Abstract
Moral particularism, defined as the view that moral judgment does not require moral principles, has become prominent both in moral philosophy and in philosophy of education. This article re-examines Nussbaum’s case for particularism, based on Sophocles’ Antigone, because her stress on sensitive appreciation of circumstantial specifics is salutary, though it cannot justify particularism because the problem lies not with moral principles, nor with moral judgment, but with a constricted and untenable view of rational judgment as simple syllogistic ratiocination. To improve our understanding of the central role of principles in moral judgment and in educational theory, this article explicates ‘mature judgment’ and highlights key features of Thomas Green’s account of norm acquisition, and of Kant’s account of the autonomy of rational judgment. These provide a basis for justifying liberal arts education in today’s context.
1. Introduction: ‘universalism’ vs ‘particularism’
Since the late 1970s there has been growing debate about whether moral judgment requires using moral principles or instead moral judgment suffices unto itself to guide moral behaviour, without recourse to moral principles. This debate has been cast broadly as one between ‘universalism’ and ‘particularism’ about moral judgment. Though not inaccurate, this broad contrast tends to occlude the wide range of views falling under it (Crisp, 1998). I shall not consider this range here. Instead I re-examine Martha Nussbaum’s (1986) attempt to defend moral particularism (in the sense indicated) through close consideration of Sophocles’ Antigone and what she contends Aristotle learned from Attic tragedies about the faults of any ‘rule-following’ model of moral judgment and about the merits of attending to the concrete particulars involved in any situation requiring moral consideration. According to Nussbaum, moral judgment suffices to guide moral decision and action without using moral principles. Hence the ‘rule-following’ model of moral judgment, which is hopeless in theory and a pernicious distortion of moral judgment in practice, is dispensable.
This debate about ‘universalism’ and ‘particularism’ in moral theory has direct implications for educational theory and practice. One broad, central aim of education is to help raise youngsters into maturity, where a central feature of maturity is competent exercise of moral judgment. As educators we need to know what are our aims, including, e.g. whether our aims involve either inculcating moral principles or instead fostering some form of moral judgment which does not require moral principles. I shall argue that moral principles are central to moral judgment, whether implicitly or explicitly, and that educational theory or practice which neglects this centrality is illfounded. I re-examine Nussbaum’s illuminating treatment of these issues because I believe her examination of the concrete details of moral judgment in Antigone provides a more informative and persuasive brief for particularism than other, more theoretical treatments of these issues. 1 I begin with a brief synopsis of Sophocles’ critique of Creon’s ruling principles in Antigone (Section 2). I then review some of Nussbaum’s central findings about moral judgment and attention to detail in Antigone and in Aristotle (Section 3). I concur with Nussbaum that the common ‘rule-following’ – or rather: the ‘subsumption’ – model of moral judgment is deeply flawed. To gain a better understanding of moral judgment I then explicate ‘mature judgment’ (Section 4). So doing helps to show both that the ‘subsumption’ model of rational judgment is deeply flawed and that this model is not required for principled moral judgment. To elaborate this point I consider Thomas Green’s account of five types of conscience and their roles in moral judgment (Section 5). I conclude that Nussbaum’s case for particularism stands – or rather falls – with the hopelessly inadequate subsumption model of judgment it presupposes: the fault lies with that common model, not with principled moral judgment (Section 6). These considerations are central to Kant’s account of rational autonomy (Section 7). I conclude that moral judgment, indeed any exercise of mature judgment, requires both judicious use of principles and careful, reflective attention to the details of the case at hand and their interrelations. Both of these complementary aspects of rational judgment are central to the aims and methods of education in all subjects, though they are best developed by a sound liberal arts education.
2. Sophocles’ critique of Creon’s ruling principles in Antigone
I begin by summarizing the key points of Sophocles’ probing internal critique of Creon’s ruling principles in Antigone. 2 As Thebes celebrated its victory over Polynices’ invading army, rejoicing in its safety and security, Creon assumed the throne and introduced some key innovations expressly directed solely to the safety and security of the polis. However well-intentioned, his innovations instead led Thebes to the brink of a disaster even greater than the military defeat it had narrowly escaped. By violating divine law, Creon’s innovative principles and policies led instead directly to the near collapse of Thebes: through their consistent, persistent and insistent execution, Creon’s innovations refute themselves. None of his revisions or retrenchments suffice to secure his proclaimed principles against critical assessment, or against self-refutation.
Initially, Creon equates good with the safety of the polis (Sophocles, 2001: 175–91, 209–10). As a corollary to this, he denies any honours to traitors such as Polynices (198–208). In the face of mounting difficulties, Creon then insists that justice lies in obedience to one’s ruler, right or wrong (666–9, cf. 289–92). When this retrenchment of his principles generates further difficulties, he insists that ‘a city belongs to its master’ and that he is entitled to rule the city as he sees fit (736, 738). These principles all founder on the fact that the good of the city is complex, so that ruling for the sake of the good of the polis requires taking this complexity of civil goods into account. 3 Creon fails to take these complexities into account because ultimately he is more interested in his ruling than he is in ruling well, even if ‘ruling well’ is restricted to ruling solely for the safety of the polis. Creon’s principles reflect perverse priorities and deep misjudgments that bring about the near collapse of the polis, a collapse so total that Creon, whose name means ‘ruler’, would have nothing left over with which to rule. This confirms Haemon’s bitter advice to his father, that he should ‘go be a ruler of a desert, all alone. You’d do it well’ (739). Rule by edict alone cannot be justified, not even in its own terms. If rule by edict succeeds, it does so only contingently, by framing edicts which happen to accord with broader considerations than any royal right to fiat.
In this way, Sophocles’ Antigone presents a devastating internal critique of rigid single-mindedness set in service of the supreme right of a single ruler to govern simply and solely as he sees fit, even if he claims to do so for the sake of the safety of the polis. Moreover, this internal critique is driven by the proponent of the principles criticized, namely Creon himself, indeed despite the many attempts by others to induce him to reconsider. The implausibility of Creon’s key ruling principles is evident from the start in his sincere but narrow-minded innovations. However, precisely how drastic and disastrous his innovations are is far from obvious, even to the audience, and certainly not at all to Creon. Creon’s stubbornness serves to draw out those consequences in all their detailed significance, which ultimately is so horrifying that finally Creon not only follows the Chorus’ instructions to bury Polynices and to disinter Antigone (1100–11), he also recognizes and expressly declares the erroneousness of his own original key ruling principles (1261–72). Creon came to these excruciating insights only because he so thoroughly persisted in carrying out his key ruling principles to the bitter, self-refuting end, guiding all of his thought and action by those principles whenever and wherever a relevant circumstance arose. Sophocles’ audience comes to understand the breadth and depth of these issues by witnessing their exhaustive presentation and demise by their prime exponent, Creon.
3. Reflections on judgment and reflective judgment in Antigone
Rational judgment as subsumption
Compressed in this way, singling out one major theme and aspect of Antigone from the others omits a key feature of Sophocles’ play. As Nussbaum has shown, the Antigone is replete with terms for and discussions of judgment; Aristotle recognized Sophocles’ commentary on a ‘rule-following’ model of reasoned judgment. 4 The predominant model of reasoned judgment is that judging a particular case simply involves subsuming it under the relevant principle, from which direct consequences follow by explicit syllogistic inference. These inferences may be deductive, inductive or abductive; the key to this view is that justification lies in inferences that follow unilaterally and directly from ‘first principles’ of whatever sort. This model of reasoned judgment as simple subsumption or as algorithmic or as strictly deductive, though pervasive, is deeply flawed (Will, 1997, 1988).
Before continuing, I wish to correct an important misnomer. To call this subsumptive, syllogistic model of reasoning a ‘rule-following’ model of reasoning obscures important issues. One issue obscured by this designation is whether following rules is simply a matter of subsuming particular cases under general principles in order to infer a conclusion syllogistically. Wittgenstein, for example, does not dispute whether we can or ought to follow rules; he disputes whether rule-following can rightly be understood in terms of simple syllogistic, algorithmic or subsumptive reasoning, as if Aristotle’s deadly boring example of modus ponens – which infers from Socrates’ being a man and all men being mortal to Socrates’ mortality – were paradigmatic of rule-following judgment or behaviour generally. 5 Aristotle’s example is deliberately dull because it merely illustrates a form of syllogism, rather than its use in any significant context. To address the issue about rule-following we must provide a more accurate designation for the simple syllogistic model of rational judgment. Following Frederick L. Will, I shall call it the ‘subsumption’ model.
Nussbaum on attention to detail
Nussbaum points out that Sophocles’ play encourages careful attention to detail, to many metaphors regarding judgment and training, and to many levels within and interconnections between each of the key incidents. She further stresses that Aristotle’s model of practical reasoning is based on this kind of carefully reflective judgment, rooted in careful examination and appreciation of all relevant details. Indeed, Nussbaum finds this built into the very structure of Sophocles’ lyrics:
The lyrics both show us and engender in us a process of reflection and (self-)discovery that works through a persistent attention to and a (re-)interpretation of concrete words, images, incidents. We reflect on an incident not by subsuming it under a general rule, not by assimilating its features to the terms of an elegant scientific procedure, but by burrowing down into the depths of the particular, finding images and connections that will permit us to see it more truly, describe it more richly; by combining this burrowing with a horizontal drawing of connections, so that every horizontal link contributes to the depth of our view of the particular, and every new depth creates new horizontal links . . . The image of learning expressed in this style, like the picture of reading required by it, stresses responsiveness and an attention to complexity; it discourages the search for the simple and, above all, for the reductive. It suggests to us that the world of practical choice, like the text, is articulated but never exhausted by reading; that reading must reflect and not obscure this fact, showing that the particular (or: the text) remains there unexhausted, the final arbiter of the correctness of our vision; that correct choice (or: good interpretation) is, first and foremost, a matter of keenness and flexibility of perception, rather than conformity to a set of simplifying [sic] principles . . . Finally, the Chorus reminds us that good response to a practical situation (or: a text) before us involves not only intellectual appreciation but also, where appropriate, emotional reaction. . . . these elders allow themselves not only to ‘think on both sides’ but also to feel deeply. They allow themselves to form the bonds with their world that are the bases for profound fear and love and grief. (Nussbaum, 1986, 69–70)
6
Nussbaum’s observations on practical reasoning are salutary, as much for philosophers as for general readers. Her comments illuminate philosophical reflection. They also betray the Achilles’ heel of her analysis: she rightly rejects the notion that ‘correct choice’ consists in ‘conformity to a set of simplifying principles’ (Nussbaum, 1986: 69–70). To reject simplifying principles is not, however, to reject principles as such. Nussbaum’s analysis confronts a dilemma: either she criticizes only a subset of moral principles, namely simplifying principles, or she presumes without argument that all moral principles are simplifying. If she criticizes only simplifying principles, her analysis cannot justify particularism, which rejects altogether moral principles or at least their use in actual moral judgments. If instead she presumes that all (moral) principles are simplifying, this key premise is false. For example, neither Kant’s ([1797–98] 1996) nor Mill’s ([1861] 1963–91) nor Gewirth’s (1978) moral principles are simplifying. 7 Let us use Nussbaum’s observations to reconsider moral judgment and the roles of moral principles.
Moral judgment, tragedy and moral education
Recent scholarship (Janko, 1987: xvi–xx) has developed a powerful account of Aristotle’s view of the moral significance of tragedy, rooted in Aristotle’s concern with developing virtues of character and their role in practical wisdom (phronesis). Virtues of character involve coming to have the appropriate kind and degree of emotion in response to appropriate circumstances. Having such emotional responses contributes both to right action and ultimately to phronesis itself. In this regard, tragedies offer us an opportunity to learn about the appropriate circumstances for feeling great pity and fear without undergoing life-threatening ordeals. Such learning includes both having the relevant emotions and recognizing the appropriate situations in which to feel those emotions. Experiencing tragic performances can help us learn both of these morally important things, which are both affective and intellectual. 8
Moreover, these proper affective/intellectual responses are part of properly understanding the significance of points made in a tragedy. In Antigone, Creon ultimately rejects his own views on ruling by profoundly re-affirming the traditional Attic form of life:
I’m afraid it is best to obey the laws, Just as tradition has them, all one’s life. (Sophocles, 2001: 1113–14)
Sophocles’ audiences would agree deeply with this conclusion. They would agree with this conclusion, not as an abstract principle demonstrated by a philosophical proof, but as a concrete principle of life, now profoundly re-affirmed on the basis of Creon’s harrowing attempt to deny and to defy it. They would have re-affirmed it intellectually and also affectively, attitudinally, conatively in the very bowels of their living agency. This is a profound form of self-understanding. (How explicit or reflective this self-understanding may be is a further issue we may leave aside for now.) Sophocles’ audiences would also have understood and most would have accepted that human law cannot rightly violate divine (or customary) law; that rule by fiat alone cannot be justified because it cannot, as such, provide for justice.
These points accord with and underscore how moral judgment (though not only moral judgment) does not and cannot consist simply in knowing a list of principles because it also involves the conative capacities, abilities and commitments to using these principles judiciously and acting on one’s best judgment, in view of all relevant features of the situation to be judged.
Nussbaum’s oversight
Because Nussbaum focuses so emphatically on reflection on particulars, her observations tend to obscure the fact that such reflections are the basis for forming and reaching determinate, general conclusions, such as the elders’ ultimate agreement with both Haemon and Antigone (802–6; cf. Nussbaum, 1986: 70). Furthermore, Creon’s ultimate conclusion states a general moral principle: to obey traditional laws throughout one’s life. Even if we contextualize this principle to Attica, or even to ancient Thebes, it remains a general principle governing a myriad of actions during any Attic Greek’s (or any ancient Theban’s) lifespan. Nussbaum’s selective emphasis appears to favour moral particularism only because she does not consider well enough the role of appreciating relevant particulars in developing, formulating and assessing an adequately reasoned, principled view on the matter at hand. More generally, interpreting Aristotle as a particularist, or using his views to justify particularism, neglects Aristotle’s view that phronesis is concerned not only with particulars but also with universals. This concern of practical wisdom with universals (as well as with particulars) is duly reflected in Aristotle’s educational theory (Curren, 2010: esp. 544–53).
The problem Nussbaum identifies in the subsumption model of judgment is not a problem with rules or principles. It is instead a problem with modelling their use upon simple subsumption of an ‘obviously’ relevant case under an equally obvious rule, premise or principle. Like following rules, using principles requires both identifying which principles are appropriate to which occasions and identifying how relevant principles are appropriately used in those circumstances. Identifying these crucial factors are matters of judgment, informed by the particulars of the situation, along with understanding relevant principles. As both Kant and Wittgenstein stressed, this kind of judgment cannot be eliminated by formulating ever more explicit and exhaustive rules: whatever further rules for applying rules one might supply, those rules of application themselves require judgment to apply them. 9
Nussbaum’s attention to details, connections and sensitive reflection are salutary. However, they do not justify particularism because attention to and sensitive reflection on details and their interconnections is required for adequate judgment in non-formal domains, including those forms of judgment involving principles or rules. The prevalence of the ‘subsumptive’ model of rule-following or the ‘application’ of principles rests on a pervasive though mistaken attempt to assimilate reasoning in non-formal domains to strictly deductive reasoning within formal domains. 10 These issues quickly become technical, but an important converse point may be made here. The particularist attempt to dispense with moral principles and make do solely with moral judgment ultimately confronts a devastating difficulty. Judging rightly is possible without judging by explicit recourse to principles; Kant contends that commonsense morality, without recourse to Kant’s moral theory, typically judges moral matters rightly, because it is implicitly guided by a fundamental moral principle Kant claims to explicate (1964 [1902]: GS 4:403–4; see Kerstein, 2009).
Particularists who stress that moral judgment is more like perception than ratiocination should reconsider just how simple perception is – not. Perception is not informative until it becomes ‘seeing that’ (Dretske, 1969: Part II), which is no simple matter of sensory intake; not even simply seeing is a simple matter of sensory intake. 11 Arguably, one central aim of biology education is to teach students to see like a biologist, which is to say: to see the biologically relevant and important features of whatever one observes. This is a matter of recognition, a highly informed, highly educated, highly intellectual (as well as sensory) ability. Moral ‘perception’ involves comparable kinds of sophisticated, educated, intellectual (as well as emotional and conative) recognition, pertaining to the identification and assessment of the moral features of a situation. That such perceptual recognition ‘feels’ simple or ‘seems’ to occur automatically or effortlessly does not indicate that such recognition is simple. Instead it indicates how very skilled and quick-witted we often are in matters moral. More specifically, this marks the contrast between novice and expert perception; the latter is far more discerning, not because it is simple, but because it is so intellectually acute, because it is informed by both the relevant principles and the proper use of those principles in concreto, in recognizing and assessing relevant features of the particular circumstance. For example, consider the contrast between how ordinary civilians and how war veterans or medics ‘perceive’ an accident victim. Only due to their training in first aid do the latter immediately ‘see’ what to do; simple perception this is not. In matters moral, this can be called a kind of moral literacy; Herman (2007) develops this aspect of Kant’s moral theory brilliantly; moral particularism has no monopoly on moral ‘perception’. Intellectual acuity in perception, whether moral or non-moral, is a form of rational judgment not exercised by explicit ratiocination, though it is acquired, trained, honed (in part) through prior ratiocination, of the kinds central to education, expert training and also to the raising of youth into sufficiently mature adults.
Moral judgment can be guided implicitly by principles. This is especially so in unproblematic cases, which do not require explicit moral reasoning. 12 When difficulties arise in cases of moral uncertainty, and more so in cases of moral disagreement or conflict, these situations call for explicit moral reflection, reasoning and judgment. Sometimes moral uncertainty or disagreement may be resolved by re-examining the particulars of the case. Often, however, it cannot. Especially in the case of moral disagreement, the conflict often lies much deeper, and can be addressed, if at all, only by explicating and assessing the moral points of view which generate the conflict. Such explication and assessment requires articulating the core, relevant principles which structure those moral points of view, and hence structure the relevant disagreement. Appeal to moral principles is all the more necessary when dealing with various forms or levels of cultural conflict, whether intra- or inter-societal. Indeed, this is a key reason for the development of the distinctively Modern natural law tradition: to try to identify sufficient multi-, if not omni-lateral principles which can be justified across the dispute at issue (independent of sectarian dogma), and would suffice to settle the dispute, perhaps by dismantling it. Principles only became central to moral theory in the early Modern period, when the Thirty Years War in Europe and the rise of international trade, especially by sea, raised grave difficulties about identifying and justifying sufficient principles of justice and right action to achieve peace and to secure regular trade, both domestically and internationally. That is, the theoretical task of identifying and justifying basic moral principles arose precisely when and because it was no longer obvious who counted as morally wise, who counted as an Aristotelian phronimos, nor why any purported phronimos merits this designation. This remains our condition today, both domestically and internationally.
Note, however, that this observation concerns the centrality of identifying and justifying principles to moral theory. I do not deny that moral principles were important to moral practice prior to the late sixteenth century; I have already noted, for example, that Creon’s ultimate conclusion states a moral principle, and that Aristotle’s view is that phronesis is concerned with universals as well as particulars, a concern evident also in his educational theory. Note further that Creon’s concluding principle is prevalent not only in Attic Greek, but in all traditional ways of life – including Modern and contemporary forms of life, too, however much post-Enlightenment societies have buttressed, augmented or restructured their traditions through explicit practical reasoning and principles, including e.g. written constitutions. Recourse to, debate about, use of and obedience to explicit practical principles and their justification can itself become a traditional practice, and has become so in many societies in recent centuries. 13
A crucial problem confronting particularism is this: in the face of moral dispute, particularism ultimately has no more to offer than appeals to proper upbringing, that is, upbringing to make proper moral judgments. However, the notion of ‘proper’ upbringing is morally contentious: it has a grievous history of papering over and even facilitating class, religious, ethnic, racial and gender discrimination. Particularism provides no basis for settling or even addressing serious moral disagreement or cultural conflict, whether these be limited to the chattering classes, remain cold or flare up into hot war. Neither can moral particularism begin to address the quintessential formulation of these difficulties: the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion. This Dilemma easily arises in debate about which judgment is a ‘properly’ moral one, or about who counts as a phronimos and why. Likewise, this Dilemma easily arises in debate about whose (purported) ‘moral perception’ is correct, superior or at least suitable. Addressing such issues constructively, both in theory and in practice, is complex. My present point is that particularism cannot even begin either task. The point for which I have argued elsewhere in detail is that a proper account of rational principles, moral judgment and their justification can constructively address these issues, in part by solving the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion. 14 Moral particularism is a throwback to a pre-Enlightenment world in which large-scale moral consensus reigned, or was perceived to reign or at least secured dominion.
Nevertheless, Nussbaum’s observations illuminate philosophical reflection, regardless of whether specifically practical or theoretical (cognitive) issues are considered, and regardless of debates between particularists and universalists. This is because the kind of reflection she describes is required (though not sufficient) for sound justificatory reasoning, which centrally involves critical assessment of the matters at hand, and of one’s own understanding of them. Only such reflective examination and appreciation of details can enable us to assess any particular piece of reasoning we engage in, and indeed to assess the relevance or adequacy of any principles and of any particular evidence or information we use in our thought, judgment and action regarding the case at hand. Only by examining and considering the particular details of the situation and the implications (direct conclusions as well as broader ramifications) of a piece of reasoning can we consider whether that reasoning is invalid or valid, or whether it is apt, illuminating, not quite adequate, beside the point, prejudicial, corrupt or perhaps simply daft. Likewise, we can only assess the soundness of a piece of deductive reasoning, and determine whether it should be used modus ponens or modus tollens, through careful, reflective consideration of the principles, premises and inferences used in that reasoning, together with the particulars of the circumstance or issue which that reasoning addresses (see ‘Rational judgment as subsumption’ in Section 3 above). Only this kind of careful, thorough reflection can enable us to distinguish unsound from sound analysis and reasoning, and thereby to identify genuine proofs or sufficient justifications. This point holds both of practical and of theoretical reasoning; it concerns cognition as well as practice, and it concerns our philosophical reasoning about cognition or practice, all of which matter centrally to education and to philosophy of education. We can better understand this more comprehensive account of judgment by considering ‘mature judgment’.
4. Education and mature judgment
According to an old adage, education is what remains after one forgets all one learned. The truth in this witticism is that many of the most important results of education concern intellectual skills and abilities, not only the mastery of factual knowledge. Those skills and abilities may be summed up in a phrase: mature judgment. Mature judgment involves the abilities to discern and define the basic parameters of a problem, to distinguish relevant from irrelevant, and more relevant from less relevant, considerations bearing on a problem, to recognize and to formulate important questions and subquestions which must be answered in order to resolve a problem, to determine proper lines of inquiry to answer those questions, to identify historical or social factors which lead people – including ourselves! – to formulate questions or answers in particular ways, to think critically about the formulation or reformulation of the issues, to consider carefully the evidence or arguments for and against proposed solutions, to accommodate as well as possible the competing considerations bearing on the issue, through these reflections and inquiries to resolve a problem so far as possible and ultimately to organize and to present these considerations clearly and comprehensively to all interested parties.
These qualities of judgment are cardinal intellectual virtues. They are central to a liberal education, and they are crucial to constructive, intelligent inquiry in any of life’s many activities, whether professional, commercial, political, academic, scientific or personal. 15 However, these qualities of judgment cannot be learned ‘by taking a course’ in them, as Wittgenstein reminds us; they are the indirect result of training, education and experience in more specific subjects and activities. They are correlated with a subtle understanding of a topic, but they are not reducible to mastery of the factual component of the topic understood. 16
5. Judgment, conscientiousness and principles
These features of mature judgment and those regarding informed reflection discussed earlier (Section 3) are highlighted and elaborated by Thomas Green’s illuminating account of norm acquisition. Green’s (1999) book, Voices: The Educational Formation of Conscience, is centrally concerned with moral education. I suggested to him that his central concern is not simply with moral education, but with the moral dimensions of education; he was receptive to this suggestion. 17 Green’s key question is: What is it to come to govern oneself in view of a norm? (1999: 35–55). 18 This developmental issue includes its result: individual normative self-governance. Hence Green’s issue of norm acquisition pertains directly to my central issue of what is involved in using – that is, in properly governing one’s thought and action on the basis of – normative principles.
Green argues, soundly I submit, that governing oneself by a norm involves much more than simply complying with a norm, or obeying it or even observing it (in the sense of recognizing its authority). Central to being governed by a norm is a self-critical attitude towards the appropriateness and use of a norm in its proper context, where this involves caring to use the norm correctly. Green observes that moral education ‘has to do with an acquired temper of the self by which [avowed principles are] brought to actually govern conduct and can be discerned to do so, even when the conduct itself falls short of all we think it ought to be’ (1999: 3). Bringing thought to bear in actual conduct Green calls ‘effective governance’ (3–4; cf. 16–17). Effective governance involves caring to use a norm correctly.
Caring to use norms correctly involves conscience, which Green defines broadly as ‘reflexive judgment about things that matter’ (21). Green occasionally uses the term ‘self-appraisal’ (22) in this connection; it might also be termed self-critical assessment, or critical self-assessment of one’s own conduct, both in thought and in action. Green selects the term ‘conscience’ because its judgments are both self-given and authoritative, and because its competence is much broader than ‘morality’ as commonly and narrowly conceived (22); indeed, it is broad enough to cover the whole range of ‘things that matter’. Green provisionally summarizes his analysis in three claims:
Conscience is reflexive judgment on things that matter . . . [It] is formed by the acquisition of norms . . . [These] norms . . . take on the role of governance. (Green, 1999: 23; cf. 32, 39)
Green analyses conscience in terms of five ‘voices’ of conscience (whence his title): the conscience of craft, of membership, of sacrifice, of memory and of imagination (chapters 3, 4).
Green focuses not on statistical norms, but on rules, ideals and exemplars which serve as communal standards for judging what people ought to or should do, or ought to have done (32–3). Hence neither compliance nor non-compliance with some course of behaviour suffices to establish a community’s norm governing such behaviour. Establishing this requires knowing about the community’s and its members’ attitudes toward and judgments about such behaviour. Observing a norm involves acknowledging its authority. However, one may observe a norm (in this sense) and still disobey it. Obeying a norm involves acknowledging and acting on the authority of a norm (34–5). Defying a norm can then be a way of protesting its alleged authority (35). To obey a norm requires a self-critical attitude, the kind of attitude reflected in correcting one’s own behaviour in order to maintain or to improve one’s compliance with that norm (37–8). A person who governs his or her behaviour by a norm regards and acts on that norm as a point of rectitude and assesses the relevant behaviour of others accordingly (38). Obeying a norm thus involves caring to be correct in one’s observance of that norm; a critical and self-critical attitude is essential to normative governance (39). These attitudes and abilities are not results of acquiring a norm; they are constitutive of acquiring a norm, Green argues (38–9). Conversely, a central form of alienation or anomie is the cynical attitude that corrects others but not oneself (39–41).
This process of acquiring norms Green calls ‘normation’. Green contends that
normation just is this structuring of the emotions of self-assessment – shame, guilt, embarrassment, pride, and the like – both in our self-assessment and in our judgments of others. (Green, 1999: 41)
Normation specifies such emotions by providing them objects of (broadly speaking) approval and disapproval (41). Critical judgment, according to Green, is as much affective as intellectual; hence he speaks of ‘acquiring’ rather than ‘learning’ or ‘knowing’ norms (42–3). These are important reasons why affect and conation are required for moral judgment and for moral virtue, in addition to how they inform sensitive moral perception of morally salient features of one’s situation.
Acquiring a norm involves developing judgment about those situations to which the norm pertains, either directly or indirectly, and distinguishing these from contexts to which the norm is irrelevant. Acquiring a norm also involves developing judgment about how best to obey the norm, given the specifics of a situation and the other norms and considerations which bear on it. Such judgment is not reducible to following a set of preformulated rules, no matter how complex. Norm-governed reasoning and conduct requires more than deduction or the application of algorithms; the notion that we ‘apply’ norms to specifics is deeply misleading. Norm acquisition and normative governance are always embedded in activities (44–50). Thus Green, too, rightly rejects the ‘subsumption’ model of rational judgment.
Green does not rank the five voices of conscience, but instead identifies them and their distinctive contributions to intelligent conduct in any and all of our undertakings. He does not think that these voices are always univocal, or that there are any set ways of reconciling them when they diverge. Instead he contends that only by acknowledging the various claims made by these voices, and considering them carefully in the particular context in which they may conflict, can we devise any sensitive and satisfactory resolution in any problematic case.
In this regard, Green may appear to advocate particularism. However, Green offers a theory of norm acquisition and of normative self-governance, in deliberate abstraction from any theory of the nature or the content of norms, or of their justification, correctness, acceptability, suitability or priority. Strictly speaking, his view takes no stand on substantive issues in normative ethics. Hence his view is compatible with many substantive accounts of normative principles. However, Green emphasizes the central and ineliminable role of norms – that is, authoritative principles – in rational thought, judgment and conduct. As noted above, his focus is upon rules, ideals and exemplars that serve as communal standards for judging what people ought to or should do, or ought to have done (32–3). His analysis does not favour or support particularism. Green’s view is compatible with the view that moral considerations trump others, though he rightly cautions that discerning exactly how and why a certain policy or course of action is the morally correct one in any troubling circumstance requires giving full reign to each of the voices he identifies. In any problematic case of moral unclarity or of moral conflict, we cannot be sure we have identified or properly appreciated all the morally relevant information, principles and other considerations without listening carefully to each of these voices, including their expression by others: one of the voices is the conscience of group membership. The appreciation and consultation of these voices of conscience is constitutive of mature judgment, and is required to use principles appropriately to judge matters – especially difficult matters – rightly and justifiably. Green’s account of normative self-governance shows why Nussbaum’s account of delving into the particulars of any relevant situation is required for proper use of principles, rather than an alternative to it. 19
6. Some myths of autonomy
Green rightly cautions against ‘The Illusion of the Autonomous Self’ (6–8), and yet he accepted my suggestion that his philosophy of moral education concerns genuine autonomy. Indeed, he states: ‘By “governance” must also be meant the self-governance of persons’ (2), which leads directly to his key question, What is it to come to govern oneself in view of a norm? (35–55).
‘Autonomy’ has become a common buzz word in moral philosophy and educational theory. The illusions against which Green rightly warns are in the main generated by taking Kant’s term ‘autonomy’ out of the context in which Kant specifies it (see Section 7 below) and interpreting the notion of self-governance in terms of the still influential Enlightenment dichotomy between ‘the’ individual and his or her community. The common presumption is that to be autonomous means to govern oneself independently of, or even regardless of, one’s community. This presumption is supported by atomistic forms of individualism which arose in and pervade the Modern period, most obviously in Hobbes. This stout notion of individual self-sufficiency is supported by a common reaction to the dichotomy which for too long anchored debates about ‘methodological individualism’ in social and historical studies. The pervasive supposition has been that there are only two ways to conceive the relations between individuals and societies:
Either
1 Individuals are basic, whilst societies are composed of individuals. (‘Individualism’)
or
2 Societies are basic, whilst individuals are only creatures of society. (‘Holism’)
If this dichotomy is both exhaustive and mutually exclusive, then (and then alone) is it urgent to reject the second and affirm the first. This is what happened historically: Liberal individualists have defended in theory and in practice – including the practice of war – the first thesis in opposition to totalitarianism – whether fascist or communist – which affirmed the second.
Setting these recent horrors aside, this dichotomy reinforces the notion that individuals are radically independent of one another. Educators impressed by this dichotomy and by the notion of self-governing, autonomous selves accordingly advocate an account of upbringing and education which consists primarily in protecting children and youth against harm and otherwise interfering as little as possible in their development so that each child can ‘naturally’ develop his or her own ‘true self’. This view often parades under the heading of ‘child-centred education’. In effect, this view regards individual human beings as self-contained Leibnizian monads, though with no provision for harmony, pre-established or otherwise. Of course early education should be child-centred, though only if we understand adequately what and who human children are and what they require to develop into mature, educated, responsible and tolerably wise adults. Little self-developing automata children are not.
Here we must ask: Were Attic Greeks so mistaken to believe that the best way to raise a virtuous son was to raise him in a polis governed by good laws? Does individualistic monadology illuminate or obscure what Green (ix) rightly identifies as the first task of any society – emptying the nursery – and also the ultimate task of every modern society: populating its commons with intelligent, committed, involved and effective adults? Individual autonomy is supposed to be central to individual freedom. Frederick Neuhouser adroitly observes, however, that
. . . although it is the essential nature of human beings to be free, freedom does not come naturally to [us]. (Neuhouser, 2000: 149)
If so, what exactly is required for children to develop their freedom and to exercise it responsibly?
These questions and observations suggest that we simply must do better – especially in education, both in theory and in practice – at integrating nature and nurture than is allowed by the sharp dichotomy between individualism and holism posed above. Fortunately, that dichotomy is not exhaustive. Lost in that theoretical and historical skirmish has been a much more tenable intermediate view, defended by liberal moderate collectivists whose views have been persistently misunderstood by force-fitting them into the very dichotomy they reject. The alternative view, which I call ‘Moderate Collectivism’, comprises three theses:
MC 1 Individuals are fundamentally social practitioners. Everything a person does, says or thinks is formed in the context of social practices that provide material and conceptual resources, objects of desire, skills, procedures, techniques and occasions and permissions for action, etc.
MC 2 What individuals think and do depends on their own responses to their social and natural environment.
MC 3 There are no individuals, no social practitioners, without social practices; and vice versa, there are no social practices without social practitioners, without individuals who learn, participate in, perpetuate or modify those social practices as needed to meet their changing needs, aims and circumstances (including procedures and information).
At the very least, Moderate Collectivism is logically consistent. Hence just stating it suffices to show that the prevalent dichotomy between individualism and holism is neither exclusive nor exhaustive; instead it is specious. 20
The most obvious question about Moderate Collectivism is exactly how its first two theses are consistent. If individuals are fundamentally social practitioners, how can what they do depend on their own response to their social and natural environment? An important part of the answer to this question lies in Kant’s account of rational autonomy.
7. Normative principles and the autonomy of rational judgment
The key points of Kant’s analysis of rational autonomy are these. The self-conscious ‘I think’ that matters most is the ‘I judge’ that is central to rational thought and action in any of its forms. Only a strong sense of ‘I judge’ that involves critical assessment makes possible thought and reasoning, as contrasted with mere vocables, rhetoric, propaganda or rote following of protocols. Conversely, anyone who can or does engage in genuine inquiry and debate instantiates (more or less adequately) this strong sense of the term. My present focus is the kind of self-conscious judgment required to understand, to appreciate and to assess any substantial piece of reasoning, including moral reasoning.
Rational judgment must be one’s own judgment
To judge rationally is not merely to decide. To judge rationally is to make whatever judgment is best warranted in view of all available relevant considerations, including evidence, counter-evidence, relevant principles of inference, relevant (as contrasted to irrelevant or to less relevant) analogies with other examples, cases or domains as well as relevant alternative accounts or assessments of the issue, whether historical, contemporaneous or merely possible. To judge rationally is to assume responsibility for the warrant or justificatory status of one’s conclusions. To assume responsibility for making judgments and for making any and every particular judgment one passes is to exercise autonomy. The autonomy of rational judgment consists in regulating one’s own thinking, deliberation, assessment, judgment and behaviour in view of the various factors which bear on the identification and justification of the correct, or at least the most adequate and most justified, conclusion about the matter at hand. This kind of ‘self-regulation’ of one’s own thinking literally is a form of ‘auto-nomy’, of self-guided, self-motivated, voluntary and self-assessing use of evidence, rules, principles and laws, in this case, the ‘laws’ or at least the guidelines of cogent justificatory reasoning, which includes principles and procedures for assessing relevant evidence or features of the situation at hand. Hence one basic sense in which judgment is autonomous is that, in the ways indicated, one forms one’s own judgment, rather than merely adopting anyone else’s judgment, advice or recommendation (much less: command). 21
Judgment and proper functioning
A second significant sense in which rational judgment is autonomous is that it is guided by the normative considerations of appropriate assessment and use of both evidence and principles of reasoning. If judgment, as a physiological or psychological process, is in some way causal, nevertheless it counts as judgment only insofar as it responds to such normative considerations, rather than merely to its causal antecedents as such. Judgment is a response to, not merely an effect of, its proper evidentiary and inferential antecedents. If justificatory processes turn out to be causal, they are justificatory not because they are causal, but because they satisfy sufficient normative constraints – defining or at least including proper functioning, proper inference and proper assessment – to provide inter alia rational justification. For this reason, Kant held that reason, rational judgment (a pleonasm), is spontaneous (Allison, 1997). This point merits closer consideration.
Judgment and rational spontaneity
Only rational spontaneity enables us to appeal to principles of inference and to make rational judgments, both of which are normative because each rational subject considers for him- or herself whether available procedures, evidence and principles of inference warrant (justify) a judgment or conclusion. In the theoretical domain of knowledge, having adequate evidence, proof or (in sum) justification, requires taking that evidence, proof or justification to be adequate; in the practical domain of deliberation and action, having adequate grounds for action requires taking those grounds to be adequate. We act only insofar as we take ourselves to have reasons, even in cases of acting on desires, where we must (ex hypothesis) take those desires as – by judging them to be – appropriate and adequate grounds of action on that occasion. Otherwise we abdicate rational considerations and absent ourselves from what Sellars (1963: 169) calls ‘the space of reasons’ and merely behave. In that case, as McDowell (1994: 13) aptly says, we provide ourselves only excuses and exculpations, but not reasons or justifications, for acting or believing as we do. 22 Kant’s conception of rational spontaneity opposes empiricist accounts of beliefs and desires as merely causal products of environmental stimuli, and it opposes empiricist accounts of action, according to which we act on whatever desires are (literally) ‘strongest’. We think and act rationally only insofar as we judge the merits of whatever case is before us. This is the third aspect of rational autonomy. 23
The normative autonomy of reason
The fourth aspect of rational autonomy is that reason alone suffices to identify and to justify the basic norms governing rational thought, and thus the basic norms governing both cognition and morals. This thesis is justified by Kant’s constructivist method of identifying and justifying norms. Kant’s constructivism is as fascinating as it is sophisticated; however, here I may only mention it (Westphal, 2002a, 2010a, 2010b). The central point for present purposes is that Kant’s constructivist method of identifying and justifying normative principles ultimately resolves the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion, 24 whereas particularism cannot address that Dilemma.
8. Conclusion
Particularist theories of moral judgment are propped up by a hopelessly inadequate ‘subsumption’ model of rational judgment. Too often particularists constrict our use of moral principles or norms to simple syllogistic inference, as if Aristotle’s simple illustrations of modus ponens or modus tollens adequately illustrate the practical syllogism. Yes, Aristotle’s practical syllogism involves attending to the concrete details of a situation and their rich interconnections in just the ways highlighted by Nussbaum. Yet his practical syllogism equally involves principles and norms as major premises, even if we must work back and forth between our major and minor premises in practical reasoning in order to best fit them together (Price, 2008; Wiggins, 1980). Kant’s account of rational autonomy builds upon and augments Aristotle’s account of the practical syllogism. Kant is fully aware that the subsumptive model of rational judgment is ill-suited to the moral domain, and to the non-formal domain of empirical knowledge (whether commonsense or scientific). Kant’s analysis of rational autonomy is entirely compatible with recognizing the social embeddedness of individuals, provided their embeddedness is conceived in terms of Moderate Collectivism. 25 In disabusing ourselves of the subsumptive model of rational judgment we should not err by also rejecting the fundamental roles of normative principles in rational judgment. 26 Green’s account of normation complements the core features of Kant’s account of autonomous rational judgment. Together they contribute to showing how complex is the exercise of rational judgment, and why the apparent lack of explicit ratiocination does not entail the irrelevance of moral principles when exercising moral judgment in unproblematic moral ‘perception’.
As educators, we must tend not only to our subject matter, but also to all aspects of mature judgment, and avoid mistaking one aspect of it for the whole or for the core: mature judgment involves both judicious use of principles and sensitive reflection on the details of the matter at hand. Indeed, it is impossible to engage in the one without also engaging in the other. This we must seek to embody in our own judgments, and to encourage and facilitate in our students and indeed in one another as well.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This article is gratefully dedicated to Donald Tunnell, who as my undergraduate supervisor first had me read 
, which immediately became central to my liberal arts education. I also thank Tom Hastings for referring me to Don. (They were colleagues in the School of Education, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.) A draft of this article was presented to the Institute of Education, London (April 2008). I am grateful for their invitation and for many helpful remarks during that discussion. I am especially grateful to Paul Standish for his kind invitation to present this revised article at the Gregynog Philosophy of Education Conference (June 2011). Once again the discussion was lively and very helpful. Special thanks to Paul Standish, Christopher Winch, Jan Derry and Randall Curren for their encouragement and critical advice.