On the Character of a Moral Saint
In her famous article "Moral Saints," Susan Wolf argues that the character that one would have to have in order to be a moral saint is not one that seems particularly attractive as a personal ideal. We have good reason, according to Wolf, to be glad that neither we nor those with whom we are close are moral saints, because if we or they were our lives would be in certain important respects impoverished. If we were moral saints, for example, we would be unable to pursue many of the projects that, given our unsaintliness, actually give shape and meaning to our lives. The single-minded focus on "improving the welfare of others or of society as a whole," as Wolf puts it, that would be required of a moral saint would, in part because it would eliminate the possibility of pursuing more self-regarding projects, make us less interesting and less well-rounded individuals.
While some of what Wolf says about the costs of moral sainthood seems plausible enough (after all, we surely do think that it's quite valuable for individuals to develop well-rounded characters, and that one way in which we are able to do that is by engaging in personal projects that help to form such characters), much of her description of what a moral saint would have to be like strikes me as extremely misguided. She says, for example, that
Returning to the role of personal projects in our lives, Wolf goes on to point out that because a moral saint will have to devote nearly all of her time to helping others,
Rather, the kind of character that it seems most appropriate to attach the label "moral saint" to is best represented by people such as Gandhi or John Brown, individuals who, unlike most of their contemporaries, both recognized prevailing moral atrocities as such, and dedicated their lives to trying to end those atrocities. And if it is people like this who represent the ideal of a moral saint, then while many will still find the prospect of themselves living the life of a saint unappealing, few will deny, at least when looking back on the saints of the past, that those who have lived such lives possessed characters that deserve our admiration. Gandhi surely possessed a character that is worth aspiring to, and it is absurd to think that his life was "strangely barren" in virtue of his focusing on the specifically moral projects that he did rather than on developing his oboe skills or backhand (or some other such goods). On the contrary, it is the fact that he dedicated so much of his life to opposing moral atrocities that makes his a kind of character that is worth aspiring to. Many of his contemporaries may have found him a strange character that they preferred to avoid, but that is likely because they did not, as he did, recognize the prevailing atrocities for what they were, or at least did not accord them the kind of importance that they deserved (this is perhaps even more clearly the case with respect to John Brown and the other dedicated Abolitionists of his time).
Of course there are many reasons that, at any given time in history (surely including our own), many people are likely to be put off in some ways by those who come closest to being moral saints. First, and most obviously, such people will always be outside the norm of behavior and commitment, and this always makes many people uncomfortable. Second, those who come closest to being moral saints remind those of the rest of us who at least recognize the moral atrocities that the saint is fighting of how much better, morally speaking, we could (and perhaps should) be doing in our own lives, and being made to reflect on this is likely to make most people at least somewhat uncomfortable. And of course those who don't recognize the atrocities as atrocities at all (as most did not recognize slavery in the early days of the Abolition movement) will simply believe that the saint is wasting his life opposing what is the natural order of things, or what is justified for reasons that the saint does not recognize.
The problem for the moral saint is that she is often also a moral visionary, ahead of her time in recognizing the moral failures of the prevailing order of things. And so she will necessarily appear to others as a kind of strange character, as someone detached from the values and ways of life that shape the characters of her compatriots. But often enough those who appear to others in their own time as undesirable characters whom one is better to avoid will be recognized by future generations as the truly admirable individuals that they were. And surely to live a life that will have this result is not something that we should think undesirable.
While some of what Wolf says about the costs of moral sainthood seems plausible enough (after all, we surely do think that it's quite valuable for individuals to develop well-rounded characters, and that one way in which we are able to do that is by engaging in personal projects that help to form such characters), much of her description of what a moral saint would have to be like strikes me as extremely misguided. She says, for example, that
[The moral saint] will have the standard moral virtues to a nonstandard degree. He will be patient, considerate, even-tempered, hospitable...He will be very reluctant to make negative judgments of other people...A moral saint will have to be very, very nice. It is important that he not be offensive. The worry is that, as a result, he will have to be dull-witted or humorless or bland.It is completely mysterious to me why Wolf would assume that a moral saint would have to possess these virtues to a "nonstandard degree." After all, surely there are situations that, morally speaking, call for one to react not with patience or even-temperedness, but rather with their opposites. Observing the horribly unjust treatment of others is just one obvious example of a case in which moral common sense tells us that the morally appropriate response is a certain sort of outrage, and, at the very least, a certain kind of negative judgment about the perpetrators of the injustice. The moral thing to do will not be to be "very, very nice", or to avoid offending the perpetrators of injustice. Rather, the moral saint will be much more likely than the non-saint to confront such people, and to make her disapproval of their conduct as clear as possible, in the hope that by doing so she might effect a change in their future behavior. It's true that the saint will not be any more hostile than is warranted by the situation, but plenty of situations warrant significant hostility, and I see no reason to think that a moral saint shouldn't be inclined to exhibit such hostility when it is warranted.
Returning to the role of personal projects in our lives, Wolf goes on to point out that because a moral saint will have to devote nearly all of her time to helping others,
...necessarily he is not reading Victorian novels, playing the oboe, or improving his backhand. Although no one of the interests or tastes in the category containing these latter activities could be claimed to be a necessary element in a life well lived, a life in which none of these possible aspects of character are developed may seem to be a life strangely barren.This is much less implausible than the thoughts I quoted above, but I still think there is something importantly misguided about Wolf's thinking, not necessarily about the value of lives that include the goods she mentions, but about what we should, indeed what in some cases we do, think about the characters of those whom we might legitimately describe as moral saints. The picture that Wolf paints of the moral saint as dull, passive, and lacking the kind of well-developed character and successful nonmoral ground projects that attract us to those whom we most admire, is, it seems to me, quite far off the mark.
Rather, the kind of character that it seems most appropriate to attach the label "moral saint" to is best represented by people such as Gandhi or John Brown, individuals who, unlike most of their contemporaries, both recognized prevailing moral atrocities as such, and dedicated their lives to trying to end those atrocities. And if it is people like this who represent the ideal of a moral saint, then while many will still find the prospect of themselves living the life of a saint unappealing, few will deny, at least when looking back on the saints of the past, that those who have lived such lives possessed characters that deserve our admiration. Gandhi surely possessed a character that is worth aspiring to, and it is absurd to think that his life was "strangely barren" in virtue of his focusing on the specifically moral projects that he did rather than on developing his oboe skills or backhand (or some other such goods). On the contrary, it is the fact that he dedicated so much of his life to opposing moral atrocities that makes his a kind of character that is worth aspiring to. Many of his contemporaries may have found him a strange character that they preferred to avoid, but that is likely because they did not, as he did, recognize the prevailing atrocities for what they were, or at least did not accord them the kind of importance that they deserved (this is perhaps even more clearly the case with respect to John Brown and the other dedicated Abolitionists of his time).
Of course there are many reasons that, at any given time in history (surely including our own), many people are likely to be put off in some ways by those who come closest to being moral saints. First, and most obviously, such people will always be outside the norm of behavior and commitment, and this always makes many people uncomfortable. Second, those who come closest to being moral saints remind those of the rest of us who at least recognize the moral atrocities that the saint is fighting of how much better, morally speaking, we could (and perhaps should) be doing in our own lives, and being made to reflect on this is likely to make most people at least somewhat uncomfortable. And of course those who don't recognize the atrocities as atrocities at all (as most did not recognize slavery in the early days of the Abolition movement) will simply believe that the saint is wasting his life opposing what is the natural order of things, or what is justified for reasons that the saint does not recognize.
The problem for the moral saint is that she is often also a moral visionary, ahead of her time in recognizing the moral failures of the prevailing order of things. And so she will necessarily appear to others as a kind of strange character, as someone detached from the values and ways of life that shape the characters of her compatriots. But often enough those who appear to others in their own time as undesirable characters whom one is better to avoid will be recognized by future generations as the truly admirable individuals that they were. And surely to live a life that will have this result is not something that we should think undesirable.
posted by Brian Berkey at 9:23 PM
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=18266847&postID=3842728654397499045&isPopup=true Comments:
A moral saint might just be someone who explicitly identify himself as a person who is dedicated to eradicating moral atrocities, and this conception seems plausible given your using Ghandi and John Brown as examples of moral saints.
While this identity-constituting project is certainly admirable, it doesn't exhaust the whole possibility of being a human. Some people might explicitly identify themselves as artists, or farmers, or various other identities that do not necessarily have the aim of correcting moral injustices.
And why is it not possible to admire a moral saint without desiring to become one? One could conceivably recognize the good work that the moral saint is doing but does not become a moral saint himself due to various constraints. For example, I might recognize that slavery is morally wrong but not join the Abolitionist movement because I have a family to take care of. In this situation, it is not that I do not recognize the good work of a moral saint like John Brown, but rather the prospect of becoming like him is unattractive given my circumstances. And it's possible for me to support moral saints without becoming one myself.
This is at least my sympathetic reading of Wolf. I take her article as saying that moral saint, as a possible way of living life, is not universally attractive, even if one acknowledges the good work that moral saints do.
I'm not quite sure I buy your criticism of Wolf when you claim that she's wrong to think that the character of the moral saint would be bland, unselfish and altogether unattractive.
Her point about the character of the moral saint is designed to show that the moral saint can NEVER have an emotion or response to conducive to promoting the well-being of others. You're right to point out that sometimes anger or hostility will be appropriate. But it should still be worrisome that the character of the moral saint will be such that no sarcasm or cynicism will ever escape her lips. The unattractiveness of the character or the moral saint, it seems to me, can't be argued away by showing that the moral saint can reasonably get angry sometimes.
There's a larger point here, though. You offer an argument against Wolf that, if I understand it correctly, goes like this:
1. "the kind of character that it seems most appropriate to attach the label "moral saint" to is best represented by people such as Gandhi or John Brown."
2. Gandhi and John Brown "surely possessed...character that is worth aspiring to."
3. Therefore, moral saints have characters that are worth aspiring to.
The problem, here, is with the first premise. The moral saint is an ideal - someone who, as Wolf says, is morally perfect. Whatever we can say about Gandhi or John Brown, it won't be that they were morally perfect. Rather, they came pretty close to moral sainthood - about as close as one can come. But they weren't morally perfect, and so we cannot infer anything about the character of the moral saint from the character of imperfect real-life approximations. Whatever evidence you have that will show that Gandhi and John Brown had interesting characters or personalities is irrelevant unless you can show a) that Wolf intends her claims to be taken literally for real-world approximations of moral saints; or b) that Gandhi and Brown were true moral saints. Wolf's point is that the moral saint - someone who truly is perfect - simply won't have time (or inclination) for any non-moral interests whatsoever. By her lights, that will be to more or less anything resembling a self.
Robert Adams offers a similar criticism of Wolf in his response "Saints." He argues that real-life saints had truly well-rounded personalities (Albert Schweitzer was a good pianist, apparently). He admits toward the end of his paper that perhaps this doesn't constitute good evidence against Wolf, however. That isn't to say that we cannot learn a lot about the nature of worthy personal ideals by studying the characters of real life saints. But those studies will tell us little about the nature of the ideal moral saint.
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