The role of reasons and sentiments in Tugendhat's moral philosophy.

AutorNaves de Brito, Adriano
CargoErnst Tugendhat - Ensayo cr

RESUMEN: En este artículo discuto la filosofía moral de Tugendhat mediante la investigación de su concepción de justificación moral y del papel que los sentimientos desempeñan en ella. Para comprender y criticar la relación entre razones y sentimientos en la filosofía moral de Tugendhat, analizo la correlación entre juicio y afecto. Sostengo, además, que, en lo que atañe a la estructura más básica de la moralidad, los individuos tienen mucho menos autonomia para aceptar o rechazar un sistema moral de lo que Tugendhat está dispuesto a admitir.

PALABRAS CLAVE: autonomía, estructura de la moral, justificación moral, sentimientos morales

SUMMARY: In this paper I discuss Tugendhat's moral philosophy by focusing on his conception of moral justification and the role sentiments play in it. In order to understand, and to criticize, the relationship between reasons and sentiments in Tugendhat's moral philosophy, the correlation between judgment and affection is scrutinized. Furthermore, I argue that as far as the innermost structure of morality is concerned individuals have far less autonomy to accept or reject any moral system than Tugendhat is prepared to admit.

KEY WORDS: autonomy, structure of morality, moral justification, moral sentiments

  1. Introduction

    Tugendhat's criticism of Kant's grounds for moral obligation is well known (cf. e.g. Tugendhat 1993, chapters 6 and 7). The idea of an absolute Reason as the basis upon which morality has to be built has no descriptive force for him. The problem he sees here is not that Reason (with a capital 'R') is not a basis on which to plant the seeds of morality. This would only be possible if this "Reason" existed, but it does not. However, Tugendhat considers that morality among human beings requires justification. Since there can be no complete phenomenological description of a human group without including a description of the rules through which the behaviour of this group is reciprocally evaluated and constrained, moral obligation must somehow be justified. Otherwise, he asks, how is it possible to explain that human beings submit themselves to moral limitations rather than not doing so? Thus Tugendhat's guiding question concerning morality is how moral obligations are to be justified, since this is necessary if they are to be obeyed.

    Tugendhat's conception of morality is largely based on the role sentiments, particularly indignation, guilt and shame, play in it. (1) In his view, moral sentiments are fundamental elements in our moral constitution, without which conscience and obligation and the like cannot be explained in a way that would be consistent with both an enlightened view of man and the refusal of Reason in a Kantian sense. Yet if justification is what needs to be explained, moral sentiments ought to help us understand why human beings prefer to accept moral constraints.

    It is important to note from the outset that the descriptive strength of Tugendhat's approach to morality strikes me as highly convincing. The idea of taking as a starting point a concept of morality based on a phenomenological description of how human groups live together restrains the normative impetus to which moral philosophers are prone when dealing with this issue. At the same time, this idea acts as a guide in the investigation, helping to determine how things really work within the realm of morality, and may provide us with a genuine understanding of its human structure.

    Nonetheless, and despite my enthusiasm for Tugendhat's achievements in describing the structure of morality, I am less happy with the emphasis he places on the issue of justification. I will now state briefly my critical view on the matter, as I shall return to this point in more detail later. Tugendhat's concern is with the justification of moral judgments. Contrary to empirical judgments, whose claims for objectivity rest on empirical facts, moral judgments cannot rely on facts in order to have their claims for objective validity granted. Nonetheless, moral judgments do raise such claims, as is clear in the case of judgments expressing obligations. What interests Tugendhat is understanding the legitimising basis for these claims. Since he does not believe in absolute grounds for moral obligation, be it in a Kantian or a religious sense, his view dictates that what should be justified is not that it is good (in an absolute sense) to follow a certain course of action, but that it is plausibly better (cf. Tugendhat 1993, chapter 5) to follow one course rather than another. Justification, in this sense, must deal with some determination of choice. Hence, to justify is to give reasons for choosing A instead of B, or, in a different formulation, to answer why an individual should make a specific choice from among multiple possibilities. Here a particular criterion is required. Thus if we consider that Tugendhat's discussion involves at the highest level whole conceptions of morality, (2) then, at the end of the justification chain, a criterion for choosing one among several different moral conceptions is required. That such a criterion might be provided is, however, denied by Tugendhat. So the result would appear to be inconsistent with the picture he ultimately presents of the system of morality. In fact, it is apparently inconsistent with his thought, because if one chooses to emphasise the need for justification, one will be bound to search for a criterion which is in essence the same as that promised by the kantian and religious positions: namely, an objective criterion for this fundamental moral choice--one that would need to be more than the mere individual's will. (3)

    It is my opinion that Tugendhat's investigation was vitiated in part by the issue of justification, and I believe that this was due to his feeling called upon to offer an alternative to the individualistic tradition of the Enlightenment, which overestimated the individual's capacity for choice, as well as the need for a basis in morality. In order to counter the morality of the Enlightenment, Tugendhat remained within its conceptual premise (cf. e.g. Tugendhat 2006). At any rate, he may either attempt to describe the system of morality--and the result he obtains is that there can be no absolute value, and therefore no ultimate justification, for choosing one conception of morality over another--, or he may attempt to justify a minimal conception of morality, in this case universalistic and egalitarian. Both procedures are not compatible tout court with Tugendhat's research procedures, although a description of the structure of morality may itself prove compatible with universalism and egalitarianism.

    I once confronted Tugendhat with some of these criticisms. He pointed out to me that I might have mistaken the very aim of his philosophical endeavour, which was to better understand morality. In truth, he was not seeking to offer a justification of any kind, but was merely trying to understand what can be found in moral justification or, in other words, how we can understand this when we consider that moral judgments require de facto justification. He was therefore neither interested in discussing the need for the moral justification we actually give, nor in providing himself with a justification, but rather in understanding its structure.

    I believe Tugendhat achieved what he intended, i.e. to better understand the structure of morality, although he did more than that. Therefore I still think there is something odd about the role justification plays in Tugendhat's moral approach, and I also think that this oddness is somehow related to the balance his view establishes between reason and sentiment on describing the structure of morality among human beings. This description is what he meant to give, and deserves to be better clarified by separating it from the issue of justification.

    Nonetheless, I am aware that things are much more complicated than they have been presented so far. In this paper, I want to investigate the system of morality, rather than to emphasise justification. However, I also want to do so through a discussion of Tugendhat's moral philosophy. Thus an analysis...

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