Part II: Malice, Compassion and Moral Good and Evil

After considering malice, Taylor turns to the incentive of compassion. The story he gives to highlight this incentive is the story of two soldiers marooned on an island in the Pacific during World War II. One of which is an American, the other a Japanese. After a battle where the Americans believed that they had wiped out all the Japanese on the island, the American marine was accidentally left behind. He, while exploring the island, stumbled across the Japanese and, to his dismay, discovered that the Japanese man had a pistol and a knife whereas he only had a knife. Certain that he could not defeat the Japanese man, he lived only by night, sure that he would soon be discovered. As time wore on he became more and more paranoid. However, one morning he stumbled upon the Japanese man who was fast asleep. The American raised his knife to kill his foe, yet could not kill the sleeping man and dropped his knife. This awoke the Japanese man who pushed his own weapons away and then each stood staring into the terrified face of the other. In this story there is clearly no hero, but what there is is a clear example of a tenderness towards a thing that can suffer, a kindness that goes beyond the desire for self-preservation. We find here a true example of moral good. Taylor considers how other ethical theories would account for this and finds them all inadequate as it is not the weighing up of consequences, nor any understanding of one's duty that shows us the goodness in this story. One need not be a philosopher to see that this is an example of goodness nor why it is so. (Taylor makes a good analogy, I think, where he claims that it would be as wrong to think that a person must understand philosophy in some capacity in order to understand good and evil as to think that one must understand the physics of refraction in order to enjoy a sunset.) Quite clearly, that which bestows the quality of moral good upon the final actions in this story is that they are done selflessly and for no other reason than the desire to do no harm to another's well-being.

(Sidenote: Taylor mentions compassion towards animals as being another good example of the moral good. Essentially, he sees the moral good as any action that is done out of the concern for the well-being of anything that has the capacity to suffer. He also sees this sort of compassion as a good example of a case where a person acts for the benefit of another with no hope for gaining any benefit for himself. Conversely, the same is true in the reverse for moral evil.)

As a result of all this it can be seen that for Taylor it is the incentive of an action that determines its moral quality and not its result. He says that when people suffer it is always a great evil, yet this is true whether they do so because of a natural disaster or because of a cruel tormentor. However, the latter is more than just an evil, it is a moral evil (as we are revolted by it in away we are not by the former) and it gets this quality as a result of the incentive which caused these actions. Taylor believes that it is what is in the heart of an actor when he acts, more so than anything else, that prompts in us a moral revulsion or admiration.

Next, Taylor reintroduces justice and his conception of the common good. In his mind, a sort of rudimentary justice can exist between a group of totally self-serving beings, yet any sort of serious justice or common good can not exist between them. This is because there will at some point be a time when acting for the common good confers no benefits on a person and thus, if completely self-serving he would not do it. There can be no reason given him so long as it attempts to appeal to his self-serving nature. In fact, Taylor believes that no reason can be given at all why one should have more concern for the starving millions of the world than he should for slice of toast. He thinks that there is no reason whatsoever as to why one should respect and act for the common good. However, (and this is the important part) he thinks that no reason is necessary because people do, in fact, respect and act for the common good simply because people do have these sorts of desires. Essentially, human beings just do to some extent care about one another, have the capacity to feel sympathy, the ability to imagine another's suffering as one's own even though it is not, and the desire to sometimes help relieve that suffering. It is this sort of desire that makes possible the common good and though there is no reason why people should have the fact that we do is the most important one in morality. According to Taylor, all that matters is that we desire such things.

I find this to be very interesting. A conception such as this is vulnerable to the idea where everyone takes a pill and thereby thinks/acts differently, yet I do not think that this should count as a strike against it. Taylor is trying to explain morality as it is and thus the fact that things could be otherwise seems irrelevant here. I also find it interesting that on Taylors view the very part of our nature which leads us to do such good (i.e. that we can act selflessly) is the very part that leads us to do great evils. Very interesting indeed.

What I do wonder about is what Taylor would say about someone who possessed no feelings of compassion. I guess the question is not whether there could be such as person as this is obviously so, but whether or not there is such a person. Or maybe such a person would simply be the epitome of moral evil (if he were capable of malice) or of moral neutrality (if he were capable of nothing but self-love). I don't know.

A final note from me. I am inclined to wonder what Gyges would say here. I suppose that, given the sort of person he is, he would do the same things for he would certainly not yet be convinced. No reason has been given to him as to why he should not act as he does or, more precisely, why it is not in his interest to act as he does. But, what I think is important here is that there is equally no reason why he should act on his interests. It is not that he has better arguments, but merely that he has chosen one path over the other. He could not convince someone of a different character to act in a manner like himself because reasons for acting thusly are lacking. In the end it seems that there just are no reasons for one's actions over and above his wanting to act in such and such a way. Of course, however, this needs much more discussion.