constructivist accounts can explain cases that promote one value (e.g., compassion for some people’s material well-being) at the expense of another (e.g., a simultaneous affront to the dignity of other people). Various moral emotions, analogical reasoning, and consistency-based reasoning can all help explain cases of paradigmatic moral progress, without appeal to mind-independent moral facts.

6. Conclusion In this chapter we have drawn three lessons from Mengzi on the metaethics of moral progress. The first and most general lesson was that it is possible to develop an account of moral progress not only in terms of improving moral beliefs but also in terms of improving moral perspectives. The second and third lessons provided Mengzian-inspired tools for developing such an account. The second lesson was that analogical reasoning could be utilized in accounts of anti-realist or constructivist moral progress in addition to consistency-based reasoning. The third lesson was that a variety of moral emotions can be utilized in accounts of anti-realist or constructivist moral progress. These three lessons suggest numerous avenues for fruitful further exploration. First, and most generally, we have suggested here several interesting and important components for perspectival metaethical theories (and theories of moral progress) gleaned from the philosophical work of Mengzi. Second, though our focus here has been metaethical, there are useful lessons in practical ethics to be drawn from our discussion. Not only might Mengzi’s texts be mined for effective techniques of moral persuasion, but they also problematize ingrained views about critical engagement that treat the only epistemically legitimate type of persuasion as based entirely on rational argument (anything else, we might think, is merely an ‘emotional appeal’ or manipulation). Problematic non-belief components of a person’s perspective might need to be adjusted using methods other than rational argument (such as analogical reasoning). Third, the perspectival ideas we’ve

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developed here might be useful in supplementing virtue ethical interpretations of early Confucianism and virtue ethical theories in general (see especially Hutton 2002 and Ivanhoe 2011). Finally, our discussion in this chapter might suggest new avenues for constructivist interpretations of the early Confucians and especially for Mengzi, who is likely the major early Confucian philosopher least readily interpreted as constructivist.12

Notes 1. Mengzi represents what some would call the ‘intuitionist’ wing of Confucianism and may be largely responsible for the impression that Confucianism and even the whole of Chinese philosophy relies heavily on intuitions. Even though Mengzi did not directly engage in what we would call metaethical inquiries, his normative and naturalistic framework provided a foundation that blossomed into rich metaphysical discussion in Neo-Confucian philosophy throughout East Asia between the 11th and 16th centuries. 2. For example, moral progress might consist in developing moral systems that better fulfill the original, cooperative function of morality (Kitcher 2011) or, more importantly for our purposes, in reasoning our way to a more consistent application of our antecedently held moral values and principles (Campbell and Kumar 2013, 2012). There is not universal agreement about how we should delineate moral realism and anti-realism. For example, Copp (2007) treats any theory according to which there are moral truths as realist, whether they are objective in a strong mind-independent sense or not. Here, we restrict moral realism to what we might think of as ‘strong’ moral realism, according to which moral truths are a mind-independent feature of the universe. 3. Readers may at this point wonder how Mengzi (or a Mengzian-inspired constructivist) would, in general, distinguish between moral progress and mere moral change. Providing a full answer to this question that adequately respects both the richness of the original text and of the panoply of historical and contemporary scholarly interpretations of it would require far more space than we have here, so, instead, we’ll provide a bare sketch of an answer here. For Mengzi, moral changes in line with the dao (the Way 道) are instances of moral progress. We can come to know the dao via the moral sensibilities of our heart-mind (xin 心). These moral sensibilities are naturally oriented in the right direction, in that we have in us the inclination and potential (including the emotions and intellectual abilities) to become moral. Our natural moral sensibilities can be cultivated and enriched in various ways including focusing one’s attention on these moral sensibilities and the mindful practice of ritual (li 禮) invented by the ancient sage kings. A fully enriched and cultivated heart-mind can appreciate the dao and thus is able to identify moral improvements. 4. The volume of dialogues accredited to Mengzi is titled Mencius or Mengzi. We use italics to refer to the book. The volume has seven sections that are named Book 1 through Book 7. Each section contains parts A and B. For example, Mengzi 1A7 refers to Book 1 of Mengzi, section A, passage 7. 5. We need to be careful here with our interpretive methodology. It would be obviously implausible to claim that Mengzi’s picture of human psychology cleanly maps on to contemporary philosophical views. Instead, our claim is that Mengzi’s working model of our moral minds is complex and rich in many of the ways that contemporary perspectival models are.

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6. This English translation is based on the original text of Mencius 1A7 in Yang 1962 and the English translation of Van Norden (2008, 8–10). All cited translations and original texts of the book of Mencius (or Mengzi) in this paper are from the previously mentioned sources. 7. We should emphasize that Wong does not support this purely emotive interpretation as the sole explanation of Mengzi’s strategy: “On the one hand, we cannot interpret Mengzi as holding that appropriate and motivationally effective moral feeling can be generated purely by appeal to logical consistency; but on the other hand, we cannot attribute to him the view that innate moral feelings are fully developed and already contain all the action-guiding content they need to have” (2002, 191). Thus, Wong suggests that Mengzi is not only trying to redirect King Xuan’s moral emotions, but also trying to develop, refine and improve them, and further that this process cannot work by consistency-based reasoning alone: Wong calls this a ‘developmental’ interpretation. 8. Thanks to Colin Marshall for suggesting we note this. There are two main advantages (over similar realist accounts) for anti-realists/constructivists that ground moral progress in our emotions: first, their view (which does not posit objective moral facts) is more parsimonious (and perhaps less ontologically ‘weird’, see Mackie 1991), and second, they do not need to explain the sheer epistemic luck that would be required for our evolutionarily shaped emotions to track objective moral truth (see Street 2006; Vavova 2015). 9. The claim here is not that Mengzi thinks beliefs are unimportant or superfluous for moral change, but just that in this (and like) cases, the natural emotional reaction is the engine that drives changes in other mental states. 10. Also, see Justin Tiwald (2017) for a thoughtful discussion on the relationship between the conventional standard and the personal ethical standard related to shame in the Confucian tradition. 11. Thanks to William Talbott at the Lost Voices at the Foundations of Ethics conference for raising this concern. 12. We are grateful to the panelists and audience at the Lost Voices at the Foundations of Ethics at the University of Washington and the 2018 Joint Northeast Conference on Chinese Thought and Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought at the University of Connecticut for their helpful suggestions to this project. We’d also like to thank Colin Marshall for his insightful and detailed comments and Amy Olberding for her helpful suggestions about the project. This article is made possible by a generous postdoctoral fellowship and a dissertation fellowship awarded to the two authors at the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing at the University of Oklahoma, funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

References Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2011. The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Arruda, Caroline T. 2017. “The Varieties of Moral Improvement, or Why Metaethical Constructivism Must Explain Moral Progress.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20: 17–38. Boxill, Bernard R. 1995. “Fear and Shame as Forms of Moral Suasion in the Thought of Frederick Douglass.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 31(4): 713–44. Camp, Elisabeth. 2006. “Metaphor and That Certain ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’.” Philosophical Studies 129: 1–25.

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10 Nishida Kitaro¯’s Ko¯iteki Chokkan Active Intuition and Contemporary Metaethics Laura Specker Sullivan At the center of the Nishida Kitarō1 Tetsugakukan, or philosophy museum, in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan, there is a round room on the ground floor with a view through the ceiling to the sky above. It is described as a “space where you can meditate while seeing the blue sky”, 2 and it is meant to stimulate reflective thought. Throughout the museum, there are numerous places with similar purposes, including an observatory and a ‘space of emptiness’. Nishida was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in 1870. He attended primary school and became lifelong friends with D.T. Suzuki, studied at the University of Tokyo, and was hired to teach philosophy at Kyoto University, after which he established what is now known as the Kyoto School of philosophy. The Philosopher’s Path, a meandering walk through the Western edge of Kyoto, is named after Nishida’s route to the university. A practicing Zen Buddhist, Nishida read European philosophy extensively but worked to convey a philosophical system that reflected Japanese and Zen experience. Despite the title of his first major work, An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no Kenkyū 1911), contemporary scholarly work on Nishida has focused on his metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind to the relative exclusion of his ethics. This is not entirely surprising: Nishida never promoted a complete ethical theory despite pursuing the good, or zen,3 in his first work. Perhaps this is because, as he wrote in a very early (1902) letter to D.T. Suzuki: It seems to me that ‘ethics’ in the West is purely an intellectual pursuit. Its arguments are cogent, but no one pays attention to the ‘soul experience’ – experience deep in the human heart. People forget the grounds on which they stand. There are those who analyze and explain the constituents of bread and water, but none considers the actual taste of either. The result is an artificial construct, which has no impact on the human heart. I wish contemporary scholars of ethics would leave their scholarly research and, instead, explain the

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spiritual experience of great figures of the past. That should be the factual basis for the study of ethics. (cited in Yusa 2002, 74) An academic himself, Nishida was nevertheless skeptical of intellectualist approaches to the study of ethics. He approached ethics as a deeply personal, embodied experience, not an abstract theory. Nevertheless, there are traces of ethical theory in his work, and outlining them aids in the effort to understand what ethics meant to Nishida and why he only wrote about ethical theory in the sparse terms that he did. While Nishida’s thought has been understood through a number of lenses, such as Marxist theory (Haver 2012) and political theory (GotoJones 2003, 2005), I am here interested in building a conceptual bridge between Nishida’s understanding of ethics and contemporary metaethics. There are two main reasons for this bridging. First, reading Nishida through the conceptual structures of metaethics may help clarify his ethical perspective; Nishida was concerned about the underlying structure of individuals’ ethical experiences, a project for which contemporary metaethics is a useful lens. Second, Nishida’s thought may spur contemporary metaethicists to consider neglected possibilities for conceiving of ethical thought and action. By reconceptualizing some of Nishida’s ideas in contemporary terms, I hope to show the relevance of his work for current issues in metaethics. In the following analysis I characterize Nishida’s metaethical perspective throughout his work but focus especially on his later papers, most notably his writings on kōiteki chokkan, or ‘active intuition’. These include Kōiteki Chokkan no Tachiba (published in 1935), Kōiteki Chokkan (published in 1937), as well as Nothingness and the Religious Worldview (Bashoteki Ronri to Shūkyōteki Sekaikan, published in 1945, and widely available in translation). I explore affinities between Nishida’s approach to ethics and metaethical intuitionism and sensibility theory. I then use this analysis to identify a lesson that Nishida offers to contemporary metaethicists. But first, a necessary caveat. According to some critics, translating East Asian philosophy into a Euro-American philosophical lens corrupts the meaning of the original work by stretching and compressing it to fit the constraints of an alien conceptual structure. While comparative philosophy does involve some distortion of the texts in their original languages, this is true of all projects of translation. The caveat is that the analysis here makes no claims as to the true meaning or best interpretation of Nishida’s ethics. Rather, it is intended to offer a particular approach for thinking about Nishida’s thought that may prove useful for East Asian and analytic philosophical projects, among others. Within these types of constructive, comparative projects, it is not necessarily true, as Kakuzo

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Okakura writes in The Book of Tea, that “translation is a treason . . . can at its best be only the reverse side of a brocade – all the threads are there, but not the subtlety of color or design” (Okakura 1964, 34). Nishida’s philosophy is notoriously abstract and dense; he almost never uses examples or situations to illustrate his arguments. To better make sense of Nishida’s point and to demonstrate its relationship to contemporary metaethical thought, throughout this paper I have endeavored to describe concretely the meaning of his arguments. Thus this project inevitably includes some ‘coloring in’ based on the threads of Nishida’s philosophy.

1. Ko¯iteki Chokkan or Active Intuition Nishida’s work on his concept of koiteki chokkan, or ‘active intuition’, came late in his career (1935–37). During this time, Nishida departed from his earlier psychologism in Inquiry into the Good (1911) and concerned himself more directly with the individual’s relationship with the world rather than the individual’s relationship with his or her psychological experience. While his earlier conceptions of intuition had focused on intuitive moments of self-awareness, his idea of basho (‘place’) helped him to reconceive intuition as something enacted, not just experienced (Krummel 2012). This established a two-way relationship with the world, whereby self-expression as creative activity is made possible through an individual’s active participation as an embodied subject. This participation reflects their acting self back to them and gives them a sense of self (which is then necessary for self-expression). For example, when we respond to someone who asks us a question, our response is occasioned by the prompt we are given and the situation we find ourselves in, but it is also shaped by who we are and our past experience. Each time we craft a response, we express this interaction between the self and the world, learning about both in the process. This general view grounded Nishida’s interest in creative expression and made his idea of active intuition more concrete than in his earlier work, by redefining experience as embodied, not just psychological (Krueger 2008). Yet Nishida did not discuss the ethical implications of his idea of active intuition until the last year of his life, in Nothingness and the Religious Worldview/Bashoteki Ronri to Shūkyōteki Sekaikan (Nishida 1945). One of the clearest elements in Nothingness and the Religious Worldview is Nishida’s critique of Kant. He writes that the Kantian self is purely formal, “the self of no person and yet the self of any person . . . merely an abstract being. The conscious activity of such a formal will would have no concrete meaning, for from it nothing particular or individual could emerge” (Nishida 1945, 72). At a later point in the same essay his criticism is more pointed, “Kant’s ethics of practical reason was only a bourgeois ethics. A historically transformative ethics, I say, is one that is based on the vow of compassion” (Nishida 1945, 107). On my

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interpretation, Nishida critiques Kantian ethics as ‘bourgeois’ because it is more concerned with the logical structure of an individual’s will than it is with how that individual relates to the world around her. In other words, Kantian ethics focuses more on what it means for an individual to be a good person and less on how an individual can best respond to those with whom she interacts. For Nishida, the individual in the world is fundamentally particular and concrete. To focus on the abstract will is not only to focus on the individual in isolation from the world but also to focus on an aspect of the individual that is so general as to be absent of any meaningful ethical content. After all, human beings are much more than a will functioning in isolation – we are also complex emotional, social, and embodied beings – and all of these components are involved when we act ethically. This is especially true if interpersonal relationships are fundamental to ethical activity. In Nishida’s critique of Kant, we see that ethics necessarily involves a connection to others and cannot be constrained to the individual will in abstraction. Nishida’s philosophical development suggests that the route that ethicists – both theoretical and practical – may take around Kant’s abstract formality of the will is to concentrate on the concrete dimensions of individuals’ embodied experiences through the philosophy of active intuition. The appeal to active intuition is how Nishida fleshes out the relationship between the individual and the world in epistemic, aesthetic, and ethical terms. Essentially, active intuition is a proposal about the self and the world (alternatively, the particular and the universal or the one and the many, in some of Nishida’s other formulations). It is about how a particular subjectivity relates to a sea of objectivity. Other philosophers had seen self-world relationships as either purely passive, as in perception, or purely active, as in movement and motion. This is to say nothing of the abstracted selves originating in Descartes’s Cogito and culminating in Kant’s pure reason. Active intuition was a way for Nishida to bring together the experience of the individual as simultaneously a point of active production in the world as well as a receptive perceiver of its changes. He used his longstanding interest in art to theorize active intuition from the standpoint of creative individuals who, in moments of pure production, are united with their craft without separating themselves and their materials into subject and object. As with an individual’s response to a question, Nishida conceived of paradigmatic active intuition as artistic production that responds to one’s environment while also reflecting one’s experience and sense of self. A key feature of active intuition is ‘immediate perception’. Immediate perception is the direct apprehension of a situation or an object. While it is receptive, immediate perception is not passive but is enacted. It comes about through active engagement with objects and with other people in the world. As Nishida writes in Kōiteki Chokkan, “speaking of intuition,

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people readily think of something passive, or even the state of being in a trance. This is thought to be the polar opposite of action (kōi)” (Nishida 1937, 541). The word Nishida uses for action here is significant because he does not think that just anything (such as deliberation or even instinct) counts as the type of action he describes. Rather, the word kōi, which can also be translated as ‘conduct’, suggests that the type of action he has in mind is appropriate in particular situations and at particular times but is not habitual or instinctual. Just as an individual’s particular way of conducting him or herself can be appropriate for a party but not for a department meeting, Nishida thinks that the morality of active intuition is unique to the individual and is temporally and locally constrained. Beyond the Japanese term kōi, the point here can be difficult to grasp, especially given the language Nishida is using, rich in the terminology of German idealism and French phenomenology. To bring this to life, imagine you are standing on the sidewalk and someone trips on an uneven piece of concrete. You immediately reach out to help the person regain balance. If perception is understood as receptive and passive then the explanation might be that you saw the person start to fall, which you recognized as a situation that is not good and that requires intervention, and this recognition stimulated you to reach out and offer your hand. In short, if we were using a purely passive understanding of perception, we would explain this situation abstractly, as something that any agent might do given the appropriate stimulus. Yet Nishida writes that: Such thinking does not realize that our action is in any case historical, that we as individuals (ko) in the historical world are active. Thinking of the self abstractly is the result. Even our action must be something that came to develop historically from instinctual patterns of action (dōsa). Instinctual action patterns are one type of formative activity (keisei sayō). However, life is not simply one type of formative activity. That is, the human as subject limits the environment and the environment limits the subject, and subject and environment must be in dialectical self-identity. (Nishida 1937, 542–3, my translation) Nishida might propose that what happens in the previous situation is not that my perception stimulates my action but that my action in response to the person tripping – reaching out my hand – stimulates my recognition of the situation as one that required action. There is no self that abstractly perceives the need to respond in the situation before I act within it. This is why Nishida proposes that immediate perception is active. We do not immediately perceive things by passively receiving them, but by actively engaging with them. This participation through active intuition is not random, aimless, or unproductive – it “makes things” (Nishida 1935, 74). In other words, my action in the situation is what produces

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my knowledge of the situation as one in which I should act. This is not subjectivism but a unification of subjectivity with objectivity, such that “Truth arises in the concrete dimension where we open our eyes and see the world and open our ears and hear the world” (Nishida 1945, 107). We do not find objective truth in empirical data separate from active human experience, but instead we develop it through our participation in the objective world. By the time Nishida began to flesh out his theory of active intuition he was no longer interested in the structure of individual experience alone. Rather, he became increasingly focused on explaining how individual experience relates to historical development. This is the other side of active intuition – acknowledging that ethical perception always take place within a world that is temporally unfolding: It is not the case that because our minds exist, the world exists. It is not that we merely see the world from the self. The self is rather something seen from this historical world. In my essay “Life” I argue that the world of the conscious self is the self-determination of the historical world’s temporality. Every subjectivist interpretation, by taking its point of departure from an abstractly imagined, pre-existent conscious self, clouds our vision. (Nishida 1945, 109) His argument against subjectivism is meant to show that the self is an aspect of the world seen from a certain perspective. The self is one thin slice of the world at a particular time and in a particular place. Immediate perception is contingent on the features of the world that necessitate action. Whether I find myself compelled to reach out to someone who has tripped depends on the factors that bring me to that moment. Nishida is pointing to historical constraints on active intuition when he writes that to make must be to see. Action arises due to our being in a world of [already made] things. In the arising of action, there must be things. Things are not thought, but are seen, and must appear as that which has been historically formed. (Nishida 1937, 543) We cannot act in ways that are not shaped by our environment. If no one trips in front of me, I will never participate in the reaching out of my hand in this way, and I will never come to see and know this act as something that must be done. In this way the world limits the knowledge we can gain through action. Through our action we not only enable our own knowledge production, but we also limit the historical unfolding of events by intervening in them. This in turn limits our opportunities for action further down the

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line. Each action is a limit on the world as well as a limit on both what we can do in the future and the knowledge that this action can produce. In other words, the arising of an action involves seeing the world as it has been made. When that action occurs we are ‘making’ our own present. Nishida writes that: Furthermore, this [process] takes place in the dialectical relationship with the self. While the world is thoroughly determined as the historical present, the self contains the negation of the self within itself, and in the overcoming of the self and the movement from the present moment to the present moment, there is the establishment of action. Therefore this is why action is practice and production. (Nishida 1937, 543) In other words, while acting in the world produces our knowledge of the self as a person who intervenes when someone trips on the sidewalk, it also limits the self by negating all the other possible ways in which we could have acted in that moment. We negate some pre-action conceptions of ourselves by acting in a way that asserts which type of person we are. This links up with Nishida’s understanding of morality and his critique of Kantian ethics. He asserts that moral knowledge is not the result of a priori reflection on our maxims but instead comes about through our interaction with the world and our perception of what we actually do. In other words, our actions in the world ‘make’ our moral knowledge rather than expressing this knowledge. When he writes that “true knowing and true moral practice arise in this horizon of true individuality” (Nishida 1945, 111), he indicates that we better understand the particularity of our own moral practice when we as agents attend to (1) the moments in which our actions produce moral knowledge and limit the world, while being themselves constrained by the world, and (2) the moral selves we have developed through past action. What makes this practice moral is that through active intuition we act not from a conception of ourselves as particular types of moral beings but from a responsiveness and sense of connectedness to the world (which includes other people and our community) and our environment. In Joel Krueger’s terms, active intuition highlights that agents are embodied and embedded in the world. The selfworld relationship is non-dualistic – active intuition can be understood as “the body’s capacity for a non-conceptual felt integration with the world”, a type of connectedness that is fundamental to not only aesthetic but also ethical experience (Krueger 2008, 215). To return to a point from the beginning of this section, this clarifies Nishida’s suggestion that morality must be based on the vow of compassion. In short, the point of active intuition is that a moral orientation that truly changes the world is one in which an abstract or theoretical vision of the self as a certain type of person is negated in favor of a

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responsiveness to what the situation we are in calls for us, in particular, to do. Nishida calls this a “sympathetic coalescence” (Nishida 1945, 108). As I explain, whereas the most common contemporary theory of moral intuitionism proposes that moral knowledge is the perception of self-evident and objective moral truths, for Nishida morality is intuitive in that it is based on accurate perceptions of one’s response to the world within moments of decisive action.

2. Intuitionism and Sensibility Theory in Contemporary Metaethics ‘Intuitionism’ has a wide variety of meanings in contemporary metaethics, but it most often indicates a moral epistemology that is committed to noninferential moral knowledge (Audi 2004; Tropman 2009, 2010, 2014). Intuitionism proposes that foundational moral knowledge is gained by a process that is not a form of reasoning, either from evidence or from other principles. Varieties of moral intuitionism split on their characterization of how moral knowledge is gained (while agreeing that it is non-inferential) and on their account of why such non-inferential moral beliefs are justified. Elizabeth Tropman identifies three main types of intuitionism: rationalist intuitionism, response intuitionism, and appearance intuitionism. I focus on rationalist and response intuitionism here before turning to a related view: moral sentimentalism or sensibility theory.4 Rationalist intuitionism is the theory that intuitive moral knowledge is a result of rational thought and is the most common form of ethical intuitionism. W.D. Ross is the best-known rational intuitionist. According to Ross, there are a number of self-evident moral principles that form the basis of ethical duties. Intuition, for Ross, is a rational capacity. The set of moral principles he identifies are self-evident in the same way that mathematical axioms or valid forms of inference are self-evident (Audi 2004, 40–41). The trouble with rationalist intuitionism, as Tropman points out, is the lack of attention to the emotional and practical components of moral thought (see Roeser 2006) and the difficulty of identifying meaningful moral propositions that are self-evident (beyond trivialities such as ‘it is right to do that which is right to be done’). The second form of intuitionism Tropman identifies is response intuitionism. This theory proposes that non-inferential moral knowledge comes not from our rational capacities but from some combination of emotional responses. These felt responses ground our belief that something is wrong or right, but they do so without serving as premises for inferential reasoning. Sabine Roeser has worked with Jonathan Dancy in identifying what she describes as the intuitionist epistemology underlying moral particularism (Roeser 2006). Termed ‘affectual intuitionism’, Roeser understands an intuition as an emotion that is united with a normative belief. In other words, the belief that “murder is wrong” comes in part from our

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gut emotional reaction to murder. The emotional reaction itself signals murder’s wrongness and is accompanied with a judgment that this emotional reaction is appropriate. Response intuitionism is a close cousin to moral sentimentalism. Moral sentimentalism, or sensibility theory, espouses one or all of the theses that moral facts reduce to emotions, that moral knowledge comes from our emotions, or that moral thoughts are sentimental thoughts (D’Arms and Jacobson 2006; Kaupinenn 2014). However, most advocates of moral sentimentalism hold that moral knowledge is not the result of an intuition but of a direct perception. In other words, moral qualities are seen in the world, either because they actually exist as natural properties or because features of the world trigger a moral response in perceivers. The latter form of sentimentalism is generally thought to be the most viable. It proposes that moral facts refer to human emotional responses (D’Arms and Jacobson 2006, 188). Many normative virtue ethical theories depend on sentimentalist metaethics. John McDowell, for instance, proposes that virtue is a form of perception, such that to be virtuous is to see what is moral in different situations through sensitivity to their salient moral features (McDowell 1979). Peggy Desautels develops a sentimentalist virtue ethics through her description of two types of moral perceivers: analytic and concrete. For the concrete moral perceiver, moral knowledge is identified with a felt need to respond to others – a kind of interpersonal intelligence (Desautels 1998, 279). This approach is also represented in Confucian philosophy. Stephen Angle defends an interpretation of zhi as sagely ease  – a consistent disposition that is the unity of knowledge and action, such that moral perception is in part constituted by an appropriate response and an individual cannot be said to know something until they have enacted it in practice (Angle 2005, 41–3). Within these theories, there is broad agreement that moral knowledge is acquired through a faculty like perception, that it is dependent on the cultivation of a set of human responses often described as sensitivities or dispositions, and that it is internalist, which means that moral knowledge includes the motivation to act on that knowledge. As McDowell argues, it is impossible for a virtuous agent to have knowledge of virtue without being appropriately motivated as well (McDowell 1979). In this section I have outlined two similar metaethical theories, intuitionism and sensibility theory, that can be helpful in interpreting Nishida’s metaethics. In the following section, I consider affinities and differences between Nishida’s theory of active intuition and these metaethical theories.

3. Active Intuition and Contemporary Metaethics The views described in the previous section hold that we know what is ethical by perceiving it – because it appears some way to us or because

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it engenders an evaluative response. But for Nishida, ethical knowledge is not passive perception; it is knowledge that is inseparable from action and is unique to each individual, based on that individual’s history of interaction with the world. Nishida seems to accept that there are moral facts in the world, but these moral facts do not exist independently of world-historical constraints on our action. As with Kant, morality consists in some level of self-constraint, preventing us from doing some things we might want to do and limiting us toward those things that we ought to do. Nishida suggests that we access the facts about what we ought to do not through reason but through action that is receptive of the world while also expressive of our history of interaction with it. This suggests that the apprehended moral facts are not universal moral truths that are the same for every person,; instead they are unique facts that we perceive about our active relationship with the world. While these are constrained by the world – not everything is permissible – they are constrained not by universal moral principles or moral laws that exist due to the structure of our rational capacities, but by our own patterns of self-limitation.5 In concrete terms, when I reach out a hand to help someone who is falling next to me on the sidewalk, that is not just what anyone would or should do in the situation – it is something I have done, and it embodies my active intuition in that situation. The form of intuitionism that Nishida’s active intuition best resembles is response intuitionism. Nishida is certainly not a rationalist intuitionist – his ethical picture contains nothing like prima facie moral principles but emphasizes the interconnection of moral practice with moral knowledge. On his view, the basis of our moral knowledge is not just how a situation appears but also our perception of our own response in the form of action. Nishida’s theory of active intuition also has strong similarities to an internalist sensibility theory, according to which moral knowledge is a disposition or sensitivity to certain aspects of situations that is necessarily tied to motivation. Yet Nishida might object that both response intuitionism and sensibility theory get the directionality of moral knowledge the wrong way around. Both theories suggest that moral knowledge is prior to moral action and determines it, such that agents’ sensitivities to morally significant features of situations condition their responses. Yet, as suggested by the title of his essay “From the Acting to the Seeing” (Hatarakumono kara miru mono e 1927), Nishida proposes that moral action is not based on perception of a situation, but that action conditions perception. That is, our perception of a given situation as expressing a certain normative outcome depends not on our detached viewing of it but on our acting within it, and our action in each situation is dependent on our entire history of interaction with the world. One way of understanding Nishida’s point is to say that, according to the theory of active intuition,

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moral knowledge comes about through perception of our conduct. In the moment in which we act, there is no time for conscious assessment or thought – how we act in a given situation does not just express our moral knowledge but also constructs it. Consider two agents, A and B, who are interested in acquiring moral knowledge and promoting the good. Person A is a recluse, spending the majority of her days at home, reading books, watching television, and so on. She also has rather highbrow tastes, so she reads historical and contemporary works in philosophy and psychology as well as novels and plays. She does not consider herself an expressive person; she would prefer to absorb than to emit. Person B, by contrast, is a socialite. She also enjoys reading, but her time is balanced with interpersonal relationships, with making decisions that influence and involve other people, and with other such social activities. She is creative and enjoys expressing herself through prose and poetry. Both people care about morality. It seems that person A and person B have equal prospects for possessing moral knowledge. Both can use their judgment to determine actions that are right or good to do. If we take the contemporary versions of intuitionism outlined previously, both person A and person B have equal access to moral intuitions, as rational or affective responses to features of the world. Person A might find herself crying at a scene in play or might just see that something a character does in a movie is wrong – these responses then inform her moral understanding. Likewise, person B might become angry at a friend’s action or praise an organization she is involved with for their good work, interactions that inform her understanding as well. For contemporary versions of intuitionism, person A and person B seem to have equivalent opportunities to develop moral knowledge. Yet for Nishida, person A is epistemically worse off than person B. Whereas person A is largely passive and does not express herself through words or actions, person B acts in ways that affect others whom she cares about and expresses her knowledge through creative activity. Only person B’s habits seem to qualify as active intuition because they are based on her individual history, her felt responses to different people and situations, and her attempts to express her thoughts and ideas. Not only that, but it is only because she acts that features of the world can respond to her action. In other words, she does not just passively receive the world but acts in the world herself and thus completes the circle. If she did not act in the world she would not only lack knowledge of her own personal moral understanding but would also not experience the world’s reaction to her action – which in turns allows her to internalize this action within her personal history, thus shaping her own intuition. For instance, even though person A might have abstract moral knowledge, without acting in the world and encountering responses to her actions as good or bad, right or wrong, her moral knowledge is incomplete. This is why active intuition is so important for Nishida and what distinguishes his

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metaethical approach. Nishida conceives of ethics as a give and take, as an expressive action and as a responsive reaction, where the human agent is simultaneously the subject expressing herself and the object of the world’s response. A relatively similar contemporary analogue to Nishida’s description of active intuition is the idea that moral knowledge is not propositional (not “knowledge that”) but skillful – “knowledge how” (Ryle 1949; Stanley and Williamson 2001). This distinction is often framed in terms of intellectualism and practicalism (Hetherington and Lai 2012). According to the former, knowledge-how is best understood as a form of knowledgethat; for the latter, the roles are reversed. Stephen Hetherington and Karyn Lai have proposed that Chinese philosophy, as represented by the Confucian Analects, contains a form of proto-practicalism in its portrayal of moral knowledge as knowledgehow (Hetherington and Lai 2012; Lai 2012). Lai has further developed this idea in proposing that the moral epistemology of the Analects contains the idea of “knowing to act in the moment”, or “knowing-to” (Lai 2012). Lai describes knowing-to as knowing to enact a particular virtue in a given situation – thus knowing-to is an expression of virtuous ethical skill. Knowing-to resembles Aristotelian practical wisdom. Both concepts emphasize the development of situational wisdom through habit and experience that allows an agent to act skillfully in new encounters.6 Thus knowing-to and practical wisdom are both active and historical, just as Nishida’s active intuition is.7 Nevertheless, Nishida’s point still seems to be slightly different. One might say that for Nishida, knowledge-that is a result of many instances of knowledge-how. In other words, while for both knowing-to and practical wisdom there is some conception of agential knowledge prior to action (in the form of a disposition or a sensitivity), Nishida seems to repeatedly resist the idea that agents have ethical knowledge prior to action. Virtuous ethical sensitivity is often described as being sensitive to ethical features of given situations in such a way that one is able to act skillfully (Swartwood 2013). For instance, appreciating the character and validity of principles of injustice is different from being sensitive to actual injustice in particular situations, as in the cases of person A and person B earlier(Blum 1991). The sensitivity precedes and occasions the agent’s intervention. Yet for Nishida, one cannot see without acting (Nishida 1935, 74). In other words, there is no ethical knowledge, either as sensitivity or disposition, that an agent possesses and which is then expressed in action. The action is interdependent with the knowledge because it is only through the action that the agent receives the world’s response. Moral facts can only be grasped in the relationship between agential action and worldly reaction. Further, this relationship is a historical one insofar as it is a pattern of action-reaction, not a particular instantiation of a skill.

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Nishida’s account of active intuition is unclear on whether his point is metaphysical – making a point about moral realism or anti-realism – or just epistemic – about how human beings possess moral knowledge. While Nishida himself does not say as much, his attempt to undermine the distinction between subjective moral knowledge and objective moral facts suggests that, for him, there is no straightforward difference between the metaphysical and the epistemic. In other words, an individual’s moral knowledge reflects the point at which their subjective perception of the world intersects with the objective facts of the world via the world’s response to the agent’s action.

4. Conclusion Seen through the lens of contemporary metaethical theory, Nishida’s idea of active intuition is best understood as the proposal that moral knowledge  does not precede and determine moral action, but that moral knowledge is gained in action that develops in a particular way based on each agent’s history of interaction with the world. The lesson for contemporary metaethicists here is that moral knowledge, conceived of as active intuition, can be understood as both active and historical. This develops a metaethical perspective that bridges response intuitionism and sensibility theory, such that intuition’s non-inferentiality comes from its immediate, enacted responsiveness, and its justification comes not from reasons but from the response of one’s community conceptualized as the world. Perhaps this is why the Nishida Testsugakukan includes not just space for individual reflection but also spaces that include the influence of the environment. On the ground floor of the museum, the ‘space of emptiness’ has neither ceiling nor roof; the rain and the snow fall directly onto the museum goers passing through. This proposal offers a new way of thinking about intuition in metaethics. Rather than presenting a picture of non-inferential moral knowledge as the apprehension of axiomatic principles or the insight into one’s emotional responses, Nishida proposes that it is on the basis of our action in a historical world that includes our peers that we see what is good, and it is through the internalization of our perception of the good that we permit the world to shape our agential capacities and influence our future action. This interpretation not only aids in understanding Nishida’s ethical commitments and his broader statements in letters to D.T. Suzuki, his last work (Bashoteki Ronri to Shūkyōteki Sekaikan), and elsewhere; it also suggests new avenues for the development of contemporary metaethical theories.

Notes 1. I follow the Japanese convention of writing last name before first name here. 2. www.nishidatetsugakukan.org/pamphlet/English.pdf

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3. In Japanese, this is a different word than that for the Buddhist religion, although they are pronounced the same. 4. Appearance intuitionism may be a version of the other two forms, but there is not space to argue for this thesis here. 5. There is still the possibility that there are universal moral facts that constrain action in particular ways. For instance, Nishida’s discussion of compassion suggests that it could be understood as a universal moral fact. However, this would require much broader analysis than is possible here. 6. Jay Garfield uses this same understanding of Confucian moral epistemology to defend the idea of ethical spontaneous responsiveness (Garfield 2011). 7. Another important difference between Confucian knowing-to and Nishida’s active intuition is that knowing-to is described with in the context of a rich normative ethical theory, according to which the good is defined in terms of behavior that are effective at achieving certain socially sanctioned moral ends. Nishida, on the other hand, never identifies just what the good or right consists of; he seems more concerned to provide a procedural account of morality than to construct a substantive conception.

References Angle, Stephen C. 2005. “Sagely Ease and Moral Perception.” Dao 5(1): 31–55. Audi, Robert. 2004. The Good in the Right. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Blum, Lawrence. 1991. “Moral Perception and Particularity.” Ethics 101(4): 701–25. D’Arms, Justin, and Daniel Jacobson. 2006. “Sensibility Theory and Projectivism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, edited by David Copp, 186–218. New York: Oxford University Press. Desautels, Peggy. 1998. “Psychologies of Moral Perceivers.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 22: 266–79. Garfield, Jay. 2011. “Hey Buddha! Don’t think! Just Act!” Philosophy East and West 61(1): 174–83. Goto-Jones, Christopher S. 2003. “Ethics and Politics in the Early Nishida: Reconsidering ‘Zen no kenkyū.’” Philosophy East and West 53(4): 514–36. Goto-Jones, Christopher S. 2005. Political Philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto School, and Co-Prosperity. New York: Routledge. Haver, William. 2012. Ontology of Production. Durham: Duke University Press. Hetherington, Stephen, and Karen Lai. 2012. “Practicing to Know: Practicalism and Confucian Philosophy.” Philosophy 87(3): 375–93. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0031819112000289 Kaupinenn, Anti. 2014. “Moral Sentimentalism.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato. stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/moral-sentimentalism/ Krueger, Joel W. 2008. “Nishida, Agency, and the ‘Self-Contradictory’ Body.” Asian Philosophy 18(3): 213–29. Krummel, John. 2012. “Basho, World, and Dialectics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Nishida Kitaro.” In Place and Dialectic, edited by John Krummel and Shigenori Nagatomo. New York: Oxford University Press. Lai, Karyn L. 2012. “Knowing to Act in the Moment: Examples from Confucius’ Analects.” Asian Philosophy 22(4): 347–64. McDowell, John. 1979. “Virtue and Reason.” The Monist 62(3): 331–50.

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Nishida, Kitarō. 1911 (1990). Zen no Kenkyū [An Inquiry into the Good], translated by Masao Abe and Christopher Ives. New York: Yale University Press. Nishida, Kitarō. 1935 (1979). “Kōiteki Chokkan no Tachiba” [The Standpoint of Active Intuition]. In Nishida Kitarō Zenshū [The Complete Collection of Nishida Kitarō], Vol. 8, 107–218. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Nishida, Kitarō. 1935 (2012). “Kōiteki Chokkan no Tachiba” [The Standpoint of Active Intuition]. In Ontology of Production: 3 Essays, translated by William Haver. Durham: Duke University Press. Nishida, Kitarō. 1937. “Kōiteki Chokkan” [Active Intuition]. In Nishida Kitarō Zenshū [The Complete Collection of Nishida Kitarō], Vol. 8, 541–71. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Nishida, Kitarō. 1945 (1987). “Bashoteki Ronri to Shūkyōteki Sekaikan” [The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview]. In Nothingness and the Religious Worldview, translated by David A Dilworth. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Okakura, Kakuzo. 1964. The Book of Tea. New York: Dover Publications. Roeser, Sabine. 2006. “A Particularist Epistemology: ‘Affectual Intuitionism’.” Acta Analytica 21(1): 33–44. Ryle, Gilbert. 1949. The Concept of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stanley, Jason, and Tim Williamson. 2001. “Knowing How.” Journal of Philosophy 98(8): 411–44. https://doi.org/10.2307/2678403 Swartwood, Jason D. 2013. “Wisdom as an Expert Skill.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16(3): 511–28. Tropman, Elizabeth. 2009. “Renewing Moral Intuitionism.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 6(4): 440–63. https://doi.org/10.1163/174046809X12464327133096 Tropman, Elizabeth. 2010. “Intuitionism and the Secondary-Quality Analogy in Ethics.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 44(1): 31–45. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10790-009-9173-9 Tropman, Elizabeth. 2014. “Varieties of Moral Intuitionism.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 48(2): 177–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9423-3 Yusa, Michiko. 2002. Zen and Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of Nishida Kitarō. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

11 Augusto Salazar Bondy’s Philosophy of Value Clark Donley1

Augusto Salazar Bondy was a major 20th-century Peruvian philosopher. During his relatively short life (1925–1974), he made significant contributions to phenomenology, the philosophy of domination and liberation, the philosophy of education, metaphilosophy, metaethics, and axiology.2 He is described as “a true jewel of philosophical lucidity” (Navarro Reyes 2010, 9) and as a philosopher who “lived his philosophy to its ultimate consequences” (Miró Quesada [1974] 2015, 8).3 Despite this, Salazar Bondy remains virtually unknown in Anglophone philosophy, and, where accounts of his work do exist, they have tended to skip over the gravitational center of his work: his philosophy of value.4 This limited engagement with Salazar Bondy’s work is unfortunate for two reasons. First, Salazar Bondy made significant and nuanced contributions to the philosophy of value that deserve careful study. Second, by understanding Salazar Bondy’s philosophy of value, we can better understand his treatment of topics such as Latin American metaphilosophy and the philosophy of domination and liberation. In this chapter I provide a detailed introduction to and reconstruction of Salazar Bondy’s philosophy of value and its development. Salazar Bondy’s overarching philosophical project, as David Sobrevilla (1995, 17) observes, is integrating phenomenology, analytic philosophy, and humanist socialism. These three influences roughly correspond to what Adriana María Arpini identifies as the three stages of Salazar Bondy’s philosophical development (Arpini 2008, 2016, chaps. 1–2). In the first period (1950s – early 1960s), he adopts the ‘phenomenologicalontological’ approach. In the second period (early 1960s – 1970), his primary focus is analytic metaethics and the philosophy of value. There was a significant methodological change between the first and second periods from phenomenology to analytic philosophy. In the third period (1970– 1974), Salazar Bondy focuses more on issues of domination, liberation, education, and the role of philosophy in relation to those, likely owing to his increased political involvement as an active education reformer in government.5 Unlike the significant change in philosophical frameworks between the first two periods, here we mainly see a shift in the subject matter emphasized. Although his emphasis changed, he aspired

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to integrate his later views with his earlier work on the philosophy of value. His essays on the philosophy of value across much of his career are collected in his Para una filosofía del valor (published in 1971 and republished in 2010; my citations to these essays refer to the 2010 edition and are abbreviated as PFV). Sadly, Salazar Bondy died prematurely at the age of 48 on February 6, 1974, and we cannot know exactly how he would have completed his philosophical project had he lived longer. This chapter has three parts corresponding to the three stages of the development of Salazar Bondy’s philosophy. In the first part, I provide an account of Salazar Bondy’s early philosophy of value based on the fulfillment of being (cumplimiento del ser) and his later objections to it. In the second part I offer an account of his analytic turn and his mature philosophy of value. Here Salazar Bondy begins to think about value as a “condition of the possibility of human action” (PFV, 204). There will be three steps to this. First, I will explain Salazar Bondy’s mature philosophical framework: the critical-transcendental point of view. Value, on this view, is transcendental because it makes intelligible “an order of human actions and interactions” (PFV, 179). Second, I will discuss Salazar Bondy’s account of the evaluative demand and its role in his analysis of good. As Salazar Bondy says in “Una hipótesis sobre el sentido valorativo” ([1965b] 2010), “to value is not in essence to describe, nor to prove objectivities, nor is it to report, express, provoke, or prescribe states of mind, but to recognize and communicate a demand of acceptance or rejection, agreement or disagreement, that transcends the factual” (PFV, 120). The nucleus of this demand is a primitive, irreducibly normative ought (debe) – namely, the demand that one ought to have a favorable attitude toward that which is valuable – and this ought is the basis for Salazar Bondy’s analysis of good. The last part of Salazar Bondy’s mature philosophy that I will discuss is his account of the experience of value, including the different modes and patterns of valuation. In the third and final section of this chapter I will show how Salazar Bondy’s mature philosophy of value connects to and illuminates his views on Latin American metaphilosophy and the philosophy of domination and liberation.

1. Salazar Bondy’s Early Philosophy of Value In Salazar Bondy’s early work, he presents a phenomenological-ontological account of value. He argues that we should understand value as the ‘fulfillment of being’ (cumplimiento del ser), and that, by paying attention to cumplimiento del ser and its different modes, we can establish a hierarchy of value and the valuable. 1.1. Axiological Hierarchy and Cumplimiento del Ser To understand Salazar Bondy’s early philosophy of value, it will be helpful to briefly introduce his phenomenology of ontology during this period. In

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Irrealidad e idealidad (1958; cited as II), Salazar Bondy aims to show that a strict distinction between ideality and irreality (according to which ideal objects – such as Platonic forms or universals – have ontological independence, transcendence, and can be known indubitably, whereas irreal objects – such as artistic conceptions, political ideals, and so on – lack these features) is not tenable. Although there is not space here to unpack his dense argumentation for this thesis, his goal is to “unify both kinds of entities, showing the identity of their fundamental objective structure and of their behavior with respect to knowledge” (II, 14). Axiological issues, Salazar Bondy notes, had often been approached from the perspective of ideality, including an “explicit identification of values with ideal entities” (II, 142). While Salazar Bondy thinks that it’s important to retain some aspects of ideality for value (e.g., transcendence), he notes that value often acts more like irreal objects (such as aesthetic creations or political ideals). With the unification of irreality and ideality, Salazar Bondy hopes that he can explain both of these aspects of value. Values have an ideal possibility and transcendence, but that transcendence, as Arpini glosses it, is “toward a concrete correlate, by reference to which it grounds its completion on another level” (2016, 60). For example, take the value of beauty in an artwork: beauty provides an ideal possibility that transcends any given concrete work of art, but it is our contemplation of the concrete work of art as beautiful that fulfills or completes that aesthetic object’s value as the beautiful object that it is for us.6 Here Salazar Bondy combines aspects of ideality (transcendence) and irreality (the intentional act of contemplation) to explain the value of a beautiful work of art in its ontological completion. In “La jerarquía axiológica” ([1959a] 2010; PFV, essay 11), Salazar Bondy systematically develops this theory of value as cumplimiento del ser. According to this view, value is not “an instance with its own ontic content” nor is it something “independent of valuable entities”, but, rather, value belongs to the “ontological completion” of entities according to “the constitution proper to them” (PFV, 205). To establish a hierarchy of value, notes Salazar Bondy, we need, first, criteria for ordering the entities themselves according to their superiority or inferiority, and, second, criteria for ordering the modes of fulfillment of being. The unification of these, he hopes, can create a universal hierarchy of value. Salazar Bondy begins by considering a hierarchy of value with respect to a singular object. There are three dialectical moments of ‘axiological transcendence’ (trascender axiológico) here. The first moment is when the entity is real but lacking in its development. Even an incomplete entity can be valuable by virtue of “the positivity of its realization” (PFV, 208). The second moment is the ideality of that entity, understood as the potentialities of its development. The third moment is the realization of the ideality of the entity, which is the “full plenitude” of that entity (PFV, 208).7 An entity that realizes this full plenitude is more valuable than an entity of the same kind that does not. Consider, for example, a piece of fruit in

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its different temporal stages. We experience the mature, ripe stage of that fruit as more valuable than the immature, unripe stage of fruit, Salazar Bondy says, insofar as the fruit qua fruit has more completely fulfilled its being in its mature stage. We may also consider other objects of a similar class, such as when picking out one apple from a bushel, and here we can apply the previous criterion of cumplimiento del ser to each member of the set and then establish an ordering of that set. We can also consider cumplimiento del ser in relation to us. Here Salazar Bondy introduces hierarchical orderings based on a “fulfillment of a being-for” (cumplimiento de un ser-para) (PFV, 213). For example, when we judge that a sharp knife is better than a dull knife, we appeal to the function of knives and their fulfillment of being for us. We can also do this for entities that are not functionally defined. From our perspective, we value tasty fruit more than non-tasty fruit, and when we consider a piece of fruit this way we treat it not as an object in itself but in relation to us. With this “oblique” perspective, the original object loses its “ontological autonomy” insofar as we characterize its being as incorporated into the subject (PFV, 211–12). At this level, the subject-object pair can be considered as another object and ranked according to the fulfillment of its own being. For example, consider a chef who values dull knives (perhaps mistakenly considering them safer than sharp knives) and whose ability to be a good chef suffers as a result. A value hierarchy where dull knives are subjectively preferred is worse than one where sharp knives are preferred because dull knives do not allow a chef to be as good as the chef with sharp knives – i.e., for the chef to fulfill their being as a chef. Salazar Bondy thinks that we can generalize this insight to establish a universal ranking of value and the valuable. He notes that there are three different modes or levels of valuation. The first level consists of those “values that any entity considered in itself can possess”, as seen earlier (PFV, 215). On the second level, there are values that are constituted by the human being’s cumplimiento del ser. Here one finds first-order kinds of value, such as hedonistic, economic, theoretical, political, social, and ethical values (PFV, 216). Salazar Bondy thinks that we can rank these kinds of values according to the degree to which they constitute the cumplimiento del ser of the human being. For example, Salazar Bondy says, “hedonistic [values] occupy a place inferior to theoretical ones” because pleasure has less “ontic wealth” insofar as knowledge of the world opens “the horizon of being” to humans (PFV, 217). (Here again, we see Salazar Bondy’s debts to phenomenology.) For Salazar Bondy, ethical values here occupy the highest rank as they constitute the perfection of human beings (PFV, 216). Those who prize the value of pleasure over the value of ethics are, as human beings, much like the dull-knifed chef earlier: they are not able to fulfill their being as the kind of entity that they are. Beyond this, there is another level: universality, which takes into account both human and other values and whose hierarchy is ordered according to the fulfillment

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of being as such. For Salazar Bondy, the human level finds its own completion at the universal level (PFV, 217). Salazar Bondy thinks that we can establish a unified, monistic theory of value here. Although the details are sketchy, Salazar Bondy says that the universal level of valuation involves “the metaphysical transcendence” whose apex is “absolute value” and the “absolute fulfillment of being” (PFV, 218). 1.2. The Transition Away From His Early Theory of Value Salazar Bondy comes to reject much of this account of value later in his career. Nonetheless, his reasons for rejecting it help to clarify his shift toward his mature philosophy of value. In addition, while there are major changes from his early to his mature philosophy of value, there are nonetheless important thematic continuities. In the version of “La jerarquía axiológica” republished in Para una filosofía del valor ([1971] 2010), Salazar Bondy offers multiple objections to his early philosophy of value (PFV, 205n1). First, he argues that his early theory of value committed the reductionist fallacy (or, in G.E. Moore’s original term, the naturalistic fallacy). For Moore, one way of committing the naturalistic fallacy is to illicitly identify some G (e.g., good) with a natural or metaphysical property. Although cumplimiento del ser may be a kind of good (or value), this did not entitle Salazar Bondy to identify cumplimiento del ser with good or value itself, and so, he thinks, this early account of value commits the reductionist fallacy. Second, he holds that his early view falls to Hume’s guillotine (i.e., the is–ought gap). In “Razón y valor” ([1968b] 2010; PFV, essay 8), Salazar Bondy criticizes what he calls ontologism in the philosophy of value, by which he means “any thesis on which the foundation of value appeals to the structure of being or to the order of nature as the ultimate ratio of all assessment” (PFV, 177). Ontologism, he claims, succumbs to Hume’s guillotine because it “implies an invalid move from indicative to evaluative discourse” (PFV, 177). In Salazar Bondy’s eyes, his cumplimiento del ser view of value does exactly that: it offers an analysis of what an object is and illicitly moves directly to value (i.e., what it ought to be). A further objection that Salazar Bondy makes against his earlier theory is that the vague and overwrought metaphysical nature of his early system would land us in a “whirlwind of aporias” (PFV, 205–6n1). For example, we can consider the baroque complexity of the different modes of cumplimiento del ser and of the ranking the different kinds of value (e.g., the value of pleasure vs. the value of knowledge or ethics, as mentioned previously), as well as the obscurity of ‘metaphysical transcendence’ or ‘absolute fulfillment of being’. This is sure, he thinks to result in a variety of confusions and “pseudo-problems” (PFV, 205–6n1). Despite these concerns, there are some thematic continuities from Salazar Bondy’s early work to his mature work. First, he continues to be

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concerned with our experience of value. Second, he continues to reject robustly realist interpretations of value according to which value is a kind of entity or substantial property. Third, he continues to emphasize transcendence, although his account of transcendence changes significantly.

2. Salazar Bondy’s Mature Philosophy of Value What separates Salazar Bondy’s early philosophy of value from his mature philosophy of value is his analytic turn. In the early 1960s, Salazar Bondy began a detailed engagement with analytic philosophy, especially early Wittgenstein and analytic metaethics. This engagement caused him to develop a new and rich philosophy of value. I will explain his mature philosophy of value in three parts. First, I will discuss his overarching framework: the critical-transcendental point of view. Second, I will discuss his account of the evaluative demand and how he analyzes good on the basis of it. Third, I will discuss his account of the experience of value in its different modes (attribution, realization, preference, and choice) and how this relates to patterns of valuation. 2.1. The Critical-Transcendental Point of View The overarching framework for Salazar Bondy’s mature philosophy of value is the critical-transcendental point of view. Value here is not in the world but instead is what makes the world of rational human action possible. Salazar Bondy calls his move toward the critical-transcendental point of view his “Copernican turn to the problem of the grounding of value” (PFV, 178). Salazar Bondy’s critical-transcendental point of view is deeply influenced by Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (T ) ([1921] 2001).8 In “El problema del valor en el primer Wittgenstein” ([1965a] 2010; PFV, essay 15), Salazar Bondy closely reads several Tractatus passages on value and ethics (6.4–6.421). Here we find him sketching out some of the basic commitments of his critical-transcendental point of view for the first time. We can identify three main points from Salazar Bondy’s line-by-line interpretation of these passages that are especially important.9 First: “[I]n [the world] no value exists – and if it did exist, it would have no value” (T, 6.41). Salazar Bondy sees two lines of argument for this from Wittgenstein (PFV, 264–6). The first concerns the nature of value in relation to facts. For Wittgenstein, “The world is the totality of facts” (T, 1.1). If so, then, if value were in the world, it would be a fact (or set of facts), but, if value were a fact then it would cease to function as a value (PFV, 264). Because this is implausible, values cannot be in the world. Second, “all that happens and is the case is accidental” (T, 6.41), but because value is non-accidental and necessary it cannot be in the world (PFV, 266).

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Second: “[I]t is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics” (T, 6.42) and “ethics cannot be put into words” (T, 6.421). Wittgenstein holds this view, on Salazar Bondy’s reading because “to say something is to say it in terms of facts” and because facts are in the world and value is not, one cannot have propositions of ethics (PFV, 266). It would be a mistake, Salazar Bondy says, to think that this “nullifies ethics” for Wittgenstein (PFV, 267). Although we cannot say something ethical with words, our language can show something ethical. As we will see, for Salazar Bondy, evaluative language shows our commitment to an evaluative demand. However, although Salazar Bondy thinks that Wittgenstein is correct about evaluative language, he also holds that we can learn a lot through the analysis of our ordinary value language. For example, in “La experiencia del valor” ([1967b] 2010; PFV, essay 1), Salazar Bondy mimics Wittgenstein’s terse style in the Tractatus while talking extensively about evaluative language. Given Wittgenstein’s points here, this is, as Navarro Reyes (2010, 18) remarks, “a sincere homage and an irreverent gibe” toward Wittgenstein. Third: “Ethics is transcendental” (T, 6.421; PFV, 267–9). Salazar Bondy connects this claim to Wittgenstein’s claim in 6.13 that “logic is transcendental”. On Salazar Bondy’s reading of Wittgenstein, logic is a priori, does not describe the world, and does not deal with facts, and so logical propositions “have no meaning (they are sinnloss) but they are not meaningless (unsinnig)” (PFV, 267–8). Logic and logical propositions “expose the structure of the world” by reflecting it (T, 6.13). This reflection is unsayable, but it has “the function of exhibiting the essence of the world” (PFV, 267–8). This is what it means, on Salazar Bondy’s reading, for logic to be transcendental. Because ethics (and value more generally) is transcendental, it has similar characteristics: it is a priori, it does not describe facts of the world, it is devoid of meaning but not meaningless, and it is unsayable while showing something (PFV, 268). One difference between logic and ethics is that logic is involved in all propositions, which are, as Salazar Bondy puts it, “a logical image of the facts” (PFV, 267). But this can’t be the function of ethics. Here Salazar Bondy observes that we can make sense of this through the ethical will. For Wittgenstein, “the world is independent of my will” (6.373) and “there is no logical connection between the will and the world” (6.374). Because the good or bad will can change independently of the world, Salazar Bondy says, the will – and hence ethics – has a transcendental character with respect to the world (PFV, 269). In “Razón y valor” ([1968b] 2010; PFV, essay 8), Salazar Bondy offers his own elaboration of the critical-transcendental point of view and builds on his interpretation of Wittgenstein. According to this view, value is transcendental in the sense that it is a category “thanks to which there is a rational world, an order of actions and interactions that we can understand” (PFV, 179). It will be helpful here to expand on three aspects of this view: action, understanding and rationality, and objectivity. Like Wittgenstein, Salazar Bondy draws a parallel between the transcendentals of logic and value. Those of logic are, says Salazar Bondy,

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what make possible “objects in general” and those of value are what make possible “objects of praxis” (PFV, 179–80). By “objects of praxis”, Salazar Bondy means actions, the ends of action, choices, and so on. Why does Salazar Bondy think that value makes possible objects of praxis? Consider what setting a practical goal involves: one must, Salazar Bondy says, both accept something as a goal and discard competing possibilities – that is, one must make a choice and thereby make a comparative judgment about the value of what is chosen (PFV, 191). This is more than a purely subjective judgment of value. To make such a choice, Salazar Bondy says, we have to recognize a value that makes an end intelligible as an end for us. This requires making or recognizing a demand to adopt a favorable attitude toward that thing and to have a contrary attitude toward the discarded possibilities (PFV, 246–7). This demand implies that the judgment aims to be “valid for all subjects” that would be similarly situated (PFV, 123). Thus whenever I set a practical goal I make a judgment that transcends my (and others’) subjectivity and that presupposes a certain shared objectivity in the social world (PFV, 247). Value, then, functions as a term of action and, in doing so, aims to be “shareable as a collective task and as a public reality” (PFV, 247). Value renders objects of praxis – ends, choices, actions – intelligible but isn’t itself an object of praxis and so is transcendental. It’s important for Salazar Bondy that we can rationally understand our actions and interactions thanks to value. When one person makes an evaluative demand, that person presupposes that those subject to the demand can understand it. This understanding requires that a rational relation of shared meaning be established (PFV, 179). This way of thinking about value as transcendental to praxis, Salazar Bondy says, should change how we conceive of the relationship between value and objectivity. In “Objetividad y valor” ([1966b] 2010; PFV, essay  9), Salazar Bondy distinguishes meta-languages and objectlanguages: a meta-language is constituent of its object-language. Constituent and constituted languages are different: the objects in a constituted, object-language are “not apt to register in the constituent [meta-language]” (PFV, 186–7). It is a common mistake, shared by both subjectivist and objectivist accounts of value, Salazar Bondy notes, to think that value is something in a constituted object-language. This is not, however, what value is: “values, or value in genere, [are] a constitutional instance of rational human praxis, that is, of a praxis that can be qualified as objective” (PFV, 189). In this sense, value is “arche-objective” and what makes objectivity in the world of praxis possible (PFV, 189). 2.2. The Evaluative Demand: From Good to Ought In this section we will examine Salazar Bondy’s analysis of good (bueno) and ought (debe). For Salazar Bondy we use good to discuss many different forms of value, including absolute value, relative value, the value

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of something as a good thing of its kind, and different orders of value (moral, aesthetic, political, etc.). Across these different uses, Salazar Bondy holds there is a consistent structure and essential normative core to any use of good. As he explains in “La exigencia estimativa” ([1969] 2010; PFV, essay 4), when someone uses the word good they communicate an irreducibly normative demand or requirement (exigencia)10 that one ought to adopt a favorable attitude regarding whatever is said to be good (PFV, 121).11 Salazar Bondy locates normativity in this exigencia (PFV, 67). The ought (debe) here is primitive: it cannot be analyzed into or reduced to anything else. The ought, expressed in the form of a demand, shows the transcendental aspect of the critical-transcendental framework. The ought’s normativity is also essential and irreducible: it cannot be reduced to a psychological requirement, non-normative natural necessity, fittingness, or emotive expression (PFV, 117). (This is consistent with the Wittgensteinian view that value is not something in the world that we can describe propositionally.) Although the ought is primitive, it has two characteristics. First, it is unconditional insofar as it does not depend upon an agent’s subjective motivations. Second, it is universal: any judgment that ‘X is good’ aspires to universal validity (for all subjects who would be similarly situated) (PFV, 123). In this sense, the ought is similar to a Kantian categorical imperative (PFV, 123).12 Even ‘good for’ or ‘good relative to’ judgments are subject to a kind of universality: they imply that everyone ought to accept the judgment that something is good for someone or relative to something, in distinction to the notion that the judgment is only valid for the person making it. In “La plurivocidad de ‘bueno’” ([1967c] 2010; PFV, essay 6), Salazar Bondy explains that value has three important components: first, an object of valuation; second, a subject’s experience (vivencia) or attitude (actitud) (favorable or unfavorable); and third, a demand or requirement (exigencia), which links the object to the attitude via an ought (PFV, 121, 143). In the most basic case, ‘X is good’ can be translated into a demand expressed in the form of ‘a favorable attitude ought to be taken toward X’ (Debe tenerse una actitud favorable a X).13 This is a template that can be modified depending on the kind of value that is being predicated, but it will always have these three factors. For example, consider a judgment about goodness in reference to an object as the kind of object it is (PFV, 144). When we say ‘That car is a good car’ we: (1) communicate descriptive criteria for what a good car is, and that the car meets it, and (2)  express a demand that those criteria and the particular judgment about the car ought to be accepted (PFV, 144–5). This makes reference to a pattern of value for a kind of object (see Section 2.4).14 We can translate statements about something being a good object of its kind, Salazar Bondy says, into a demand: “a favorable attitude with respect to such objects ought to be taken” (PFV, 147).

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Likewise, we can translate a sentence that “X is intrinsically good”, Salazar Bondy says, as “a favorable or pro attitude ought to be taken toward the object” (PFV, 148). Salazar Bondy proposes modified translations for other kinds of good, such as relative, extrinsic, and so on. What remains constant across these schemas is the demand that one ought to take a favorable attitude with respect to a certain object, although the specific ways that one ought to take a favorable attitude with respect to that object may vary (PFV, 153). This applies as well to judgments about goodness within certain spheres, such as aesthetics, morality, economics, and so on. Consider morally good. We can translate “X is morally good”, says Salazar Bondy, as the demand that a favorable attitude ought to be taken with respect to a voluntary action (which is, on Salazar Bondy’s view, the sphere of morality) (PFV, 156). The particulars of the translation will vary according to the order of value at issue, but, in each case, Salazar Bondy translates the predication of good into a corresponding ought-based demand. Salazar Bondy hopes to show that there is an essential normative core – an ought-based demand within the critical-transcendental point of view – to all predications of goodness. The modifications of the translation schema allow him to accommodate different descriptive semantic contents while linking them to this ought-based demand. 2.3. The Experience of Value As in his early philosophy of value, Salazar Bondy continues to hold that any philosophy of value requires an understanding of valuative experience. A theory of value that does not pay sufficient attention to valuative experience, Salazar Bondy remarks, will likely “sink into error and baseless, unsupported, and orphaned speculation” (PFV, 47). In “La experiencia del valor” ([1967b] 2010; PFV, essay 1), Salazar Bondy distinguishes between two kinds of experience: constative and valuative. Constative experiences involve perceiving, observing, explaining, and so on, whereas valuative experiences involve “valuing, appreciating, esteeming, preferring, choosing, recommending”, and so on (PFV, 50). Phenomenologically, a constative experience is “having or giving an account of what occurs as it occurs, of what is as it is, of what appears as it appears”, and, in this sense, it is neutral (PFV, 50). By contrast, in the phenomenology of a valuative experience, “the subject is always in favor or against an object, inclining toward or rejecting it” (PFV, 50). The subject has a commitment (compromiso) in a valuative experience. There are diverse modes of the experience of value, and, for each, there is an implicit demand concerning the judgment of value. In what follows I discuss Salazar Bondy’s four modes of the experience of value – attribution, realization, preference, and choice – as a way of explaining how it is that value makes intelligible the world of praxis.

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2.3.1. The Attribution of Value We commonly attribute value to objects, persons, or situations. For Salazar Bondy, this involves making a judgment about that object with a valuative predicate (PFV, 56). Attributions of value have two aspects. One is a prescriptive, essentially normative evaluative demand, aims to establish the universality of the valuative judgment. If an attribution of value is to be shareable with other subjects, then they must be able to rationally understand it, and, on this view, they can do so with reference to valuative criteria (PFV, 66–8). These criteria are based on patterns of valuation (discussed in Section 2.4). For example, when I say ‘that is a good house’ I make a judgment with reference to the criteria for houses (e.g., providing adequate shelter) that are established in a pattern of valuation concerning houses, and I (implicitly) demand such a judgment be universal. Attributions of value can be true or false. One way that an attribution of value can be false is by being mistaken about the facts about the object in question. Another way is for the subject to be mistaken about the adequacy of the valuative criteria. The latter is called a primary or properly valuative error (PFV, 58). These errors can occur when a subject is knows the descriptive characteristics of an object but has applied valuative criteria that the subject does not recognize as genuinely valuable. For example, subjects may be coerced into applying valuative criteria that they do not recognize as legitimate. Salazar Bondy identifies three kinds of errors in attributions of value: illusion, counterfeiting, and mystification (PFV, 58). Illusion involves something (e.g., psychological factors) causing a subject to make a spontaneous initial judgment that is incorrect (PFV, 58). Counterfeiting occurs when the object of a judgment is a fake or a substitute. However, as Salazar Bondy points out, it is possible for a subject to be aware of counterfeiting: I can be aware that an object is a counterfeit but judge that it still has some degree of value (PFV, 59). Mystification, like counterfeiting, involves the substitution of one object for another. However, unlike counterfeiting, the subject is not aware of the substitution and is thus mystified about its nature. For example, Salazar Bondy claims that commercials mystify by associating mundane, mediocre products with other values (e.g., prestige), leading a consumer to buy the product because of the associated value, even though they do not value the product (PFV, 59).

2.3.2. The Realization of Value Based on attributions of value, we can realize values. To realize a value is for a subject to translate an attribution of value into reality through an intervention in the world (PFV, 69). Realization of value can be proper or improper. A proper realization of value is undertaken through

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a “conscious and voluntary decision” (PFV, 72). While an attribution of value begins with the actual state of an object and then predicates value or disvalue to it, a proper realization of value requires considering how the world could be with reference to value and to intervene on that basis. An improper realization of value does not have this voluntary element of decision. Unlike attributions of value, realizations of value are neither true nor false but rather authentic or inauthentic. In his essay “La cultura de dominación” ([1966a] 1995) (reprinted in Dominación y liberación [1995]; works in this volume are henceforth cited with DL), Salazar Bondy says that a way of being or acting is “inauthentic when the action does not correspond to a principle recognized and validated by the subject” (DL, 70). For example, consider someone who easily forges paintings in styles they dislike but that are easy to sell fraudulently at inflated prices: their realization of value (the creation of a painting) would be inauthentic. In an authentic realization of value, the subject does recognize the validity of the value realized in their actions. For example, suppose that I genuinely value a particular aesthetic style and I create a painting based on it in order to appreciate its beauty: this would be an authentic realization of value. 2.3.3. Preference Preferring involves “an act or experience of comparative appreciation of the degrees of value with reference to two or more [objects]” in which one of those objects is valued more (PFV, 73). There are four factors involved in preferring. First, we are aware of which properties the objects have in common. Second, we refer to a valuation pattern containing these properties. Third, we make a comparison of the objects on the basis of that pattern. This leads to a factual-axiological determination of which of the objects is preferable (PFV, 80–1). Out of these preferences, Salazar Bondy notes, we can establish hierarchies of value.15 Salazar Bondy is careful to distinguish preference from mere likes and dislikes. A judgment of preference involves comparative attributions of value, which can themselves be true or false. It implies that one object is worthy of being preferred. Like with an attribution of value, there is an implicit normative demand: others ought to recognize the truth of the preference in an objective sense. Mere likes and dislikes, or preference in a weak sense, do not involve this implicit normative demand. 2.3.4. Valuative Choice A valuative choice for Salazar Bondy combines the three prior categories. A choice is a voluntary decision to realize a value (and not to realize others) through action, on the basis of a preference ordering (which,

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recall, incorporates attributions of value) (PFV, 84). Salazar Bondy notes that although the realization of values and choice may appear similar, they are not identical. Choice involves a voluntary decision to realize a value through a course of action while discarding other possibilities judged to be less valuable. The realization of value itself does not, on this view, necessarily require a voluntary decision (although it does in the strong sense). There can be authentic and inauthentic choices, such as when one chooses to realize a value, even though that is contrary to one’s preference. However, how does one choose when values conflict? In Salazar Bondy’s early philosophy of value, his answer was that we choose in a way that realizes the human being’s cumplimiento del ser, and, more generally, cumplimiento del ser as such. But because Salazar Bondy has discarded his ontological perspective he cannot rely on that answer here. To understand Salazar Bondy’s response to this question it will be helpful to discuss his account of patterns of valuation. 2.4. Patterns of Valuation Patterns of valuation are an essential component of all of these experiences of value: attribution, realization, preference, and choice. Salazar Bondy separates these patterns of valuation into two main kinds: secondary, or derived, patterns of valuation and primary or original patterns of valuation, also called protovaluations (PFV, 91). A third kind, a critical valuation, stands as an intermediary between them. Derived or secondary valuations are based on an already existing pattern of value (PFV, 91, 197–8). There are three classes of derived valuations: learned, transferred, and imitated. Learned derived valuations involve the “conscious and deliberate acceptance of a pattern of valuation” (PFV, 92). For example, I may learn to value art with reference to rules of composition that I learn in art class. Transferred derived valuations involve an acceptance of a pattern of valuation, but that acceptance is not conscious or deliberately made. For instance, suppose that some standard of beauty is ubiquitous in society and I come implicitly to adopt this standard as my own, even though I have never explicitly considered it. Imitated derived valuations are ones that are accepted deliberately but not with conviction (PFV, 92–3). For example, I may learn to imitate the valuation patterns of a sommelier not because I like wine but because I want to project the prestigious social status of a connoisseur of luxury goods. Protovaluations are not based on an already existing pattern of value, and they issue spontaneously from the subject. Examples of these would be artistic or moral revolutions (PFV, 93). Protovaluations are free or formulated. A formulated protovaluation is formed intentionally with the aim of “establishing a new norm of valuation” (such as organizers who attempt to change our moral concepts) (PFV, 93). A free protovaluation is not

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formed with the explicit intention of establishing a new norm (although it may incidentally do so later if it receives uptake from others) (PFV, 94).16 The will, Salazar Bondy claims, is central in establishing protovaluations (PFV, 94–5). As we will see in Section 3, Salazar Bondy holds that domination involves that the dominator have the power of decision over the will of the dominated. If this is right, then protovaluations are those in which domination is absent or rejected in a moment of liberation. Between these derived and protovaluations are critical valuations. These valuations combine aspects of derived valuations, insofar as they work with an existing pattern, and protovaluations, insofar as they introduce an original revision to the preexisting pattern. Because protovaluations and critical evaluations do not rely on existing valuations, one might worry that they are arbitrary or groundless. To make matters worse, if all derived valuations are based on protovaluations then all derived valuations are based on arbitrary acceptances of those protovaluations. Thus it seems that it would be impossible to choose non-arbitrarily between conflicting patterns of valuation. In “La dificultad de elegir” ([1967a] 2010; PFV, essay 10), Salazar Bondy considers how to solve this challenging problem. He rejects a correspondence between a pattern of value and independent values as natural or non-natural entities or properties. He also rejects the idea of simply accepting arbitrariness for original patterns of valuation and then saying that normal choices, insofar as they make reference to these patterns and the patterns do not conflict, are non-arbitrary. Salazar Bondy thinks that this proposed solution is unsatisfactory: when we encounter a conflict between patterns of value or are concerned about the arbitrariness of our choices, it does seem in ordinary praxis that these two levels conflict (PFV, 198–9). One option he sees as more promising is returning to the criticaltranscendental point of view and the evaluative demand (PFV, 199–204). First, as we saw earlier, the will is a crucial part of what makes value and ethics transcendental for Salazar Bondy. If a will is not free then it cannot be a genuine protovaluation. Second, whenever we make a valuative judgment (or attribution, choice, etc.) we are implicitly endorsing an unconditional and universalizable evaluative demand that others would rationally accept. In a Kantian way, Salazar Bondy notes, these necessary features of the evaluative demand, such as universalizability, may serve as the grounds for establishing the non-arbitrariness of protovaluations or at least ruling some of them out as unsatisfactory.

3. Value, Domination, Liberation, and Philosophy In the third stage of his philosophical development, Salazar Bondy focuses on questions of domination, liberation, and the role of philosophy in

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Latin America. This period of his philosophy has attracted the most attention from Anglophone philosophers. In this section I will take up Salazar Bondy’s philosophy of domination and liberation and his view of the role of philosophy in Latin American in relation to his philosophy of value. Understanding Salazar Bondy’s philosophy of value can deepen and enrich our understanding of these topics. To show this I will call attention to four aspects of his philosophy of value: patterns of valuation, the experience of value, the critical-transcendental framework, and the evaluative demand. 3.1. Domination, Liberation, and Philosophy Salazar Bondy characterizes domination as a relation between two entities where the dominator has a power of decision over the dominated (DL, 153). This power, Salazar Bondy says in “Dominación, valores y formación humana” ([1972b] 1995; DL, 141–52), “permits [the dominator] to decide on the life of the other . . . to put [the dominated] at [the dominator’s] own disposition; therefore annexing them and, by annexing them, taking from them a little of their being” (DL, 147). On Salazar Bondy’s view, domination occurs between individuals, groups, classes, and even countries and economies. This was, he thought, the situation of Peru, both externally (in relation to colonial and imperial powers and economies) and internally (between different classes and groups) (DL, 126).17 Out of this domination, Salazar Bondy argues, can grow a culture of domination. A culture of domination involves “values, attitudes, and structures of behavior” as well as “the systems that frame [the culture’s] life and do not let it expand and bear fruit” (DL, 84–5). This culture is marked by underdevelopment, mystification, alienation, superficial imitation, and inauthenticity (DL, 123–40).18 Philosophy, as a part of culture, can also reflect and reinforce a culture of domination. Philosophers in Latin America had, as Salazar Bondy argues in ¿Existe filosofía en nuestra América? (EFNA), learned to imitate the patterns of European philosophy through the long history of colonialism in Latin America. This stunted their philosophical growth and originality. It was primarily an inauthentic cultural product that failed to respond to the historically situated needs of Latin America:19 Hispano-American philosophy sanctions, then, the use of foreign and inadequate patterns, and sanctions it in a double sense derived from the ambivalence of our existence, namely: as conscious assumption of concepts and norms without roots in our historical-existential condition, and as an imitative product, without originality and without power that, instead of creating, repeats a foreign thought. (EFNA, 85)

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For Salazar Bondy, philosophy is, as Ofelia Schutte puts it, a form of reasoning that is “rooted in the life of the community”, but, if the life of that community is deformed or distorted by domination, philosophy will “fail to correspond to the needs of the community (or communities) making it up” (Schutte 1993, 97–8). Although Latin American philosophy had yet to be authentic, Salazar Bondy was nevertheless optimistic about its potential: he remarked that, unlike Hegel’s owl of Minerva taking off at dusk, philosophy in Latin America has the opportunity to be “the messenger of dawn, the beginning of a historical change by a radical awareness of an existence projected into the future” (EFNA, 89). 3.2. Value, Domination, and Liberation For Salazar Bondy, “certain values . . . translate, affirm, and consolidate domination” (DL, 150). But domination could not, he thinks, have any meaning without the possibility of liberation: “what gives meaning to domination is that man can be more or less, can succeed or fail, can lose his being or be free” (DL, 150). There are four areas of Salazar Bondy’s philosophy of value that can deepen our understanding of his account of domination and liberation: patterns of valuation, the experience of value, the critical-transcendental framework, and the evaluative demand. 3.2.1. Patterns of Valuation The dichotomy between domination and liberation can be seen in relation to patterns of valuation. We can recall that Salazar Bondy distinguishes between three kinds of patterns of valuation: derived, critical, and proto (or original). Derived patterns of valuation and derived valuations are based on an existing pattern of value. They can be learned, transferred, or imitated. On Salazar Bondy’s view, Latin America’s condition of domination was marked by how its culture and its possibilities for action were structured by derived patterns of valuation. These were, he thought, often transferred, sometimes violently, through relations of domination, such as when a colonizing power imposes a racial, economic, cultural, or religious value pattern through coercive activity, or nonviolently through learning or imitation. The result of these imposed patterns of valuation is alienation: “to say that the Peruvian is an alienated being is to say that he thinks, feels, acts according to norms, standards and values that are alien to him” (DL, 79). This was, in Salazar Bondy’s view, what happened to Latin American philosophy. Although derived patterns of valuation may reinforce domination, Salazar Bondy’s philosophy also shows us how liberation may be possible. Critical valuations may take up part of a derived pattern of valuation but reject or modify another aspect of it. If a derived pattern of valuation reinforces domination, only in a partial way, then a critical

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revision of that pattern may serve an appropriate liberatory function. On Salazar Bondy’s view, one of the most important functions of Latin American philosophy was precisely this critical task. Salazar Bondy calls for Latin American philosophy to engage in “a cancellation of prejudices, myths, idols” and to “unveil our subjection as peoples and our depression as human beings” (EFNA, 90). Protovaluations (whether free or formulated) are not derived from any pre-existing pattern of valuation and issue from the subject’s spontaneity. Although protovaluations are not based on previously established patterns of valuation, they nonetheless may be responsive to the sociohistorical location in which the subjects formulate them and serve a liberatory function. Because value is a condition for human action and interaction, protovaluations may allow for radical reconfigurations in possibilities for human action and interaction. Here I think we can see the positive role of philosophy: it provides us with the conceptual resources that can be used to formulate new protovaluations, and this may help to explain what has been called Salazar Bondy’s “surprising optimism concerning the potential of philosophy to dispel domination” (Llorente 2010, 173). 3.2.2. The Experience of Value For Salazar Bondy, as we saw, there are four modes of the experience of value: attribution, realization, preference, and choice. Attributions of value, as we saw, can be true or false. False attributions of value may be due to simple factual errors, or they may be due to deeper errors, such as illusion, counterfeiting, and mystification. Consider, for example, the ideologies that the colonizer imposes on the colonized about the inferiority of the colonized. These judgments may, after extensive social control, come to be internalized by the colonized. This could lead the colonized to make incorrect judgments about their own value. As another kind of case, consider mystification. Mystification occurs when a subject thinks that they value an object other than the one that they in fact value. Salazar Bondy gives the example of indigenous religious beliefs. Indigenous communities in Peru, he notes, have a set of beliefs that they may take to be Catholic yet, in actual fact, they are sufficiently different from Catholicism to effectively “have lost [Catholicism’s] original substance” (DL, 71). If these communities think that they value Catholicism, rather than their own indigenous religious beliefs and practices, they would be mystified. Such mystification would affirm and consolidate colonial domination. Salazar Bondy’s account of the realization of value and of choice can also help to explain how values can reinforce domination. Recall that choices and realizations of value are either authentic or inauthentic. An inauthentic choice or realization of value is when an action is based upon a value whose validity is not recognized by the subject, such as when

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subjects act on values begrudgingly owing to inequalities of power, or they act because of mystified attributions or preferences (DL, 70). Remember that, for Salazar Bondy, domination is a structural relation in which the dominator has the power of choice over the dominated. Insofar as it is the dominator who chooses what the dominated will do, the dominated’s choices will tend to be inauthentic: they will be based on the choices and principles of the dominator. To the degree that the dominator has convinced the dominated to take those values or principles as their own, the dominated make mystified attributions of value and inauthentic choices. 3.2.3. The Critical-Transcendental Framework and the Evaluative Demand Value is, on Salazar Bondy’s view, transcendental to human action. Values are what allow us to understand (and be understood) and hold others accountable (and be held accountable ourselves) in their interactions with us. Given that value structures the world of praxis, domination through values runs deep. Salazar Bondy’s account can help us to understand just how constraining domination via values can be. Yet, at the same time, Salazar Bondy’s project may nonetheless give us hope for liberation through the critical power of philosophy or through the creation of new protovaluations. In addition to criticism and protovaluations, Salazar Bondy’s critical-transcendental framework can provide resources for liberation through its requirements on rationality and on the evaluative demand. In “Dominación, valores y formación humana” ([1972b] 1995; DL, 141–52), Salazar Bondy reminds us that values, in constituting the world of praxis, “attempt to ground the rationality of human coexistence” and this, in turn, implies “the idea of a dialogue in which all converge” (DL, 145). However, the relationship of dominator-dominated is one that does not aim at the rationality of coexistence or at a dialogue in which all converge. The critical-transcendental viewpoint, then, can explain what’s gone wrong when a dominator attempts to impose values that are irrational, that fail to secure human coexistence, or that undermine rational dialogue. In this way, as Gian Franco Sandoval Mendoza puts it, values “are the guarantees of all practical rationality” (Sandoval Mendoza 2014, 122). For any judgment of value, a subject is committed to an evaluative demand, which aims to be universal. However, domination precludes universality because the dominated lack the power of decision to determine their own lives. Patterns of valuation, then, which aim to secure domination cannot be universalized. In his philosophical dialogue Bartolomé o de la dominación ([1974] 1995; DL, 191–264), Salazar Bondy makes this point clear in the remarks of the character Hatuey (who is deeply critical of the conquista):20 Universalization is impossible and rationality will not be complete if the order achieved within a nation cannot be extended to all the

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earth, so that there are no countries dominated or dominating, miserable and opulent countries, servant nations and owners of the world who can condemn a people to hunger, blocking their territory, cutting it off from the rest of the earth, like this island. (DL, 254) Here we see the synthesis of Salazar Bondy’s sophisticated philosophy of value with his urgent historical critique of domination in Latin America. The last line of Bartolomé illustrates Salazar Bondy’s optimism for a better tomorrow: “The present is a struggle, the future is ours. ¡Venceremos!” (DL, 264).

4. Closing Remarks In this chapter I have offered an account of Salazar Bondy’s philosophy of value over the three stages of his career. First, we examined Salazar Bondy’s early philosophy of value as cumplimiento del ser and his reasons for leaving it behind. Second, we explored Salazar Bondy’s mature philosophy of value, and we saw how he argued how value makes the world of praxis possible via his detailed analysis of the experience of value. Third, we examined how understanding Salazar Bondy’s philosophy of value can add significant interpretative depth to his accounts of domination, liberation, and the role of philosophy in Latin America. With Salazar Bondy’s account now on the table, we may wonder whether or not it can still be relevant for us today. Are there any lessons that we, as contemporary philosophers, may now take from Salazar Bondy’s philosophy of value? To close, I want to briefly sketch out some possibilities for further potential comparative inquiry with contemporary metaethics and Salazar Bondy’s continuing relevance. Salazar Bondy’s nuanced account of the relationship between value and human action may add a new perspective to contemporary treatments of this topic. For example, in The Practice of Value (2003), Joseph Raz argues for a tight connection between values and social practices: “with some exceptions”, Raz claims, “all values depend on social practices” (19). Salazar Bondy, like Raz, holds that there are dependency relations between values and social practices. Salazar Bondy emphasizes that a dependency relation can also run in the other direction as well: practices can depend on values insofar as values are transcendental to practices and render them intelligible as objects of praxis. This is not to say that Salazar Bondy would disagree with Raz’s view that practices sustain values (he wouldn’t), but rather that Salazar Bondy’s view can highlight a different kind of dependence that practices have on values, resulting in a fuller picture of the relationship between the two. As another example, consider Kate Manne’s view of social practices in metaethics (2013). Manne, like Salazar Bondy, is not fully satisfied with either objectivist or subjectivist accounts in metaethics (50–1), and, again

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like Salazar Bondy, she holds that there is another, underexplored metaethical perspective arising “from facts about what we do, or about what one does, as a participant in certain sorts of collective practices, joint enterprises, or particular social relationships” (51–2). Both Manne and Salazar Bondy are also interested in determining how to validate certain social practices while ruling out others, especially oppressive ones. However, despite these similarities, there remain important differences between the two. For example, Salazar Bondy, we can recall, endorses a transcendental perspective and Kantian-style universalizability requirement on the evaluative demand; by contrast, Manne opts for a flourishing-based view and eschews transcendental or universalizability approaches to the validity of practices. There is not space here, of course, to adjudicate these differences, but I simply want to suggest that Salazar Bondy’s mature philosophy of value can be put into dialogue with cutting-edge work in metaethics and that the result may be a productive friction. Finally, I want to close with a more general metaphilosophical observation. In the second and third periods of Salazar Bondy’s philosophical career we see an excellent example of a philosopher who combines analytical clarity, rigor, and nuance with an abiding concern for the pressing social and political issues of his time. We can observe how Salazar Bondy uses the tools and distinctions he developed in his philosophy of value to analyze the problems of domination facing Latin America. Salazar Bondy was optimistic that philosophy, by developing authentic concepts, could contribute to the struggle for social, political, economic, and cultural liberation. While this is common in applied ethics, normative ethics, and political philosophy, it remains less common in more abstract subfields of philosophy such as metaethics. This is not to say that we should instrumentalize metaethics for purely political purposes but rather to suggest that, where appropriate, the conceptual tools that we use and develop may inform (and be informed by) our responses to difficult social and political problems, as they did for Salazar Bondy.

Notes 1. I would like to thank the participants at the Lost Voices at the Foundations of Ethics conference for their helpful comments and questions. Parenthetical citations to Salazar Bondy’s works use the following initialisms: DL: Dominación y liberación EFNA: ¿Existe una filosofía de nuestra América? II: Irrealidad e idealidad PFV: Para una filosofía del valor Para una filosofía del valor and Dominación y liberación are compilations of previously published works by Salazar Bondy, and I cite these volumes rather than the original essays. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. 2. For biographical details, see Arpini (2016, chap. 1), Sobrevilla (1995), and Ørvig (1995).

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3. Helen Ørvig (1995, 14), his wife, recalls that, even when he was physically unable to write due to illness in 1974, he would dictate his work “paragraph by paragraph” every day until a week before his death. 4. For a helpful account of Salazar Bondy’s metaphilosophy in relation to his philosophy of domination, see Schutte (1993, chap. 3). 5. Salazar Bondy was politically active throughout his career. Salazar Bondy’s political views should be seen in the context of Latin American history, with its legacy of colonialism and imperialism, and the corresponding ills of poverty, inequality, domination, racism, and sexism. Salazar Bondy’s adult years were periods of political tumult in Peru. In 1948, there was a military coup; in 1956, there were elections, at which time Salazar Bondy was the cofounder of the humanist socialist Movimiento Social Progresista, a group of public intellectuals who agitated for social reforms. From 1963–1968, there was the tumultuous Belaúnde presidency, including peasant uprisings and their suppression. Although political concerns are rarely explicit in his philosophy of value from the first two periods, they do become important for understanding how, around the early 1970s, he attempts to integrate his philosophy of value with his philosophy of domination and liberation. In 1968, there was a revolutionary military coup (led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado), which remained in power from 1968 to 1980. This regime sought to implement populist reforms, including educational reforms. Salazar Bondy agreed to help lead the commission on educational reforms in the early 1970s. 6. For more on Salazar Bondy’s aesthetic views, see “Valor y objeto en estética” ([1959b] 2010; PFV, essay 12). 7. For additional complexities, see PFV, 208–13. 8. Thanks to Quentin Fisher for helpful feedback here. Translations of the Tractatus in this section are by D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness. 9. Because Salazar Bondy’s reading of Wittgenstein has, as Navarro Reyes (2010, 18) puts it, a “finesse” that makes it “a superb example of conceptual precision”, it is impossible to do it full justice here, but, nonetheless, it is useful to at least sketch its major contours. 10. Exigencia can be translated as demand or requirement. I opt for demand because it better captures some of Salazar Bondy’s prescriptivist leanings. There are some passages, however, where requirement might make for a more natural translation. 11. Salazar Bondy’s proposal has some similarity to R.M. Hare’s prescriptivism. For Salazar Bondy’s overview of Hare, see PFV, 311–12, and for some slightly critical remarks, see PFV, 115. 12. Although Salazar Bondy is influenced by Kant, we do not see him adopting Kant’s entire normative ethical theory. Perhaps the closest that he comes is putting some restrictions on valuations if they cannot be universalized. 13. Salazar Bondy says that there are similar translations available for ‘X es bueno’ (e.g., Hay que tener una actitud pro X and Lo debido es ser favorable a X) (PFV, 121). Thanks to Santiago Ramos for helpful discussion here. 14. Notice that Salazar Bondy has dropped his earlier talk about value as the object’s cumplimiento del ser here. 15. One difference with Salazar Bondy’s earlier theory is that he no longer discusses value orderings on the basis of cumplimiento del ser but rather preferences and valuation patterns (see Section 2.4). 16. One worry about formulated protovaluations is how, if they are indeed formulated, they could be formulated without reference to existing patterns of valuation. This is because value is supposed to be what makes objects of praxis – such as actions, choices, and ends – intelligible, but, without these, it’s not clear how one could deliberately or intentionally make a choice to form a protovaluation.

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17. Salazar Bondy’s analysis of domination and liberation draws on the insights of Marxism and dependency theory. For a good overview of Salazar Bondy’s debt to Marxism, see Llorente (2010, 172–5). 18. See also Sobrevilla (1995, 26). 19. This was the central point of controversy in Salazar Bondy’s debate with Leopoldo Zea. See Schutte (1993, chap. 3). 20. For a more detailed analysis of Bartolomé, see Sandoval Mendoza (2014, 122).

References Arpini, Adriana María. 2008. “Valor y experienca valorativa en los escritos de Augusto Salazar Bondy: Momentos de su reflexión axiológica.” Solar 4: 157–203. Arpini, Adriana María. 2016. Filosofía, crítica y compromiso en Augusto Salazar Bondy. Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Peru. Hare, R. M. 1952. The Language of Morals. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Llorente, Renzo. 2010. “Marxism.” In A Companion to Latin American Philosophy, edited by Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte, and Otávio Bueno, 170–84. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Manne, Kate. 2013. “On Being Social in Metaethics.” In Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 8, edited by Russ Shafer-Landau, 50–73. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Miró Quesada, Francisco. (1974) 2015. “Augusto Salazar Bondy: Biografía filosófica.” El Peruano, September 8, 2015. Moore, G. E. (1903) 1993. Principia Ethica, edited by Thomas Baldwin. Revised ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Navarro Reyes, Jesús. 2010. “Estudio crítico introductorio: La axiología de Augusto Salazar Bondy.” In Para una filosofía del valor, 9–36. Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica de España. Ørvig, Helen. 1995. “Prólogo.” In Dominación y liberación, edited by Helen Ørvig and David Sobrevilla, 11–14. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Facultad de Letras y Ciencias Humanas Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Raz, Joseph. 2003. The Practice of Value, edited and with an introduction by R. Jay Wallace. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. 1958. Irrealidad e idealidad [II]. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1959a) 2010. “La jerarquía axiológica.” In Para una filosofía del valor, 205–18. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1959b) 2010. “Valor y objeto en estética.” In Para una filosofía del valor, 221–27. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1965a) 2010. “El problema del valor en el primer Wittgenstein: A propósito de Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.4-6.421.” In Para una filosofía del valor, 257–70. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1965b) 2010. “Una hipótesis sobre el sentido valorativo.” In Para una filosofía del valor, 112–20. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1966a) 1995. “La cultura de dominación.” In Dominación y liberación, 69–94. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1966b) 2010. “Objetividad y valor.” In Para una filosofía del valor, 182–90. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1967a) 2010. “La dificultad de elegir.” In Para una filosofía del valor, 191–204.

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Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1967b) 2010. “La experiencia del valor.” In Para una filosofía del valor, 47–97. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1967c) 2010. “La plurivocidad de ‘bueno’.” In Para una filosofía del valor, 139–62. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1968a) 2006. ¿Existe una filosofía de nuestra América? [EFNA], 17th ed. Mexico, DF: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1968b) 2010. “Razón y valor: El problema de la fundamentación en el debate axiológico.” In Para una filosofía del valor, 174–81. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1969) 2010. “La exigencia estimativa.” In Para una filosofía del valor, 121–36. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1971) 2010. Para una filosofía del valor [PFV], 2nd ed., edited and with an introduction by Jesús Navarro Reyes. Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica de España. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1972a) 1995. “Cultura y dominación.” In Dominación y liberación, 123–40 Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1972b) 1995. “Dominación, valores y formación humana.” In Dominación y liberación, 141–52. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1973) 1995. “Filosofía de la dominación y de la liberación.” In Dominación y liberación, 153–58 Salazar Bondy, Augusto. (1974) 1995. “Bartolomé o de la dominación.” In Dominación y liberación, 191–264. Salazar Bondy, Augusto. 1995. Dominación y liberación: Escritos 1966–1974 [DL], edited by Helen Ørvig and David Sobrevilla. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Facultad de Letras y Ciencias Humanas Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Sandoval Mendoza, Gian Franco. 2014. “Niveles de la vida valorativa y la superación de la estructura de la dominación en Augusto Salazar Bondy.” In Actas del Congreso sobre Augusto Salazar Bondy, edited by Rubén Quiroz Avila, 115–26. Lima: Instituto de Investigación del Pensamiento Peruano y Latinoamericano. Schutte, Ofelia. 1993. Cultural Identity and Social Liberation in Latin American Thought. Albany: SUNY Press. Sobrevilla, David. 1995. “Introducción: Los escritos de Augusto Salazar Bondy sobre dominación y liberación.” In Dominación y liberación, edited by Helen Ørvig and David Sobrevilla, 15–64. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Facultad de Letras y Ciencias Humanas Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1921) 2001. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [T], translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness. New York: Routledge.

12 Sontag on Impertinent Sympathy and Photographs of Evil Sean T. Murphy

Let the atrocious images haunt us. Even if they are only tokens, and cannot possibly encompass most of the reality to which they refer, they still perform a vital function. The images say: This is what human beings are capable of doing – may volunteer to do, enthusiastically, self-righteously. Don’t forget. Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others

Although her work is not often discussed in the typical venues for academic philosophy, Susan Sontag is likely to be a name that many among our small community would recognize. Outside of philosophy her thought has been key to understanding the dynamical nature of visual culture throughout the 20th century and its impact on the modern human condition. As such, she’s garnered the attention of scholars across various fields, from art history to cultural and media studies. Inside philosophy, however, one gets the sense that she is treated as a literary aesthete, which might explain why philosophers have not paid her work the attention it deserves. This chapter attempts to correct for this undeserved neglect by injecting Sontag’s voice into one of the most interesting and theoretically complex areas of academic philosophy – namely, contemporary metaethics. The text that will be the focus of this essay is Sontag’s late book Regarding the Pain of Others (henceforth RPO). The subject matter of the book – the history of photographic representations of war – allows for the natural organization of her metaethical insights into two rough clusters of views: one deals with issues in moral epistemology (specifically moral perception), the other with the moral and epistemic value of human sentiments in general, and our sentimental or emotional reactions to misery and suffering, in particular. Along the way we will see that her views on these matters raise interesting questions about the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. In particular, Sontag raises questions about the moral value of our engagement with, and reactions to, photographs. With respect to moral epistemology, Sontag holds that we can gain knowledge of moral propositions on the basis of perception. What is unique about Sontag’s view is that contrary to other moral perception theorists

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(e.g., Blum 1994), she thinks we can directly acquire general moral knowledge via perception, i.e., knowledge of the following sort of proposition: “Human beings everywhere do terrible things to each other” (Sontag 2003, 116).1 While we can sometimes acquire this kind of general moral perceptual knowledge by direct confrontations with reality, it is part of Sontag’s view that photographs are particularly well-suited to this purpose.2 I will argue that, for Sontag, it is in virtue of their status as aesthetic objects that photographs can serve this moral-epistemic purpose. We find a clear expression of the second metaethical insight in the following passage in RPO, where she discusses our emotional responses to photographs of the suffering of war: So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence. To that extent, it can be (for all our good intentions) an impertinent – if not an inappropriate – response. (Sontag 2003, 102) This passage raises two problems for any view that gives sympathy or compassion pride of place in the foundations of moral value and action. I call these problems The Innocence Problem and The Impotence Problem. Seeing a photograph of a child covered in napalm might cause me to have a certain sentimental reaction, like feeling sympathy or compassion for the child. Those inclined toward sympathy – or compassion-based approaches to ethics – take this to be a good thing, some sign of my having the right sorts of values and being in the right relation to my fellow human beings. Sontag, however, argues that there are many cases where having these sentiments can be both morally and epistemically problematic. She thinks that our sentimental responses often presume our innocence and our impotence in cases where we in fact are guilty, and it is within our power to do something. For Sontag, it follows that sometimes the content of our emotional responses is false: it can seem that it is part of the content of sympathy that the person who feels sympathetic is innocent and impotent, when neither is in fact the case. So while some part of the content of our sympathetic response to suffering might be accurate or true, another part is not. In the next section I will offer a summary of RPO and provide textual support for the two metaethical insights that I attribute to Sontag. Section 3 discusses work on moral perception. In Section 4 I set Sontag’s views on moral perception and moral knowledge against the literature and argue that she gives us good reason to think that we have some general moral perceptual knowledge. Section 5 treats The Innocence Problem and The Impotence Problem. I introduce the problems and argue that each proves troublesome for some aspects of moral sentimentalism. I then offer some additional support for Sontag’s worries in the form of a historical

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analogue of her view found in the work of another 20th-century voice neglected by most metaethicists: Theodor Adorno. Finally, I consider how the moral sentimentalist might respond.

1. The Metaethical and Aesthetic Insights of Regarding the Pain of Others In RPO, Sontag considers the human fascination with depictions of the misery and ruin wrought by war. She examines the ways in which violence and cruelty have been artistically represented in various media, including painting and film. But her main focus is on the practice of war photography, which began with the Crimean War and achieved its greatest ethical relevance during the Vietnam War, a moment in history when “war photography became, normatively, a criticism of war” (Sontag 2003, 65). She also discusses photographic representations of the more recent conflicts in the Balkans and the Middle East. Her reflections on these photographs and the historical reality they represent are primarily concerned with their ethical and aesthetic value. On the ethical side of things, she is concerned with familiar questions about the status of moral knowledge, how that knowledge figures in moral motivation, and, relatedly, the moral value of our sentimental reactions to the pain and misery of others. One of her guiding questions is: “[what] to do with such knowledge that photographs bring of faraway suffering?” (Sontag 2003, 99). This is a question she believes we all must ask, and one that becomes especially pertinent in a modern condition where images of violence proliferate. The status of this knowledge will be discussed later in this chapter. For now, it is important that we notice the connection that Sontag draws between knowledge, emotion, and action in her discussion of what we, the viewers, are to do with these photographs. A fruitful way to consider what Sontag says on this score is to compare RPO with her earlier, well-known collection of essays, On Photography. In doing so we notice a marked difference in what she says about “the ethical value of an assault by images” (Sontag 2003, 117). In her earlier work, Sontag was skeptical about the moral credentials of photographs, stating that “[the] ethical content of photographs is fragile” (Sontag 1977, 21). In the same essay (“In Plato’s Cave”), she touches on the “limit of photographic knowledge of the world”, noting that while the knowledge acquired by seeing photographs “can goad conscience, it can, finally, never be ethical or political knowledge” (Sontag 1977, 24). By the time she is writing RPO, however, her skepticism has subsided. She reflects on this change in her view in the following passage. In the first of the six essays in On Photography (1977), I argued that while an event known through photographs certainly becomes more real than it would have been had one never seen the photographs,

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after repeated exposure it also becomes less real. As much as they create sympathy, I wrote, photographs shrivel sympathy. Is this true? I thought it was when I wrote it. I’m not so sure now. (Sontag 2003, 105) Throughout her career she was preoccupied by thoughts about the relationship between photographs of the evil acts that human beings commit toward each other and the emotions they stir in the viewer. Her initial worry was that a sympathetic or compassionate response to the photographs, while appropriate, was not of much practical value. This worry is still present in RPO. “Compassion”, she says “is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers” (Sontag 2003, 101). This claim is related to the challenge raised against moral sentimentalism. There are a certain class of moral emotions – sympathy and compassion in particular – that are morally problematic for the reason that (1) their content is sometimes false or illusory and (2) they do not always motivate agents in the appropriate ways. However, this claim does not apply to all moral emotions, nor does Sontag think, as she once did, that being inundated with images of war threatens to diminish our moral sensibility and our degree of moral receptivity to the pain of others. People don’t become inured to what they are shown – if that’s the right way to describe what happens – because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling. The states described as apathy, moral or emotional anesthesia, are full of feelings; the feelings are rage and frustration. (Sontag 2003, 102) Before diving into the details of the metaethical insights contained in RPO, we should also note what Sontag says about the aesthetic value of the photographs she is interested in, since this will bear on the discussion of moral perception that follows. Sontag suggests that war photographs are their own unique sort of aesthetic object. Their uniqueness lies in the fact that it can be inappropriate to take up a purely aesthetic attitude toward them. They are also the sort of aesthetic object whose nature as aesthetic is constituted by a set of properties other than what are thought to be classically aesthetic properties. To bring out this second point, Sontag remarks on the commonly held belief that “to find beauty in war photographs seems heartless” (Sontag 2003, 75–6). War photographs, she says, cannot be “too much like art” (Sontag 2003, 76). Likewise, “a beautiful photograph drains attention from the sobering subject and turns it toward the medium itself, thereby compromising the picture’s status as a document” (Sontag 2003, 77). The question naturally arises: if it is inappropriate for war photographs to appear too much like art, then what makes them aesthetic objects? One answer to this question is that photographs are aesthetic in the sense

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that they are the result of a creative act. Although rather crude, this way of thinking about them would speak to one of the reasons we might appreciate seeing a war photograph: we appreciate the feat of someone actually capturing that particular moment. This would be a kind of aesthetic appreciation of the creative act, and what the photographer did to get themselves in the position to pull that act off, rather than an aesthetic appreciation of the content of the image. When we focus on the creative act of the photographer, however, we come face to face with a central question in the aesthetics of photography, namely, the question of realism. The photographic realist claims that photographs are transparent to the world.3 When you see a photograph of a screaming child covered in napalm running through her village streets, you really see that child in that condition. That is, you see the world, and not just a photograph of the world. Sontag is torn between her conviction that something like realism must be true, and the idea that every photograph is the result of a creative act, an action that occurs at a certain time, in a certain place, from a certain perspective. This tension is seen in the following two passages. Photographs had the advantage of uniting two contradictory features. Their credentials of objectivity were inbuilt. Yet they always had, necessarily, a point of view. They were a record of the real – incontrovertible, as no verbal account, however impartial, could be – since a machine was doing the recording. And they bore witness to the real – since a person had been there to take them. (Sontag 2003, 26) [The] photographic image, even to the extent that it is a trace (not a construction made out of disparate photographic traces), cannot be simply a transparency of something that happened. It is always the image that someone chose; to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude. (Sontag 2003, 46) The very thing that renders war photographs objects worthy of some kind of aesthetic appreciation equally jeopardizes their epistemic credentials. This problem of photographic choice raises the question of the status of any objective knowledge acquired through seeing a photograph. As an exegetical matter, we must ask in which direction Sontag leans: are photographs objective records ‘of the real’ or is what they depict always a reality seen from a particular point of view, and therefore not strictly speaking ‘objective’ at all? For the time being, I will run with the idea that Sontag, though of a mixed mind, is committed to the idea of war photographs as records of the real (even if they are not direct transparencies of what they represent). The aesthetic value of such photographs is therefore not to be fully accounted for by appealing to the creative act of the photographer, nor is

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it proper to say that what they record has the property of being beautiful. Thus the best candidate for a view of the aesthetic value of documentary war photographs takes their aesthetic value to be primarily a matter of their cognitive value. A documentary war photograph succeeds aesthetically, that is, succeeds in accordance with the kind of aesthetic object that it is, when it presents the viewer with a representation of war that can be used to ground beliefs about the world that are conducive to knowledge about the world.4 But what sorts of knowledge about the world do war photographs ground? Sontag’s answer is that the most significant kind of knowledge we get from looking at war photographs is moral knowledge – and not just any kind of moral knowledge, but knowledge of general moral propositions such as “human beings everywhere do terrible things to one another” (Sontag 2003, 116). This suggests that Sontag’s settled view is that the aesthetic value of war photographs is exhausted by the extent to which they add to the viewer’s reservoir of moral knowledge. In doing so, they provide the cognitive benefit of helping agents reach what she calls “moral and psychological adulthood” (Sontag 2003, 114). I will have more to say about how their status as aesthetic objects contributes to these epistemic and moral gains. But first we must consider Sontag’s claim that we can acquire knowledge of general moral propositions by seeing photographs. To do this, we need to examine her view of moral perception.

2. Moral Perception and Moral Knowledge For what follows, it will help to review some of the general features of moral perception theory. Let us assume that a lot of what gets photographed during war and smaller conflict are states of affairs that morally ought not to be. Setting aside metaphysical questions about the nature of moral values (real? anti-real? irreal?), let us focus on the epistemological question of how we know that what these photographs show is a reality that morally ought not to be. In virtue of what can we be confident that utterances of this sort are true? Moral epistemology addresses questions about how we come to know what is morally good and bad, what morally ought and ought not to be, or what we morally ought and ought not to do. To chop things rather roughly, philosophers will usually offer either a rationalist or an empiricist moral epistemology.5 The rationalist can claim that we come to know the morally good and bad through a priori reasoning, innately, or because what is morally good and bad is self-evident, something we know via intellectual intuition. The empiricist, on the other hand, holds that moral knowledge is a species of empirical knowledge. Since empirical knowledge is the sort of thing we typically acquire via perception, one kind of empiricist claims that we have perceptual moral knowledge. Sontag’s remarks in RPO align her more closely with the empiricist.

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The literature on moral perception has been steadily growing over the last several years (Blum 1994; McGrath 2004; Wright 2007; Cullison 2009; Dancy 2010; McBrayer 2010; Audi 2013. For a skeptical view see Väyrynen 2018). Those who are attracted to the idea of moral perception believe, as Jen Cole Wright puts it, “that there are genuine perceptual states that have moral (or morally relevant) content” (Wright 2007, 2). If this can be shown, then it is plausible to think that at least some moral knowledge can be had by way of perception. Furthermore, if the view succeeds, then our perceptual experiences can be cited as evidence for some of our moral beliefs. ‘How do you know that what those soldiers did is morally bad, Susan?’ Answer: ‘because I see that it is’.6 Moral perception, its proponents argue, is analogous to ordinary perception in many respects. We have no trouble claiming that we can have perceptual knowledge, under good conditions, of the objects in front of us in ordinary experience. I see the mug on the counter. So, the mug is part of the perceptual content of my experience, from which I conclude that there is a mug on the counter, and therefore that the proposition ‘the mug is on the counter’ is true. Likewise, moral perception theorists claim that the perceptual states we are in when we see pickpocketing on the subway, wrongful exploitation in the workplace, etc., have the ‘wrongness’ of the act or ‘badness’ of that state of affairs as part of its content. This is so even if it is the case, as some suggest, that the wrongness or badness we perceive is grounded in the ordinary, non-moral empirical data that makes up the content of the perceptual state.7 Having moral perception of your boss’s exploitative behavior will likely require having the ordinary perception of, for example, seeing him make marks on a page: perhaps he crosses out your colleagues overtime hours because he does not want to pay them overtime. Even if the perceptual state you are in has a mixed content, the moral perception theorist holds that part of that content is moral.8 Before turning to Sontag, consider some perceptual states with moral content: 1. 2. 3. 4.

perceiving that that particular act of pickpocketing is wrong perceiving your boss’s exploitative behavior as despicable perceiving that human beings are capable of unspeakable wrongdoing perceiving the world as a bad place

Moral perception theorists often focus on examples like (1) and (2). In such cases, the content of the perceptual state of the agent concerns a particular moral wrong. With the literature focused on these sorts of cases, two fairly widespread ideas emerge. First, that moral perception is a skill, something that is possessed by mature moral agents, and second, that moral perception always concerns some particular person’s needs.9 Mature moral agents can achieve knowledge of the wrongness of (1) and (2) through a combination of perceiving what takes place and attending

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to the particular good of the person(s) involved. It is in virtue of the fact that the good of a particular individual is made salient to the mature moral agent in combination with the non-moral facts that the content of their perception has a moral element. Hence, Lawrence Blum claims that “one of the most important moral differences between people is between those who miss and those who see various moral features of situations confronting them” (Blum 1994, 30). Mature moral agents, for Blum, are those who are perceptually sensitive of the needs of others, which enables them to know when they are in a situation where something must be done in support of another’s needs – they are the sorts of people who are skilled at perceiving “moral situations as moral situations” (Ibid.). Moral perception theorists like Blum often object to universalist or impartialist ethical theories that explain the morality of an agent’s action in terms of her recognizing the moral rule that applies to her situation. According to such a theory, a moral agent is said to be responsive to the needs of others in a particular case in virtue of there being some general rule which she endorses that says she ought, in such cases, to act in certain ways. As a moral particularist, Blum disagrees with this approach to the morality of action. He argues instead that in order to act in a way that is distinctively moral, the agent must act “from loving attention to particular persons” (Blum 1994, 25). Even if we grant that an agent might be skilled at “perceiving moral situations as moral situations”” and that her principles may reinforce perception of this type, she cannot be said to have particular moral knowledge – moral knowledge of the sort that Blum thinks is crucial for loving moral action – if the content of her perceptual state is something general like in states (3) and (4). Sontag, however, is not committed to tying moral perception to moral particularity, nor does she hold that the value of moral perception is ultimately a matter of it enhancing our epistemic sensitivity to particular instances of evil. Thus, whereas Blum and others focus on examples of moral perception like (1) and (2), Sontag is more interested in examples like (3) and (4). When she asks “[what] to do with such knowledge that photographs bring of faraway suffering?” I suggest that we should read her as speaking about general, as opposed to particular, moral knowledge (Sontag 2003, 99). The Sontagian claim about moral perception that I will defend is that, in addition to providing us with knowledge of particular moral propositions about the goods and needs of others, perception provides direct knowledge of general moral propositions as well. Contrary to Blum and others, Sontag believes there is moral value in perceiving something general about humans in the particular, and, moreover, this kind of perception does not do violence to particularity.

3. Perceptual Knowledge of General Moral Truths? In the cases like (1) and (2) earlier, there is some particular action or state of affairs that an agent perceives, and part of the content of her perception is

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that the particular action or state of affairs is wrong or despicable. But in cases like (3) and (4), the perceptual content is different: what the agent perceives is not something particular but rather something general in the particular. This straightaway raises a question about whether or not there is some inference involved in cases like (3) and (4), such that the general moral knowledge in those cases is not perceptual but rather inferential. And there is the additional worry of whether such inferences, if they are involved, would be justified, since while some inferences to the general are quite safe, others may not be. The aim of the following section is to present Sontag’s argument for the claim that general moral knowledge can be had by way of perception, and therefore that some perceptual states have as part of their content some general, rather than particular moral truths.10 I will also show how she addresses the aforementioned worries about the role inference plays in our acquisitions of moral perceptual knowledge. The first thing to note is that Sontag does not enter the debate about moral perception at the earliest stage of trying to convince a skeptic that there is such a thing as moral perception.11 Rather, she is speaking to those who are already inclined to believe that there is such a capacity. Her main argument for the claim that we can have general moral perceptual knowledge appears in her discussion of how war photographs weigh on memory. She begins by pointing out that “[there] is simply too much injustice in the world. And too much remembering (of ancient grievances: Serbs, Irish) embitters” (Sontag 2003, 115). Her thought is that there is ethical value in forgetting, since we’re one to never forget past injustices, it would be difficult to go on living. Less dramatically, if one cannot forget the wrongs done to them by others, then their relations will never recover the form they once had. The point is that there is some good to be had for the Irishmen, whether Protestant or Catholic, who strive to forget what the other side did during The Troubles. Sontag thus believes that those afflicted by political violence should move beyond the particular harms done to them as best they can and let their desires for retribution subside. “If the goal is having some space in which to live one’s life”, she says, “then it is desirable that the account of specific injustices dissolve into a more general understanding that human beings everywhere do terrible things to one another” (Sontag 2003, 115–6). This is a normative recommendation about how one ought to go on living after directly experiencing political violence. For many, such a recommendation is already morally problematic. Whether or not Sontag is right to make such a recommendation, I am interested in the epistemic implications of what she says, since these implications bear on the question of moral knowledge. One such implication is that specific injustices often reveal something general about human beings and the human world. According to Sontag,

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we ought to “[let] these atrocious images” of injustice haunt us (Sontag 2003, 115). “The images says: this is what human beings are capable of doing – may volunteer to do, enthusiastically, self-righteously” (Ibid.).12 Notice the two propositions Sontag gives us to work with here. We can explicitly quote the first as “human beings everywhere do terrible things to one another” (Ibid.). The second proposition adds to the first the idea that human beings do these terrible things voluntarily, and so it reads as follows: “human beings everywhere voluntarily do terrible things to each other”. The idea here is unique not only because of the form of the moral propositions Sontag has in mind but also because of the way in which she thinks it is possible for us to acquire knowledge of them, namely, perceptually. Two comments about her claim are called for. First, in the previous passage, Sontag speaks about the way humans can come to have a ‘general understanding’ of the two propositions. That is, she is talking about ways we can come to understand general moral truths by perceiving war photographs, but not explicitly about whether or not this perception gives us knowledge. Depending on how one draws the line between perceptual moral understanding and perceptual moral knowledge, this claim will be more or less striking, perhaps because understanding is epistemically weaker than knowledge. So where does Sontag draw the line between the two? I think it is clear from the surrounding context in which this claim occurs that she does think that the general understanding that she thinks mature moral agents come to have by seeing war photographs is a result of the general moral knowledge that the photographs transmit perceptually. Thus, what is really needed is a defense of the claim that we can have some general moral knowledge by perceiving war photographs. If we can have that, then we will be in a position to fulfill the normative recommendation to forget. War photographs, according to Sontag, enlarge “our sense of how much suffering caused by human wickedness there is in the world we share with others” (Sontag 2003, 114). They perform this task by showing “what human beings are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties upon other human beings” (Ibid.). But what about an example of ordinary moral perception? Sontag’s claim is that the relevant perceptual states often admit to a particular and a general interpretation. The particular interpretation is the one given to them by Blum and others. But Sontag wishes to claim that the very same ordinary perceptual states can be interpreted as providing agents with moral knowledge of a more general sort in virtue of the same content that Blum and others would cite as providing agents with particular moral knowledge. However, there might be some reasons to doubt that this is true. As an example, imagine that you were one of the many war photographers sent to document the Vietnam War. To make things even more vivid, imagine you are standing next to Ron Haeberle in the village My Lai in March of 1968. You are taking photographs of the massacre that

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occurred shortly before you arrived. As far as standard moral perception theory goes, you are in a perceptual state with moral content, which can put you in a position to know an empirical moral truth about the world, namely, that what the marines did to these villagers was wrong (wrong in general, wrong in accordance with the rules of war, etc.).13 The idea is that by being in that perceptual state you can also acquire knowledge of a more general empirical moral truth about the world, namely, ‘that human beings do terrible things to each other’ or ‘that great human suffering is caused by great human wickedness’. And this shows that the perceptual state has general as well as particular contents. However, here one might worry that the perceptual state one is in has only particular contents, and that the move to the general requires an inference. This is problematic for Sontag, since her claim is that we can have general moral perceptual knowledge, not just general moral knowledge that we infer on the basis of some particular moral perceptual knowledge. Moreover, the inference here is potentially unjustified: it would be too quick to assume that people everywhere do wrongful things to each other just by seeing a handful of bad (even atrocious) actions. But all that these worries show is that it is not mere happenstance that Sontag chooses to talk about general moral perceptual knowledge had by looking at photographs, rather than through direct perception of the world. It is the uniqueness of photographic perception that forms the basis of her argument. One of Sontag’s main claims is that the ethical value of photographs rests in the fact that they can provide unique opportunities for moral perception that one might otherwise not have. While perceiving such photographs cannot remedy all of the holes in our moral knowledge, they at least present us with “an invitation to pay attention, to reflect, to learn, [and] to examine the rationalizations for mass suffering” (Sontag 2003, 117). Paying attention to, reflecting on, learning about, and examining are activities through which we can acquire certain epistemic goods that enable us to reach moral maturity. As long as such holes exist in one’s moral knowledge, then, as Sontag says, they will not have “reached moral or psychological adulthood” (Sontag 2003, 114). The implication is that in order to reach moral adulthood one must possess moral knowledge of not only particular moral wrongs but also of general moral wrongs as well. And one of the ways to justifiably achieve this knowledge is by studying the photographic record. As it turns out, war photographs are particularly well-suited for providing the sort of general moral knowledge Sontag is interested in; thus they meet the worries about justification mentioned earlier. This is in virtue of their being aesthetic objects. I already argued that the aesthetic value of documentary war photographs can be thought of as being a matter of the cognitive benefits such photographs provide. Now we see that one of those cognitive benefits is that they provide general moral knowledge

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of human evil and wickedness. This adds to our thinking about their aesthetic value the idea that documentary photographs succeed aesthetically to the extent that they provide opportunities for epistemic (and also moral) enrichment. It is because war photographs are aesthetic objects that they can provide these sorts of cognitive benefits. According to at least some aesthetic theories, such as Arthur Schopenhauer’s, an aesthetic object, like a photograph, provides epistemic opportunities that are unavailable in other parts of life. This is because aesthetic objects provide their audience with an opportunity to contemplate general, as opposed to particular, ideas. We might refer to this as the capacity of aesthetic objects to make certain ideas salient to us. As the argument goes, aesthetic contemplation provides a focused form of contemplation, one removed from ordinary human concerns. This allows the audience to contemplate certain general ideas that they may miss in ordinary life.14 Applied to Sontag, the idea is that war photographs can make the truth of certain general moral propositions salient to us, especially to those of us prone to a false moral optimism. They do this in virtue of the fact that, as aesthetic objects, they are suited to presenting general ideas – things like the idea of the world as a terrible place. This nicely avoids an objection that has been lingering about our discussion of Sontag’s views on moral perception, which says that general moral perceptual knowledge is in fact not perceptual knowledge at all but inferential knowledge. I think this objection has some legs when applied to ordinary moral perception. Maybe it is true that in a direct case of moral perception one is not justified in claiming to have seen that some general moral proposition is true. However, war photographs can block this move, since they have certain features that make them ripe to convey this sort of knowledge directly, namely, they express general ideas. My construal of the aesthetic and epistemic value of war photographs also blocks another familiar objection to cognitivist views of the arts. Jerome Stolnitz (1992) famously argued that the knowledge conveyed by works of art is of a trivial sort. Anything we can come to know about the world by engaging with a work of art is something we could know through some other means; thus art has no special cognitive value. Moreover, as the objection goes, whatever cognitive benefits there are from engaging with art will not bear on art’s value as art.15 The objection from triviality misses the mark here, since the general moral knowledge had by perceiving photographs is precisely not the sort of knowledge we would be justified in saying we acquired simply by seeing a few bad things happen in ordinary life. Even if it would be possible for one to acquire this sort of general moral knowledge through some non-aesthetic means, we could still defend the cognitive value of documentary photographs in terms of their making certain features of the world morally salient to individuals who might not otherwise have the chance to confront them.

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This, in fact, is what Sontag thinks they do. They make moral truths about human evil salient to those privileged enough to never have to confront them directly.16

4. Two Problems for Moral Sentimentalism Though Sontag aims to make us aware of the epistemic value of war photographs, her real concern is with their moral value. Again, the guiding question of RPO is “What to do with such knowledge as photographs bring of faraway suffering?” (Sontag 2003, 99). The previous section treated the epistemic part of her question. This section will treat its moral or practical part. Throughout RPO, Sontag exercises caution when discussing the actions, attitudes, and emotions that our knowledge of suffering prescribes. The modern moral sensibility, she says, “regards suffering as something that is a mistake or an accident or a crime. Something to be fixed. Something to be refused. Something that makes one feel powerless” (Sontag 2003, 99). Suffering can evoke a wide, conflicting range of evaluative responses. In regarding it as a mistake or a crime we evaluate it as bad or wrong. In taking it as something to be fixed, we regard it as providing some motivation for us to act to alleviate it. And yet, in making us feel powerless, we regard it as something that we cannot do anything about. This later evaluation explains how it is that our witnessing suffering can become voyeuristic. And so Sontag says that [perhaps] the only people with the right to look at images of suffering . . . are those who could do something to alleviate it . . . or those who could learn from it. The rest of us are voyeurs, whether or not we mean to be. (Sontag 2003, 42)17 Sontag’s remarks on suffering’s voyeuristic allure caution against assuming that other people’s suffering prescribes a unitary response, while also questioning the practical value of the moral emotions that witnessing suffering often evokes. In this section I will draw out the implications of these ideas for the metaethical theory they most directly effect, namely, moral sentimentalism. In a recent volume on moral sentimentalism, Remy Debes and Karsten R. Stueber state that moral sentimentalists “are unified by a conviction in the ‘response-invoking’ nature of (at least some) ethical concepts or judgments; that is, the thesis that (at least some) ethical concepts or judgments must be analyzed in terms of human emotional responses (broadly construed)” (Debes and Stueber 2017, 1). For example, according to some moral sentimentalists, the basis for judging that an action is ‘wrong’ is

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a feeling of disapproval toward that action. Rather than linger over the moral sentimentalist’s account of moral judgment, however, I want to examine more closely the value they attribute to certain moral emotions, particularly those evoked in response to human suffering. The moral sentimentalist’s list of favorite moral emotions18 runs long, but we can be sure that somewhere on that list will fall a variety of explicitly other-regarding emotions like sympathy, empathy, and compassion. These emotions are evoked by witnessing another human being’s suffering, and many moral sentimentalists think that human beings who feel sympathy, compassion, and empathy for another’s suffering are morally good in at least some respects. I will focus on sympathy and compassion here, since Sontag refers to them in discussing the practical value of war photographs. Sontag’s most striking remarks about sympathy occur in the following passage, already quoted: So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence. To that extent, it can be (for all our good intentions) an impertinent – if not an inappropriate – response. (Sontag 2003, 102) The main problem that Sontag brings to the moral sentimentalist’s attention here is one of content. Emotions like sympathy and compassion purport to have the subject’s innocence and impotence as part of their content when, in fact, in some important cases, this is not the case. Since this problem concerns both a subject’s false innocence and her false impotence, I will break the problem into two parts: The Innocence Problem and The Impotence Problem. The Innocence Problem for moral sentimentalism says that certain other-regrading moral sentiments, in this case sympathy, can be problematic for the reason that they include the innocence of the agent experiencing them as part of their content. But in many cases, the agent who feels sympathy is in fact not innocent. Therefore, in certain cases, the content of sympathy is false or illusory. If Sontag’s view is correct, this might seriously jeopardize both the moral and epistemic value of certain otherregarding emotions. Let us explore the details of her claim. The ‘content’ of an emotion would seem to be that which the emotion is about or that which it is directed at.19 An emotion like sympathy typically has another person’s suffering (or maybe we want to say their good) as part of its content. One might claim that since emotions have content they are a kind of quasi-judgment. One’s feeling fear, for example, can be understood as proclaiming something about their environment: that something threatening might be lurking around the corner. Similarly,

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one’s feeling sympathy proclaims something about one’s environment, namely that someone is suffering. The previous passage, however, shows that Sontag’s idea is that sympathy does not just proclaim something about the object that it is directed at but also something about the subject who feels it. By contrast, the standard view in moral sentimentalism is that emotional responses are primarily or exclusively object-directed. Famously, some non-cognitivist moral sentimentalists have used the language of ‘projection’ in arguing that our emotional responses project certain properties onto natural objects. It is in virtue of these projections that natural objects then acquire their emotional or moral significance for us.20 Applied to moral agents, the idea is that if we notice someone in distress, we might feel sympathetically toward them, and from that feeling we might find ourselves judging that their situation ought not to be, and that we should do something to help. As of yet, there does not seem to be anything false in the content of one’s sympathy. However, this is because we have not yet taken into account what our sympathetic feeling says about us. And this is where Sontag’s remarks prove insightful. To get a sense for Sontag’s insight, imagine a situation where, walking down the street, you see a cyclist crash and injure herself. You feel sympathy for her. What is the content of this feeling? Part of it is the suffering of the cyclist. But the full moral weight of the feeling cannot be assessed by attending only to its intentional object. So we have to ask what your sympathy says (or does not say) about you. One obvious thing it says is that you are averse to what happened to the cyclist. It might also say that you ought to help. Finally, what will not be part of the content of your sympathy is that you are guilty, and you might come to know this by asking yourself if you had anything to do with what just happened, to which you answer ‘no’. So there is nothing morally problematic in this case; therefore the content of your sympathy is neither false nor illusory. But now imagine you are browsing the internet and you come upon a photograph documenting an atrocity of war (the My Lai massacre, a young Serbian soldier kicking a dying Bosnian woman, a victim of the Rwandan genocide, and so on). You feel sympathy for these human beings, or even better, perhaps you feel compassion for them. Again, part of the content of this feeling is their suffering, since that is what the feeling is directed at. But feelings are not just intentional but reflexive. And if you were to ask yourself whether or not you are in any way implicated in what you see, depending on the context, you may very well be. But then while your sympathy proclaims that you had nothing to do with what you see, this is false. Therefore, as Sontag sees it, feeling sympathy is impertinent and inappropriate. You can be innocent only if you are not an accomplice to what caused the suffering. Are you? Sontag implies that if you were directly involved in bringing to power the regime that is responsible for the suffering you witness, then you are an accomplice and therefore not innocent. However,

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even if you were not directly involved in bringing that regime to power, you might remain a citizen of the country (United States, Serbia, and Rwanda) in which the incidents took, and perhaps continue to take, place. Or, more likely, you are a citizen of a country who in some way, shape, or form supports the regime responsible for the atrocity you witness. For Sontag, your being in such a relation to the suffering you perceive follows from the fact that, in an increasingly globalized world, “our privileges are located on the same map as their suffering – and may, in ways we’d prefer not to imagine – be linked to their suffering” (Sontag 2003, 102–3).21 Part of the content of your sympathy, therefore, is false or illusory in virtue of what it proclaims about you. Sontag is not claiming that it is always inappropriate to feel emotions like sympathy. Rather, she is claiming that it is inappropriate to feel them in certain important cases, for instance, when members of the privileged class of society witness the atrocities committed by their country. She thus gives us distinctive reasons to doubt the moral and epistemic significance of moral emotions like sympathy and compassion. One final piece of evidence we might cite for Sontag’s views is the fact that, as she says, “morally alert photographers and ideologues of photography have become increasingly concerned with the issues of exploitation of sentiment (pity, compassion, indignation) in war photography and of rote ways of provoking feeling” (Sontag 2003, 80). The fact that these sentiments can be exploited in ways that may be neither prudent nor morally efficacious is partially explained by The Innocence Problem. Perhaps a photograph has failed its moral purpose if it arouses emotions with false or illusory content. What about what I am calling The Impotence Problem for moral sentimentalism? Here the claim is that the content of certain emotions is false not just in virtue of their professing an agent’s innocence but also in virtue of professing her impotence. In some cases, then, it is part of the content of sympathy or compassion that the one who feels it is powerless; they are incapable of doing anything about it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a similar criticism was raised against sentiment-based ethics by another fierce social critic, and one whose voice has equally been neglected by contemporary metaethics: Theodor Adorno.22 In the spring and summer of 1963, Adorno delivered a series of lectures on the problems of moral philosophy. In the final lecture of that series, Adorno offers the following criticism of Schopenhauer’s ethics of compassion, which carries over to other forms of moral sentimentalism. [The] concept of compassion tacitly maintains and gives its sanction to the negative condition of powerlessness in which the object of our pity finds himself. The idea of compassion contains nothing about changing the circumstances that give rise to the need for it . . . . We may conclude from this that the pity you express for someone always

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Adorno’s claim that the feeling of compassion “contains nothing about changing the circumstances that give rise to the need for it” can be read as the claim that compassion has as part of its content the idea that the circumstances cannot be altered. In other words, his main criticism of compassion is that it merely affirms the social conditions in which suffering arises. He then goes on to call the compassionate act itself impotent, since it cannot affect any change in the world. Sontag and Adorno thus agree that, sometimes, it is part of the content of sympathy and compassion that nothing can be done. They may also agree on the motivational issue of the compassionate act itself being impotent and being inappropriate for that reason. Sontag, however, seems less sure of this than Adorno. She seems to think that compassionate acts are not always impotent. The important thing is simply that agents must act on their compassion, before it “withers” (Sontag 2003, 101). The main upshot of these criticisms for the moral sentimentalist is that the content of the emotional responses they take to be central for morality has to be treated with more subtlety and care. This means appreciating what certain emotions say about the person who has them as much as appreciating what they say about others. If the basis of our moral judgments and convictions is to be sought in our emotional responses, and some of these emotional responses contain false or illusory content about the subject, then they will have to be further scrutinized if they are to have the value the moral sentimentalist assigns to them. In other words, she must appreciate the reflexive and not just the reactive element of sympathy and compassion. Sontag is not denying that it is a morally good thing to react to another’s suffering by feeling sympathy or compassion for them. Indeed, such feelings often naturally motivate agents to act in ways that will contribute to alleviating that suffering. Her point is that taking these emotional responses to be all-things-considered good is inconsistent with the troubling human tendency to (1) do nothing about that for which they feel sympathy, and (2) to read off of one’s sympathy one’s own moral virtue and their moral exculpation from whatever it is that demanded that emotional response. A moral sentimentalist might respond to The Impotence Problem by claiming that Sontag is not operating with the right conception of the relevant moral emotions. Sympathy and compassion, they argue, are conceptually tied to motivation. Michael Slote makes almost exactly this point in a recent paper (Slote 2017). Sympathy and compassion, or as Slote prefers to talk about, empathy, must include as its intentional object “the other person’s feeling(s) or emotion(s)” (Slote 2017, 8). But if an agent is

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relating empathically to another’s distress then they in fact feel distressed too. Therefore, “one ipso facto has some motivation to do away with or lesson” the other’s pain (Ibid.). It is available to Slote and others to argue that in order to be in an emotional state like sympathy or empathy, that state must have the right motivational contents. Without the right content, the state cannot be one of moral motivation. Since impotence precludes motivation, then any emotion whose content includes a feeling of impotence cannot be a moral emotion in Slote’s sense. So Sontag is not even talking about the sorts of emotions that the moral sentimentalist is interested in: what she means by “sympathy” or “compassion” is not what they have in mind. The Innocence Problem proves more difficult for the moral sentimentalist. Squabbling over what is and what is not part of the content of a given moral emotion does not seem the way to go here. And even if the Impotence Problem can be met by noting that certain moral emotions must motivate and bring about changes in circumstance to count as the very moral emotion in question, it still could be that such emotions profess our innocence; thus it is in her unveiling of the Innocence Problem that Sontag exhibits her genuine utility for contemporary metaethics. What this shows is that metaethicists and moral philosophers interested in the moral emotions have not paid sufficient attention to their reflexive character, that is, what the emotions say about the subject who feels them and the interesting issues it raises. One research area that might directly benefit by engaging with Sontag’s views is work on the reactive attitudes, those attitudes which, as Michelle Mason has recently put it, “respond to the wrong and the bad in human action and character” (Mason 2017, 153). The reactive attitude theorist is interested in showing that attitudes like resentment, holding one in contempt, guilt, etc., have a serious role to play in moral life. But in doing so, it is often taken for granted that, for instance, the value of one’s attitude of contentment toward another’s actions or character is cashed out purely in terms of the appropriateness of the reaction. Feeling contempt is taken to count in favor of a negative evaluation of the actions or character of another. But what the reactive attitude theorist ignores is what this response says or reflects about the agent who has it. Sontag’s general lesson, I think, is that we need to ask what such reactions say about ourselves. Just as it can be morally problematic to continue to feel innocent in the face of suffering, so it can be morally problematic to allow one’s emotional reactions to pass as unreflective signals of the moral truth.23

Notes 1. As I will argue, it is important for the uniqueness of Sontag’s view that we are able to acquire general moral perceptual knowledge directly, since other moral perception theorists might agree with her that we can acquire general

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3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Sean T. Murphy

moral knowledge via moral perception, but they may in turn say that we can only do this indirectly. In her 2011, Sarah McGrath makes the point that pictures are often thought to be good tools of moral conversion on the basis that they can present us with actual instances of whatever moral practice it is that we are concerned with and allow us to draw some “general conclusions in response” (McGrath 2011, 268). There is some reason to think that perhaps her view would lend itself to the same reading I provide of Sontag here. For the classic defense of this view, see Walton (1984). The problem of the frame implies that photographs are always more than just direct representations. It would be an overly simplistic view of Sontag’s many reflections to say that she subscribes wholeheartedly to photographic realism. Moreover, it is precisely because photographs are aesthetic objects that they can do more than just directly represent. Thanks to Michael A. Rosenthal for reminding me to appreciate the many complexities in Sontag’s views. Here I am following the way McBrayer (2010) frames the issues. This way of thinking about things presupposes that seeing that p entails that one knows that p. (For a discussion of this thesis, see Pritchard 2012). See Audi (2013, 38–9). But again for doubts about moral perception see Väyrynen (2018). Väyrynen claims that “[positing] distinctively perceptual representations of moral properties would add no explanatory power because a simpler and a more unified account treats their representations in the relevant cases as resulting instead from implicit transitions in thought” (Väyrynen 2018, 110). But note that many moral perception theorists, Wright included, do not take themselves to be committed to claiming that we have perception of moral properties. Rather, their claim is that moral perception is a kind of aspect or factive perception, not a property/trope perception (Wright 2007, 5). This point is emphasized by Blum (1994), and Wright (2007) follows his lead on this matter. Wright, drawing on empirical research into the nature of ‘refined perception’, defends the view that moral perception is only available to moral agents whose perceptual apparatus is refined. In this way, I see Sontag’s work on moral perception to be loosely Moorean in spirit, since she is claiming that knowledge can be legitimately had directly via perception. In a sense, Sontag at times even seems to be offering something analogous to a Moorean proof. How do I know suffering is bad? Here is a picture of it. See Moore (2000). Wright has the following nice response to such a person: “[Mature] moral agents do not possess some distinct [‘moral sense’]: their existing faculties of perception have simply been refined and developed in such a way as to enables them to reliably perceive subtle facts about the moral environment that surrounds them (facts that other moral agents might not perceive)” (Wright 2007, 11). Shortly after saying this, Sontag tells us not to forget what these photographs show, but then goes on to say that there is some ethical value in forgetting. I am not going to guess where she comes down on this complicated issue. Even with the evaluative context altered as it is during times of war. This, in admittedly too rough an outline, gives the general flavor of Schopenhauer’s views in Book III of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer (2010). Stolnitz (1992, 191). More needs to be said here to show whether photographs are uniquely suited to provide this kind of moral perceptual knowledge, since at first glance it seems a historical painting ought to as well.

Sontag

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17. Here Sontag suggests that moral perception theorists should consider the issue of when a moral subject is entitled to certain moral perceptual states and when she is not. The notion of perceptual entitlements that typically gets discussed in literature on perception is usually tied to an epistemic notion of justification, whereas here Sontag seems to be speaking about a notion of moral justification and its relation to perception. 18. I will use the terms moral emotions and moral sentiments interchangeably. 19. This is just a stab. I am not deeply committed to a cognitive theory of the emotions. More to the point, Sontag’s criticisms here would apply to anyone who gave a central role in moral life to certain moral emotions, regardless of their subsequent account of the content (or lack thereof) of the emotions. If one wishes to claim that emotions have no content, then her criticism can just move on down the line and focus on the normative issue of the inappropriateness of certain emotions in certain situations, regardless of their contents. 20. While it is by no means clear whether Hume himself was a projectivist of this sort, his remark in the final paragraph of the first Appendix (“Concerning Moral Sentiment”) to An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume (1975) has been influential among moral sentimentalists, whether of a Humean or some other stripe. There, he says that “taste”, which he appears to view as synonymous with sentiment, “has a productive faculty . . . gilding or staining all natural objects”. 21. Sontag mostly focuses on incidents perpetrated by the Western powers. I certainly am not suggesting that a country that is a victim of colonialism, the effects of which could perhaps be cited in explaining what led to genocide, is afforded the Western privileges that Sontag speaks of in this passage. 22. Freyenhagen (2013) is an exception: an excellent study of Adorno’s normative and metaethical views that does a nice job of linking some of his ideas to certain contemporary stances in the literature, e.g., Aristotelian naturalism, Kantian metaethics, etc. 23. I would like to thank my fellow presenters at the 2018 Lost Voices at the Foundations of Ethics conference held at the University of Washington, Seattle, first for their congeniality, and second for their helpful comments and probing objections to an earlier version of this essay. Special thanks to Colin Marshall for his generous (and plentiful) comments on several drafts of this essay. I’d also like to thank Dave Fisher, Kevin Mills, Sandy Shapshay, Ivan Verano, and Allen Wood for discussing these issues with me.

References Adorno, Theodor W. 2001. Problems of Moral Philosophy, translated by R. Livingston. Cambridge: Polity Press. Audi, Robert. 2013. Moral Perception. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Blum, Lawrence A. 1994. Moral Perception and Particularity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cullison, Andrew. 2009. “Moral Perception.” European Journal of Philosophy 18: 159–75. Dancy, Jonathan. 2010. “Moral Perception.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 84: 99–117. Debes, Remy and Karsten R. Stueber. 2017. “Introduction.” In Ethical Sentimentalism, edited by R. Debes and K. R. Stueber, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Freyenhagen, Fabian. 2013. Adorno’s Practical Philosophy: Living Less Wrongly. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hume, David. 1975. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mason, Michelle. 2017. “Reactive Attitudes and Second-Personal Address.” In Ethical Sentimentalism, edited by R. Debes and K. R. Stueber, 153–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McBrayer, Jamie P. 2010. “A Limited Defense of Moral Perception.” Philosophical Studies 149: 305–20. McGrath, Sarah. 2004. “Moral Knowledge by Perception.” Philosophical Perspectives, Ethics 18: 209–28. McGrath, Sarah. 2011. “Normative Ethics, Conversion, and Pictures as Tools of Moral Persuasion.” In Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Vol. 1, 268–94. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moore, G. E. 2000. “Proof of an External World.” In Epistemology: An Anthology, edited by E. Sosa and J. Kim, 24–6. Malden: Blackwell Publishers. Pritchard, Duncan. 2012. Epistemological Disjunctivism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schopenhauer, Arthur. 2010. The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1, translated and edited by Judith Norman, Alistair Welchman, and Christopher Janaway. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Slote, Michael. 2017. “Yin-Yang and the Heart-Mind.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 17: 1–11. Sontag, Susan. 1977. On Photography. New York: Picador. Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador. Stolnitz, Jerome. 1992. “On the Cognitive Triviality of Art.” British Journal of Aesthetics 32: 191–200. Väyrynen, Pekka. 2018. “Doubts About Moral Perception.” In Evaluative Perception, edited by Anna Bergqvist and Robert Cowan,109–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Walton, Kendall. 1984. “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism.” Critical Inquiry 11: 246–77. Wright, Jennifer. 2007. “The Role of Moral Perception in Mature Moral Agency.” In Moral Perception, edited by J. Wisnewski, 1–24. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Author Biographies

Nicolas Bommarito is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He works in ethics and Buddhist philosophy and has published papers in Philosophy East & West, Philosophical Studies, and Philosophical Review. His first book, Inner Virtue, was published in 2018 by Oxford University Press. Brian Yazzie Burkhart is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land: A Trickster Methodology for Decolonizing Environmental Ethics and Indigenous Futures (Michigan State University Press, 2019) and “Be as Strong as the Land that Made You: An Indigenous Philosophy of Well-Being through the Land.” Science, Religion and Culture, Vol. 6 Special Issue No. 1, 26–33 (2019). Burkhart is finishing a book on decolonial epistemic resistance entitled You are Made from Red Earth: Indigenous Epistemic Sovereignty through the Land. He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Kevin DeLapp is Fleming Professor of Philosophy at Converse College in South Carolina. In addition to metaethics, he works in comparative philosophy with emphases on classical Chinese and Greek sources. His publications include the books Partial Values: A Comparative Study in the Limits of Objectivity (Rowman & Littlefield 2018), Lying and Truthfulness: A Reader (Hackett 2016), and Moral Realism (Bloomsbury 2013). Clark Donley is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He teaches and conducts research in ethics and metaethics, with a special focus on the relationship between the constitution of agency and foundations of morality. He also holds a master’s degree in Latin American studies from Georgetown University. He maintains other research interests in virtue ethics, the history of moral philosophy, and Latin American philosophy. John Grey is an academic specialist at Michigan State University. He received his Ph.D. from Boston University. He specializes in the history

258 Author Biographies of modern philosophy, and his research examines the systematic attempts of various early modern authors to provide metaphysical foundations for psychology and ethics. His broader areas of interest include analytic metaphysics, ethical theory, and philosophical logic. His recent publications include “Conway’s Ontological Objection to Cartesian Dualism” (Philosophers’ Imprint 2017) and “The Modal Equivalence Rules of the Port-Royal Logic” (History and Philosophy of Logic 2017). Jing Hu is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University (Canada). Her research facilitates a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary dialogue between Confucianism and Western ethics through a close study of moral emotions and virtues such as sympathy/empathy, honesty, and shame. Her recent publications include “Empathy for Non-kin, the Faraway, the Unfamiliar, and the Abstract” (Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 2018), “Moral Motivation in Mencius Part 1”, and “Moral Motivation in Mencius Part 2” (both in Philosophy Compass 2019). Alex King is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Her primary areas of interest are ethics, metaethics, practical reason, and aesthetics. Her current research concerns the ‘ought implies can’ principle and moral and aesthetic normativity. Some of her recent papers include “The Amoralist and the Anaesthetic”, “‘Ought Implies Can’: Not So Pragmatic After All”, and “The Virtue of Subtlety and the Vice of a Heavy Hand”. She is also editor-in-chief of the aesthetics and philosophy of art blog Aesthetics for Birds. Christopher C. Kirby is Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Washington University. His focus is the history of philosophy and comparative thought. His recent publications include “Naturalism and Moral Expertise in the Zhuangzi” (Journal of East-West Thought 2017) and “Gadamer, Dewey, and the Importance of Play in Philosophical Inquiry” (Reason Papers 2016). Irene Liu is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Le Moyne College. She has previously published articles on Aristotle and Stoicism. Her current research focuses on issues in contemporary metaethics and, particularly, ethical naturalism. Drawing inspiration from sources in classical Confucianism, she has defended a version of ethical naturalism that regards human nature as the matter or material of human virtues and ways of life. Her recent articles have appeared in Philosophy, European Journal of Philosophy, and Journal of Value Inquiry. James Maffie teaches in the Department of American Studies, University of Maryland. He is author of Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion (University Press of Colorado, 2014), and he is currently working on a second book, Aztec Ethics: Balancing a World in Motion.

Author Biographies

259

Colin Marshall (Editor) is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research focuses on the intersection of historical and contemporary philosophy of mind and metaethics. His publications include “Schopenhauer and Non-Cognitivist Moral Realism” (Journal of the History of Philosophy 2017) and Compassionate Moral Realism (Oxford 2018). Joseph Len Miller is a Ph.D. candidate in the philosophy department at the University of Washington, Seattle. In 2009, he earned a B.A. in philosophy (with an applied ethics emphasis) and a B.A.Sc. in psychology from the University of Minnesota Duluth, and in 2012 he earned a M.A. in philosophy from Virginia Tech. His research focuses on metaethics, empirical approaches to moral psychology, and American Indian/Native American philosophy. He is from Corcoran, Minnesota, and he is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation based in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Sean T. Murphy is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Indiana University. His main areas of research are 19th-century German philosophy (especially Arthur Schopenhauer), moral philosophy, and aesthetics. Seth Robertson is a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma and a dissertation fellow at the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing. His research interests are moral psychology, metaethics, virtue and social epistemology, philosophy of the social sciences, and early Chinese ethics. He is the author of “Nunchi and Well-Being” (Science, Religion, and Culture, Special Issue “Cross-cultural Studies in Well-Being” (2017)). Laura Specker Sullivan, Ph.D., a specialist in medical ethics and crosscultural ethics, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the College of Charleston. She has previously held research appointments at Harvard Medical School, the University of Washington, the University of British Columbia, and Kyoto University. She received a Ph.D. in philosophy and Japanese studies from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Her recent publications include articles in the International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Science, the Journal of Neural Engineering, the American Journal of Bioethics–Neuroscience, Social Science and Medicine, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, and the Journal of Medical Ethics.

Index

beauty 130–1, 215, 224–5, 239 belief 8, 25, 35n62, 93–4, 159, 180, 182, 241; moral 8, 159, 173, 179, 182–92, 194n9, 205, 241–2; nonpropositional 7, 159, 173, 183 Berlin, Isaiah 145, 154n18 Bhagavad-Gītā 7, 147 Blackburn, Simon 26, 28, 35n63, 35n65, 35n73 Blum, Lawrence 10, 209, 237, 242–3, 245, 254n9 Buddhism 143, 149

cognitivism 27–9, 35n62, 95; see also non-cognitivism colonialism 153, 227, 255n21; and grounded normativity 49–50, 53, 55 commitment 219, 222; ethical commitment to land 40, 41, 46, 51 community 5, 74–5, 120, 121, 204, 210, 228; see also social factors compassion 122, 183, 186–7, 190, 200, 204, 237, 239, 249, 250–3 confrontations, notional vs. real 141 Confucius 119–20, 122, 124–5, 128–31, 135n5, 161, 168 consequentialism 125–7, 131, 133, 136n13; rule-consequentialism 127, 136n14 convention 6, 28, 35n72, 134–5, 137n23, 161, 171, 191, 194n10; ritual 119, 131, 132; see also ritual co-participation 70 Cordova, Viola 77n14, 98n8 cosmos 1, 4, 22, 60–1, 65, 69, 166; cosmology 76n5, 82, 165; see also creation creation 64, 94–5, 104–5, 108; event of 3, 21, 23, 25–6, 31n6, 62, 70; narrative 60–1; see also cosmos creator 4, 54, 104–5, 107; beings 60–7, 69–75, 76n5, 76n11; see also God(s) creatures 5–6, 51, 56, 104–5, 107–12, 114, 116n12, 117n19, 117n20, 130 culture 52–3, 55, 81, 119, 122–5, 134–5; of domination 227–8; individuation of 7, 140, 142

Camp, Elisabeth 182, 189 chicahualiztli 61, 67–8, 76n8

deliberation, moral 5, 8, 183 desert 66–8, 70, 73, 77n13

absolute, the 31n7, 55, 70, 147, 217; absolute principles 57–8; absolute power 43, 47; absolute value 52–3, 102, 217, 220; see also moral absolutism Adorno, Theodor 238, 251–2, 255n22 aesthetics 6, 31n7, 119–20, 129–33, 167, 201, 204, 221–2, 233n6, 239–41, 247; aesthetic object 215, 237, 239, 241, 246–7, 254n4; aesthetic value 6, 132, 238–41, 246–7 afterlife 3, 19, 21, 33n32 agency 8, 13, 44, 66, 114 anekānta 149–50, 154n31, 155n37 Anscombe, G. E. M. 15n8 appropriation 13–14 attitudes 24, 28–30, 35n69, 121, 171, 180–2, 227, 248, 253, 256; see also judgment, moral Audi, Robert 205, 242 authority 47, 51, 56; moral 24–6, 28; normative 122, 124, 131 Ayer, Alfred Jules 1

Index desires 126–7, 129–30, 134, 136n12 dharma 7, 146–8, 152, 154n21; Sādhāraṇa 152; viśeṣa 146–8, 152 divine command theory 25, 34n55 divine goodness 103, 107–8, 110, 112 domination 9, 13–14, 213–14, 226–32, 233n5, 234n17; of land 41, 47, 51, 55–7 ekānta 150; see also anekānta Elgin, Catherine 182–3 emotions 6, 8, 98n13, 121, 126–7, 129–30, 134, 180, 182–3, 206; moral 10, 186, 189–92, 193n3, 194n7, 194n8, 239, 248–9, 251–3, 255n18, 255n19; see also moral sentimentalism empiricism 83, 131, 149, 203, 241–2, 246 emptiness 7, 16, 143, 149, 154n31, 171; see also Śūnyatā essence(s) 5, 6, 103–4, 106–10, 112, 114, 116n12, 144, 154n17; of language 23, 30; monism 5, 6, 106–7 essentialism 16, 19, 103, 106–9, 111–17 evaluative, the 102, 110, 115n1; evaluative content 167; evaluative demand 214, 218–20, 223, 226–8, 230; evaluative language 219 experience 222, 224, 242, 252; constative 222; moral 7, 134; valuative 9, 222, 225, 227–9, 231 Flanagan, Owen 15–16, 195 flourishing 120, 122–5, 135n5, 135n10, 148, 232 Foot, Philippa 15n8, 99n21, 99n23, 100n27, 135n9, 139–40 Frege-Geach Problem 27, 35n64 Freud, Sigmund 48–9 Fricker, Miranda 16, 153n9 Ganeri, Jonardon 153n1, 153n3, 155n33, 155n35, 155n36, 155n37, 155n38 gifting, mutual 67, 69, 71–3, 76n11 God(s) 5, 20–6, 34n46, 60, 63–4, 77n13, 99n23, 104–6, 109–11, 116n8 Goodness (ren) 119–21, 135n3 guardianship principle 42, 44–5, 48, 50, 52–3, 57

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Hampshire, Stuart 134, 137n22, 147–8, 154n28 Hare, R. M. 6, 11, 139, 233n11 Harman, Gilbert 6, 139–40, 142–3, 153, 153n3, 153n10, 153n11 harmony 5, 81–4, 86–92, 94–6, 97n6, 99n19, 99n20, 100n27, 100n28, 100n38, 126, 128; the Principle of 84, 86, 88–92, 96, 99n22, 99n23, 99n25 humanity 51, 53, 103, 110–12, 114, 121, 130–1, 133–4, 165–6, 169 human nature 6, 8, 110, 112, 120, 183–4 Hume, David 2, 12, 14, 217, 255n20 ideal adviser 113–15, 117n20, 117n22, 117n23 illocution 29, 35n69, 35n72 inamic pairs 64–5, 72; inamic partners 64–5, 72 indigeneity 3–4, 13–14, 40–50, 52–5, 58, 81–2, 92, 95–6, 98, 101, 229 ineffability 160, 164, 169, 175n6, 175n15 intuition 9, 102, 142, 193n1, 200, 205–6, 208, 210, 241; active 8–9, 199–204, 206–10, 211n7; intuitionism 199, 205–8, 210, 211n4 Ivanhoe, P. J. 119, 123, 126, 135n5, 164, 183, 193 Jainism 139, 149 Jones, Karen 160, 171–2 Joyce, Richard 35n73, 181 judgment, moral 172, 249, 252 justice 3, 19–20, 24; epistemic injustice 13; of God 105, 107, 111; injustice 209, 244–5, 252 Kant, Immanuel 2, 9, 11–13, 15n7, 15n9, 15n10, 152, 200–1, 207, 233n12 Kitcher, Phillip 179, 181, 190, 192, 193n2 knowledge 5, 40–2, 45–7, 50–1, 54–5, 81–2, 93–6, 102, 110, 169, 203–4, 206, 215–17; a priori 149, 204, 219, 241; empirical 241; general moral 241, 243–7, 253n1; knowledge-how vs. knowledge that 209; moral k8–10, 81, 149, 204–10, 238, 241–7, 254n1; non-moral 5,

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Index

82, 92–5; particular moral 243, 245; perceptual 237, 242–4, 246–7, 253n1, 254n16 koiteki chokkan 199–201; see also intuition, active Kṛṣṇa 154n26 Kukla, Andre 164, 175–6 language 2–3, 8–9, 12–13, 15n4, 19–30, 32n8, 33n25, 34n46, 34n47, 162, 165–7, 175n15, 219–20; of appraisal 141–2; and land 48–50, 53–5 linguistic 3, 11–12, 22, 25–8, 30, 35, 140, 142, 175 love, acts of 86 Maat, goddess 3, 19–39 Mackie, J. L. 1, 11, 15n2, 181, 192, 194n8 Madhyamaka 143, 154 magic 22–6, 28–9, 34n45 Mahābhārata 139, 147, 154n27 Manne, Kate 231–2 McDowell, John 9, 135n10, 137n21, 206 McGrath, Sarah 242, 254n2 memory 22–4, 26, 244 Mencius 6, 8, 120, 122–3, 125, 135n6, 135n7, 161, 179; see also Mengzi Mengzi 8, 179–87, 189–94; see also Mencius merit, to 66–70, 73 metaphor 7, 161–2, 164–8, 173, 175n16, 175n17 mind-independence 25 monism 144; see also singularism Moore, G. E. 1, 15n3, 96, 100n39, 217, 254n10 moral absolutism 7, 145, 152 moral disagreement 57–8, 173 moral discourse 27–9, 161 moral expertise 7, 159–60, 169, 172 moral fabric 7, 74, 146, 148–9, 151–2 moral improvement 5–6, 110 moral progress 8, 172, 179–85, 187–92, 193n2, 193n3, 194n8 moral sentimentalism 205–6, 237, 239, 248–51 moral sentiments 249, 255n18; see also emotions, moral moral subjects 111–12, 114, 117n19 moral understanding 208, 245

motivation 8, 93–4, 154n29, 182–3, 186–9, 206–7, 221, 248, 252–3; moral 238, 253 mutualism, obligate mutualism 63–5, 69, 72 Nāgārjuna 139, 143–4, 154n17 naturalism 25–7, 34n54, 34n55, 34n56, 95; Aristotelian 133, 135n10, 255n22; Mencian 122–5, 127, 131, 133, 135n5; see also nonnaturalism nature 64, 88, 160–3, 165–6, 168, 173, 217 Neoplatonism 103, 117n19 Nietzsche, Friedrich 98n13, 136n19, 139 Noddings, Nel 100n26 non-anthropocentrism 4, 74–5 non-cognitivism 27–8, 35n62, 95, 159; see also cognitivism non-naturalism 25, 95; see also naturalism non-onesidedness see anekānta normativity 4, 23, 30, 68, 75, 98n12, 124, 160, 165–6, 173, 221; grounded 4, 40–1, 45–7, 50–2, 54–8; normative relationship 4, 68–73, 75 Nussbaum, Martha 125, 135n8 objectivity 9, 74–5, 119–23, 130–1, 150, 179–82, 191, 201, 203, 205, 210, 214, 219–20, 240 Okakura, Kakuzo 200 O’Neill, Eileen 15n6 othering 153 other-than-human 60–1, 66, 68–9, 72–3, 75 Park, Peter 15n6, 31n3 perception, moral 9–10, 206, 236–7, 239, 241–7, 253n1, 254n8, 254n9, 254n10, 255n17 perlocution 29–30, 35n72; see also illocution place 3–4, 40–1, 45, 54, 58 pluralism 6, 135n8, 144–7, 149, 151–2, 154n19, 154n25, 174 politics 2, 9–10, 13–14, 42–3, 46–7, 232, 233n5, 238, 244; political power 54–5 prayer 62, 68, 83–4, 94–5, 100n33 progress, moral 8, 172, 179–85, 187–92, 193n2, 193n3, 194n8

Index quasi-realism 3, 26–30, 35n61, 35n63, 35n67 Railton, Peter 113 Raz, Joseph 231 realism: moral 3–4, 7, 26, 35n73, 57, 59n2, 144–5, 147, 154n17, 159, 161, 169, 173, 193n2, 210; photographic 254n4; robust 25–7, 30, 34n56, 34n57, 218 reasoning 108, 183, 205; analogical 8, 180, 184–9, 192; consistency-based 184–6, 188–9, 192, 194n7 reciprocation 84–5, 87 reciprocity 60, 62–3, 65–7, 74, 83–5, 92, 98n13; reciprocal relations 46, 65–6, 74–6, 76n9 reduction 96, 173, 221; and naturalism 25, 34n55 relativism 7–8, 160, 164, 174; cultural 7, 140–4, 148, 150–1, 153, 154n15, 154n17; of distance 141, 153n9; hard and soft 140, 145; vulgar 140 ritual 3, 6, 20–30, 34n46, 84, 92, 94, 119–33, 135n3, 136n10, 136n11, 136n12, 136n16, 161–2, 183, 185 Ross, W. D. 145, 154n19, 205 sacred 4, 23, 48, 53–4, 64, 83, 90, 93, 95, 98n12 Sādhāraṇa see dharma Schopenhauer, Arthur 247, 251, 254n14 Schroeter, Francois 160, 171–2 Schwitzgebel, Eric 171–2 sensibility theory 199, 205–7, 210; see also moral sentimentalism sentimentalism see moral sentimentalism sentiments see moral sentiments silence 22–3 singularism 7, 144–5, 152–3; see also pluralism Slote, Michael 252–3 Smith, Michael 5, 35n65, 113, 115n1 social factors 6, 10, 64, 66, 68, 70–4, 120–1, 126–8, 201, 231–2, 252; social acts 26; social fabric 69, 71, 73–4; social relationships 66–8, 70–1, 74, 232 speech acts 21, 29 standpoints 150, 155n35, 182 Street, Sharon 181–2, 194n8 subjectivity 88, 130, 160, 201, 203, 210, 220–1

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suffering 10, 22, 93, 122, 148–9, 151, 185, 187, 189, 236–8, 245–6, 248–53, 254n10 Śūnyatā 143; see also emptiness supernatural, the 34n54, 60, 64–5 Suzuki, D. T. 198, 210 svabhāva 143 sympathy 10, 191–2, 236–7, 239, 249–53; see also compassion telos 122, 135n6, 166 teotl 4, 61, 64–6 tequitl 61–2, 66–7, 72, 76n8 transcendence 166, 215, 217–18 transformation 70, 74, 83, 136n12, 165–6, 168–9, 173 Tropman, Elizabeth 205 truth 3–4, 7–8, 19–21, 26, 28–30, 150, 180–1, 193n2, 203, 205, 244–8; correspondence theory of 24–5, 27, 30, 34n57; deflationary 28; non-propositional 161–5, 167, 173; universal 145, 207, 211n5 truth-bearers 25, 27 truth-makers 25, 27–9, 35n62 valuations 9, 225–6, 228; derived 225–6, 228; protovaluations 225–6, 229–30, 233n16 value 3–6, 9–10, 44, 52–3, 55, 123–4, 130, 144, 147, 150–1, 192, 213–32, 233n16; aesthetic 6, 132, 238–41, 246–7; authentic realization of 223–5, 229; cognitive 241, 247; epistemic 236, 247–9; moral 6, 148, 236–8, 243, 248; pluralism 174; symbolic 131, 136n18 violence 22, 42, 238, 244; gendered 85–6, 98n16 virtue 8, 24, 119–25, 134–5, 137n21, 159, 170–2, 175n3, 183, 206, 209 Viśeṣa see dharma voluntariness 222, 224–5 Williams, Bernard 6, 135n10, 139–43, 153n3, 153n7 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 9, 218–19 Wong, David 160, 164, 174, 183, 186–7, 194n7 Wright, Jennifer 242, 254n9, 254n11 Xunzi 6, 120, 122, 125–33, 135, 135n3, 136n12, 136n13, 136n14 Zangwill, Nick 167–8