Mike Cantrell

Dissertation Prospectus

Kierkegaard and Modern Moral Philosophy: Conceptual

Unintelligibility, Moral Obligations and Divine Commands

We moderns have lost a grasp on some of our most commonly used moral concepts. Or rather, the moral concepts that we use every day have, in our grasp, lost the intelligibility they once enjoyed. Contemporary moral judgments are linguistic survivals from practices that have been largely abolished in many spheres of modern society. And although we continue to use the same expressions, many of our moral utterances are now lacking in content, due to our having relinquished the conditions for their meaningfulness.

Versions of this thesis are famously present in the writings of two uncommonly perceptive twentieth-century writers, namely Elizabeth Anscombe and Alasdair MacIntyre. These thinkers were not, however, the first to propose such a radical picture of our moral predicament. MacIntyre himself credits Nietzsche with being the first to perceive the disorder of post-Enlightenment morality. And with Nietzsche’s talk of the death of God and of the modern devaluation of moral values, it is clear that he did recognize it—even in the nineteenth century. I maintain, however, that the disorder of our modern moral language and thought was diagnosed by one even prior to Nietzsche, that is, by the nineteenth century Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. Of course, Kierkegaard’s central preoccupation with the intelligible use of moral concepts has not been generally appreciated. In what follows, therefore, I present both Kierkegaard’s diagnosis of the modern decline into moral conceptual unintelligibility and his prescription for our recovery.

In chapter one, I take stock of one major strand of criticism of morality in twentieth-century moral philosophy, focusing on the argument of Elizabeth Anscombe’s 1958 essay, “Modern Moral Philosophy” and on the writings of those who subsequently have helped to clarify and extend her criticisms. Then, in chapter two, I demonstrate that Kierkegaard diagnosed the conceptual confusion of morality over a century before Anscombe; in fact, Kierkegaard anticipated Anscombe’s argument in remarkable ways. In chapter three I take up an analysis of “modal” terms from chapter one and employ it to illuminate the diametrically opposed moral criticisms of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Finally, in chapter four, I develop and defend Kierkegaard’s solution to the problem of modern moral unintelligibility, namely, the recovery of a divine law conception of ethics.

I. The Problem of Modern Moral Unintelligibility

Thesis: Elizabeth Anscombe and subsequent twentieth century moral philosophers have diagnosed modern morality as suffering from unintelligibility; the purpose of this chapter is to clearly articulate that diagnosis.

In her famous 1958 essay, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Elizabeth Anscombe argues that there are (at least) two distinct senses in which terms like “ought”, “should” and “must” have come to be used in contemporary language and thought. When used in the first, “ordinary” sense, these terms are tied to the inherent desirability of an action or to the need that it be performed. As Anscombe says, “[t]he terms ‘should’ or ‘ought’ or ‘needs’ relate to good and bad: e.g. machinery needs oil, or should or ought to be oiled, in that running without oil is bad for it, or it runs badly without oil.”[1] Again, remarking upon this “ordinary” usage, she explains that to say of an organism “that it needs [a particular] environment . . . is . . . to say . . . that it won’t flourish unless it has it.”[2] The ordinary sense of “ought”, then, is teleological in character; it applies to those actions that help a thing to flourish. So as properly applied to human action, this use of modal terms points to the relation between the character of a particular act and a notion of virtuosity or viciousness qua human being. This sense is broadly Aristotelian in that it is expressible in concepts that were available to Aristotle.

On the other hand are what Anscombe calls the “moral” sense of these modal terms. She argues that terms like “ought”

have now acquired a special so-called “moral” sense—i.e. a sense in which they imply some absolute verdict (like one of guilty/not guilty on a man) on what is described in the “ought” sentences used in certain types of context . . . The ordinary (and quite indispensable) terms “should,” “needs,” “ought,” “must”—acquired this special sense by being equated in the relevant contexts with “is obliged,” or “is bound,” or “is required to,” in the sense in which one can be obliged or bound by law, or something can be required by law.[3]

Unlike the “ordinary” sense of such terms, the “moral” ought is deontological in character; Anscombe sometimes refers to this as the “emphatic” ought. Its intelligibility is not dependent upon the inherent desirability of an action or upon the need that it be performed. Rather, its intelligibility is tied to an action’s being legally required. Hence, Anscombe argues, this use of modal terms (along with the attendant concept of moral obligation) requires for its intelligibility the context of one’s being “bound” as by a law (or rule or commandment) that is given by a supreme law-giver.

But how did this emphatic, distinctively moral use of modal terms come into our language? Anscombe maintains that “between Aristotle and us came Christianity, with its law conception of ethics. . . . In consequence of the dominance of Christianity for many centuries, the concepts of being bound, permitted, or excused became deeply embedded in our language and thought.”[4] She continues:

But if such a conception is dominant for many centuries, and then is given up, it is a natural result that the concepts of “obligation,” of being bound or required as by a law, should remain though they had lost their root; and if the word “ought” has become invested in certain contexts with the sense of “obligation,” it too will remain to be spoken with a special emphasis and special feeling in these contexts. It is as if the notion “criminal” were to remain when criminal law and criminal courts had been abolished and forgotten. . . . . The situation, if I am right, [is] the interesting one of the survival of a concept outside the framework of thought that made it a really intelligible one.”[5]

The consequence of this situation is that the second kind of modal term has “become a word of mere mesmeric force.”[6] Lacking the necessary conditions for its intelligibility, the emphatic, moral ought has lost its meaning.

Following Anscombe, Philippa Foot notes that “[p]eople talk, for instance, about the ‘binding force’ of morality, but it is not clear what this means . . .”[7] Foot finds the supposed special moral sense of these modal terms unintelligible and wonders why one would “insist that there must be such a sense when it proves so difficult to say what it is?” “Suppose,” she continues, “that what we take for a puzzling thought were really no thought at all but only the reflection of our feelings about morality?”[8] Other writers have remarked upon the odd character of this emphatic, moral use of “ought” and similar terms, calling it “incoherent”[9], “mesmeric”[10], “mystique-ridden”[11], or perhaps even “superstitious”[12], “magical”[13], or “talismanic”[14]!

To be sure, it is precisely because this use of modal terms has come to lack sense that Anscombe advances her thesis that

the concepts of obligation and duty—moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say—and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the . . . [moral] sense of ‘ought,’ ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible; because they are survivals, or derivatives of survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer generally survives, and are only harmful without it.”[15]

Again, she says, “It would be most reasonable to drop [the moral ought]. It has no reasonable sense outside a law conception of ethics; [modern moral philosophers] are not going to maintain such a conception; and you can do ethics without it, as is shown by the example of Aristotle.”[16]

II. Kierkegaard and Modern Moral Philosophy

Thesis: Kierkegaard diagnosed the disorder of morality over a century before Anscombe and anticipated her argument in remarkable ways.

When not completely neglected, Kierkegaard typically has been misunderstood by writers in ethics, so the fact that his writings contain profound analyses of the fallout of the Enlightenment’s rejection of the moral tradition of classical theism has gone totally unrecognized. Kierkegaard’s diagnosis of the disorder of our modern moral language and thought has remarkable commonalities with Anscombe’s argument; indeed, their common diagnosis is that modern morality’s ills stem specifically from its rejection of a divine law conception of ethics. But the commonalities go even deeper. The fact is that Anscombe and Kierkegaard both wrestle with one very important and very specific ethical issue, namely, the conceptual foundations of moral obligation and of the conditions for the intelligible use of the moral ought. Indeed, as I argue, the emphatic, “moral ought” of Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy” and the emphatic shall (as in “You shall love the neighbor”) of Kierkegaard’s Works of Love are really one and the same concept. Once this conceptual identity is recognized, deep and remarkable parallels between Kierkegaard’s and Anscombe’s respective diagnoses of modernity come into view.

As C. Stephen Evans has plausibly argued, Kierkegaard’s Works of Love has three main polemical targets, the “unspoiled” or (as I prefer) “naïve pagan,” the “spoiled pagan,” and the “deluded pagan.”[17] As I argue, Kierkegaard’s polemical targets (which include a fourth, the “secular pagan,” at which he takes aim in The Sickness Unto Death) are present in other guises in Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy.” First, the naïve pagan represents the (“pre-Christian”) person (i.e., Aristotle, et al.) who has never encountered or else operates outside of a divine law conception of ethics, and hence, is without a notion of moral obligation. The Christian—not a polemical target for Kierkegaard, but rather the ideal—is one who follows the commandments of Christ, and hence, operates with a divine law conception of ethics. Kierkegaard’s second polemical target, the spoiled pagan, represents the (“post-Christian”) person who retains the notion of moral obligation (and hence, the special emphasis and feeling of the moral ought), but who has given up a divine law conception of ethics. The spoiled pagan, as I argue, can be recognized as the primary target of Anscombe’s polemic in “Modern Moral Philosophy.” Third, the deluded pagan represents the individual who does not operate with the relevant notion of moral obligation (and hence, is without the moral ought) and yet does purport to be a Christian. Fourth, the secular pagan represents the individual who neither claims to be a Christian nor operates with the relevant notion of moral obligation; we might say that such a person has taken Anscombe’s advice and achieved a measure of consistency by abandoning his or her use of the moral ought.

This conceptual common ground between Kierkegaard and Anscombe lays the basis for genuine disagreement between them regarding what remedy should be prescribed. As we saw in chapter one, Anscombe recommends jettisoning use of the moral ought; as we shall see in chapter four, Kierkegaard recommends the recovery of a divine law conception of ethics. For now, however, we shall turn to examine what is at stake in the recovery or rejection of a divine law conception of ethics.

III. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on Modern Moral Unintelligibility

Thesis: The analysis of modal terms from chapter one can helpfully illuminate Kierkegaard and Nietzsche’s diametrically opposed criticisms of morality.

Contemporary morality is the product of a collision of worlds, the historical outcome of a cultural event that was thousands of years in the making. Our modern concept of morality points, not to some universal dimension of human life, but rather to a specific, historically conditioned cultural product of the collision between the ancient Greek and Judeo-Christian worlds—a product which has itself undergone essential development since the Enlightenment. In brief, think of it like this: our specifically modern understanding of “morality” was available neither to the ancient Greeks nor to the writers of the New Testament. This is not, of course, to say that the ancient Greeks and early followers of Christ did not articulate normative principles for character-formation and action-guidance—they most certainly did. But the status and significance of such principles in their lives were markedly different than those enjoyed by the principles of modern morality.

It is natural for us to read our modern moral conceptions back into the writings of the ancients; to avoid thorough misunderstanding, therefore, the latter should be considered with great care. Take the ancient Greeks, for example. Virtue, for them, means personal excellence, understood as an individual strength or superiority. Thus, a virtuous man is not (as we tend to think of him) one with a benevolent will, marked by selflessness and kindness to others. He is, on the contrary, one who stands out as superior, one who is quite literally better than others, uncommon, noble, and therefore deserving of honor. As a man of special worth, he is contrasted, not with the immoral person but with the worthless person. And while we would consider it perfectly in order to find many good men among the weak, ignorant and dispossessed, this suggestion would strike the ancient Greeks as, “if not self-contradictory, then at least sick and perverse.”[18] Indeed, the stark divergence from modern morality can be seen in the fact that, on the ancient Greek evaluation, a good man is one whom the common man might even have occasion to fear.

So it would be terribly misguided to read into the writings of the ancient Greeks a conception of virtue that is embodied, for instance, in the Beatitudes. The ancient Greeks never dreamed that the meek or the poor in spirit could be counted among the blessed. Of course, if the ancient Greeks were not concerned with morality in our modern sense, neither were the early Christians—not because the early Christians shared the Greek form of valuation, but rather because the Christian form of valuation had yet another status and significance. Christian evaluations are necessarily tied to one’s relationship with God. That is, reference to God and God’s will is of the very essence of the Christian form of valuation. But this is not so for modern morality, as can be seen by considering this question: does one who claims that morality requires no reference to God speak nonsense? One who makes such a claim may be mistaken, to be sure, but almost no one would hold it to be utter nonsense.[19] Yet the same question, asked of the Christian form of valuation, must receive quite the opposite answer. Christian evaluations are necessarily tied to one’s relationship with God. And this modal claim is what fundamentally distinguishes its form of evaluation from modern morality.

The principles by which the ancient Greeks and the early Christians lived, then, are not best thought of as moral principles in our modern sense. But that is certainly not to say that their forms of evaluation bear no relationship to our morality. To be sure, we moderns have inherited much from the ancients, but much has changed as well. Probably the most significant change was the Enlightenment’s rejection of divine authority, where the Enlightenment unhinged moral obligation from the divine will (so that today moral obligations are determined by such mundane considerations as, e.g., the calculation of maximized expected utility). Given its varied history, then, it should not be a great surprise that our moral language, thought and practice exhibit the marks of deep disorder.

Two nineteenth century thinkers, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, were each keenly sensitive to our modern moral disarray. To be sure, in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche we have two diametrically opposed critics of morality; what makes their criticisms so interesting is that each criticizes morality from the perspective of precisely that which the other wishes to eradicate. Nietzsche criticizes morality from the perspective of the ancient Greek ideal and Kierkegaard does so from the perspective of Christianity. Because contemporary morality is a strange hybrid of the ancient Greek ideal’s this-worldly appraisals and the sublime spiritual objectives of Christianity, neither Kierkegaard nor Nietzsche can be happy with it: for Kierkegaard, we are too pagan; for Nietzsche, we are too Christian. Indeed, the analysis of differing senses of modal terms given in chapter one can be employed to make sense of each of their perspectives. Nietzsche holds to the broadly Aristotelian use of modal terms and wishes to see the non-Aristotelian, legal (i.e., divine law) use of such terms banished from our moral vocabulary. In fact, what Nietzsche calls the priestly “revaluation of values” can be understood precisely as the rejection of broadly Aristotelian modals and their replacement with the legal use of modal terms, along with a corresponding change in content. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, can be seen as rejecting the broadly Aristotelian use of modal terms in moral discourse and holding to a divine law conception which gives the legal use of modal terms pride of place (again, along with a corresponding change in content). Kierkegaard is clearly skeptical of the human ability to recognize what is morally good by the use of unaided human reason, and this militates against the use of broadly Aristotelian modals for moral purposes. This theme (and thus the contrast between the merely human and the divine perspectives) is expressed most clearly in Fear and Trembling and Works of Love. The teleological suspension of the ethical can be fruitfully understood as a teleological suspension of any morality that is not based on divine law (and hence, on a specific, legal use of modal terms).

IV. A Kierkegaardian Divine Law Conception of Ethics

Thesis: Kierkegaard’s prescription that we overcome the problem of modern moral unintelligibility by recovering a divine law conception of ethics is a viable contemporary option.

As C. Stephen Evans has argued, Kierkegaard advances a divine command theory of moral obligation. Evans plausibly understands such a theory as comprised by the twofold claim that a divine command is sufficient for rendering an action morally obligatory and also that it is necessary for rendering an action morally obligatory.[20]

R. Zachary Manis has recently raised several objections to viewing Kierkegaard as a divine command theorist, all of which I believe can be met. Manis’ first objection maintains that Evans has failed adequately to establish that Kierkegaard is committed to the “necessity clause,” the claim that divine commands are necessary for moral obligations. As I argue, however, a reading of The Sickness Unto Death reveals that it stands as an entire book-length argument for the necessity clause (or at least that the necessity clause is entailed by the book’s argument). Manis’ second objection holds that Evans’ view must classify some paradigmatically moral obligations as non-moral or pre-moral obligations. And his third objection holds that Evans has no adequate answer to the questions “Do we have a moral obligation to obey God? And if so, what grounds it?” Responding to these objections will require reference to divine authority; as Works of Love and The Book on Adler indicate, Kierkegaard views God as necessarily authoritative.

Of course, Mark C. Murphy has recently attacked the claim that God is necessarily authoritative, arguing instead that humans are under divine authority only insofar as they have chosen to allow God’s decisions to take the place of their own in their practical reasoning. I maintain that Murphy’s arguments are based on a demonstrably false conception of authority and that once this is made clear, a correct conception suggests itself. With this corrected conception in hand, as I argue, an account of God’s necessary authority can be given which is both plausible and consistent with the divine command metaethic previously defended.

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[1] G.E.M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy” in Stephen M. Cahn and Joram G. Haber, Twentieth Century Ethical Theory (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1995), 354; originally published in Philosophy 33, No. 124 (January 1958).

[5] Anscombe, 355; the second sentence begins a new paragraph.

[7] Philippa Foot, “Morality as a System of Categorical Imperatives, in Twentieth Century Ethical Theory ed. Stephen M. Cahn and Joram G. Graber (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1995), 452.

[9] Duncan Richter, “The Incoherence of the Moral ‘Ought’,” Philosophy 70 (1995).

[11] Robert J. Richman, “Miss Anscombe’s Complaint,” Journal of Value Inquiry 10, No. 1 (spring 1976), 46.

[12] Charles Pigden, “Anscombe on ‘Ought’,” The Philosophical Quarterly 38, No. 150. (January 1998), 23, 27.

[14] Simon Blackburn, “Simply Wrong,” Times Literary Supplement (September 30, 2005).

[17] C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

[18] Richard Taylor, “Ancient Wisdom and Modern Folly,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XIII (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 54-63.

[19] In fact, some have argued that any morality that requires reference to God is nonsense. See, e.g., James Rachels, “God and Moral Autonomy,” in Ten Essential Texts in the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Steven M. Cahn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 19-31; originally published as “God and Human Attitudes” Religious Studies 7 (1971), 325-337.