A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND.(Review)

THE UNIVERSITY of Otago's Emeritus Professor of Politics, James Flynn, has never been one to heed advice to stick to his last, with the result that he has made lasting contributions to a number of areas outside political theory as narrowly conceived. Most famously, the "Flynn effect" is named for him, referring to his discovery of a large, clearly non-genetically controlled, increase in the intelligence quotients of peoples around the world over the last few decades. This has proved an enormous spanner in the works of IQ testing, especially for those defending a strongly hereditarian view of intelligence, and earned Flynn a "Profile" in the prestigious Scientific American.

Somewhat closer to the intellectual "duties" associated with his occupancy of the chair of politics he has also vigorously pursued an interest in moral philosophy, and this is what he takes up in his most recent book, How to Defend Humane Ideals: Substitutes for Objectivity (University of Nebraska Press). As his earlier work Humanism and Ideology: An Aristotelian View indicates, he has long worried over the problem of moral relativism and especially over the question of whether, in the absence of moral truth, some variety of humanism can rationally be shown to be superior to its ethical rivals.

In both books the major spectre haunting the world of ethics is taken to be Nietzsche whom, unlike many other modern moral theorists, Flynn takes very seriously indeed. In critically examining the argument of the later book I shall suggest that although the spectre of Nietzsche's ethics is successfully laid--along with a number of lesser sprites--there remains a demon all the more menacing because unimpressed by the rules of exorcism which supposedly leave humanism alone occupying the halls of the ethical. But before taking on that task, and because my approach is largely critical, I should emphasise just how good Flynn's book is. It excels both in its learning and its critical acumen and in seriousness of intent is as far removed from the usual "conference circuit" trivialities as could be imagined. It deserves criticism in the way a first-class batsman deserves the best of bowlers.

Flynn's thesis comes in two parts. First, he digs a large hole for moral facts to fall into and then, second, tries to persuade us not to worry too much about their disappearance because even in their absence we can still defend "humane values" against non-humane ones. The first bit of the program, then, consists in arguing that there is nothing objective about morality apart from the fact that different people do live the various moral lives they do--as warriors or saints or remorseful sinners and so on. No moral statements are true, as his conclusion might usefully be put, although in putting it this way it is not clear whether Flynn thinks that this apparently lamentable state of affairs is because these statements are neither true nor false--that, for example, because as prescriptions or commands they involve rules which, of of their nature, cannot be true or false--or whether he believes that at least some of them are not true because, in trying to state what is the case, they just turn out false. The latter interpretation is suggested by Flynn's argued rejection of those realist moral theories which locate good as consisting of sorts of facts in this or some other world: as the Form of the Good (Plato) or as "non-natural properties" (G.E. Moore) or causally efficacious psychological states (N.L. Sturgeon) or some such things or properties.

Now it may be that, if pressed, Flynn could argue with respect to the otherworldly variety of moral realism that he has--and indeed he has--shown its incoherence and that thereby both truth and falsity pass it by, that it involves "category mistakes" or some similar sort of "logical" error which boldly takes discussion intocontexts which make a nonsense of it. But he has not shown this for the this-worldly realist theories which attach moral predicates to psychological states (for example) which look as if they might have to be taken as a different kettle of red herrings. That Flynn, perhaps unguardedly, regards these as straightforwardly false is suggested when he compares them with the evidently false theories of astrology. Howsoever this may be he claims early on that all moral utterances lie entirely outside the domain of truth-tests, that is, of ways or methods of deciding truth. In that sense there cannot be a moral science.

The issue of the correct interpretation of moral statements leads on to a matter of some importance. Flynn's later argument requires them to be neither true nor false because if that were the choice they would all of them be false on his account and so all morality would be mere illusion. And he does not wish to press his claim that moral statements escape the discipline of truth-testing into the service of a general scepticism or "nihilism" but rather to avoid that desperate position. Moral beliefs are not to be dismissed as merely subjective--as mere whims or whatever--because they escape the subjective/objective opposition which itself depends on prior notions of the possible attribution of truth and falsity. Absolute scepticism about morality, on this account, makes the mistake of insisting on the wrong sort of measure or test, a bit like a wine taster complaining about the lack of hops: "in the absence of a truth test, no moral ideal, humane or otherwise, can either pass or fail".

The importance of this argument that the absence of objectivity in morality does not imply subjectivity and hence mere whim is that, if sound, it disposes of the greatest threat to Flynn's promise to provide a justification of humane ideals despite the impossibility of coming up with truth tests or "proofs" for them. ("Proofs" are supposedly a priori justifications of moral positions--they are a bit like reductio ad absurdum arguments in geometry.) The justification, the second part of his argument, consists in showing that humanism's ideals are superior to rival sets, such as those of racism or Nietzsche's aesthetic fascism, in as much as unlike them they are mutually consistent, do not involve false social theories, are achievable and so on. In place of appeals to the good we are given a mixed list of logical and empirical criteria for success. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and only Flynn's recipe yields a mixture stable enough for a tasting.