From love of neighbor to Christianity

Start with this argument:

1. It’s not wrong for me to love my friend as if they were in the image and likeness of God.

2. If someone is not God and not in the image and likeness of God, then to love them as if they were in the image and likeness of God is excessive.

3. Excessive love is wrong.

4. My friend is not God.

5. So, my friend is in the image and likeness of God.

6. So, God exists.

I think there may be some other variants on this argument that are worth considering. Replace being in the image and likeness of God, for instance, with (a) being so loved by God that God became incarnate out of love for them, or with (b) having the Spirit of God living in them. Then the conclusion is that God become incarnate or that the Spirit of God lives in our neighbor.

The general point is this. Christianity gives us an admirable aspiration as to how much we should love our neighbor. But that much love of our neighbor is inappropriate unless something like Christianity is true.

I think there is a way in which this argument is far from new. One of the great arguments for Christianity has always been those Christians who loved their neighbor as God called them to do. The immense attractiveness of their lives showed that their love was not wrong, and knoweldge of these lives showed that they were indeed loving their neighbor in the ways the above arguments talk about.

Relationship without belief

Consider this fairly standard version of the argument from hiddenness:

1. If God exists, he produces everything that is necessary for a personal relationship with every nonresisting person.

2. Belief in the existence of x is necessary for a personal relationship with x.

3. So, if God exists, every nonresisting person comes to believe in God.

4. Some nonresisting person does not come to believe in God.

5. So, God does not exist.

I noticed today that (2) is just plain false. My example is a skeptic about other minds. You can take seriously the hypothesis that you are the only real person around, seriously enough that you do not believe the hypothesis false, and still have a personal relationship with other people. Surely Unger, in his phase of believing that people don’t exist, had personal relationships with them!

A perhaps even better counterexample to (2) was given by one of my students. You can have a long-standing Internet-based personal relationship while taking seriously the possibility that the other person doesn’t exist (e.g., maybe you are interacting with a chatbot).

This observation doesn’t destroy the hiddenness argument. One might, for instance, replace (2) with:

6. A personal relationship with x is incompatible with consistent disbelief in the existence of x

and then replace (4) with:

7. Some nonresisting persons end up consistently disbelieving in God (e.g., due to their reasonable evaluation of the problem of evil, or due to low priors for theism).

But now (7) is less plausible than (4). One might well think that the evidence against theism is insufficiently strong to make it possible for a nonresister to disbelieve in God.

Alternately, one might replace the deductive hiddenness argument with a probabilistic one by noting that it’s a lot harder to have a personal relationship without belief in the other person, and it’s unlikely that a loving God would make it this hard. I think that’s not a very strong argument, but it is an option for the defender of hiddenness.

Love and obedience

“This is the love of God: that we keep his commandments” (1 John 5:3)

But what is the connection between love and commands? Indeed, why would a loving God issue us commands?

Many things can be said about this. But here is one more that has occurred to me. God is unchanging and has complete beatitude. Yet love seems to fit particularly well with vulnerability. And by commanding one becomes vulnerable to the person one has commanded. For it detracts from one’s “extrinsic wellbeing” if one’s commands are broken.

Thus while one might think of the issuance of commands as the mark of dignity and greatness, and it is that, it also turns the tables, by making the commander be at the mercy of the commanded, at least with respect to the fulfillment of this particular aspect of the commander’s will.

Aristotle thought that love between gods and humans was impossible because of the inequality, since love involves a kind of equality. Kierkegaard wrote much about the difficulty of a love relationship between the infinite and the finite. But commanding us, paradoxically, is a way of introducing a kind of equality.

Of course, our disobedience does not change God, or impact his intrinsic beatitude. But it does impact his external wellbeing, and detracts his extrinsic honor.

And this is a different kind of vulnerability from that which the second person of the Trinity acquires by the Incarnation. It is a vulnerability of God as God.

Gaining and losing personhood?

1. Love (of the relevant sort) is appropriately only a relation towards a person.

2. Someone appropriately has an unconditional love for another human.

3. One can only appropriately have an unconditional R for an individual if the individual cannot cease to have the features that make R appropriate towards them.

4. Therefore, at least one human is such that they cannot cease to be a person. (1–3)

5. If at least one human is such that they cannot cease to be a person, then all humans are such that they cannot cease to be a person.

6. If all humans are such that they cannot cease to be a person, then it is impossible for a non-person to become a human person.

7. All humans are such that they cannot cease to be a person. (4,5)

8. It is impossible for a non-person to become a human person. (6,7)

9. Any normal human fetus can become a human person.

10. Therefore, any normal human fetus is a person. (8,9)

(I think this holds of non-normal human fetuses as well, but that’ll take a bit more argument.)

It’s important here to distinguish the relevant sort of love—the intrinsically interpersonal kind—from other things that are analogously called love, but might perhaps better be called, say, liking or affection, which one can have towards a non-person.

I think the most controversial premises are 2 and 9. Against 2, I could imagine someone who denies 7 insisting that the most that is appropriate is to love someone on the condition of their remaining a person. But I still think this is problematic. Those who deny 7 presumably do so in part because they think that some real-world conditions like advanced Alzheimer’s rob us of our personhood. But now consider the repugnance of wedding vows that promise to love until death or damage to mental function do part.

Standing against 9 would be “constitution views” on which, normally, human fetuses become human animals, and these animals constitute but are not identical with human persons. These are ontologies on which two distinct things sit in my chair, I and the mammal that constitutes me, ontologies on which we are not mammals. Again, this is not very plausible, but it is a not uncommon view among philosophers.

An odd motive for love

Here is an odd reason for love. Someone is doing really well, and when we come to love them, their wellbeing becomes in part our wellbeing. So it’s especially good for us to love all the people who are doing well. The most extreme version of this is loving God. For God has infinite wellbeing. And so by loving God, that infinite wellbeing becomes ours in a way.

My first reaction to the above thoughts was that this is ridiculous. It’s too cheap a way of increasing one’s wellbeing and seems to be a reductio of the thesis that whenever you love anyone, their wellbeing is incorporated into yours.

But it’s not actually all that cheap. For consider one of the paradigm attitudes opposed to love: envy. In envy, the other’s wellbeing makes us suffer. It seems exactly right to say that in addition to the other-centered reasons to avoid envy, envy is just stupid, because it increases your suffering with no benefit to anyone. But if so, and if love is opposed to envy, then it is not surprising that there is a benefit to love. And because envy is hard to avoid, the opposed love is not cheap, since it requires one to renounce envy.

But what about the oddity? Well, that oddity, I think, comes from the fact that while the benefit to ourselves from loving is indeed a reason to love, it cannot be our only reason, since love is essentially an attitude focused on the other’s good. At most, the realization that loving someone is good for us will help overcome reasons against love (the costs of love, say), and motivate us to try to become the kind of person who is less envious and more loving. But we can’t just say: “It’s good for me to love, ergo I love.” It’s harder than that. And in particular it requires a certain degree of commitment to the other person for good and ill, so if an attitude is solely focused on the desire to share the other’s good, that attitude is not love.

Oppositional relationships

Here are three symmetric oppositional possibilities:

1. Competition: x and y have shared knowledge that they are pursuing incompatible goals.

2. Moral opposition: x and y have shared knowledge that they are pursuing incompatible goals and each takes the other’s pursuit to be morally wrong.

3. Mutual enmity: x and y have shared knowledge that they each pursue the other’s ill-being for a reason other than the other’s well-being.

The reason for the qualification on reasons in 3 is that one might say that someone who punishes someone in the hope of their reform is pursuing their ill-being for the sake of their well-being. I don’t know if that is the right way to describe reformative punishment, but it’s safer to include the qualification in (3).

Note that cases of moral opposition are all cases of competition. Cases of mutual enmity are also cases of competition, except in rare cases, such as when a party suffers from depression or acedia which makes them not be opposed to their own ill-being.

I suspect that most cases of mutual enmity are also cases of moral opposition, but I am less clear on this.

Both competition and moral opposition are compatible with mutual love, but mutual enmity is not compatible with either direction of love.

Additionally, there is a whole slew of less symmetric options.

I think loving one’s competitors could be good practice for loving one’s (then necessarily non-mutual) enemies.

Respecting vs. not violating free will

God could pretty much guarantee that you freely choose to love him. Here’s how. God puts you in a situation where you have a non-infinitesimal probability of freely choosing to love him (this may require grace, etc.). Such situations clearly exist, since a significant number of people have freely chosen to love God. If you don’t freely choose to love him, then God resets your memory and character to how they were before your choice, and puts you in the same situation again. No matter how small the probability of freely choosing to love God, as long as it’s not infinitesimal, the probability that eventually you would freely choose to love God is one, or at least within an infinitesimal of one.

I think this scenario illustrates something interesting: There is a difference between (a) not violating someone’s freedom and (b) respecting someone’s freedom. If God engaged in the above course of action, he wouldn’t be violating our freedom, but he also wouldn’t be respecting it.

A divine intentional promotion account of duty

In my previous post, I argued against divine desire versions of divine command theory. Reflecting on that post, I saw that there is a simple variant of divine desire that helps with some of the problems in that post. Instead of saying that we ought to do what God desires us to do, the divine command theorist can say that:

1. We have a duty to ϕ (respectively, not to ϕ) if and only if God is intentionally trying to get us to ϕ (respectively, not to ϕ).

On this picture, God doesn’t just “sit around” and wish for our actions: God intentionally promotes some of our actions and obstructs others. He does this in a multitude of ways: by commanding, by creating us with a human nature that inclines us towards some actions and against others, by inspiring us with his grace, and more generally by intentionally putting us in an environment that encourage or discourages certain actions. An advantage of this view is that it allows for divine commands to be constituted by a plausibly broad variety of divine actions.

One of the problems I raised in the previous post for divine desire theories of duty was the problem of conflicting divine desires. Even a perfectly rational being can have conflicting desires. It is perfectly rational to desire a medical procedure one knows to be painful while desiring not to have pain. Thus there is a serious possibility of conflicting desires on the part of God. This possibility is raised to the level of likelihood when we reflect on the fact that God is said to bring greater goods out of the evils we do, which makes for a likely conflict between God’s desire for these goods and God’s desire that we not perform the evils.

But while a perfectly rational being can have conflicting desires, it is plausible that a perfectly rational being does not have conflicting intentions. A perfectly rational being may desire A and not-A, but he won’t be intentionally promoting both. (Of course, a perfectly rational being may intentionally promote both A and B despite the fact that promoting A makes B less likely. But that doesn’t seem to raise particular difficulties for the intentional promotion account of duty, though I could be missing something.)

My second worry about divine desire theories was cases where our action goes against God’s desires but leads to God’s desires being on the whole better satisfied, such as when our succumbing to temptation keeps a large number of people untempted. I suggested that it is a loving thing to go against someone’s desires when doing so better promotes their desires on the whole. Here, I think there are subtle and difficult issues, but I think the same worry does not apply to the intentional promotion view. Suppose that Bob is intentionally trying to produce A and B. Alice, however, correctly judges that B is more important than A to Bob, and that intentionally acting directly against A will better get Bob what she wants. So she opposes Bob with respect to A in order to produce B. There are cases where this is perfectly appropriate. But I think these are all cases where Alice has a certain kind of superiority to Bob, say because she is Bob’s parent and hence has authority over him, or because she is much smarter than Bob. When Alice and Bob are equals, for Alice to intentionally act against A is not a proper act of love. It is either an act of enmity or at best an act of improper paternalism. (One might think something similar is true in the case of desires, but I doubt it. See the gift example in my previous post.) And this is much more so the case when Bob is Alice’s superior, as God is ours in every respect.

Love seeks union. To oppose oneself to one’s beloved’s intentions is innately contrary to that union. Sometimes love will make such opposition appropriate when the person we love is confused in some way (while love seeks union, union is only one of multiple aspects of love, and sometimes the other aspects may take precedence). But God is superior to us in every respect. Thus it seems plausible that love for God will never require us to oppose God’s intentions. But it may well require us to oppose some of God’s desires, because God’s desires themselves oppose one another, since an all-good being desires all goods, and the goods conflict (thus, God’s desire to exhibit forgiveness to creatures conflicts with God’s desire that creatures not do anything that needs to be forgiven).

Indeed, I think if we have a divine intentional promotion account of duty, there is hope that we may be able to ground moral duty in something virtue-theoretic, like Evans’ account that the virtue of gratitude calls on us to obey God—for it is fairly plausible that gratitude to a being superior in all respects calls on us to further that being’s intentions—or a love account.

Here are some interesting and nice corollaries of the view:

2. There are no true moral dilemmas, because God’s intentions do not conflict.

3. If to tempt someone is to try to get them to do the wrong thing, then God cannot tempt anyone (James 1:13), since if God were to try to get someone to do something, that would ipso facto be the right thing to do.

4. God cannot intentionally unconditionally predestine anyone to damnation. For he who intends the end intends the means, and the means to damnation is sin, and God cannot intend sin.

5. Abraham did not have a duty to sacrifice Isaac, but only a duty to prepare to sacrifice Isaac. For God has no intention that he sacrifice Isaac.

On the other hand, here is an uncomfortable consequence:

6. God cannot intentionally promote a supererogatory action. For any action intentionally promoted by God becomes not supererogatory but a duty.

Perhaps we can say that sometimes God’s promotion of an action doesn’t come with the intention that one do the action but that one be more likely to do it, and that’s what happens in the case of supererogation? If that subtle distinction works, then we can turn a disadvantage of the theory into a significant advantage—for being able to account for supererogation is a serious challenge to many theories of morality.

Finally what about God’s duties? We have two options. First, we could say that (1) is limited to creatures, and God has no duties. Second, we could say that (1) applies to God as well. In that case, every time God intentionally does anything, God is fulfilling his duty, since if God intentionally ϕs, God is thereby intentionally (and in a very strong way) promoting his ϕing. Neither option is appealing. Perhaps the first one is better. In any case, questions about divine duties are always going to be tricky for a divine command theory.

All that said, I don’t endorse the theory. I much prefer a love theory or a natural law theory.

An argument for the unity of the virtues

Alice and Bob are friends, but Carl is a friend of neither. Carl pays Bob to betray Alice in some nasty way, and Bob being greedy does so. What Carl has done is as bad as what Bob has done. However, Bob was disloyal whereas Carl’s action was not a failure of loyalty. We might say this: Carl’s action offended against the value of loyalty without being disloyal.

Here’s perhaps a starker example. The virtue of chastity does not apply to immaterial beings: they can’t be either chaste or unchaste. If an immaterial tempter, however, persuades someone to be unchaste, the tempter offends against the value of chastity without being at all unchaste.

There is thus more than one way to offend against a virtue. One very special way of offending against a virtue is to act in a way contrary to it. But that is not the only way. Carl offends against loyalty without acting contrary to loyalty and the immaterial tempter offends against chastity without acting contrary to chastity.

Once we see this, we can also see that there is a multitude of ways of acting (or just being) in for or against a virtue that need not fall under or be contrary to the virtue. Encouraging someone else to be courageous is a way of acting in favor of courage, but need not show any courage. Typically, encouraging oneself to be courageous does exhibit some courage, because one is apt to know that if one becomes courageous, one is more likely to be in danger in the future. But we can imagine someone who hasn’t thought through the logical consequences and doesn’t realize that training oneself to courage is itself dangerous.

If all good action falls under a virtue and all bad action is contrary to a virtue, the above considerations suggest that there must be a meta-virtue M such that acting for any first-order virtue falls under M and acting against any first-order virtue is contrary to M. Now, since one common way of acting for a first-order virtue is to exhibit that first-order virtue in one’s actions, and one common way of acting against a first-order virtue is to act contrary to it, it follows that every action that is for a first-order virtue V falls under M insofar as it is an action for V, and every action that is against V is contrary to M insofar as it is against V. Moreover, just as acting for first-order virtues is virtuous, acting for higher-order virtues is also virtuous. To avoid a regress of meta-virtues, we should suppose that M is actually a virtue exhibited by acting for any virtue, including M itself, and opposed by acting against any virtue, including again M.

This yields something very much like a unity of virtues thesis: There is a virtue M such that any virtuous action whatsoever falls under M and any vicious action whatsoever is contrary to M.

What is this virtue? In the end, I suspect it’s love.

The Paradox of Charity

We might call the following three statements "the Paradox of Charity":

1. In charity, we love our neighbor primarily because of our neighbor’s relation to God.

2. In the best kind of love, we love our neighbor primarily because of our neighbor’s intrinsic properties.

3. Charity is the best kind of love.

I think this paradox discloses something very deep.

Note that the above three statements do not by themselves constitute a strictly logical contradiction. To get a strictly logical contradiction we need a premise like:

4. No intrinsic property of our neighbor is a relation to God.

Now, let’s think (2) through. I think our best reason for accepting (2) is not abstract considerations of intrinsicness, but particular cases of properties. In the best kind of love, perhaps, we love our neighbor because our neighbor is a human being, is a finite person, has a potential for human flourishing, etc. We may think that these features are intrinsic to our neighbor, but we directly see them as apt reasons for the best kind of love, without depending on their intrinsicness.

But suppose ontological investigation of such paradigm properties for which one loves one’s neighbor with the best kind of love showed that these properties are actually relational rather than intrinsic. Would that make us doubt that these properties are a fit reason for the best kind of love? Not at all! Rather, if we were to learn that, we would simply deny (2). (And notice that plenty of continentally-inclined philosophers do think that personhood is relational.)

And that is my solution. I think (1), (3) and (4) are true. I also think that the best kind of neighbor love is motivated by reasons such as that our neighbor is a human being, or a person, or has a potential for human flourishing. I conclude from (1), (3) and (4) that these properties are relations to God.

But how could these be relations to God? Well, all the reality in a finite being is a participation in God. Thus, being human, being a finite person and having a potential for human flourishing are all ways of participating in God, and hence are relations to God. Indeed, I think:

5. Every property of every creature is a relation to God.

It follows that no creature has any intrinsic property. The closest we come to having intrinsic properties are what one might call “almost intrinsic properties”—properties that are relational to God alone.

We can now come back to the original argument. Once we have seen that all creaturely properties are participations in God, we have no reason to affirm (2). But we can still affirm, if we like:

6. In the best kind of love, we love our neighbor primarily because of our neighbor’s almost intrinsic properties, i.e., our neighbor’s relations only to God.

And there is no tension with (1) any more.

Naturalism and lovability

1. If naturalism is true, Stalin is not lovable.

2. Everyone is lovable.

3. So, naturalism is not true.

Here, by “lovable”, I don’t mean that it is possible to love the person, but that it is not inappropriate to do so.

Premise 2 follows the intuition that it is permissible for every parent to love their children. It also follows from the more controversial claim that everyone should love everyone.

The intuition behind premise 1 is something like this: Stalin’s actions were so horrible that the only plausible hypotheses on which he is lovable are that there is some deeply mysterious and highly valuable metaphysical fact about his being, such as that he is in the image and likeness of God, or that his Atman is Brahman, a fact incompatible with naturalism. For if all we have are the ordinary naturalistic goods in Stalin, these goods are easily outweighed by the horrors of his wickedness.

Proper empathy

Empathy is usually understood as sharing in the feelings of others, and it is thought to be an important part of closer forms of human love.

I think there is a mistake here. Consider these cases, where Alice is a very close friend of Bob.

1. Alice knows that Bob’s wife has been cheating on him, but because of the confidentiality of the source of the information, she is unable to information Bob. She constantly sees Bob enjoying his marriage and delighting in thinking of his wife’s loyalty.

2. Last week, Bob has been informed he has a terminal disease, and is feeling the normal feelings of dread. Alice works in the medical office and has just discovered that that Bob’s file was mixed up with the file of another person of the same name, who indeed had a terminal disease and died of it two years ago, and Bob’s actual diagnosis was a clean bill of health. The office has yet to inform Bob of this.

3. Bob is a great fan of his local hockey team. He has just found out that the star player in a team that is to play against them has just broken a leg, and is delighted, and shares his delight with Alice.

4. Because Bob’s country used to be occupied by the Soviet Union, Bob has a visceral dislike of Russia. He has just learned that Russia won the Ice Hockey World Championship, and this makes him sad. He shares his sadness with Alice.

Cases 1 and 2 are cases where Bob is ignorant of the relevant facts, and cases 3 and 4 are ones where he is in the grip of a vice. But in none of the four cases is it appropriate for Alice to straightforwardly share in Bob’s feelings.

In case 1, Alice can be expected to feel badly for Bob, and her feeling badly is only accentuated by the fact that Bob doesn’t feel badly. In case 2, Alice would feel delighted for Bob, with the delight tempered by some a sadness that Bob is still feeling dread. But even that sadness would not take the form of dread. In case 3, Alice might share some of Bob’s joy that his preferred team will win, but she shouldn’t feel any delight at the player breaking a leg. Moreover, Alice should feel badly about her friend exhibiting a vicious joy. Finally, in case 4, Alice should feel badly, but not as a sharing in Bob’s sadness, but as a reaction to Bob’s ethnic prejudice. However, since she knows that the feelings are unpleasant ones for Bob, she might well have some sadness for his suffering, even if that suffering is vicious in nature.

These cases suggest to me that a good human friend:

• Has a first-order share in the feelings that the friend should have (i.e., would have if they were virtuous and well-informed).

• Has second-order feelings in reaction to the friend’s actual first-order feelings.

In many cases where the friend is virtuous and well-informed, the first-order sharing in the feelings the friend should have is also a first-order sharing in the feelings the friend does have.

This is a much more complex, and morally loaded, set of dispositions than empathy as usually defined. I don’t know that we have a good name for this complex set of dispositions. We might, of course, call it “proper empathy”, if we like.

Quasi-divinization and love

When we deeply love someone, we are apt to raise them to a quasi-divine status in our hearts.

If naturalism is right, this is misguided, for the evolved clouds of particles that are the people we love do not in fact have any quasi-divine status.

If theism is right, then this quasi-divinization could well be appropriate: for persons participate in God in such a way that they are in God’s image and likeness. But although not necessarily misguided, the quasi-divinization is dangerous, lest it cross the line into idolatry. (See C. S. Lewis’s Four Loves.)

I think that the theistic outlook on the quasi-divinization in love better fits with the plausible observation that this kind of deep love is sometimes both laudable and yet still morally dangerous, while on the naturalistic outlook, it is merely misguided.

Loving excessively and the existence of God

1. Francis of Assisi did not love nature excessively and Mother Teresa did not love the needy too much.

2. Francis loved nature as reflecting God and Mother Teresa loved the needy as images of God.

3. If God does not exist, then to love nature as reflecting God or to love someone as an image of God is to love something as better than it is.

4. To love something as better than it is is to love it excessively.

5. So, if God does not exist, Francis of Assisi loved nature excessively and Mother Teresa loved the needy too much. (2–4)

6. So, God exists. (1 and 5)

Love and physicalism

Every so often, I have undergraduates questioning the reduction of the mental to the physical on the basis of love. One rarely meets the idea that love would be a special kind of counterexample to physicalism in the philosophical literature. It is tempting to say that the physicalist who can handle qualia and intentionality can handle love. But perhaps not.

Maybe students just have a direct intuition that love is something that transcends the humdrum physical world?

Or maybe there is an implicit argument like this:

1. Love has significance of degree or kind N.

2. No arrangement of particles has significance of degree or kind N.

3. So, love is not an arrangement of particles.

Here is a related argument that I think is worth taking seriously:

1. Love has infinite significance.

2. No finite arrangement of atoms has infinite significance.

3. So, love is not a finite arrangement of particles.

4. If physicalism is true, then love is a finite arrangement of particles.

5. So, physicalism is not true.

One can replace “love” here with various other things, such as humanity, virtue, etc.

Intention and Christian ethics

Some ethicists think that the permissibility of an action typically does not depend on the intentions with which the action is done. (We obviously need “typically”. It is possible to make promises as to one’s intentions. And saying “This statement is intended” is permissible only if one intends to say it.)

Here is a deep reason why Christians cannot agree. Perhaps the deepest Christian ethical commitment is to something like this:

• An action is permissible if and only if it is loving (possible weaker variant: it is not unloving).

But whether an action is loving or unloving typically depends on intentions.

On a criticism of union theories of love

On some union models of love, like Robert Nozick’s, our well-being extends to include our beloved: good and bad things happening to our beloved count as happening to us.

A standard criticism of the union models (I first saw it in Jennifer Whiting’s criticism of Aristotle) is that we end up pursuing the other’s good not for their sake but for our own, since their good is a part of our well-being.

This criticism seems to me to only apply if one adds to such a union model the thesis that our actions are always solely in pursuit of our own good. But such a thesis leads to the problem that we don’t pursue other people’s good for their own sake independently of the union of love. The criticism, thus, is not a criticism of the union model of love, but of an egoistic theory of motivation.

The fact that the other’s good is a part of my good does not entail that I pursue the other’s good because it is my good. After all, we sometimes do things that we know benefit us but do them for reasons other than the benefit to ourselves. If after adding up the scores, I see that I am the winner of a game, my announcing the scores benefits me. However, I do not announce them because this benefits me, but because it’s the truth.

It is true that if I were omnirational, and if my own good were not excluded by a higher-order reason, then whenever an action benefited me, that benefit would be a part of my reasons for the action. But that is not objectionable: on the contrary, it is a part of the charm of love that the lover acts not just for the sake of the beloved but also for their own sake. That fact helps make the lover’s generosity not be a demeaning condescension.

Perhaps the criticism comes from a deeper mistake about love, the mistake of thinking that when we act lovingly, then typically the love is itself a part of the reasons for the action. For if the love is constituted by the other’s good being included in mine, and if the love is a reason for the action, then it does seem that when I act because of the love, I act because of the other’s good being included in mine. However, typically when we act lovingly, we do not act because we love. If my friend needs help, helping them is loving, but to reason “I love, so I should help” is to think a thought too many. Instead, one should just reason: “They need help.” My antecedent love makes it more likely that I will act on that reason, and my acting on that reason is partially constitutive of the continuation of the love, but the love is not itself the reason. After all, imagine that five minutes before finding out that my friend needed something, I stopped loving them. That would be no excuse not to help!

In fact, it seems to me that the best kind of union model would say something like this: What makes it be the case that my beloved’s good is a part of my good, what makes my beloved be “another me”, is the fact that I am pursuing my beloved’s good for their own sake. In other words, one could hold that love is constituted by union, but the union is constituted by pursuit of the beloved’s good.

Ethics and complexity

Here is a picture of ethics. We are designed to operate with a specific algorithm A for generating imperatives from circumstances. Unfortunately, we are broken in two ways: we don’t always follow the generated imperatives and we don’t always operate by means of A. We thus need to reverse engineer algorithm A on the basis of our broken functioning.

In general, reverse-engineering has to be based on a presumption of relative simplicity of the algorithm. However, Kantian, utilitarian ethics and divine command ethics go beyond that and hold that A is at base very simple. But should we think that the algorithm describing the normative operation of a human being is very simple? The official USA Fencing rule book is over 200 pages long. Human life is more complex than a fencing competition. Why should we think that there are fundamental rules for human life that can be encompassed briefly, from which all other rules can be derived without further normative input? It would be nice to find such brief rules. Many have a hope of finding analogous brief rules in physics.

We haven’t done well in ethics in our attempts to find such brief rules: the Kantian and utilitarian projects make (I would argue) incorrect normative claims, while the divine command project seems to give the wrong grounds for moral obligations.

It seems not unlikely to me that the correct full set of norms for human behavior will actually be very complex.

But there is still a hope for a unification. While I am dubious whether one can find a simple and elegant set of rules such that all ethical truths can be derived from them with no further normative input, there may be elegant unifying ethical principles that nonetheless require further normative input to generate the complex rules governing human life. Here are two such options:

• Natural Law: Live in accordance with your nature! But to generate the rules governing human life requires the further information as to what your nature requires, and that is normative information.

• Agapic ethics: Love everyone! But one of the things that are a part of love is adapting the form of one’s love to fit the the persons and circumstances (fraternal love for siblings, collegial love for colleagues, etc.), and the rules of “fit” are extremely complex and require further normative input.

Feeling bad about harms to our friends

Suppose something bad happens to my friend, and while I am properly motivated in the right degree to alleviate the bad, I just don’t feel bad about it (nor do I feel good about). Common sense says I am morally defective. But suppose, instead, something bad happens just to me, and I stoically (I am not making any claims about the Stoic movement by using this word, despite the etymology) bear up under it, without feeling bad, though being properly motivated to alleviate the harm. Common sense praises this rather than castigating it. Yet, aren’t friends supposed to be other selves?

So, we have a paradox generated by:

1. The attitudes we should have towards our friends are very much like those we should have towards ourselves.

2. It is wrong not to feel bad about harms to our friends even when we are properly motivated to fight those harms.

3. It is not wrong to feel bad about harms to ourselves when we are properly motivated to fight those harms.

As some terminological background, feeling bad about our friends’ losses is not exactly empathy. In empathy, we feel the other’s feelings as we see things from their point of view. So, feeling bad about harms to our friends will only be empathy if our friends are themselves feeling bad about these harms. There are at least two kinds of cases where we feel bad about harms to our friends when our friends themselves do not: (a) our friends are being stoical and (b) our friends are unaware of the harms (e.g., their reputation is being harmed by gossip we witness, or our friends are being harmed by acting viciously while thinking it’s virtuous). Moreover, even when our friends are feeling bad about the harms, our feeling bad about the harms will only be a case of empathy if we feel bad because they are feeling bad. If we feel bad because of the badness of the harms, that’s different.

In fact, we don’t actually have a good word in English for feeling bad on account of a friend’s being harmed. Sympathy is perhaps a bit closer than empathy, but it has connotations that aren’t quite right. Perhaps “compassion” in the OED’s obsolete sense 1 and sense 2a is close. The reason we don’t have a good word is that normally our friends themselves do feel bad about having been harmed, and our terminology fails to distinguish whether our feeling bad is an instance of sharing in their feeling or of emotionally sharing in the harm to them. (Think of how the “passion” in “compassion” could be either the other’s negative feeling or it could be the underlying harm.) And I think we also don’t have a word for feeling bad on account of our own being harmed, our “self compassion” (we do have “self pity”, but that’s generally seen as bad), though we do have thicker words for particular species of the phenomenon, such as shame or grief. So I’ll just stick to the clunky “feeling bad on account of harm”.

When we really are dealing with empathy, i.e., when we feel bad for our friend because our friend feels bad for it, the paradox is easier to resolve. We can add a disjunct to (1) and say:

4. The attitudes we should have towards our friends are very much like either those that we should have towards ourselves or those that our friends non-defectively have towards themselves.

This is a bit messy. I’m not happy with it. But it captures a lot of cases.

But what about the pure case of feeling bad for harms to a friend, not because the friend feels bad about it?—either because the friend doesn’t know about the harm, or the friend is being stoical, or our bad feeling is a direct reflection of the harms rather than indirectly via the other’s feeling of the harms. (Of course there will also be the special case where the feeling is the harm, as perhaps in the case of pains.) I am not sure.

I actually feel a pull to saying that especially when our friend doesn’t feel bad about the harm, we should, on their behalf. If our friend nobly does not feel the insult, we should feel it for them. And if our friend is being unjustly maligned, we should not only work to rescue their reputation, but we should feel bad.

But I am still given pause by the plausibility of (1) (even as modified to (4)) and (3). One solution would be to say that we should feel bad about harms to ourselves, that we should not be stoical about them. But I don’t want to say that the stoical attitude is always wrong. If our friends are being stoical about something, we don’t always want to criticize them for it, even mentally. Still there are cases where our friends are rightly criticizable for a stoical attitude. One case is where they should be grieving for the loss of someone they love. A more extreme case is where they should be feeling guilt for vicious action—in that case, we wouldn’t even use the fairly positive word “stoical”, but we would call their attitude “unfeeling” or something like that. In those cases, at least, it does seem like they should feel bad for the harm, and we should likewise feel bad on their behalf whether or not they do. (And, yes, this feeling may be in the neighborhood of a patronizing feeling in the case where they are not feeling the guilt they should—but the neighborhood of patronization has some places that sometimes need to be occupied.)

Still, I doubt that it is ever wrong not feel something. That would be like saying that it is wrong not to smell something. Emotions are perceptions of putative normative facts, I think. It can be defective not to smell an odor, either because one has lost one’s sense of smell or because one has failed to sniff when one should have. But the failure to smell an odor is not wrong, though it may be the consequence of doing something wrong, as when the repair person has neglected to sniff for a gas leak.

Instead, I think the thing to say is that there is a good in feeling bad about harms to a friend—or to ourselves. The good is the good of correct perception of the normative state of affairs. A good always generates reasons, and the good is to be pursued absent countervailing reasons. But there can be countervailing reasons. When I injure my shoulder, my pain is a correct perception of my body’s injured state. Nonetheless, because that pain is unpleasant (or fill in whatever the right story about why we rightly avoid pain), I take an ibuprofen. I have reason to feel the pain, namely because the pain is a correct way of seeing the world, but I also have reason not to feel the pain, namely because it hurts.

Similarly, if someone has insulted me, I have reason to feel bad, because feeling bad is a correct reflection of the normative state of affairs. But I also have reason not to feel bad, because feeling bad is unpleasant. So it can be reasonable not to feel bad. Loving my friend as myself does not require me to make greater sacrifices for my friend than I would make for myself, though it is sometimes supererogatory to do so (and sometimes foolish, as when the sacrifice is excessive given the goods gained). So if I don’t have an obligation to sacrifice my equanimity to in order to feel bad for the insult to me, it seems that I don’t have an obligation to sacrifice it in order to feel bad for the insult to my friend. But that sounds wrong, doesn’t it?

So where does the asymmetry come from? Here is a suggestion. In typical cases where our friend feels bad for the harm, our feeling does not actually match the intensity of our friend’s, and this is not a defect in friendship. So the unpleasantness of feeling bad for oneself is worse than in the case of feeling bad for one’s friend. Thus, more equanimity is sacrificed for the sake of our feelings correctly reflecting reality when it is our own case, and hence the argument that if I don’t have an obligation to make the sacrifice for myself, I don’t have an obligation to make the sacrifice for my friend is fallacious, as the sacrifices are not the same. Furthermore, to be honest, there is a pleasure in feeling bad for a friend. The OED entry for “compassion” cites this psychological insight from a sermon by Mozley (1876): “Compassion … gives the person who feels it pleasure even in the very act of ministering to and succouring pain.” I haven’t read the rest of the sermon, but I think this is not any perverse wallowing or the like. The “compassion” is an exercise of the virtue of friendship, and there is an Aristotelian pleasure in exercising a virtue. And this is much more present when it is one’s friend one is serving. Thus, once again, the sacrifice tends to be less when one feels bad for one’s friend than when one feels bad for oneself, and hence the reason that one has to feel bad for one’s friend is less often outbalanced by the reason not to than in one’s own case.

Nonetheless, the reason to feel bad for one’s friend can be outbalanced by reasons to the contrary. Correct perceptual reflection of reality is not the only good to be pursued—not even the only good in the friendship.

Loving our neighbor as ourselves

Suppose that, as some theories of motivation hold, that all our actions are done in pursuit of our flourishing. But the Scriptures tell us that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. Therefore, all our actions should also be done in pursuit of our neighbor’s flourishing. This seems an unreasonably high standard.

There are three ways out:

1. Deny that all our actions are done in pursuit of our flourishing.

2. Deny the love ethic of the Old and New Testaments.

3. Argue that the standard is not unreasonably high.

For me, (2) is not an option. I do think (1) is a serious option for independent reasons.

But I also think (3) is a very promising approach. Reasons to think that the requirement that we be pursuing our neighbor’s flourishing in all our actions is excessive are apt also to be reasons to think that Paul’s requirement that we “pray constantly” (1 Thes. 5:17) is excessive as well. But if all our actions are done in pursuit of our neighbor’s flourishing, and if we see our neighbor as in the image of God, then all our actions might be a kind of prayer, thereby fulfilling Paul’s difficult injunction. And, conversely, if we are praying always, aren’t we going to be always pursuing our neighbor’s flourishing?

We get something something similarly onerous to the requirement to pursue our neighbor’s flourishing in Kantian ethics: the requirement always to treat rational beings as ends.

One family of difficult cases, both for the flourishing requirement and the Kantian one, lies in everyday businesslike interactions. To use an example of Parfit, you’re buying coffee. It seems that all that is relevant about the barista is that they are supplying coffee. How can you not treat them as a mere means? How can you be pursuing their flourishing? Well, a useful reflection is that we flourish in large part by promoting the wellbeing of others. The barista’s professional activity is a part of their flourishing as a social animal. In courteously buying coffee, one is doing one’s part in an interaction that constitutes a part of that flourishing. Of course, it would be very odd, and likely to lead to pride (“Look at how great I am: I am enabling his flourishing”), if one were to be explicitly thinking about this each time one buys coffee. But courteously making opportunities for others to exercise their professional skills can be a habitual background intention in one’s actions. Similarly, when I when I bite into a delicious sandwich, my intention to get some enjoyment is not something that I need to think about, but it structures the activity (e.g., it explains why I don’t at the same time pinch myself hard).

A different kind of difficult case is given by activity which adversely impacts the flourishing of others. Morality sometimes requires such actions. Less well qualified applicants need to be turned down and trolleys need to be redirected towards more sparsely occupied tracks. Here I think three things can be done to abide by the flourishing requirement. The first is that one not intend a bad effect on flourishing. One doesn’t turn down the less well qualified applicants in order to negatively impact their flourishing. The second is that while declining the applicants or redirecting the trolley, one should be taking their flourishing into account, by thinking about any creative ways to decrease the negative impact on flourishing. Even if no creative ways are found (but isn’t prayer always an option?), the action is chosen as part of a pursuit of the flourishing of those who are harmed by it—but not of course as part of the pursuit of only their flourishing. The third is that there is a kind of harm to one if one is benefited immorally. To a morally sensitive person, it feels bad to get a job that another applicant is was better qualified for, and it would surely feel awful to have five people die because the trolley operator refused to redirect the trolley away from them for one’s sake. These feelings reflect reality. No human is an island, and when our flourishing is at the expense of those who deserve flourishing more, that is bad for us—even if we don’t know about it. It may not be on balance bad for us, but still it is a bad thing. And so the person who turns down the less qualified candidate or redirects the trolley prevents this bad thing from happening, and this is a positive impact on flourishing.