Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

Yeager considers a case of evil preferences, such as that “Mr A would relish gloating over an enemy’s misfortune, which in fact has occurred. Is it desirable that A should learn about it and reap his enjoyment? One might answer ‘no’ on the grounds that A’s malicious pleasure will impair his character and his capacity for future enjoyment, or that it will worsen the tone of society. A is about to die, however, so harm to his character is irrelevant. Furthermore, no one else will learn of his malicious pleasure. Wouldn’t his having it then add to the sum total of happiness?” (Ethics as Social Science, 142) Further on he gives another typical example: “A mob is bent on massacring blacks to avenge a murder supposedly committed by an unknown black man. The sheriff is sure he can pacify the mob and save many lives by framing and executing one innocent victim.” (148) What is to be done?

The fundamental problem then is that breaking a rule utilitarian (RU) commandment even to further an end consistent with act utilitarianism (AU) sets a bad example for both the rule-breaker and the general public. It tells the common man that he, too, may need to evaluate at least some acts directly on how well they promote utility, a task at which he is manifestly incompetent, as opposed to following RU rules blindly which is normally his duty. An enlightened AU elite might be able to pull this trick off more or less successfully, but a common man will just be confused. “We cannot force ourselves to consider each individual case in complete isolation from each other. We can hardly help thinking that in general and on average, a readiness to take pleasure in others’ misfortunes will promote misfortune … It would be an either vacuous or downright unacceptable ethical code that prescribed, in each individual case considered by itself, whatever actions seemed to promise the best results on the whole. An ethical code hardly counts as a code unless it prescribes, instead, general rules of behavior, principles of character development, and criteria for appraising institutions and choosing policies. Rules or indirect utilitarianism does not recommend the actions, types of character, and institutions and policies that give ample scope for Schadenfreude.” (143) For example, Mr. A may have enjoyed his final victory for free, but he must have made himself the kind of person who would gloat over another’s misfortune by numerous prior acts of such gloating, and that was bound to make him a miserable creature. The sheriff may get away with framing an innocent man to save a whole village for a while, but the truth has a way of getting out, and furthermore it may embolden the sheriff to manipulate the mob to his advantage and forget all about AU. There is no easy solution. Thus, “[o]ne must accept guilt for one action or another, and in accordance with one’s own moral character, but without brooding excessively about it. A moral person will accept the guilt without letting it destroy him.” (152)

Still, wouldn’t it be a valuable character trait to know for certain when breaking a utilitarian rule will lead to greater happiness than following it? Wouldn’t intense training in ethics to become more discerning be of use to people? Isn’t it true that the more prudent a person is, the more he will plot and plan to maximize utility while paying attention to the rules only insofar as following them actually benefited him and his? Rule utilitarianism is a practical concession to the limitations of our intelligence. But shouldn’t we strive to teach people how to calculate well for an arbitrary group of people arbitrarily far into the future? Or is it an empirical fact that the difference in the power of ethical reasoning between a Nietzschean superman and the regular Joe is sufficiently trivial for it not to be worth worrying about AU at all?