aesthetics

162

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKPHIBPhilosophical Books0031-8051© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2003April 20034421000

BOOK REVIEWS

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

April 20034421000

Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie: Ein Lexikon

By

and

Philipp Reclam, 2000. 254 pp. Euro 5,60

Scholarly research into ancient philosophy has not always been particularlygood at pointing out its relevance to contemporary philosophical debate. Itis one of the goals that Andreas Bächli and Andreas Graeser have set them-selves to meet—in the rather unexpected medium of a concise encyclopaediaof 48 basic concepts of ancient philosophy. These are discussed in a formatthat combines the virtue of encyclopaedia articles, to provide concise, cross-referenced information, with the more discursive, and in this case sometimeseven elegant, style of the philosophical essay. Art (

τ

7

χνη

/ars), beauty (

τ

3

καλ

2

ν

/

pulchrum

), cosmos (

κ

2

σµος

/

mundus

), form (

µορφ

8

/

forma

), the good (

τ

3 0

γαθ

2

ν

/

bonum

), imitation (

µ

1

µησις

/

imitatio

), matter (

6

λη

/

materia

), nature (

ϕ

9

σις

/

natura

),quality (

ποι

2

της

/

qualitas

), the soul (

ψυχ

8

/

anima

), time (

χρ

2

νος

/

tempus

), truth(

0

λ

8

θεια

/

veritas

), virtue (

0

ρετ

8

/

virtus

) are among the concepts covered.The English translations suggested here can be just as misleading as the

common German renderings of the terms Bächli and Graeser are dealingwith; the authors point out throughout where and to what extent modern‘equivalents’ of ancient terms are precisely not equivalent. This indicatesalready that the connections that Bächli and Graeser draw between ancientand modern philosophy do not result in a rash assimilation of both. Subject/

subiectum

/

5

ποκε

1

µενον

is an obvious opportunity to point out the deep gulfbetween both epochs. Nevertheless Bächli and Graeser insist that the philo-sophical literature between the sixth century

and the sixth century

hassomething to say where present philosophical disputes are concerned, and thisis partly reflected even in the choice of topics; the article on meaning(

σηµα

1

νειν

/

significatio

) is a characteristic example.Another move that fits in well with this perspective of the book is a choice

of texts that is against the current, aiming at a shift in the canon. While theclassics, Plato and Aristotle, of course have to figure prominently, Bächli andGraeser at the same time see the tradition of Scepticism as central rather thanmarginal to ancient philosophy. Generally, texts that contain much of philo-sophical interest, but have tended to be overlooked, such as Cicero’s

Lucullus

or Boethius’s

Contra Eutychen et Nestorium

, are given due attention. In dealingwith these texts, whether familiar or neglected, Bächli and Graeser are philo-sophers and also classicists rather than the other way round. Beyond thehistory of words, concepts and ideas, they engage in argument. The articles

163

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

on opinion (

δ

2

ξα

) or relativity (

πρ

2

ς τι

) exemplify this powerfully; but thefeature holds for the book as a whole.

There is little to complain about. While a good bibliography is provided at theend of the book, I would have preferred to be referred to specific further readingat the end of each article. But the quality of the articles is excellent; students notonly of ancient, but just as much of contemporary philosophy ought to knowwhat is contained in them. An English translation would be highly desirable.

April 20034421000Book Review

Descartes. Belief, Scepticism and Virtue

By

Routledge, 2001. xii + 372 pp. £55.00

Richard Davies proposes to reconstruct Cartesianism using notions that arecontemporary with the composition of Descartes’s works. Thus he undertakesto interpret Descartes with reference to the Aristotelian virtues known toall Scholastic philosophers (whom Descartes openly opposes) to provide aCartesianism that they would comprehend and perhaps even to some extentapprove. Davies believes that, from the first appearance of Descartes’s

Meditations

, there has been puzzlement as to why anyone would undertakean enterprise of wiping the slate of knowledge clean with scepticism in anattempt to attain certainty for all knowledge. To avoid this, Davies replacesthe method of doubt with a process of creating or receiving beliefs he calls dox-astic rectitude, which involves commitment to inquiry without extremes: “it isthe virtue in belief-acquisition that lies in whatever might turn out to be themean between the vices of scepticism and credulity” (p. 27). It is satisfactionnot with “all” or “only” but with “some” and “most” (p. 35). The doctrine ofthe mean, then plays a large role in Davies’s reconstruction of Cartesianism.In particular, balance must be attained between the intellect and the will.Descartes puts this in terms of curbing the will, but Davies sees it more interms of accommodation between will and intellect. An example of how Daviesproceeds is his treatment of scepticism. He says that “scepticism was a—even

the

—public nuisance in Descartes’ day. What we have ended up with is anaccount on which sceptical manoeuvres [sic] are properly applied to almost allthe sources of our beliefs” (p. 195). But scepticism was of so little worry at thetime that it was mostly rejected or joked about in the objections to Descartes’s

Meditations

. And what Davies develops is much like the mitigated scepticismadopted by early modern scientists to bypass metaphysics and advance prac-tical science. No one of the day had recourse to Aristotelian virtues to mitigateCartesianism. Davies’s execution of his reconstruction is fairly dense. Certainlyhe is thorough in his coverage of Descartes’s positions, and he perhaps goesbeyond need in bringing in the historical context. That there were Aristoteliansin Descartes’s day conversant with the virtues does not in itself, however, pro-vide much support for Davies’s virtuising of Cartesianism. It is also one ofthose interpretive gimmicks that, once one gets the idea, does not really needworking out in the great detail Davies provides. The recasting of Cartesianism in

164


itself is cogent and consistent. Nevertheless, the question remains: If Descartes’sScholastic or Aristotelian contemporaries could have seen Cartesianism inthis guise, why is it that none of them ever interpreted Descartes this way? Theanswer probably is because the result is not Cartesianism. The positive takeon Davies’s results is that he believes that Cartesianism is worth rescue, andin particular that philosophy or general metaphysics should not be dismissedas irrelevant or nonsensical as many philosophers in the twentieth centuryhave argued. Various virtue philosophers, mostly Thomists, have stood upagainst the positivist avalanche. Davies takes the defence all the way back toDescartes. It is not at all clear that Cartesianism survives the onslaught.

, . .


Descartes Embodied: Reading Cartesian Philosophy through Cartesian Science

By

Cambridge University Press, 2001. xii + 338 pp. £40.00 cloth, £14.95 paper

This book brings together 13 essays about Descartes and his context, pre-ceded by a paper concerned with the philosophical worth of Garber’s pre-ferred approach to the history of philosophy. The earliest of the essays is notquite twenty years old, and many are drawn from articles published in the1990s. All display the great clarity, historical insight, good sense, and freedomfrom dogma and aggression that one has come to expect from their author.Garber does not go in for laying down the law, either about Descartes or theright approach to the history of philosophy. He does not set out to provepeople wrong. He tries instead to produce understanding of philosophicallyimportant texts. In the case of Descartes, this means conveying a particularblend of empirical hypothesis and metaphysical argument on a large scale.Presenting the blend in the right proportions is Garber’s speciality. No-one elsewriting in English can produce the sort of seamless exposition of Descartes’sphysics and Descartes’s views about God’s nature and operations that fidelityto Descartes’s text requires. No-one else, either, succeeds in doing so in a waythat ordinary working philosophers will find intelligible and that specialisthistorians of philosophy and of science will find illuminating.

Garber’s gift for this sort of synthesis gives him a unique position inthe world of Anglo-American philosophy, in Descartes scholarship, and inresearch on early modern philosophy in general. Because the

Meditations

is acanonical text

par excellence

in Western philosophy, and in Anglo-Americanphilosophy in particular, it receives routine but casual mention throughout thesubject, and many live research programmes in the philosophy of minddevelop elaborate disagreements with theses called ‘Cartesian’. Again, the

Meditations

is a book often assigned to beginners in the subject. This meansthat many book-length studies of Descartes take the form of commentaries on thearguments of the

Meditations

for students, while many articles allude to thesesor supposed illusions associated with Descartes by professional philosopherswhose close inspection of the texts last took place in their philosophicalchildhood. Descartes for students and professionals in the English speaking

165


world consists of Descartes’s arguments as found in the

Meditations

. The restof Descartes’s corpus is obscure, the intellectual context even more so. Thegreat challenge for a Descartes scholar writing in English is to widen anddeepen that perspective without entirely changing the subject, that is, withoutdeserting the Descartes of the philosophers for a Descartes of the historiansof ideas or the historians of science. Anyone who wants to see how it is doneshould read this book.

There are fine essays on the ‘method’ that the

Discourse on Method

advertisesbut does not explain, and that it perhaps takes over from the earlier work, the

Regulae

. There is a good deal on what Descartes—the supposedly arch a pri-orist in science—understood by experiment and how he counts as a sort ofexperimentalist. Then there are essays—some already reprinted—that connectDescartes’s theses about mind-body interaction with conservation laws andwith the para-causal notion of a stimulus being the occasion for an idea. Furtherpieces (which overlap in content with Garber’s well-known book,

Descartes’Metaphysical Physics

) take up Descartes’s complex relation to the tradition ofexplaining effects by reference to ‘forms’. A pair of essays in a concludingsection of the book take up, broadly speaking, Descartes’s place in the widerscientific community he interacted with and the pedagogical practices whichhe both benefited from and, in a sense, repudiated or revised. Taken together,these essays, thirteen in all, more than justify the publication of the book.

My one reservation concerns the remaining and opening essay. Garber says(p. 6) that in it he is trying to make explicit the approach followed in the otherthirteen, and that he is trying at the same time to bear out the claim that thehistory of philosophy has philosophical value. This opening essay developsseveral analogies that are useful for explaining the philosophical worth of thehistory of philosophy to those in the analytic tradition, and it also takesan approach to the texts of the past that is notably different from that mostself-consciously analytical and critical of historians of philosophy, JonathanBennett. But Garber’s thirteen essays do not seem to me to implement theapproach he develops in the opening one, and the main kind of illuminationone gets is of various Cartesian claims and texts rather than of an independ-ently interesting philosophical question. What he says in the opening essay isthat historical figures can be philosophically interesting for the questions theyraise (p. 23), rather than the answers, and that work on them can resemblefield anthropology, in which an investigator who at first finds a culture aliencomes to feel at home with it (p. 30). Although the analogy with anthropo-logical research may fit very remote figures in the history of philosophy, suchas the presocratics, whom we will probably never understand very well, or morerecent but marginal figures, it does not fit Descartes, just because most peoplepast the beginner’s stage in philosophy approach him under an illusion of fam-iliarity. A better analogy in Descartes’s case would be with the sort of fieldwork which undoes stereotypes. Again, it is not clear which questions askedby Descartes and discussed in the thirteen essays are supposed to recom-mend themselves to philosophers working today. Some of the questions are ofcourse crucial for a systematic understanding of Descartes, and for makingourselves conscious of the way philosophical distinctions that are familiar

166


to us are not eternal, but it is not always clear why either of these things is sup-posed to be

philosophically

illuminating, as opposed to illuminating simpliciter.


T.H. Green’s Moral and Political Philosophy. A Phenomenological Perspective

By -Palgrave 2001. xiv + 176 pp. £40.00

This book discusses pairs of ‘perspectives’ in Green. First, to Hume’s role forthe passions Green added reason, as distinguishing the self from its desiresand transforming them so that what one wants is a state of oneself—not thebook for instance but the experience of reading it. Practice is then guided byself-distinguishing and self-seeking ‘principles’. This theory implies a “pregnant”transcendentalism (p. 27); Green’s epistemology is “disproved” by it (p. 51).

To be moral is to be disinterested, seeking the substantive good of the self assatisfied, not satisfaction, and the formal, open-ended good of self-perfectionas unconditional, not personal (Ch. 2). Green’s view that to be disinterestedis to aim at ‘an idea of oneself ’ and ‘self-perfection’ is surely perverse; thebook does not properly consider this objection. However, he saw their relationas a problem: from one’s internal view one is only improvable; extern-ally, others are valuable as they are. Yet he achieves more than he knows.Berlin rejects positive freedom as transferring self-mastery from the private tothe public sphere, so violating rights. This transfer does not occur in Green.Personal development implies a need for equal treatment: one is free posit-ively as producing moral goods, and this depends on negative freedom.

His common good theory describes the process of becoming motivatedmorally: we invest in social projects to overcome our transient nature (Ch. 3).The author attacks Green for arguing that one can work for others’ good as forone’s own, and for so losing the notion of ordinary, non-moral good. My moralgood as a teacher for instance benefits others, but this common good is my pupils’ordinary good since they do not yet aim at others’ well-being. The ordinarycommon good is a form of social life in which all deserve social welfare andjustice regardless—contra Green—of whether they act as moral agents or not.

Dimova-Cookson does not notice that for such a process, ‘obligations’ arevoluntary. She compares it with Husserl’s ‘reduction’, but he suspends ‘natur-alistic assumptions’ rather than self-interest as she claims. Also, while com-paring Green to Husserl she does not mention Husserl’s attempt to describe‘the phenomena’ systematically, particularly concerning the ‘ego’ and its rolein knowledge.

True freedom is more important; juristic freedom is indispensable (Ch. 4).We have rights only in society; social prosperity requires personal fulfilment(Ch. 5). Which is more important, perfection or well-being? To make the bestof ourselves or be accepted as we are? Freedom in pursuing one’s own ideaof one’s good or in fulfilling duties? Rights justified by human need or bysocial recognition? These dilemmas mean that any moral assessment of con-duct involves two sets of priorities.

167


This book is to be warmly welcomed for showing, in more ways than canbe discussed here, why Green is worth studying and not easily dismissed. ..

April 20034421000Book ReviewThe Metaphysicians of Meaning. Russell and Frege on Sense and DenotationBy Routledge, 2000. x + 230 pp. £60.00 cloth, £17.99 paper

The metaphysics of meaning in this book is the theory of propositions anddenoting concepts in Russell’s Principles of Mathematics from 1903 and Frege’stheory of sense and reference. Makin focuses on Frege’s reasons for adopt-ing the theory of sense and on Russell’s reasons for abandoning denotingconcepts in his famous 1905 paper ‘On Denoting’. The centrepiece of thisoriginal and refreshingly new reading of these works is a detailed account ofthe notorious ‘Gray’s Elegy’ passage in ‘On Denoting’ where Russell claimsto be arguing against Frege’s theory of sense and reference, but really seemsto be presenting an obscure objection to his own theory of denoting concepts.Makin argues contrary to this conventional wisdom that Frege in fact isRussell’s target and one of the themes of the book is the extended parallelismbetween Frege and Russell’s theories. What’s more, Makin presents a plausiblereading of each and every sentence of that famously obscure passage. Themain outlines of the argument are already known: that it is impossible to havepropositions about denoting concepts or complexes, since if they appear in aproposition it is what is denoted that the proposition will be about. WhatMakin does is to go on to make sense of the rest of the argument, includingthe apparently confused proposal to use quotation marks to refer to ‘mean-ings’ or senses, and more. While the interpretation seems correct for eachsentence, one is still left without an account of how the passage fits togetheras the natural unfolding of an argument. In the end there are a number ofsubarguments only telegraphed by single lines, two ‘rounds’ or passes at theargument and lots that is not explained in the text. Yet this adds to the feelingthat Makin has got it right, for there just can’t be a clear, well argued andpresented argument lurking in those murky sentences. Instead what we arepresented with is a coherent view which lies behind the passage, which makessense of each part and places the whole in context. This chapter alone is awork of great ingenuity and insight, worth the price of the book.

Makin then goes on to debunk many myths about the significance of ‘OnDenoting’. One is the commonplace that the primary goal of the theory ofdescriptions is to show how expressions with apparent singular terms, such as‘the present king of France’, can be meaningful without committing one toMeinongian entities. As has been noticed before, Russell’s own theory ofdenoting concepts dating back to Principles, which does not require that denotingconcepts in fact denote anything, is already able to handle this problem.What then is the innovation in ‘On Denoting’? Makin argues that in fact Russell’stheory of descriptions does not mark the epic break in the development ofsemantic views that it is sometimes made out to. Instead, he shows, the devices

168


for the theory of descriptions were already present in Russell’s semantic views,and that as a result of the technical difficulty in the theory of denoting conceptsthat is presented in the obscure passage, Russell saw how to adapt those earlierviews to definite descriptions and so avoid the need for denoting concepts.

Paralleling this revisionist account of Russell’s progress is a similarly fresh lookat Frege’s theory of sense. Senses are seen not as the reification of the rules foruse of ordinary language, what is known when we know a meaning, but ratheras constituents of thoughts, comparable to denoting concepts as constituents ofpropositions for Russell. On this view it is more important to the nature of sensesthat they be the reference of a name in an indirect context than that they bea ‘route to a referent’. A number of sources of what is now conventional wisdomabout Frege as a philosopher of language are targets of this book, some men-tioned by name, others not. We are presented with a Frege who, like Russell, is prim-arily concerned with the metaphysics of non-linguistic, logical entities which areof use in their respective logicist programmes. This reinterpretation of Frege, likethe reading of Russell, also rings true, and is, perhaps reassuringly, not com-pletely novel. Much of what he says about Frege will sound familiar to those whohave looked at his work from the viewpoint of ‘intensional logic’ as developed byAlonzo Church and David Kaplan. Indeed, at times this reviewer wished that theirviews were discussed in addition to those of Gareth Evans and Michael Dummett.

Makin’s arguments are forceful, and his reading of the principal texts, as wellas other work of Frege and Russell, is thorough and careful. Sources includeRussell’s manuscripts preceding 1905 which have just recently been publishedin Volume IV of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell. One lapse is an excess inMakin’s claims about the radical inappropriateness of Frege’s theory of senseand reference to natural language and ordinary objects, especially the argu-ment tossed off at pp. 181–182 to the effect that Frege’s immutable senses canonly refer to indestructible objects. Overwhelmingly, however, the argumentsare presented carefully, with copious and well documented textual support, andin the end ring true. This book makes an important contribution to scholar-ship on Frege and Russell and it should be widely and carefully studied.

April 20034421000Book Review GENERAL PHILOSOPHYApril 20034421000Book Review

Rorty and His CriticsEdited by . Blackwell, 2000. xx + 410 pp. £55.00 cloth, £17.99 paper

Richard Rorty: Critical DialoguesEdited by and Polity Press, 2001. x + 242 pp. £14.99 paper

Rorty and his Critics should be read by those interested in truth, objectivity andjustification; highly readable, philosophically substantial—there is even anunexpected twist in the last chapter.

169


Habermas’s contribution charges Rorty with missing the fundamental mean-ing of the truth predicate, its claim to universal validity. He agrees that truth ascorrespondence is untenable, and so cannot underwrite claims to universality,but considers it a substantive task to provide an alternative account. Rorty repliesthat we must substitute “fear for hope” (p. 61): inquiry should be driven byconcrete fear of regression to ignorance, rather than abstract hope for universality.

Davidson’s paper is of independent importance for containing a sophistic-ated argument against deflationism about truth, as defended by Paul Horwich.Truth is far from trivial because of its connection to meaning: it is essentialto thought, since one can believe only if one knows that beliefs may be trueor false. Rorty cannot see the point of using Tarskian truth-conditions to pro-vide a theory of meaning, since coping with the world and other speakers isa matter of know-how rather than grasping a theory. He doesn’t understandwhy Davidson won’t agree. This changes by the end of the book.

Putnam continues his long-running debate with Rorty about justification.For Rorty, new beliefs are better justified if it comes to seem to language userswe recognise as better versions of ourselves that they are coping better withtheir new beliefs. Putnam observes that we will not be around to recogniseour descendants as better versions of ourselves. Either Rorty’s account dependson a very unRortyan appeal to counterfactuals, or he must count as reform anynew standards our descendants think helps them to cope better. Rorty’sresponse emphasises the importance of imaginary conversations; the “better sortof judges and politicians” (p. 89) should and do ask themselves whether presentconstruals of the American Constitution result from arguments the FoundingFathers would recognise as appealing to better versions of themselves.

Dennett mischievously praises Rorty’s early papers as contributing to“objective knowledge of the way the world is”, despite Rorty’s more recent“fashionable and famous ideas” (p. 92). Dennett likes Rorty’s attempteddemystification of first-person authority as the public practise of treating cer-tain reports as incorrigible, but rejects Rorty’s suggestion that if third-persontests (“cerebroscopes”) became more reliable than first-person reports, therewould no longer be any minds. Dennett describes an AI project called “Cog”,showing how its designers might lose epistemic authority over its internalstates: they might have to treat Cog’s own reports of its states as incorrigible,since the machine is designed to indefinitely self-revise the functions of itsstates. Having a connectionist architecture, no ‘cerebroscope’ could read thesefunctions from Cog’s intrinsic properties. Rorty rejects as scientism the idea thatthere might be “actual justification” (p. 102), over and above the justificationof linguistic convenience, for the practise of incorrigibility.

McDowell describes what Brandom, in the introduction, calls “Rorty’smaster idea” (p. x): that realism casts “the world in the role of the non-humanother before which we are to humble ourselves”. Scientific realism has takenover the role of religion in holding back human maturity, and it too must goif the humanist project of the enlightenment is to be completed. McDowellthinks this anti-authoritarianism leads Rorty to confuse the Cartesian/Lockean epistemological framework, which McDowell agrees must go, withanswerability to the world. Rejecting the latter means Rorty cannot agree that

170


an utterance of “cold fusion has not yet been achieved” is justified by the factthat cold fusion has not yet been achieved, and not by the utterance’s accept-ance. Rorty agrees that whether the utterance would “pass muster” in theright circles is a distinct question from whether fusion has occurred, butdenies this shows a difference in norms: “the difference is not one that makesa difference” (p. 125).

Michael Williams takes up Rorty’s “Emergence Thesis”, that epistemologyemerged as a distinct subject in the seventeenth century, when mind was firstconceived as a conglomerate of representational ideas. He lists four centralproblems as dealt with by Plato and Locke, and traces lines of continuitybetween modern and ancient concerns. Rorty responds that ‘epistemology’ isa pointless pigeon-hole he regrets making central use of in Philosophy and theMirror of Nature. It was simply representationalism that emerged, a new wayof maintaining our “pathos of distance” from something non-human in theatmosphere generated by the New Science.

The final essay by Bjørn Ramberg (mysteriously missing from the list of Noteson Contributors) persuades Rorty to abandon some of his best known views!Rorty now agrees with Davidson’s conception of truth, and will no longer saythat ‘true of ’ is not a word-world relation. Nor will he object to the notion of‘getting things right’, though he adds the more familiarly Rortyan rejoinderthat no area of culture (science, for instance) gets the world more right thanothers. Anybody interested in Rorty, Davidson, and/or contemporary prag-matism will have to read and carefully digest this important essay and response.

Richard Rorty: Critical Dialogues employs the same format, but with regard toRorty’s political and social philosophy.

John Horton argues for a conflict between Rorty’s conception of the liberal‘ironist’ and political commitment. Ironists grasp Rorty’s anti-foundationalism,realise anything can be made to look good or bad through re-description, andthus cannot take their own fundamental values entirely seriously. Hortonargues that the ironist is “simply unlikely to feel a sense of solidarity with theunironical majority” (p. 26), and that as they argue unconditionally for theirliberal values in the public sphere, their irony might collapse into cynicism.Rorty construes the challenge as “can an anti-foundationalist have deep moralcommitments?”, and his answer is: “let’s experiment and find out” (p. 31).

Simon Thompson thinks Rorty should make more use of his ideas of thecautionary use of truth and the fallibilism of justification in order to acknow-ledge “that there can be blameless variation across a wide range of ways oflife” (p. 47). Rorty replies that since “beliefs are habits of action”, then “if theother guys have different beliefs from ours, and if we are trying to accomplishthe same goals, then one of us just has to be inferior to the other” (p. 54).

Norman Geras takes up Rorty’s idea that moral progress rests on theenlargement of human solidarity. Rorty’s idea that through sympathetic education,traditional divides like race can be downplayed in favour of similarities withrespect to pain, humiliation, cherishing loved ones etc., is, according to Geras,a tacit appeal to a core humanity, of the sort needed to found moral progress.

The book finishes with Rorty’s ‘Justice as a Larger Loyalty’, arguing thatmoral dilemmas described as between loyalty and justice (such as whether

171


to employ expensive local or cheap foreign labour) are better described asconflicts between loyalty to smaller and larger groups.

There are other interesting essays, covering Rorty’s relations to Dewey,Habermas, and Rawls, for instance. But sometimes Rorty seems to be justrunning through the motions; sharply worded criticisms receive routine andjaded explanations of what he takes to be his critic’s misunderstanding.Nevertheless, students of Rorty’s politics will want this volume too.

April 20034421000Book ReviewA Theory of Freedom: From the Psychology to the Politics of AgencyBy Oxford University Press, 2001. 193pp.

The distinctive feature of Pettit’s book is the attempt to produce a unifiedtheory of freedom which addresses both the question of ‘free will’ and that ofpolitical freedom. That conceptual distinction is itself, he thinks, misleading.Rather than talking of ‘free will’ he prefers to speak of ‘freedom in the agent’, andhe aims to articulate and defend a comprehensive account of the concept of free-dom which does justice to both the psychological and the political dimension.

The argument proceeds in three stages:

(i) a conceptualisation of freedom—an initial account of the concept forwhich a theory is needed;

(ii) a theory of freedom which identifies its fundamental psychological features;(iii) an account of freedom as a political ideal, identifying what the state

ought to do in order to enable its members to enjoy freedom.

The three candidates for a conceptualisation of freedom are (a) freedom asunderdetermination—the idea that to be free means that one’s choice of action isnot fully determined by certain sorts of antecedents; (b) freedom as ownership—the idea that a freely chosen action is one which the agent can own; and(c) freedom as responsibility—the idea that to act freely is to be fit to be heldresponsible for what one does. Pettit argues for the responsibility conceptionas the core concept for which we need to provide a theory.

There are again three candidates for a theory, but each theory involves adifferent approach and a different focus. The theory of freedom as rationalcontrol focuses on what it is for an action to be a free action, and only deriv-ately on what it is to be a free self and what it is to be a free person. Thetheory of freedom as voluntary control focuses primarily on what it is to be afree self. And the theory of freedom as discursive control focuses primarily onwhat it is to be a free person—that is to say, on the standing of the free agentrelative to other agents.

The theory of freedom as rational control says that an action is free if it isrationally dictated by the agent’s desires and beliefs, and if those desires andbeliefs have been rationally embraced in the light of the evidence available.As a theory of free action, the theory encounters what Pettit calls ‘the recursive

172


problem’: an agent may act rationally on the basis of their desires andbeliefs, but not have any evaluative standards in the sense of beliefs aboutwhat is required of them and desires to live up to those standards. Non-human animals, for instance, may act rationally but do not have such evaluat-ive standards, and hence cannot be held responsible for their actions in theway that is required for free action. As a theory of the free self, the theory ofrational control encounters what Pettit calls ‘the bystander problem’: I maybe someone who acts rationally and who is not driven by irrational patholog-ies such as compulsions or obsessions or weakness of will, but the theory doesnot explain why that need mean that I identify with my actions and experi-ence them as ones in which I am present as the author. My actions may berational, and yet I may experience myself as distanced and alienated fromthem, in the manner of a bystander. Finally, as a theory of the free person,the theory of rational control encounters the problem of hostile control: ifother people try to coerce me for their own ends, I may still be able to makerational choices about how to respond to that coercion, and the theory wouldtherefore have to entail that I retain my freedom in such cases.

The theory of freedom as volitional control builds on its predecessor byintroducing the idea of second-order volitions: I am free only if the desires onwhich I rationally act are in turn endorsed by my second-order desires. Pettitthinks that this theory fails in the same ways as its predecessor. It still encoun-ters the recursive problem, because the agent’s second-order volitions may notbe ones for which they can be held responsible, and so the theory is facedwith a regress. There is still the bystander problem, for my second-ordervolitions, like my first-order beliefs and desires, may not be ones with whichI identify—I may recognise them as, for instance, the product of childhoodupbringing, an unwelcome inheritance from my past. And like the theory ofrational control, this second theory cannot account for why hostile coercionrenders a person unfree.

The theory which Pettit sees as succeeding where its two rivals fail is the the-ory of freedom as discursive control. I am a free person if I have the kindof control over my actions which is made possible by discourse-friendly rela-tionships, in which I am able to reason together with others by whom I amauthorised as a discursive partner. This solves the recursive problem—my beingdiscursively authorised by others as a reason-responsive agent is sufficient toblock the regress. It solves the bystander problem, for I am identified with mybeliefs and desires insofar as I avow and honour them in discursive exchangewith others. And it can account for why hostile coercion makes me unfree,since such coercion is clearly incompatible with discourse-friendly relationships.

Pettit now turns to the political part of the theory, beginning with a chapterwhich is something of a diversion from the main argument, and in which heshows that free agency, as he has characterised it, can be ascribed to collectivesubjects as well as to individuals. Socially integrated collectivities are capableof discursive control, and can be committed to actions by their prior rationaldeliberations in ways which are not reducible to the rational agency of theindividuals who compose them. Perhaps in part because it is relatively self-contained, I found his argument here entirely compelling.

173


The remaining two chapters spell out what Pettit sees as the appropriatepolitical ideal of freedom. Again there are three candidates: freedom as non-limitation, as non-interference, and as non-domination. Drawing on the theory offreedom as discursive control, Pettit argues that freedom may be threatenednot only by interference but also by being at the mercy of others who, evenif they do not actively interfere with one’s actions, have the power to do so.In other words, one’s freedom may be diminished by other people’s domination.The political ideal of non-domination requires that the state may needto interfere in people’s lives, in non-arbitrary ways, in order to prevent thedomination of some individuals and groups by others. This however runs therisk that interference by the state will constitute another form of domination.Democratic institutions are therefore needed to limit the power of the stateand to ensure that it interferes only to protect genuinely common interests. Suchinstitutions will include the familiar electoral institutions aimed at positivelyidentifying the common interests which should underpin decision-making, butalso contestatory institutions aimed at negative scrutinising of policies, to ensurethat ‘false positives’, policies not sufficiently backed by common interests, are‘edited out’. The political theory which emerges in these last two chapters isone which Pettit has defended at greater length elsewhere, and indeed herecycles some material from the postscript to the paperback edition of hisbook Republicanism. What the present book does is to ground that politicaltheory more deeply in a unified theory of freedom.

It will be apparent that the structure of the book has a pleasing symmetry.Three questions are posed, in each case three candidates for answers arereviewed, and in each case the third candidate is vindicated in the light of theshortcomings of its two rivals. This makes for a clear, well organised andrigorous argument, but I am left wondering whether the neat structure maynot be a little too schematic. In some cases it seems to me to make too sharpa contrast between what are presented as rival positions. In other cases theseparation between different questions seems to me to be not sharp enough.As an example of the former worry, it is not clear to me why the three initialconceptualisations of freedom—as underdetermination, as ownership, and asresponsibility—are rivals between which we have to choose. If the task at thisstage is simply to identify what an adequate theory of freedom must success-fully explain, then I do not see why these three features of the concept should notall be accepted as constraints on any plausible theory. Indeed, the ‘ownership’conception does appear to come into play at later points in the argument,as when Pettit poses the ‘bystander problem’ for the theories of freedom asrational control and voluntary control. Frankfurt’s theory of second-ordervolitions, for instance, is criticised on the grounds that it may still leave mydesires as ones from which I “distance myself ” (p. 54), with which I fail to“identify”, and which I experience “as a more or less impersonal event, notas something that I properly own” (p. 56).

Similarly, the contrast between the theories of ‘rational control’, ‘volitionalcontrol’ and ‘discursive control’ is perhaps overdone. The argument could,I feel, have been advanced as effectively by pressing the question of what itis for control of one’s actions to be ‘rational’. That would have taken us into,

174


and beyond, the idea of ‘volitional control’. The idea of ‘discursive control’ does,admittedly, include an aspect not encompassed by any attempt to elaboratethe concept of rational control—but this brings us to the point where Pettitseems to me to conflate questions which need to be more sharply separated.One of his criticisms of both ‘rational control’ and ‘volitional control’, we haveseen, is the problem of hostile coercion. “The striking thing about hostilecoercion,” he says, “. . . is that it typically leaves the coerced individual with achoice, and with rational control over how that choice is to be made. . . . Andso under the theory of freedom as rational control, you will retain your freedomin such a case” (p. 45). But surely, though the coerced individual is in an obvioussense unfree, there is also a legitimate sense in which his/her choice ofwhether or not to submit to the threat is an exercise of what has traditionallybeen called ‘free will’. That is why philosophers have distinguished between themetaphysical concept and the political concept of freedom. Pettit’s search for aunified theory blurs this distinction by making hostile coercion a test case for atheory of psychological freedom. This is what leads him to argue that his theoryof ‘discursive control’ succeeds “because it begins with the freedom of the personin relation to others” (p. 103). To me this looks like excessive unification.

Indeed, pondering Pettit’s book leads me to think that there are at leastthree or four distinct questions about freedom. There is the metaphysicalquestion about the distinctive features of human action, as such, which leadus to talk of ‘free will’. There is the psychological question of what distin-guishes a free agent from someone acting under the compulsion of irrationalpathologies and obsessions. There is perhaps a further psychological questionabout what makes a person more or less autonomous (and it is interesting thatthe concept of autonomy is hardly mentioned in Pettit’s book). And there isthe political and social question of how various kinds of social institutions andrelationships promote or prevent people’s exercise of their freedom. This lastquestion is in part an evaluative one, but we can identify ‘freedom’ as a valueonly for those beings which are, in a metaphysical sense, already free. Humanbeings, unlike rocks or trees or cows, can be coerced or liberated only becausethey are the kinds of beings which have ‘free will’.

This is only to say that Pettit’s theory does not seem to me to be the lastword in the search for a comprehensive account of freedom. What is import-ant is that he attempts the task, and any alternative theory will in part haveto be judged by whether it can do any better than this impressive attempt.

April 20034421000Book Review PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

April 20034421000Book ReviewTheories of VaguenessBy Cambridge University Press, 2000. xii + 234 pp. £35.00

What are the logic and semantics of vague language? Following on from thejointly edited anthology on vagueness with Peter Smith, this new work by

175


Rosanna Keefe now forcibly presents her own views on the matter. The resultis a monograph which, after considering the major theories of vagueness,comes down firmly in favour of the popular supervaluationist approach.Vagueness is properly considered a semantic phenomenon, contra epistemicand pragmatic accounts, however the revisions to logic and semantics calledfor by many-valued and degree (or fuzzy) theories cannot be adequatelydefended. A far more conservative option is available in the form of superval-uationism which is nonetheless sufficient as an account of the logic andsemantics of vagueness. That, at least, is what is claimed.

The book begins with an introduction to the phenomenon under discus-sion, vagueness, distinguishing it from other phenomena with which it isfrequently confused. Applied to predicates, vagueness is identified with thepresence of borderline cases, the apparent lack of sharp boundaries, and,“typically” (p. 7), susceptibility to sorites paradoxes. (Unfortunately, the inter-esting question whether a less guarded claim concerning the relationshipbetween predicate-vagueness and sorites-susceptibility can be made remainsunanswered.) We are also introduced to various types of vague expressions—unidimensional and multidimensional predicate-vagueness, vague relations,adverbs, quantifiers, modifiers and singular terms. Avoiding certain “trickyquestions” (p. 15) about how to locate the source of vagueness of sentences(for instance, is it due to the singular term therein, the quantifier, or someother constituent?), she suggests taking complete sentences as the primarybearers of vagueness. While laying the groundwork Keefe also seeks to avoid,as far as possible, the maze of issues that arise in considering ontologicalvagueness. Thus after a brief foreshadowing of the positions to be discussedin relation to developing an appropriate logic and semantics of vagueness, adescription of the various forms of and responses to the sorites paradox, andan introduction to that aspect of vagueness commonly taken to make it a trulydeep problem, higher order vagueness, the stage is all but set. Before movingon to a discussion and evaluation of rival theories of vagueness Keefe pausesin Chapter 2 to consider general questions relating to the theorising aboutvagueness itself. As a methodology she advocates the familiar pursuit of areflective equilibrium, seeking an optimum balance between our intuitivejudgements, our more theoretical judgements, and the usual constraints ontheories like simplicity. Having said this, her task is clear. Like much othertheorising in the area, she aims to show that an elegant, coherent account ofvagueness can be given in preferred (supervaluationist) terms that accordswith our judgements better than the rivals considered.

Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 concentrate on a series of rival theories, the authoraiming to build up objections which taken together reveal each theory as “anunattractive package in poor agreement with the crucial opinions” (p. 42).Readers can judge for themselves whether she is successful in making plausibleeach negative thesis. Chapter 3 focuses on Williamson’s epistemic theory. Thetheory, though admitted to be viable, faces objections centring on how vagueexpressions acquire their postulated determinate extensions and our inabilityto know what these extensions are. When coupled with the view that super-valuationism is able to be defended against objections Williamson levels at it,

176


the relative merits of the epistemic view are not enough to justify its statusas preferred theory. Another account that similarly seeks to preserve classicallogic and semantics in the face of vagueness, the pragmatic view advocatedby Burns, fares little better as Chapter 6 (revisiting arguments from an earlierpublished paper) is intended to show. Many-valued accounts are also surveyedand found wanting. Three-valued and infinite-valued logics in particular comein for detailed treatment in Chapter 4, primarily in truth-functional guisethough some non-truth-functional variants are also considered under theheading of many-valued logic. Chapter 5, a revised version of an earlier Mindpaper, subsequently presents powerful and very general objections to degreetheories and associated fuzzy logics where the infinitely many truth-values aretaken to correspond to ‘degrees of truth’. The numerical resources themselveson which such theories rely constrain the theories in such a way that theybecome implausible. That, at least, is the claim. Though the arguments herehave already appeared in print, like those of Chapter 6 they take on newimportance when placed in the context of the overall argument of the book.

Lying somewhere in between the supposedly untenable radicalism ofmany-valued logics and the equally untenable conservatism of epistemic andpragmatic theories lies supervaluationism and it is this view that the final twochapters, Chapters 7 and 8, are devoted to exploring and defending. Believingthat “there is no straightforward argument for the correctness of this view”(p. 152) Keefe applies the cost-benefit method of assessment discussed inChapter 2. Given that some modification to classical logic or semantics isrequired and also that truth-functional many-valued logics fall short of anadequate account, she proposes a non-truth-functional semantics that makesroom for truth-value gaps. And, she maintains, the only plausible way ofdoing this is with a supervaluationist theory.

As developed in Chapter 7, the proposed theory, like all extant supervalu-ationist approaches, builds on classical logic. It is a well-known fact of super-valuationist approaches that they can indeed preserve that logic in spite oftheir allowing for gaps induced by borderline cases. Whilst this conservatismmay appear to be a general benefit, from another perspective the retention ofparticular logical principles in the face of vagueness may be thought to bringwith it costs and, after describing the theory in considerable detail, Keefespends some time defending against them. In particular, the retention of theLaw of Excluded Middle even for vague sentences has sometimes come in forcriticism. Another related source of criticism is the non-standard semanticsadvocated, in particular that of disjunction and that of the existential quanti-fier. The theory allows that there can be true disjunctions with no true disjunctand true existential claims with no true instance—the latter being central tothe way some versions of the sorites paradox are defused. Keefe’s generaldefence against such admittedly counter-intuitive commitments is that in lightof the benefits afforded by the theory the costs, mitigated by further argu-ment, are worth paying. Concerns are also frequently expressed over super-valuationism’s appeal to precisifications and again the objections are squarelyfaced. In the end “the justification for taking the supervaluationary approachto truth-conditions and employing precisifications is that it results in a

177


successful theory of vagueness” (p. 192). This contrasts with her assessment ofa number of variations on the standard supervaluationist approach (for instance,a paraconsistent variation), all of which are deemed to incur indefensible costs.

With the final chapter, Chapter 8, devoted to showing how her theory canaccommodate higher-order vagueness and to defending the theory’s identi-fication of truth with super-truth Keefe rests her case. And the case made isone well worth examining. Given the methodology employed it is necessarilydiffuse, involving as it does a number of complex cost-benefit analyses. Thereare few attempts at knock-down arguments, the author preferring to steadilybuild support on the basis of a wide range of considerations. The concludingthesis therefore is not easily countered. But those interested in the issue ofvagueness will be well rewarded for working through this book whether theyagree with the thesis or not.

April 20034421000Book ReviewReal ConditionalsBy Clarendon Press, 2001. x + 224 pp. £35.00

If for no other reason, this book is worth reading for its wealth of intriguingexamples of real-life conditionals. (The foregoing sentence is an example ofwhat Lycan calls a ‘nonconditional conditional’—a class of sentences whichis discussed in rich detail in an appendix and a postscript.) In a brief review,I can do no more than give the barest outlines of Lycan’s basic theory.According to it, a (genuine) conditional of the form ‘If P, then Q’ has a truth-condition of the form ‘Every possible situation e is such that: P is the case ine ⊃ Q is the case in e’. I use the variable ‘e’, as Lycan does, because he likesto talk of ‘events’ rather than ‘situations’ and, indeed, calls his theory ‘theEvent Theory’ (see Chapter 2)—but the distinction is only terminological. Animportant point to be made clear at once is that possible situations or events,as conceived by Lycan, are very much ‘smaller’ than entire possible worlds.

The kind of possibility that Lycan takes to be in play here is epistemic andspeaker-relative—and, of course, if the theory is to be even remotely plausible,it is necessary to restrict the range of the universal quantifier in the abovetruth-condition in some appropriate way. Lycan accordingly restricts the‘events’ quantified over—the ‘reference-class’, as he describes it—to what hecalls ‘real’ possibilities. These he takes centrally to include certain possibilitiesthat are (in a sense which he tries to make more specific, but which is notpurely psychological) envisaged by the speaker. A further restriction of thereference-class to ‘relevant’ possibilities is imposed, which limits them at leastto ones in which either P or Q or either of their respective negations is true.The result is an account of (genuine) conditionals which represents them as being,in Lycan’s own phrase, ‘parametrically strict’, in contrast with the more familiar‘variably strict’ conditionals of David Lewis’s and Robert Stalnaker’s theories.As Lycan explains, “I shall treat the reference-class as a hidden parameterthat will vary with context in a way yet to be fully described” (p. 23).

178


An important issue now is whether the reference-class should always betaken to include ‘relevant’ events that actually obtain, irrespective of whetherthese are in fact ‘envisaged’ by the speaker. To insist that the answer to thisquestion is ‘yes’ is to impose what Lycan calls ‘the Reality Requirement’,which has an immediate bearing on the question of whether the rule of modusponens unqualifiedly holds for ordinary-language conditionals. Lycan himselfcontends (in Chapter 3) that it does not so hold, agreeing in this respect withthe well-known, if widely disputed, view of Vann McGee.

A much-touted advantage of the Lewis-Stalnaker ‘variably strict’ account ofconditionals is that it represents ordinary-language conditionals as being non-transitive and it might be imagined that Lycan, in holding such conditionalsto be a species of strict (albeit only ‘parametrically’ strict) conditionals wouldbe concerned to defend their transitivity—that is, to defend the validity ofthe inference-pattern ‘If P, then Q ; if Q , then R; therefore, if P, then R’.Not so, however: he claims it as an advantage of his own theory that it, too,represents ordinary-language conditionals as being non-transitive. This mayseem odd, since the truth-condition he supplies for ‘If P, then Q ’—unlike, say,Stalnaker’s—formally guarantees the validity of the foregoing inference-pattern. Lycan acknowledges that it may be complained that, by his account,apparent failures of transitivity really involve a “fallacy of equivocation bytacit parameter shift” (p. 68) and concedes that “[ i]n the . . . technical sensethe point is correct” (p. 68). But he then urges that this technical senseinvolves a conception of an “instance” of an inference-pattern that is unnatur-ally “strict”, announcing that he will “continue to use ‘instance’ in the ordinaryloose and popular sense” (p. 69).

It seems to me, however, that this is playing fast and loose, not just loose.The distinction between formal fallacies and fallacies of equivocation is abso-lutely central to logical theory and, in my opinion, should never be blurredin this way. It seems clear that many of the classic examples used to illustratethe alleged fallacy of transitivity are indeed examples of fallacious reasoning,but the key question is whether these examples are illustrative of a genuinelyformal fallacy or merely a fallacy of equivocation. Lycan seems to want tohave it both ways. (A rather similar complaint may be raised against hischallenge to modus ponens and he himself acknowledges the close relationshipbetween the two issues.)

Whatever one makes of the relative merits of Lycan’s basic theory andthose of his chief rivals, such as Lewis and Stalnaker, no one who has workedin this area could fail to be impressed by the immense erudition and lin-guistic sensitivity that Lycan displays in this book, as well as by his wit andlightness of touch. Anyone who thought that ‘even if ’ conditionals are atall straightforward should be made to read its two fascinating chapters(5 and 6) on this vexed topic. It also contains extensive and insightfuldiscussions of the so-called ‘indicative/subjunctive’ distinction (Chapter 7)and Allan Gibbard’s famous Sly Pete example (Chapter 8, ‘The RiverboatPuzzle’). Altogether, this book is essential reading for all aficionados ofconditionals. ..

179


April 20034421000Book Review ETHICS

April 20034421000Book ReviewNatural GoodnessBy Clarendon Press, 2001. x + 126 pp. £17.99

What are we doing when we make moral judgements? Are we expressingattitudes towards a non-moral world, or are we attempting to describe some-thing moral in the world? If the latter, then what, exactly, constitutes somethingbeing good, say, and makes our judgements true and false? And, if we have(normative) reasons to act, are the grounds of such reasons based on some-thing about our individual desires and preferences, or something external tosuch things? In relation to all of these questions we might concern ourselveswith asking what the good life is and how this life relates to the types of beingwe are and how we live now.

In Natural Goodness Philippa Foot addresses these and other questions. Shewishes to reject both noncognitivism and neo-Humeanism about ethics, thelatter being the familiar claim that, roughly, any individual agent has anormative reason to live and act if and only if that agent at bottom desires,in some sense, to live and act in that way. There is nothing external tothe agent’s desires that constitutes a normative reason and which anythingdescribed as ‘rationality’ could pick out. Her main argument against thisposition (p. 10) is to suggest, following Warren Quinn, that we would notconsider practical rationality so important if “it were rational to seek to fulfilany, even a despicable, desire”. (Similar things could be said about the valuethat actions seemingly have.) Foot wishes to replace neo-Humeanism with atype of neo-Aristotelianism. She aims to locate reasons in the developed char-acteristics and natural traits that we have as humans at this present point inour evolution. Roughly, we have reason to act in certain ways because this willenable us to flourish and become people who are better exemplars of the typesof being we are. She draws an explicit parallel between the “patterns of naturalnormativity” of plants and animals and those she thinks exist for rationalhumans, even though, as she admits, we are more complicated beings.

Along the way she also discusses possible types of moral sceptic, specificallythose that accept that one can distinguish between good and bad ways ofliving but maintain that there is no reason for them to live a good life sincethey don’t care about doing so. Foot’s answer (pp. 64–65) relies on giving adetailed enough picture of the sorts of life that the sceptics are rejecting so asto convince them that no one could reasonably reject living in, say, a trust-worthy fashion. If the sceptics become more radical and ask why they shouldrefrain from performing ‘bad actions’ (considered under that description),Foot says that we must emphasise the conceptual connection between actingwell and acting rationally. If the sceptics want a reason for acting rationallythen we can point out that reasons must come to an end somewhere and thatit is not clear that they are now asking for something intelligible.

This book is worth reading, but as with most philosophical works it has itsbad points along with the good. I shall begin with the good points. First,

180


Natural Goodness is to be welcomed because, in setting much of the currentagenda in ethics, Foot has had the courage to change her ideas and it is goodto have a statement of what she presently thinks. Secondly, I applaud her gen-eral aim and position. It seems to me right that facts about the sorts of beingwe are and can be—things we find illuminating and useful, and the ways inwhich we are compassionate and selfish—should have a bearing on what, infact, we (all) have reason to do. Thirdly, there are quite a few interesting andsuggestive discussions scattered around the book, in particular her commentsabout happiness, teleology, Nietzsche, and the moral development of children.

However, there are defects. Foot is clearly aiming to state a general positionrather than fill in all gaps. But this can be frustrating, particularly when sheis considering so many fundamental ethical questions. This defect is height-ened by the book’s relative shortness leaving her little space in which to givenecessary detail and clarification. Here are three examples.

(i) She never clarifies what she means by ‘desire’. Does it stand for specific,capricious urges, or our deep-seated, long-standing preferences, or what? (Sheseems to employ many characterisations.) This makes a big difference, givenher rejection of the idea that reasons are based on desires and her acceptancethat they are instead based on our natural, normative functioning. How arewe to characterise our natural, long-seated ‘desire’ for friendship and trust,say? What is the difference between a ‘desire’ and a ‘natural pattern’. A clear-cut distinction might be unavailable, but some exploration of this issue isrequired to bolster and clarify the position.

(ii) Similarly, matters are quite opaque when considering the questions withwhich I begin. For example, she admits (pp. 17–19) that Hume’s practicalityrequirement is important and glosses it as saying that there is a necessaryconnection between moral judgement and action, but nothing tighter thanthat is given. It is clear that she wishes to discuss something like BernardWilliams’s type of neo-Humeanism (as given above: roughly, one has a (norm-ative) reason to act if and only if one desires, in some way, to act in thatway). But she also seems interested in many other theses about motivationand judgement (for example, internalism about moral motivation) and herdiscussion slips from one to another with no acknowledgement of the differentideas. And, additionally, she never acknowledges possible subtle answers to thevariety of questions I started with above. For example, some noncognitivistsmight (strictly) deny the existence of a world with moral and reason-givingcharacter yet say that the normative reasons that ‘quasi-exist’ are based onthings external to any individual agent.

(iii) Even if one is sympathetic to her ideas, one might feel that more detailis needed when arguing against scepticism. Her idea is clear enough: to argueagainst sceptics one needs to show that life goes better if, ceteris paribus, onekeeps promises, say. But what discussions there are of such virtues and institu-tions fall far short, in my view, of what is required to convince sceptics (oreven neutrals).

There are also defects of argumentation. I pick out only one here. Whenarguing against noncognitivism she acknowledges that one of its attractions isthe fact that it puts choice centre-stage (p. 21). As she characterises it, the

181


world does not of itself have value and there aren’t reasons external to us, butthe world is invested with value and reason, as it were, because we choose tovalue it in a certain way, we prefer some things to others. In response to thisworry (p. 22) she seems merely to restate her position: we should conceive ofourselves as “recognizing” and responding to reasons. Little if any ‘cutting’reason is given for thinking this to be true. The best move here, in my view,is to argue with John McDowell that (roughly) modern noncognitivism wishesto say that some activities are better than others so as to account for moralrationality and appear plausible. Presumably what is meant here is ‘ethicallybetter’. But this description is unavailable to noncognitivists since they areattempting to construct such concepts from non-moral, conative elements oflike and dislike. There is more to say here on both sides, but a combinationof this idea with Foot’s neo-Aristotelian teleology would be interesting.

As I have said, there are reasons to read this book. It is useful because itsketches a position that is worth developing, but it is infuriating because onewishes for more development.

April 20034421000Book ReviewIdeal Code, Real World. A Rule-consequentialist Theory of MoralityBy Clarendon Press, 2000. xiv + 214 pp. £25.00

In this excellent book Brad Hooker aims to show that the version of rule-consequentialism he favours is attractive and plausible. Two main lines ofargument are central to his strategy. The first seeks to show that rule-consequentialism avoids the often desperately counter-intuitive results towhich more direct forms of consequentialism notoriously seem committed.The second is that, as he formulates it, rule-consequentialism can evadewhat are widely believed to be central difficulties of its own.

Hooker begins with an account of what he takes to be the ground rules fornormative ethical theorising. In looking for the best moral theory, he urges,we are looking for a theory which starts from attractive general beliefs aboutmorality, which is internally consistent, which coheres with our consideredmoral judgements in reflective equilibrium, which explains the correctnessof our considered judgements by justifying them from an impartial stand-point and which helps us to make progress in thinking about difficult moralproblems.

Given these ground rules, the theory Hooker thinks most promising is hisown which says (simplifying a bit) that an act is wrong iff it is forbiddenby the code of rules whose internalisation by the overwhelming majority ofpersons would have maximum expected value in terms of well-being. Thecosts of getting the rules in question internalised by the majority in eachnew generation are to be factored into our estimates of expected values.

In the light of Hooker’s ground-rules, the many counter-intuitive upshotsof a more direct consequentialism would leave the latter in some trouble.Most centrally, in Shelly Kagan’s terminology, direct consequentialism

182


undermines the many agent-centred options and constraints that common sensemorality would insist on. To take the case of options, the worry here is oneabout the demandingness of direct consequentialism. Direct consequential-ist morality has imperialistic aspirations, threatening to take over the wholepractical domain. For the direct consequentialist’s single, massively exigentrule—Optimise!—is always in play, forbidding us to do whatever falls short ofcompliance.

Hooker’s rule-consequentialism is certainly demanding also. It demands, heargues, that we should help the needy even at significant cost to ourselves.But, he suggests, following Garrett Cullity, that the demandingness may bereined in by assessing the costs to an agent of aiding others aggregatively, overtime, rather than iteratively, taking each new situation separately. Preferringthis to a more demanding rule of the sort a more direct consequentialist mightfavour is motivated by reference to the internalisation costs of such moredemanding rules which would most likely, Hooker argues, be astronomical.

Rule-consequentialism had better not be the theory that you should dowhatever is demanded by the optimal rules, except where doing somethingelse would be optimal in which case you should do that. For that is justa foolishly round-about way of stating act-consequentialism. But if rule-consequentialism tells us we should, at least sometimes, obey the rules evenwhere this is suboptimal, how can it be consequentialist at all? Here Hookerclaims that, for his theory, the second horn of this dilemma is blunted. Thissecond horn would be very sharp for a form of rule-consequentialism that wasgrounded on the thought that what ought most fundamentally to concern us,practically speaking, is to promote the good. But Hooker does not ground histheory on this thought. He grounds it on the thought that the best moral the-ory is the theory that scores highest in terms of the ground rules he defendsat the outset. It is on that basis, and not in terms of some guiding consequen-tialist master-intuition, that the theory is recommended as attractive andplausible. Perhaps someone might grant this attractiveness and plausibilitybut insist that the theory is nonetheless not really consequentialist. Hookerdisagrees but stresses, sensibly, that whether the theory is attractive and plaus-ible is very much more important than what we choose to call it.

These are among the most central points Hooker develops, but there ismuch more of interest in this book. Thus, for example, the suggestive andintriguing Chapter 5 refines the characterisation of his position into whatHooker calls wary rule-consequentialism. This allows for considerable modestywith respect to our ability ever to determine with any great accuracy whatthe consequences in terms of well-being of our internalising any given codeof rules would be. It is enough, he suggests, to identify codes the consequencesof which are, so far as we can reasonably predict, as good as any other. Tohave any real bearing on practice, this requires that we are not always hope-lessly in the dark as to the likely consequences of the various possible codes.Hooker is sanguine that this is far enough from being the case that we can atleast narrow down the candidates considerably but concedes that the result isstill liable to be a many-way tie. The tie is to be broken by adopting the codethat is closest to conventional morality as, given that conventional morality is

183


what most of those around us remain guided by, this is abundantly warrantedby dovetailing considerations of coordination and fairness.

I remain unpersuaded that Hooker’s view is the correct one. But he hascertainly succeeded in his aim of showing rule-consequentialism to be attract-ive and plausible enough to be worthy of serious philosophical attention andhe has given those who continue to disagree much work to do in constructinga case against him. The book is very well-written, extremely clear and, givenits wealth of content, wonderfully concise. It deserves to be very widely readand extensively discussed.

April 20034421000Book Review POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

April 20034421000Book ReviewOn Immigration and RefugeesBy Routledge, 2001. xiv + 160 pp. £30.00 cloth, £7.99 paper

The populist drifts in Austria, in Italy and, very recently, in France remind usonce more, if necessary, how emotionally a population reacts towards the fearthat its nation could be ‘submerged’ by refugees or immigrants. Politics, there-fore, unless it wants to give way to the pressures of the street or to demagogyhas to clear up what states owe to foreigners knocking at their doors, and “onwhat identity a state should be founded” (p. 4).

On Immigration and Refugees examines some of the fundamental issues relatedto the rights and the duties a state has towards individuals seeking to enterthe land over which it rules (p. 27) and the rights peoples have to be protectedagainst submersion by a foreign culture. The author chose not to proceedanalytically—he makes no attempt to ground in a systematic way the rightsand duties in question. He gives preference to facts, denounces politicalstatements which exemplify Great Britain’s—and Europeans’ in general—very restrictive and racist policy of immigration and challenges the argumentscommonly put forward by demagogues to justify their hard core policy.

The first part reflects on fundamental issues underlying the basic individualright to leave one’s country, as well as on the collective rights and duties whichcorrespond to it, and denounces the arguments of those who put forward thedangers of a too liberal policy of immigration for a cultural identity. Thesecond part gathers, with the precision of an historian, examples of unjusttreatment of immigrants and of discriminatory political decisions adopted inGreat Britain to restrain immigration from 1961 to the present. The purposeof both parts, however, is to show how politics easily gives way to the pressuresof the street in order to gain votes.

What right do we have to live in the country of our choice? The upshot ofthe discussion is not that states have a fundamental right to refuse entry tothose who seek refuge in its territory and then set out a list of exceptionswhich render that right void. On the contrary, the principle of open bordersis seen as the norm from which deviation can be accepted only in exceptional

184


circumstances. Dummett admits only two exceptions as valid: in case of realdanger of cultural submersion and in case of danger of serious overpopula-tion (p. 73). The notion of a danger of submersion, being regularly waved byracists and xenophobes, should however be interpreted with care. There issubmersion when important factors shaping the identity of groups, like religion,language or culture, are in danger of becoming minority concerns or of beingdissipated. According to the author, this danger is however mostly wronglyemphasised: “In normal circumstances, that is, in countries which are neitherpart of a colonial empire nor under the rule of oppressive invaders, thereis no danger whatever that even a relatively high level of immigration willthreaten the native culture or population with being submerged” (p. 20).A “vigorous culture” ( ibid.), as the author states—regrettably, without explain-ing what he means by it—will easily assimilate new features and benefit frominteraction with new cultures.

If it is a universal basic right, as the author is convinced, for everyone to livesomewhere, it is also a fundamental right to be welcomed in a new countryfor those who have been expelled from their home. This recognised right, how-ever, has no corresponding duty: no state has any obligation to admit statelesspeople expelled from the country in which they were living. Dummett advancesa concrete proposal to solve the problem. A commission ought to be establishedby the United Nations with as many nations as possible induced to complywith its adjudications (p. 30). On the basis of the individual wishes of refugeesor immigrants, their linguistic, cultural and religious background, as well as thelocation of their relatives, the commission would decide upon the country ofadoption, which in its turn would be bound to grant citizenship to the candidate.

States have a duty to treat refugees with humanity. The author does rightto emphasise this point with regards to the widespread practice of relegatingthe claimants to detention centres. Regrettably, however, he doesn’t considerthe steps that a successful immigrant and refugee policy should take in orderto integrate the newcomers and to allow them to feel at home. The individualright of refuge or immigration is indeed not exhausted in the state’s duty ofletting the applicants in. Those coming from a foreign culture, speaking aforeign language, should have the necessary financial help and supportivemanagement to settle down somewhere, to have a chance of finding a goodjob, of not being exploited and of sending their children to good schools.Only so might they once become “first-class citizens” (p. 10). This procedure,however, has a price and the defender of open borders owes it to his or heropponents to discuss the state’s duty as well as the costs that a good integra-tion policy represents for a society. This is all the more necessary sinceDummett—convincingly, from the humanitarian point of view—sets verygenerous criteria for being entitled to claim asylum in a country; for him,not only political but also social criteria should indeed be considered: “allconditions that deny someone the ability to live where he is in minimalcondition for a decent human life ought to be ground for claiming refugeelsewhere” (p. 37).

A study which denounces the demagogy of politicians claiming wronglythat the boat is full or that the cultural identity is threatened by immigrants

185


becoming a majority should spend some more time on the important questionof the integration of foreigners. Dummett’s declared convictions that onlydespair at intolerable living conditions motivates anyone to leave his countryand to flee to another, and that “to refuse help to others suffering from orthreatened by injustice is to collaborate with that injustice” (p. 34) tend toabandon those who seek for a more humane refugee and immigration policybut fear the increase of abuses and, above all, the increase of mani-festationsof intolerance in times of poor economic conditions. Moreover, by deliber-ately refusing to take some unwanted side-effects of integration failures intoconsideration, he takes too partial a view of the whole discussion which, onemay fear, will not very much force the populists and their adherents to changetheir view.

April 20034421000Book ReviewPolitical PhilosophyBy Routledge, 2001. xv + 392 pp. £50.00 cloth, £14.95 paper

The Fundamentals of Philosophy series edited by John Shand promises anengrossing, accurate and lively introduction written by an enthusiastic andknowledgeable teacher, suitable for both the undergraduate and the generalreader. Dudley Knowles has produced just this for political philosophy. Themain body of the text devotes a chapter to each of liberty, rights, distributivejustice, political obligation and democracy, and introduces Hobbes, Locke,Mill, Berlin, Rawls and Nozick, with many other thinkers also referred to.The main chapters are preceded by a chapter on utilitarianism, chosen as atheory which has been well thought through and against which many otherapproaches in political philosophy define themselves. The structure of thischapter, itself containing sections on liberty, rights, distributive justice and thestate couched in terms of a utilitarian understanding, thus reflects the struc-ture of the rest of the book. Prior to that on utilitarianism there is a helpfulintroductory chapter. Throughout there is a masterly grasp of common-sensemoral and political thinking which is never at the mercy of the wide range ofapproaches presented, never falls into unnecessary abstraction and whichmakes the book a firmly reliable source for undergraduate understanding ofthe subject.

The chapter on utilitarianism is standard fare clearly presented; the chapteron liberty is similarly standard in structure, and updated in its considerationof Philip Pettit’s and others’ ‘republican’ theory: “the real lesson we shouldlearn from the republican theory of liberty is the necessary complexity of anypersuasive account of the value of political liberty” (p. 88). “Our liberty is notenhanced by the opportunity to do evil with impunity” (p. 127). Knowlessuggests that “freedom is justified as instrumental to the worthy activities itpermits and as the necessary precondition of an autonomous life” (p. 97). Thechapter on rights explains Hohfeld’s analysis, looks at group and individualrights without assuming that unthinking individualism which some rights

186


theorists often suppose to be essential to the notion of rights, it looks at rightsand interests and it looks at rights and utility. The chapter on distributivejustice begins with Nozick’s entitlement theory and proceeds through Hayekand Hegel to a consideration of human needs, followed by a careful consid-eration of Rawls’s theory of justice. The next chapter explains the problem ofpolitical obligation, showing why it is not merely the problem of why we areobliged to obey the law: “there is nothing odd about the thought that citizensmay have duties to volunteer some service to the state or vote in elections incircumstances where such conduct is not required of them on pain of sanc-tion” (p. 242). There is here a lengthy consideration of the nature of politicalconsent, concluding with the call “If you don’t want to be bound by a decisionto strike, don’t take part in the ballot” (p. 274). Consent is essential, forKnowles: “If folk don’t actually consent, whether in an original contract orconstitutional settlement, expressly, tacitly or in the manner of voters, theirconsent cannot be used to ground their duties. This result will not satisfy thestate, which is ambitious. It will seek to find other grounds for imputing dutiesto its recalcitrant citizens . . .” (p. 275). The structure of Knowles’s presenta-tion at this point is to provide a range of grounds which the state might relyupon. The various arguments are usually introduced as if they had a prag-matic force rather than any intrinsic merit. The state “seeks to capture allcitizens in its net, but if citizens don’t do the things from which their obliga-tions may be deduced to follow, they can’t be captured” (p. 296). The finalchapter on democracy is much less utilitarian than one might commonly findin an introductory book and centres on Rousseau’s notion of “an ideal type”(p. 311) in its concentration on the general will. This is not, however, a slavishacceptance of the position: “It is just as well that both Rousseau and Mill werewrong. Democracy does not need the rigid and stifling homogeneity thatRousseau described in order to flourish and it need not produce the conform-ity Mill deplored” (p. 325). Nevertheless, “the principles of the general will dofind a place in vindicating a decision procedure to establish a legally bindingsolution” (p. 341).

Despite the introductory nature of the book it is not merely derivative.Knowles often explains things in his own distinctive way. Early in the bookhe acknowledges (p. 13) that it is Hegel from whom he obtains his picture ofour moral repertoire. Sometimes he is too quick to ignore philosophical dif-ficulties: thus he remarks “I spoke of diminishing marginal utility as a ‘law’,but I cannot claim to have much evidence for it” (p. 54). His reference hereto Lipsey’s 1965 view that this law is “unscientific” (p. 347, n. 33) does nothelp the reader towards much more recent reflection on the philosophy ofeconomic theory. Again, he notes “that it is technically possible, within a demo-cracy, for a majority of persons to be in a minority on a majority of occasions”(pp. 62–63), and rightly hints that this does not just reflect a problem in demo-cracy but in utilitarianism itself (p. 24). Yet the reader is not shown thatthis is no mere ‘technicality’, but, as Roy Sorensen showed in his 1982 PoliticalStudies research note, a serious risk for an arbitrarily large majority. Again,amalgamating individual desires into a single social outcome is a problem forpolitical philosophy in this context, but there is no reference to Kenneth

187


Arrow’s ‘general possibility theorem’. Yet an introductory book can veryappropriately slide over many issues, and not all can be pointed to in passing. ’

April 20034421000Book Review AESTHETICS

April 20034421000Book ReviewMerit, Aesthetic and EthicalBy Oxford University Press, 2001. viii + 252 pp. £37.50

Marcia Eaton’s Merit, Aesthetic and Ethical is a welcome addition to the nowflourishing literature concerned with the relationship between art (and/or theaesthetic dimension of human being) and the moral dimension of human life.She writes from within the analytical tradition in aesthetics, and she writeswell. Most of the chapters in the present book originated as independentessays, and they cover a wide variety of topics. On most of these topics, Eatonhas something useful and interesting to say. Moreover, she has attempted tointegrate these various topics by relating them to the general theme of therelationship of art (or the ‘aesthetic’) to ethics. However, her settled view onthis relationship is somewhat elusive—not just because the view is highlyqualified, but because she may be denying that there is any general relation-ship that can be usefully formulated. Hence, it often easier to understand hernegative claims rather than her positive ones.

The book consists of 14 chapters sorted into four Parts. In the four chaptersof Part I, Eaton gives her own general account of art and the aesthetic, ofaesthetic properties, aesthetic experience and aesthetic justification. She char-acterises the thrust of this Part as ‘anti-formalist’. Her basic claim is that theaesthetic is ‘socially constructed’ as is art. This can be seen as a very sensibledevelopment of what used to be called the ‘institutional theory’ of art. Herdiscussion of the aesthetic is strengthened by her comparison of her theory totheories of the social construction of emotion. She argues, convincingly to thisreader, that the aesthetic response is learned, culture-bound, and sociallyprescribed or proscribed. (She is not entirely clear, in terms of the claim aboutsocial prescription, whether she is claiming (1) that one often needs to knowabout a culture’s ‘moral system’ in order to understand its aesthetic produc-tions and concerns or (2) that one must share or endorse such a moral systemin order to participate in its aesthetic enterprise. The latter is obviously amuch stronger claim, and not one that would fit well with her general view.)

Despite the social construction of the aesthetic, Eaton preserves a core ofwhat formalist theories have wanted to assert, by claiming that “An aestheticresponse is a response to aesthetic properties of an object or event, that is tointrinsic properties considered worthy of attention (perception or reflection)within a particular culture” (p. 10). Her notion of an ‘intrinsic property’ is,however, epistemic and not ontological. Perception is a necessary conditionfor ascertaining whether an object or event has an intrinsic property, butmuch more than immediate perception might need to be brought by the

188


observer to the object or event in order for an aesthetic response to occur.Her argument that aesthetic properties are not supervenient, nor do theyneed to be so in order for aesthetic justification to be possible seems utterlypersuasive to me.

In Part II, she argues against what she calls ‘separatism’ and for the ‘ser-iousness’ of the aesthetic. One would like to see a more sharply formulatedaccount of separatism in order to judge the success of her attack on it and thenature of her own view. Some forms of ‘separatism’ may just assert that theaesthetic and the ethical are different. Since Eaton herself assumes this, thiscan’t be what she’s attacking. It’s harder to find a clear example of someonewho thinks that a work of art cannot be judged morally, or that a morallyuplifting work cannot be judged aesthetically. Indeed, it was the establishmentof the autonomy of the aesthetic in the eighteenth century that raised thequestion of the relationship of the ethical and the aesthetic. Most peopleinferred, from the separation of the ethical and the aesthetic, that there wasno entailment relationship between a moral judgement and an aesthetic one.A morally good work of art could be aesthetically bad, and an aestheticallygood work of art could be morally bad. Does Eaton mean to deny this? (Torefer to ethics and aesthetics as “mutually nurturing” does not answer thisquestion.) Of course nineteenth-century figures like Flaubert or Wilde oftenseem to be asserting the total independence of art from morality—but theymean ‘morality’ as the bourgeois values of contemporary society—‘morality’as a descriptive sociological term. Eaton, throughout this book, is very specificand detailed about what she means by the aesthetic, but she has very little tosay about what she thinks morality is; hence, her account of the relationshipbetween them is not specific.

In Part III, she gives what might be called case studies of the relationshipbetween art and the aesthetic and the ethical, broadly construed as how oneought to live one’s life.

There is a marvellous discussion of Anthony Powell’s novels as presentinga paradigm of the aesthetic life, an interesting discussion of the conceptof sentimentality as a concept which contains irreducible elements of theaesthetic and the ethical, an account of the way in which some works of artcan teach moral lessons, and some examples of deliberation which containboth ethical and aesthetic features. Once again, however, this section fails toarticulate a relationship between the ethical and the aesthetic, other than thatthere are situations to which both are relevant. Even a pretty strong formof separatism could acknowledge that. (Of course, there could be a strongaestheticism which simply denied the existence of the ethical, and Eaton’sexamples and arguments would be relevant to that—but it is difficult to findhistorical exemplars of such a view, though some have suggested Flaubert, orNietzsche, or Wilde, as candidates.)

In Part IV, she presents what she calls ‘consequences’ of her overall viewfor three different areas—the environment, communities and education. (Likemany recent discussions in political philosophy of ‘community’, Eaton’s doesnot provide any clear criterion of identity for what counts as a single com-munity. Must a community share a common culture? Can communities be

189


defined ethnically? Geographically? Religiously? We would need answers tothese kinds of questions to assess her account.)

The parts of this book contain many valuable and interesting discussionsof a wide variety of topics in aesthetics but not a clear theoretical account ofthe relationship of the aesthetic and the ethical. As I said above, this may bebecause all of Eaton’s argument can be construed as an argument for thenegation of the claim that there is no relationship between the ethical and theaesthetic. It is only in the context of the history of twentieth-century analyticalaesthetics, that Eaton’s main claim would seem to need any argument at all.

Of course, art and non-artistic aesthetic experience are important forhuman life—after all these are things that are valued in themselves by humanbeings. Of course, art can teach moral lessons (though it needn’t.) Of course,the aesthetic can be a central component of a rich, deliberately lived humanlife. It is only in the context of a philosophical tradition in aesthetics that triedto model itself on analytical ‘meta-ethics’ that such obvious truths could everhave seemed to be denied. It often seems, however, that Eaton wants to makea stronger claim than this negation (as when she cites Tolstoy as an influence).Does she want to say that we could not have great art that is morally bad?Does she mean to characterise morality sociologically (as whatever particularpractices and rules about conduct a society has) or substantively (as the prac-tices or rules a society ought to have) when she asserts the connection betweenaesthetics merit and ethical merit? Unfortunately, despite the many virtues ofthis book, the answers to these questions are not clear.

April 20034421000Book ReviewMusic and Humanism: An Essay in the Aesthetics of MusicBy .. Oxford University Press, 2000. xii + 221 pp. £30 cloth

In this trenchant, wide-ranging study, Sharpe focuses on aesthetic questionsunique, or uniquely important, to the art of music. Some are familiar, buttheir setting is original. Like Roger Scruton’s recent work, the book focusesalmost entirely, and consciously, on Western art music, with occasional refer-ences to jazz and rock and very few to non-Western musics. The title isappropriate, for like Scruton also, Sharpe is a humanist thinker who has littleinterest either in scientific musical analysis or the pseudo-disciplines influ-enced by literary theory which oppose it.

In Part One, the author defends the cognitivist view that emotional qualit-ies are found in the music itself, not just in the listener or composer. Sharpeconcedes that some emotional predicates imply something about the com-poser—if the music is witty, so are they—or the listener. If the music is mov-ing, exciting or exhilarating, then standardly the listener will be moved by it,though they will not be made sad by sad music. But music is not to be valuedfor its emotional qualities as such, he concludes. Expression is later relocatedin the relation between interpreter and performance. Performance should beviewed as an expression or “assertion” of the work (pp. 130–34).

190


Sharpe persuasively argues that most writers exaggerate the role of pleas-ure in motivating interest in the arts (pp. 31–39). His cognitivist standpointclaims that to have an interest as opposed to merely taking pleasure in music,implies having ideas about it—we discern a piece’s form and how it develops,and make comparisons between works and performances. I value a piece ofmusic for what it is, not just for the pleasurable experiences I gain from it;indeed I may value the experiences but not the work, Sharpe argues. (How-ever, there may be plausible analyses of the pleasure listeners gain which donot regard music as a means to independent sensations of pleasure.)

The chapter ‘Music, Rhetoric and Oratory’ argues, in opposition to thecommon cognitivist view that music’s expressiveness derives from a parallelwith human expressive behaviour, that the cognitive elements in music—“The recognition of a theme on its return, the identification of a canon, therealization that a movement is approaching its peroration”—originate in animitation of rhetoric (p. 82). Music was once centrally vocal and dramatic,but with the hegemony of instrumental music, these origins became obscured:“[Perhaps] music was once very closely tied to rhetorical intentions, and hassince then developed into a formal art”, with no essential linguistic association—but this is unlikely (p. 80). Sharpe allows that his account works best formonodic music. His claim that unsupported melody implies harmony isdoubtful especially for non-Western musics.

Part II concerns ontology and performance. Sharpe distinguishes Platonist,nominalist and deflationary accounts and outlines his scepticism that therecan be an analysis of the concept of the musical work, arguing thatapproaches which see music as product or as performance are irreconcilable.Yet—against Lydia Goehr—he claims that sixteenth-century composersbehaved as if they possessed the work-concept; Byrd and Tallis had a licenceto publish music, suggesting that music was performed in the absence of thecomposer. (He seems to gloss over the fact that composer and work are cor-relative concepts.)

There follows an absorbing discussion of the canon. Sharpe separates ideo-logy as Marxist false consciousness connoting exploitation, from its broader,neutral sense of a system of thought identifying a culture or subculture, whichconditions—and distorts—how things are seen and described. A set of beliefscan be ideological yet also true. The canon acts like an ideology in privilegingcertain responses to certain figures whilst marginalising others; it “expresses andpreserves the dominance of the Austro-German tradition” (p. 116). Yet radicalwriting on the arts is wrong to make dominance central, and to regard high cultureas enshrining social superiority in those who enjoy it—it is not clear that itserves anyone’s interests that we should believe in the league table which thecanon implies, Sharpe responds, except perhaps Austro-German cultural interests.

“The canon is both inevitable and damaging” yet it “gets matters broadlyright” (pp. 117, 120). It is damaging because it raises Telemann aboveRameau, Schumann’s symphonies above Berwald’s, and so on; yet necessarybecause works which have passed the test of time, offering a likely return oneffort devoted to them, should be recognised, primarily for the sake of musicalbeginners. Sharpe’s view, therefore, is that the canon is ideological, yet since

191


ideological beliefs are privileged, its choice of composers is rejected at somecost. His account of this is hard to follow, however. “In my subculture,” hewrites, “to love classical music is to be worthy of respect . . . . A lack ofmusicality is regrettable. But one cannot love music and not care for Mozartor Schubert; they are bench-marks in a way that even Beethoven is not; anda distaste for Mahler, Wagner, Brahms, or Tchaikovsky is permissible wherea lack of interest in Haydn, Mozart, Bach, or Schubert is not” (p. 115). I willpursue this issue shortly.

Sharpe aims to reconcile responsibility to the work with the interpreter’screativity. Works of art permit a variety of interpretations, while excludingothers, he argues; each interpretation foregrounds episodes in the work whichillustrate its preferred themes. He has much of interest to say on the move-ment for authentic performance, which he broadly favours. The basic condi-tions for such performances are: “those in which the music sounds as it wouldhave done at the time of composition had it been played by competent musi-cians familiar with the style and performing conventions, playing on decentinstruments which the composer assumed . . .” (p. 146). Against the argumentthat our ears cannot be innocent—the dissonances which open Mozart’sDissonance Quartet are no longer shocking—Sharpe responds that wecan acquire and internalise knowledge of the original milieu. Those whoapproach art purely on the basis of their own culture are like tourists whotravel only to eat familiar food and practice their own customs, he believes.However, his claim that the limits of viable interpretation are given by whatauthors could have intended in the culture of their time seems very conserv-ative; why should ‘authenticity’ be required as well as permitted?

The concluding chapters discuss an under-explored wider sense of sincerityand authenticity, involved for instance in the idea that Brahms was guilty of“artistic error”—for writing in the language of Schumann rather than a post-Lisztian or post-Wagnerian style, thus showing a “conscious reluctance tomeet the demands a culture makes” (p. 167—similarly Richard Strauss).I would claim that it is at least a matter of dispute, within any meaningfullydefined contemporary art music subculture, whether Brahms was a conserv-ative or the progressive which Schoenberg claimed him to be; and indeedlater Sharpe claims that the general assumption that music progresses may bean example of an ideology that distorts musical experience (p. 172).

A more basic question is whether Sharpe’s account of ideology and thecanon is coherent. It is not clear why, if it is so valuable, the test of time shouldnot yield objective and non-ideological results, nor why the canon could notcome to incorporate those composers whose music really does offer a returnfor those who devote time to them. Sharpe remarks that ideology is a uni-versal phenomenon, and recognises that he is its prisoner; yet his accountsuggests Carnap’s contrast between internal and external questions. If it doesmake sense to step outside an ideological framework such as the Westerncanon and attempt to assess its efficacy, there must be external questionswhich are non-ideological.

In the final Part Sharpe elaborates on music as a humanist art. Thoughhe has argued that music is not a language of the emotions, the language

192


metaphor retains its power and expresses the humanist ideal, he claims. Theimportant sense of understanding music involves following it, and heremelody is central—though regrettably now absent from nearly all “advancedmusic”. Though less impervious to the value of contemporary compositionthan Scruton, Sharpe believes that “present-day composers have been dealta rotten hand by history” (p. 208). He concedes that much poor music isfollowable, and that much good music has other virtues, but gives short shriftto these in the case of contemporary composition: “Commentators tell usabout the wonderful and distinctive sounds [and textures] we can hear. . . .The problem is that the fascination of mere sound is too close to the child’sfirst wonder at music, and too close to our interest in the music from othercivilisations” (p. 207).

These criticisms are unconvincing. ‘Sound’ in this sense—and it is not‘mere sound’—is central to the genius of composers, such as Debussy, whomSharpe admires; while, limiting cases of postmodernism aside, classical organ-ising principles such as motivic development, for instance, retain a place inthe mainstream of Western composition. Like many music theorists, not allof them philosophers—I’m thinking of recent books by Roger Scruton andLeonard Meyer—Sharpe issues ex cathedra pronouncements against contem-porary music while seemingly ill-acquainted with it. I’d encourage the authorto attend the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, where he wouldhear exciting music that refuted his suggestion of history’s “rotten hand”.Despite these criticisms, however, I learned much from this book. It is clearlywritten and should be highly recommended to students of aesthetics. Musicand Humanism is an honest, thought-provoking and often passionate piece ofwork—not such common qualities in Philosophy today.

aesthetics

Documents