On McMahan on Parfit (A Pet Peeve)

Over the twelve years following the publication of this landmark paper, Parfit worked relentlessly on the manuscripts that were to become Reasons and Persons (1984). This book has often been described as comprising four distinct but closely connected books: one on the ways in which moral theories can be self-defeating, a second on rationality and time, a third that defends his view of personal identity, and a fourth on the ethics of causing people to exist and duties concerning future generations. While each of the four parts has been enormously influential, Part Four effectively created a new, difficult, highly important, and now flourishing area of philosophy known as ‘population ethics’. Peter Singer has described Reasons and Persons as the best work of moral philosophy since Sidgwick’s Methods of Ethics, which was published in 1874.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, material that would, after much rewriting, eventually coalesce into Reasons and Persons began to circulate in photocopies of Parfit’s typescripts. It is perhaps difficult for those who have entered the field of philosophy since that book was published to appreciate how exciting and exhilarating those early formulations of his ideas were. Over the intervening decades, much of moral philosophy has been shaped by the forms of argument, including the imaginative use of hypothetical examples, and even the style of writing that are characteristic of Reasons and Persons. But at the time they were radically different from what philosophers were familiar with. For many of those working in philosophy then, and perhaps especially for graduate students who were able to read some of Parfit’s manuscripts, the novelty, brilliance, and practical significance of his arguments were intoxicating. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that, at least for some of us, that era seemed rather as the French Revolution seemed to the young Wordsworth: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!’

Parfit had a native genius for philosophy. But he also devoted more time and concentrated effort to the development of his ideas than any other philosopher I have known. He once mentioned a passage in a book of economic history that noted that the concept of work had sometimes been understood in such a way that work was necessarily unpleasant. On this understanding, Parfit almost never worked.-Jeff McMahan Obituary of Derek Parfit. [HT Don Ainslie]

First, I was moved by McMahan's obituary of Parfit. And I warmly recommend it.* It offers a portrait of a life fully and somewhat lopsidedly immersed in philosophy. Those of us who think that a good-life must be more rounded do well to reflect critically on our own attitudes in light of the exemplar Parfit. And while the genius (I tend to wince at this word [recall my treatment of boy-wonders] when discussing professional philosophers and population ethics, but let's allow McMahan the use) may have been native it was clearly cultivated by considerable effort and focus. In addition, what also shines through in McMahan's obituary is that Parfit's genius was also, in a sense, social. After all, he put tremendous effort into improving others around him:

Parfit’s kindness and generosity, not only to his students and friends but to others as well, are legendary. The comments he gave to people on their manuscripts were sometimes longer than the manuscripts themselves, and the comments were invariably articulated in the gentlest, most tactful, encouraging, and constructive way possible. (3-4)

It is no criticism to remark that such kindness and generosity are rewarding in multiple ways not just to the community but also to the person Parfit in a credit economy in which giving of intellectual gifts -- and attention is the greatest (and scarcest) gift of all -- is one of the main, status enhancing currency. (The previous sentence is compatible with the absence of this insight as a psychological motive in Parfit; one cannot see well in the recesses of other people's hearts when is also simultaneously dazzled by their genius.)

The previous paragraph is misleading in one respect. Another scarce good in the political economy of the profession is time. And it is clear that the circumstances of Parfit's appointment gave him considerable freedom to develop his views without the demands of publication that are nearly inconceivable to the rest of us. That's no criticism of Parfit. In fact, one may say he understood his circumstances and made the best of them (again, this is not a remark about his psychology).

Even so, I also want to articulate a pet-peeve. I do so, in part, because I encounter some such inflationary claims more often in the self-understanding of my fellow analytical philosophers. The pet-peeve is not prompted by Singer's remark (quoted by McMahan) that 'Reasons and Persons as the best work of moral philosophy since Sidgwick’s Methods of Ethics,' although I will allow that I find something peculiar about the very practice of ranking works in moral philosophy (unless one is parceling out scarce goods like jobs, then rankings may be a necessary evil). For the person judging places himself as an arbiter of taste or value. Yet, the value of works of philosophy, and especially works of moral philosophy, is their impact on the lived experiences, including as theoretical reasoners about moral value, on not just specialized, cognitive communities, but also many readers that will be unknown to such a judge. What we do with other people's works is hard to judge in advance.

Rather, the pet-peeve is McMahan's claim that 'Part Four effectively created a new, difficult, highly important, and now flourishing area of philosophy known as ‘population ethics’. Now, it's true that recent population ethics (in style of argument and in its presuppositions) owes much to Parfit (and I think McMahan captures this very nicely in the passage I quoted above). But that's not what McMahan writes. He turns Parfit into the inventor of population ethics. Yet, population ethics has been an integral part of philosophy since Plato and Aristotle in all kinds of guises during the long history of normatively discussing various intellectual practices that mixed eugenics, political economy, political demography, and political philosophy (Sidgwick's fellow victorians were not unfamiliar with population ethics). {One may say, in short-hand that this is the pre-history to what Foucault calls biopolitics.} That it's not always recognized as philosophy by us or in the past is a different question. I'd like to think, for example, that Parfit-style population ethics was inaugurated by Swift in a Modest Proposal [recall].** (I am not claiming that treating A Modest Proposal from the perspective of population ethics does full justice to its (ahhh) genius.)

There are, of course, non-trivial issue about the reasons why population ethics fell out of favor in the early post-world-war-II years. But that's for another occasion. Rather, when Parfit is treated as the founder and originator of population ethics, he is essentially being inscribed into a familiar narrative: as a Kuhnian legislator of a paradigm in which others can develop professional careers working out the implications. It generates a sociologically powerful excuse to ignore alternative approaches and to be ignorant of the prior history of philosophy (including sordid bits); it nudges the young -- who increasingly lack time to read around uselessly -- to stay focused on the puzzles at hand. I recognize that for some this is, in fact, a fine justification for McMahan's narrative, but I am less confident that this is good for philosophy.

 

*See also Amia Srinivasan in the LRB.

**My own awareness of how immersed the history of philosophy is in population ethics was prompted by reading of Berkeley's Querist (once alerted to the significance of population ethics by two economists, David Levy and Sandra Peart).

Comments

[Justin W.]

Related: my pet peeve is that the subject matter of part 4 has come to be known as "population ethics." The population issue is just a handy example for the more fundamental question of the roles of quality and quantity in assessing outcomes generally.

[Stephen Turner]

The film Rocco and his Brothers opens with a scene in which the impoverished southern Italian family living in Milan opens the window of their basement apartment to see snow. They yell "work for Everybody." This is how I see these boomlets in philosophy: you get a Rawls, or the idea of collective intentionality, or population ethics, or scientific realism, and there is a boom not in criticizing, but in cranking out applications and refinements-- which gives people something to put on their vitas and creates the illusion that there is something there. But it is mostly philosophical makework, and too often there is nothing there. And there are not enough people pointing this out.