Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

The difference between freedom and power is a bit subtle. Freedom is not being acted on in a disagreeable manner. Power, on the contrary, is acting or ability to act in an agreeable manner. Freedom often has a social connotation, being associated with other human beings’ not acting on you contrary to your desires. But it need not have such a connotation. Lack of freedom is linked with some necessity forcing you to do something against your will. Something imposes a demand on you when you’d rather ignore the demand or prefer that the demand did not exist.

Three things can diminish one’s freedom: violence, deception, and duties. Thus, (1) if a cop handcuffs you, then he is acting on you against your wishes. Your body is moving but not according to your commands. (2) If you act on false information, then your actions are futile, in that something causes your actions to fail to satisfy the desire that prompted the action in the first place. You can be said to lack freedom, inasmuch as you are prevented from acting according to your desires. (3) A duty can be thought of as a device for making humans more like machines; predictable. No matter what you want to do, you ought to do some particular thing. Your desires have no sway when it comes to performing your duties. There is a necessity attaching itself to your actions which disregards your actual wants.

The social notion of freedom attaches rights to you and duties to others. It prohibits various types of trespassing or violence against person and property by other human beings (the idea of violence presupposes the ideas of property and its legitimate or just possession and acquisition). You are free when others do not interfere with your use of what you own as you see fit.

To go back to the original question, insofar as you are forced to report to jail despite your wish to remain within society, you lose freedom. You are dragged off to jail by force; your property in your body is given short shrift. But insofar as the prison walls and razor wire and guards prevent you from escaping and doing as you please, you lose power.

Henry Sidgwick makes the following startling statement:

For though doubtless a man may often best promote his own happiness by laboring and abstaining for the sake of others, it seems to be implied in our common notion of self-sacrifice that actions most conducive to the general happiness do not — in this world at least — always tend also to the greatest happiness of the agent. …

[C]ircumstances are conceivable in which a man is not unlikely to think that he could best promote the Excellence of others by sacrificing his own. But no moralist who takes Excellence as an ultimate end has ever approved of such sacrifice, at least as far as Moral Excellence is concerned; no one has ever directed an individual to promote the virtue of others except in so far as this promotion is compatible with, or rather involved in, the complete realization of Virtue in himself. (The Methods of Ethics, 9ff)

But virtue is for the sake of happiness. Apparently, then, there are two kinds of happiness: one which is produced with the help of some excellence of character, virtue, or art, and another, not produced in that way. The former can under no circumstances be sacrificed for the sake of another; the latter can be and is, at least according to utilitarianism. What are the properties of these kinds of happiness?

We can approach the answer by reading St. Thomas. He first distinguishes between imperfect happiness which can be attained in this life and perfect happiness, which consists in the contemplation of God. In II-I, 1 through 5, he considers these issues, in particular, (1) those things that can generate imperfect happiness but that are neither necessary nor sufficient for perfect happiness (that is, things without which one can still be happy) in Q. 2; (2) things that are necessary for perfect happiness (among which he numbers pleasure, comprehension, righteousness, and, with qualifications, perfection of the body) in Q. 4; and (3) the one thing that is sufficient for perfect happiness, namely the vision of God in Q. 3. Commenting on (1) and foreshadowing the economists’ (correct) claim that human desires are for all intents and purposes unlimited, Aquinas writes:

the desire for artificial wealth is infinite, for it is the servant of disordered concupiscence, which is not curbed… Yet this desire for wealth is infinite otherwise than the desire for the sovereign good. For the more perfectly the sovereign good is possessed, the more it is loved, and other things despised: because the more we possess it, the more we know it. … Whereas in the desire for wealth and for whatsoever temporal goods, the contrary is the case: for when we already possess them, we despise them, and seek others: which is the sense of Our Lord’s words: “Everyone who drinks this water,” by which temporal goods are signified, “will be thirsty again.” The reason of this is that we realize more their insufficiency when we possess them: and this very fact shows that they are imperfect, and the sovereign good does not consist therein. (2, 1, ad 3)

… it is evident that naught can lull man’s will, save the universal good. This is to be found, not in any creature, but in God alone; because every creature has goodness by participation. (2, 8)

(I disagree, however, that the distinction between natural and artificial goods is tenable.)

Thus, wealth, honor, fame, power are such that if you fail to obtain them, you would lose little, for the will is not truly rested in those goods but seeks still something else. Therefore, if utilitarianism demands that you forgo some of these goods, it may have a case. But it is precisely perfect happiness that is the reward for virtue. Hence if you were to be deprived from the beatific vision, e.g., through viciousness of character, you would lose everything. And no one could be asked to make such an enormous (infinite) sacrifice for the sake of the merely imperfect (and finite) happiness of others. It is conceivable that God’s providence might trade off one person’s perfect happiness for another’s perfect happiness or one person’s imperfect happiness for another’s imperfect happiness. But one can never be obligated to exchange his perfect happiness even for an improved imperfect happiness of the rest of the world. Nevertheless, just as grace requires nature, and glory, grace, so does everlasting happiness with God require striving for happiness in general, of whatever kind. For example, though Aquinas denies that ultimate happiness “consists in the consideration of speculative sciences,” still, such consideration might be one’s vocation and therefore the source of merit and therefore glory and reward. He agrees that wealth “cannot be man’s last end, rather is it ordained to man as to its end” but in being so ordained, it can at least be a useful good, a means to perfect happiness.

“What is there to decide whether a particular pleasure is worth purchasing at the cost of a particular pain, except the feelings and judgment of the experienced?” (Mill, Utilitarianism, 11) All valuations, all subjective goods and evils, all pleasures and pains, no matter how diverse, become commensurable in the process of choice. There is a single “value scale,” on which all desires are ranked, and lower-valued pleasures are set aside for the sake of the higher valued ones. The ranking is ordinal, meaning that it admits judgments of better and worse satisfactions, those that are above and those that are below, but it does not countenance assignments of cardinal values to utilities. In a manner of speaking, in choosing one grinds up projected enjoyments or sufferings into homogeneous juice — “a happy feeling in one’s heart” — which one then weighs against each other. But this happy feeling is inseparable from an actual particular undertaking and success in that undertaking. The happiness juice is a metaphor; one can’t distill it and inject oneself with it. Moreover, choosing exercises the imagination, in which the anticipated choices are felt as already made and pleasures received. This entails an entrepreneurial judgment that the scale of values will remain relevantly the same until the actual consumption. For example, in choosing tea over wine I assume that once the tea is served, I will still enjoy it more than the wine.

An NT Rational lawmaker will ask: “What is the best and most efficient way to select local government officials?” And answer, e.g.: “By popular vote.” Having adopted the law, an NF Idealist will ask: “Ought I or you to vote?”; “Is it one’s duty to vote?” Now it would seem that the connection between the two questions is that it is one’s duty to obey the law. True enough, but this duty will be prima facie, not all things considered. Here are situations in which the law will be in full force, yet the duty to do as the law says will be abrogated.

1. Let the town population permitted to vote be 100,000 people. Then if only 20 of those vote, then the institution of voting is undermined, and it make no sense for you to vote.
2. Let 99% of the eligible public have already voted with candidate A garnering 70,000 votes, and candidate B, 29,000 votes. Clearly, your vote will make no difference, so if the goal is to affect the outcome, then it is useless to vote.

   This is an act utilitarian consideration rather than a rule utilitarian one, but it seems to be valid as things stand.

3. Suppose you are sick unto death. Then your business is in the next world, and it is no longer your duty to care for the affairs of this one.
4. You may be out of town at a philosophy conference which is arguably more important than voting. Hence, again, no duty to vote.
5. On the way to the polls, you see a car accident and help the victims. As a result, you are late and fail to register your vote. Here a more important duty has trumped a less important one. All things considered, voting is not a duty in this case.
6. You are an anarchist who thinks there should not be any government. Now the law looks as follows: “If we are to have public officials, then the best way to appoint them is by popular vote.” You may protest the antecedent by protesting the consequent. Once again, there is no duty to vote.

If it is asked, “Why must I, a player, obey the rules of baseball?,” the answer must obviously be, “Because only then will you have an enjoyable game or even a game at all.” So, if it occurred to an act utilitarian that the best way toward happiness is to play some baseball, then he would bind himself to this game’s rules.

If it is further asked, “Why must I obey these rules as opposed to some other set of rules?,” the answer is presumably, “Because these rules have been selected in the market as producing the greatest pleasure for the participants or for those who watch the game or for both.” Here, too, an act utilitarian would endorse the rules.

A baseball game is a consumer good which works according to some set of rules set forth in an official manual. So does a DVR or a car. In order enjoy the game, one must “program” the players to behave predictably and learn the rules oneself. (So, again, a game is a simple abstraction from reality with equality of opportunity and competitive play.) Since baseball has been extensively tested in the marketplace, its rules are probably very efficient, rather like the fact that the internal combustion engine in cars has been more or less perfected in the past 100 years. In a manner of speaking these rules can be said to be summaries of act utilitarian actions; they are guides to what is best on the whole in particular cases. However the game actually progresses, as long as the rules (such as “you shall try to win to the best of your ability, and these are the objectives”) are followed, the public gets what it paid for.

Morality, on the other hand, is not a consumer good which someone produces and offers to us in exchange for money. To be sure, one can write a book on ethics and sell it. But then the “seller” would have to obey the same laws as the “buyer.” Morality regulates the very production of goods and services on the market. It’s the laws that govern real life not playgrounds. Rules of baseball represent a part of an in-demand service supplied on the marketplace. They regulate the actions of baseball players. Morality is about general human actions and emotions. It posits rules for human beings as such.

Is there a difference between rules of baseball and rules of morality? If we consider their purpose, then the answer is yes and no: the goal of the baseball rules is ultimately to create an interesting and challenging game for the entertainment of the players and spectators. The rules of baseball serve to attain a specific goal: enjoyment of the game. The rules of morality, too, are attuned to happiness, but their goal is much more general, e.g., protection of life, liberty, and property.

If it were asked, What are the properties of the rules of baseball?, we would answer: they are simple rules to be followed blindly; there are no exceptions nor a hierarchy of lower and higher laws or of competing systems of laws. The rules enforce (or are designed to) strict equality of opportunity, such that breaking a rule makes no sense, because it immediately privileges one player or team over the other. The players are pitted against each other so as to generate conflict and drama and impel the players to excel one another which leads to clever strategies, bold tactical maneuvering, and other components of a fun game. The game, furthermore, is fully constituted by its rules.

One cannot violate a rule of baseball during a game. I know little of baseball, but I remember people complaining that home runs have become far too frequent. Amending the rules of professional baseball has to be done through a proper procedure; there is no such thing as a unilateral “civil disobedience” while a game is being played.

Moral rules, on the other hand, are complex; they have layers of lower and higher laws; they have exceptions; they come from different sources; they require careful balancing. There will be different correct moral choices for persons of different temperaments. Moral laws do not assume equality of opportunity, nor do they outline a zero-sum game. Life and society are not wholly constituted by moral rules.

One can break a moral or legal rule for two reasons. First, as a protest against the rule in general, i.e., against its general applicability, for example, to “create awareness” of an unjust or inefficient law and suggest a reform. Second, in order to obey a higher law, e.g., in order to further act utilitarianism. This is a challenge to the rule’s particular applicability. Still, in the first case you will be questioned as to why you think the commonly accepted rule is altogether bad. In the second case you will be asked why you broke a rule that even you consider to be useful most of the time. And you had better have good replies.

Introspective understanding is the unity of knowledge. It’s a picture of how all things fit together. Unity is a condition for harmony within some complex system that is working smoothly “as one” without, however, necessarily having a real identity. The paradigmatic cases of such a system is the free market and the human body.

Sensing understanding is a combination of adaptable tactical appraisal and easy logistical grasp of exactly what is needed where and at what time. This is the understanding that allows one to act, to interpret history, and the like. It is different from prudence, as prudence is a practical virtue concerned with finding the most profitable course of action given the known ends and means. Understanding is a speculative virtue that assesses the situation and considers the feasibility of rival plans. In other words, knowledge gives prudence the causal connections between events. Understanding gives prudence estimates of how projects are likely to proceed in any given situation. Prudence then takes this information and calculates the best choice to make.

So far I have assumed that we start with act utilitarianism and employ “you shall maximize utility” as the highest law from which we derive secondary rules, such as “you shall not steal.” And I have written that the reason for having these secondary principles is two-fold: “we have rules, because [acts recommended by pure utilitarianism] are usually lawlike; and we use these rules in moral deliberations instead of considering acts directly, because of the limitations of human prudence.” Thus, we go down from prudence, with the help of which men discover and enact particular laws judged to be most profitable to the community, and we entrust SJs with caring for their enforcement.

But we can also go up from secondary laws to the most formal law of utility, if we can show that whenever these laws are made by some natural process other than explicit rational legislation, such as “by human action not by human design,” then this process will yield laws that — surprise! — happen to be good. I read somewhere that the career of Richard Posner has consisted in no small measure in demonstrating that the common law, made in precisely such a manner, is “efficient,” or in other words, conforms to utilitarianism.

1. NF Idealists impose a constraint on SP Artisans as to how the latter live their lives: their lives must be a story, have an identity. More important, they must be true to their own artistic visions.

On the other hand, SPs impose an imperative on NFs: they must fight for what they believe in. To reverse this, NFs urge SPs to believe in what they fight for instead of being their normal cynical selves. That’s why all the SP cartoon superheroes fight for “justice,” an NF cardinal virtue.

2. One of the very few deficiencies of Keirsey’s Please Understand Me II is that he failed to realize that Artisans represent the passions or sensuality which is split into two distinct powers: the concupiscible and the irascible. The former is instinctively attracted to sensual pleasure and flies from pain; the latter is that whereby an animal resists attacks and attacks others. Therefore, to Artisans two virtues belong: temperance and courage. Folks of this temperament seek not only sensual stimulation, as Keirsey asserts, but victory, as well.

A promise seems to put one under an obligation to do as promised. There are two useful definitions of promising: the first makes the obligation a part of its essence, e.g. “promise is an oath that one ought to fulfill”; the other makes the obligation a part of its virtue, e.g., “promise is a declaration that one will do or refrain from doing something specified,” and there can be true promises and false promises.

With the first definition, a person who does not subscribe to the institution of promising or who does not consider the ability to promise to be socially useful will no longer know the meaning of the term “promise,” as its only definition above is for him compromised. He does not believe there are any oaths he ought to keep. At the very least he does not think that making an oath in a socially prescribed manner places any obligation on him. If he is an anthropologist, then he may know the meaning that other people attach to promising, but he himself will not be able to use this term, any more than he will be able to use any other meaningless term, such as “prukving.”

If a politician is pledging to do something and does not think he ought to do it, then under the first definition or “promise” he is not promising anything; he is merely manipulating the public.

Hence an “is,” i.e., an act of making a promise entails an “ought,” i.e., a duty to bring about the thing promised. In the previous post I said that the hypothetical imperative connects a 2nd-level desire with 1st-level action to satisfy the desire. Here the categorical imperative links up 1st-level physical words and gestures with their interpretation at the 2nd-level to mean that a promise is being made.

Under the second definition it is legitimate to ask whether one ought to keep his promises. Here we can say that it is unjust to deceive.

NB: all the “oughts” here are prima facie not “all things considered.”

NT Rationals are masters of the law, discovering or legislating it for society as a whole. SJ Guardians are servants of the law, enforcing it. The latter can have their responsibility and status within the network of laws. Similarly, NF Idealists are masters of duty, prescribing it to individuals, and SP Artisans are servants of duty, performing it. The latter can have their freedom and artistic creativity within the network of duties.

Therefore, the NT imperatives are hypothetical: if you want to do X, then you ought to do Y. Here the point is not so much to derive an “ought” from an “is” as to link the 2nd-level human willing and thinking with the 1st-level world of matter and energy. The requisite connection in this case is through human action: a 2nd-level desire is satisfied via an exercise of bodily powers in moving around or imbuing energy into particles of matter.

The NF imperatives, on the other hand, are categorical: you shall or shall not do X. For example, the concept of promising includes in itself the idea of a personal obligation to keep the promise. Therefore, if one utters the phrase “I hereby promise you to do X” (an “is”) under the right circumstances, then he immediately incurs a duty to do X. In other words, it is true that “I ought to X,” and the ought does not presuppose an end to be achieved. It’s “I ought to X,” period. Justice itself demands it.

Now the duty to keep promises presupposes the goodness of the promise-giving institution, and the job to evaluate this institution belongs to NTs: if we want to have a healthy society, they’ll reason, then people ought to be able to issue true promises. Once this judgment is made, NTs fade into background and (1) allow SJs to enforce promise-keeping, e.g., by shunning or shaming the non-compliant and (2) allow NFs to insist that promises be kept, particularly to SPs. This means that NT actions are prior to and determine the structure of NF actions, for without laws that enforce contracts or more informal norms that enforce promises, no duties could arise upon agreeing on any property transfer or upon promising anything. However, I would say that the foregoing NT decision to recommend the practice of promising is almost vacuous, so natural promising and contracting are to people (unless I feel this, simply because I am habituated to pay my bills and suchlike). Furthermore, NT deliberations are entirely formal, whereas NF duties have content: they say not merely that one ought to abide by the promise but exactly what one must do to abide by it. To connect it to our general theory, NTs love disinterestedly, and their laws apply to everyone without distinction; while NFs love “interestedly,” and their duties are unique, depending on what is actually agreed to in any particular individual or even “social” contract.

The NT moral theory is act utilitarianism, and it is successful whenever the means-ends connections are evident (as well as when the means are present — speaking of which, SJs might well be responsible for that, being the best savers, thereby effecting capital accumulation). The NF moral theory is integrity, and it is successful whenever one is true to himself or to others, that is, never deviates from the reality of one’s identity. This integrity imposes on SPs duties which NFs promulgate. (Of course, in order to be true to oneself, one must be someone first. Building oneself, it seems to me, belongs to SPs.)

For the following exercise I assume that we are all good at playing trains. So, suppose that on the first track of the trolley lies Ron Paul, and on the second track lie Lew Rockwell, Tom Woods, Bob Higgs, David Gordon, and Joseph Salerno all tied up by the mustachioed villain Statist Ideology. You can’t stop the trolley but must steer it on one track or the other. What are you going to do?

Now relax and consider the exact same problem but with newborn infants instead of our libertarian heroes. Does the problem seem easier? Is it now not so heart-breaking to steer the trolley onto the track with the one infant?

Very good. Now suppose that instead of the infants there lie on the tracks 1 week old though viable embryos. Is the proper course of action now almost entirely obvious?

This bears on the issue of abortion. It is clear that Lew Rockwell is not interchangeable with Ron Paul, and neither are the rest of our friends. They are unique human beings, profoundly actualized with distinct and powerful personalities and histories, each in his own way. The infants and still more, the embryos, on the other hand, are much more like each other than the grown men in the first example. “5 > 1″ and therefore “saving 5 is better than saving 1″ become more plausible, the more the 5 things resemble each other and the 1 thing. So, I think that the reason why many people do not consider abortion problematic is that in their view the embryo is entirely interchangeable with other embryos they might later beget or conceive. I mean, look, making a child is normally a trivial undertaking. Any pair of idiots can make one in 5 minutes; it’s not rocket science. So, as long as an embryo is considered to be just like any other embryo rather than a real and inimitable though developing son or daughter, abortion will be widespread.

The issue is actually two-fold. First there is the “relative” problem just mentioned, namely, whether any two arbitrary embryos produced by the same couple can pretty much be swapped for one another with little harm done. Update. It is true that each embryo has a unique set of genes. But given any two embryos we don’t know at this point which of them is better than the other. The chance to get an “improved” version of your child as opposed to a “worse” version is 50-50. Therefore, one is indifferent to whether to replace an embryo or to keep the existing one. Furthermore, it is also true that people invest into their children. A newborn child represents 9 months of difficult time for its parents for its sake. One would not want the investment to die. But almost nothing has been invested into a 1 week old embryo, so exchanging it does not seems unreasonable from that point of view.

Second, there is the “absolute” problem of whether an embryo maintains its personal identity as it matures. In other words, the question is, are you the same person (in the metaphysical rather than legal or moral sense) that you were when you were in your mother’s womb as a 1 week old creature?

This second question is puzzling. A 1 week old embryo does not seem to have any powers of willing and thinking. It’s not that it has these powers but is not in a condition to exercise them as might be asserted of a sleeping adult or even of an infant. It’s that it lacks these powers altogether. Therefore, though it is certainly potentially human, it is not essentially human. But if it is not essentially human, then, surely, there is no enduring personal identity of it which obviously requires a personality or habits and dispositions which build on, actualize, and direct the powers proper to a human being. So, this is the second reason why I think many people consider abortions to be non-crimes.

When we say that X is a good burglar, we affirm a hypothetical: “If one wanted to rob a house, he would be well-advised to hire X.” Or: “Using X is an efficient means to the end of committing theft.” It does not mean that we recommend the end but only the means to it. For we can legitimately warn our reader: “Stealing is not a propitious means to your ultimate end, happiness.” But the hypothetical is true anyway.

Note that some nouns are functional and others are descriptive. A functional word in itself entails suitability for a human end, while a descriptive word does not. For example, saying that “H is a hygrometer” already says something about H’s competence to measure humidity. There are good hygrometers and bad hygrometers, but at some point if we move from good to bad, H ceases to be a hygrometer at all. Or consider a soldier. A soldier can be good if he is smart and quick and deadly and bad otherwise. But if he cowardly runs away at the fight sign of danger, then he will no longer be a solider at all, so unconducive he is to his commander’s designs.

A descriptive word, on the other hand, such as “sunset” or “tree” or “man,” is not related to human ends. But placing “good” in front of a word like that can convert it into a functional word in some sense. For example, a good sunset is one that is beautiful to behold by human beings, and there can be wide agreement on what a sunset must be in order to be beautiful. Delight and happiness are good by their very definitions. Now so far we have been dealing with physical goods, divided, to repeat myself, into useful, virtuous, and pleasant. On the other hand, trees and men are creatures, and their goodness may be intrinsic to them: a good tree is one that is big and strong and healthy, and a good man is one who is virtuous. In other words, “tree” and “man” specify essences of powers, and “good” specifies virtues in both. These are moral goods. Both the tree and the man are ends in themselves in that they live for themselves and have an intrinsic potential to actualize, such that when it is actualized, they are called “good.” On the other hand, a hygrometer has only an extrinsic function; it exists solely for the sake of another’s end.

And when one opines that A is better than B, he may think about A and B’s completeness of nature or powers. Thus, a human being is metaphysically better than a tree.

That is, you have to think in the right manner as a necessary and sufficient condition for having any virtue. Sometimes you need to persuade yourself to acquire a virtue. So, Aristotle was right in saying that a good man and an evil man are exactly alike 8 hours per day while they sleep.

A subjective good is one that brings pleasure or yields utility to a person. Aquinas distinguishes between a “useful” good = capital good, a “virtuous” good = consumer good, and a “pleasant” good = the happiness received and felt from the services provided by a consumer good.

But is there such a thing as an objective good? I think there is. An objective good is something that a person ought to value and enjoy, such that if he does not value and enjoy it, then it is an indication of that person’s sickness and misery. Failure to consider an objective good to be good signifies vicious character or corruption or unhappiness. It is not a case of “de gustibus non est disputandum,” such as I prefer chocolate ice cream, and you prefer vanilla ice cream, and neither preference is better than the other. With respect to ice cream each person indeed seeks happiness in his own way, and himself determines what is good for him. But consider the case of general enjoyment of food. We can legitimately say that a healthy person will enjoy eating once in a while, but a sick person may lack an appetite. The refusal to eat is not an arbitrary preference but can be judged objectively as vicious and a sign that something with the person who has it is wrong. Or consider the case of beauty. I fully endorse the definition of beauty as “that which when sensed, pleases.” But not all disagreements about what is beautiful are fruitless; not all judgments of beauty are arbitrary and subjective: failure to perceive something as beautiful or ugly may be a sign of folly, a vice contrary to wisdom (remember that wisdom is quadriform, and beauty is one aspect of it). Or, say, I argue that such and such book contains really good philosophy. I don’t just mean that it makes me happy; I mean that it ought to make other philosophers happy, too, and if someone does not enjoy the arguments in this book, then his designation as a philosopher is suspect. Again, my judgment of truth (yet another aspect of wisdom) had better be shared by others, lest those others be condemned as (objectively) defective.

Finally, we can identify an intersubjective good. It is not subjective wherein something is a good because one enjoys it. Subjective goods consider the thing loved to be an object of love. Nor is it an objective good, when loving a thing is a necessary reaction to seeing and possessing it. Objective goods consider the self to be an object in whom love is provoked by a subject. (For example, A can share its goodness and being with B by “infusing” them into B who will then naturally love A as A’s effect.) Rather, intersubjective good is the result of subject-to-subject judgments, including of judging oneself. Intersubjective good is irreducibly moral. It depends both on one’s own powers of judging and on the other subject’s qualities. It depends further on what the two subjects agree and disagree on. This mixing of the subjects produces a unique evaluation called an intersubjective good.

Now that I have discussed at some length rule utilitarianism (see the sidebar), we can turn to the next half of ethics. Integrity will be our third ethical system, individual unlike the NT Rational and SJ Guardian social approaches to ethics, corresponding to the NF Idealist temperament and to the cardinal virtue of justice.

Our starting point will be the nature of NF love. Unlike NT’s disinterested benevolence, NF love is deeply personal love of a particular human being as unique as he is and for his own sake. (One might ask, what are the SJ and SP loves? The correct reply, it seems to me, is that for the introspective types love is primarily an emotion, while for the sensing types love is primarily an action. What kind of action will be discussed later, so stay tuned.) NTs respect one’s autonomy and care for the welfare of the whole society; NFs respect one’s benevolence or love that stitches together into a unity yet care for the welfare of the individual as unique and irreplaceable. NT ethics teaches truth to each individual and thereby serves society (e.g., by promoting coordination of plans); NF ethics unifies society and therefore serves each individual. Due to its stress on personal uniqueness, integrity allows no interpersonal utility comparisons; each person is precious in his own right. Its is the morality of the good shepherd (Jn 10; Mt 18:12-14): “He calls his own sheep by name,” implying that each sheep is special. With NFs there is no weighing one person’s welfare against another; people are fundamentally incommensurable, each one being an inimitable world in itself.

NTs can start with a unified society (e.g., by the price system) and move down until they reach a society consisting of a single individual to whom they recommend to practice his own personal prudence. NFs might want to start with an individual and his unarguable personal identity and proceed upward through, say, a family into a civil society attempting to attribute some sort of identity to such composite objects. (Mises who called the market a process and Whitehead who focused on the process “philosophy of organism” and process theology would, I imagine, disagree that any such identity of trans-human entities exists. And yet…) For example, in theology we talk about the body of Christ, of which Jesus is the head and we are members. Perhaps this society of the faithful and the saints has a kind of cosmic mind to it, namely the mind of God, into which we are incorporated, by which we are influenced, and of whose blessings we partake.

Just as telling the truth is the key to utilitarianism, unifying into a “one,” into something with an identity is the key to integrity. But unifying what? For example, an NF might recommend a union of human ends. One’s goals should not contradict each other but form a coherent life’s work or even story, again with a kind of identity. Or, being true to oneself, given that there are traces of the divine Trinity within all of us, entails a kind of conformity of the “son” to the “father” which, when translated, means a unity of essence, self-knowledge, and self-love which forms a person. (As I write here, the relationship between the divine persons is called paternity and filiation, because “God’s knowledge is both true and is ‘true to His essence’ as in, conforms to it, never falters from reality, never errs, never sins.”) The virtue of justice — called by Aquinas “metaphorical” but in fact precisely the genuine one — justifies a man to himself or rectifies his dealings with himself.

Far be it from integrity to deny that each individual has his own personal projects and priorities that require his special attention. Utilitarianism, on the contrary, would have none of that. A utilitarian does not respect persons or privilege anybody’s plans and undertakings including those of the utilitarian himself. But integrity realizes that what makes each person special and unique is precisely his own ideas and actions. (Note that I do not say “virtues” or “personality,” because, as I have explained, each member of <powers, virtues, acts/happiness> follows upon the previous one, and we are dealing with the ethics of acts and of how to be happy, not with its precondition, the virtues. Virtue ethics is its own separate subject.) Each person has not only the right but the duty to devote his efforts first and foremost to his own affairs. This follows immediately from the nature of NF love. With its being deeply personal, one naturally loves himself more than any neighbor, no matter how close. The difference is even of a kind not merely of degree: I bear a peculiar kind of responsibility for myself that I do not bear for anyone else. I am assuredly my own keeper even if not necessarily my brother’s. But nothing stops an integrist from loving certain people more than others; in fact, he is almost required to do so. Charity means “holding dear” and those dear to one’s heart are bound to be special and the love for them, exclusive. One can love everybody in the world with the love of charity only if one is God. Hence we have the principle of subsidiary which presupposes differing degrees not only of knowledge but of love, as well.

NT utilitarianism may be said conventionally to be a moral theory of the good; SJ deontology, a theory of the right. But neither the good nor the right are the same as obligatory. The way to connect these terms is to say (1) that pure utilitarianism commands one to execute the most profitable course of action, i.e., that it is obligatory to maximize the good; (2) that pure deontology commands one to respect the rights of others, i.e., that it is obligatory to obey the moral law, to adhere to one’s duties and thereby to the right; and (3) that rule utilitarianism will demand that a combined approach be followed. In other words, all morality is a set of orders or prescriptions; it says what one shall or shall not do; but different moral theories will differ as to what those orders are.

How would a utilitarian feel if he were to be sacrificed for the common good? He would be delighted that the cause of the common good was served through him. He was at the right place at the right time to ensure his surprising employment in the interest of the whole society. He dies happy, knowing that he has been well-used.

Is it true that children are born full of love and innocence until the cruel world stomps them out of them? Or will they naturally behave like the kids in Lord of the Flies? Mises writes, for example, “Man is born an asocial and antisocial being. The newborn child is a savage. Egoism is his nature. Only the experience of life and the teachings of his parents, his brothers, sisters, playmates, and later of other people force him to acknowledge the advantages of social cooperation and accordingly to change his behavior.” (Omnipotent Government, 241)

The point is, being wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove are complementary to each other, such that neither virtue can exist in isolation. Wisdom cannot co-exist with a malicious will; indeed, wisdom has a particular affinity with charity: insofar as it judges good and evil, including the highest cause, which is the last end and the sovereign good, for what they are, the will loves the good so judged, especially the will blessed with charity. A will bent on evil will silence and corrupt the operation of the crown chakra. Nor can one be innocent and stupid: the world will quickly pounce on one’s innocence, filling one who is dull with the equally dull rage or resentment. Only wisdom can reconcile one to the banality and ubiquity of evil.