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Moral Metaphors

A solid moral vocabulary would seem essential to sound moral judgement and action. Yet we are signally lacking in that regard. Our language doesn’t aid the cause of morality. Can it be revised and improved? Are we conceptually lacking in our moral attitudes? These are important questions, especially in a time of moral…moral what? What is the name of the state we are in when we are thinking and acting immorally (unethically)? There are two old standbys repeated with numbing frequency: “morally bankrupt” and “lacks a moral compass”. Notice immediately that the latter has the antonym “has a moral compass”, but we can’t say “is morally solvent” or “is able to pay his moral debts”. To be bankrupt is to lack money, whether through one’s own fault or by bad luck. But we don’t think that you can be morally bankrupt and yet not to blame for it (if we believe in blame at all). We don’t say, “He is morally bankrupt, but it’s not his fault, he fell on hard moral times”. Nor do we suppose that he might receive a moral windfall and return to moral solvency. The metaphor is extremely limited and mostly inapt: to be morally bad is not the same as lacking some desirable quantity of something; it isn’t like being short of food. Moreover, a person generally suffers from bankruptcy—it is not prudentially desirable—but moral bankruptcy is not invariably associated with personal catastrophe. A person can be morally bankrupt and not give a damn, even revel in it. The state of being financially bankrupt is not like the state of being a vicious psychopath. The only point of analogy is lack: the bankrupt person lacks money and the evil person lacks morals. You might as well say a bad person is morally shirtless or shoeless. The bankruptcy metaphor is singularly unapt. But we keep falling back on it, as if nothing else comes to mind. In a logically perfect language, we would have a much better description. When I use the phrase, I always feel a shudder of semantic inadequacy—is that the best you can come up with?

The talk of a “moral compass” is hardly any better. Who came up with this? Again, it is clearly metaphorical; you don’t literally have a compass in your hand or head. It suggests the idea that a person without one of these has no sense of direction morally. A moral problem is a navigation problem, a problem about getting from A to B. We need to be pointed this way not that. Is that what a moral problem is? Don’t we often know the direction we should go but lack the moral strength to go there? You can’t say, “He knew just what to do, but he didn’t have the moral compass to point him in the right direction”. He had the compass; he just didn’t have the motor. Virtue isn’t just knowing what you should do; it’s having the will to do it. Moreover, whether you have a compass is a matter of luck for which you are not responsible; you might lose your compass over the side of the ship. But to lack a moral character is not a matter of luck in this way: you can be blamed for lacking a moral compass but not for lacking a physical compass. Is lacking a moral compass like lacking a moral map or written directions? These don’t seem like good metaphors, so why is the compass metaphor any better? A good person judges rightly and acts on that judgment; he doesn’t have an instrument that helps him figure out where to go. And notice that we don’t say, “He has a moral compass” if we wish to commend a person morally; that seems much too weak, a necessary condition perhaps but not a sufficient condition. Again, the metaphor is feeble at best—and only a metaphor. What is the literal truth we are trying to capture?

The trouble is we don’t have much to fall back on. Some people like to say, “That’s not who we are” or “That’s not who you are”, but this attempt to de-normativize morality falls flat and invites the response, “That is exactly what we are, though it’s not what we should be”. We can of course say, “He is morally bad”, but it lacks in punch and descriptive power; it cries out for articulation (hence compasses and bankruptcies). Suppose I want to say in urgent terms that the country I am living in has become morally bad, seriously so: what linguistic resources can I call upon? Not much springs to mind: I can try “morally blind” but that doesn’t really cut it (like “morally blinkered”); it’s too weak and seeing-oriented. I might try “morally lobotomized”: that has the right amount of punch, but is rather recherche and lacking in accusations of culpability. Nor will it do to say “morally insane” or “morally broken” or “morally subpar” or “morally deformed”. We are faced with real lexical poverty just where we need lexical richness. There is nothing wrong with “morally corrupt”, but that only covers taking bribes and the like. We have only inadequate metaphors to express our most serious moral opinions. What were the Nazis—“morally bankrupt”, “lacking in a moral compass”? These locutions just don’t cut it. Of course, we can say they were “evil”, but that leaves us with a rather colorless term with little descriptive content (sometimes people report to animal imagery at this point, but that is obviously no use). I thus declare an emergency situation, linguistically speaking: we don’t know how to describe the things we most deplore, which lets those things get away with it linguistically. If only there was a term that hit the nail squarely on the head and conveyed a suitable sense of outrage! Vague analogies to bankruptcies and compasses land far from the mark.[1]

[1] The demise of religion has left our moral vocabulary distinctly diluted and thinned out. We can no longer deploy words like “ungodly”, “satanic”, “devilish”, “wicked”, “sinful”, “demonic”, “damnable”, “infernal”, “fallen”, etc. We don’t know how to describe serious moral badness anymore, so we resort to feeble metaphors. The time is ripe for linguistic innovation.

Rebirth

The OED defines “retirement” as “the period of one’s life after retiring from work”. But what is work? That is defined as “activity involving mental or physical effort in order to achieve a result” and “such activity as a means of earning income”. These are very different ideas; confusing them leads to misconceptions about the period of life in question. In the latter sense I have done no work since retiring in 2013, since I have not exerted myself as a means of earning income. I don’t work at all. But in the former sense I have worked harder than ever: I think of this as WORK. WORK is a lot better than work. Let me count the ways. First, academic or intellectual work: I have read vastly more than I was ever able to do when working; this has been enormously enjoyable and beneficial. It’s like having a second education, only this time under no pressure and well equipped to undertake it. I won’t list my retirement (i.e., rebirth) reading but it has been prodigious, taking in philosophy (especially history), science, biography, fiction, and so on. Now I feel properly educated, a man in full. Then there is my writing: here I find it hard to express the expansion. So much more time to write, many fewer distractions, the benefits of prolonged concentration. One’s mind seems to stretch out to the horizon. I can’t believe how much I have written in this work-less period. And I am so much happier with the product. It has been a philosophical rebirth for me—more productive, more satisfying, more far-reaching. My WORK has been enormously expanded. This would never have happened if I had not retired. In sum: I have done much more WORK now that I don’t work.

But that is just the beginning. I have also had much more leisure, free time (good phrase). Again, I won’t go into detail: tennis, table tennis, watersports, knife throwing, motorcycling, swimming, skateboarding, trampoline, darts, strength training, golf, archery, etc. I have learned many things in these areas, improving dramatically. I am a better all-round athlete than I have ever been. Musically, it has been a revelation: I neglected this in my previous life for lack of time and other priorities. In retirement I have honed my drumming, neglected since my teenage years, learned to play guitar (not easy), and miraculously learned to sing after believing I couldn’t sing for toffee. I took lessons and diligently practiced; it took a couple of years and I am still improving. I never thought that was possible. Now it is one of the most enjoyable things I do. Learning to sing a particular song is always a thrill; I probably know a hundred songs now. I actually sing for people. In addition, I became a songwriter, again to my considerable surprise. It took some effort and trial and error, but eventually it came. This would never have happened if I were still working. It sure beats grading.

More fundamentally, my relationship to time has changed. I don’t hate time anymore. I always used to be short of it, under its thumb, fighting it. Now time is my friend, my benefactor—I have the gift of time. Time is actually good! You can do things in it—things you like to do. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Time stretches out, lots of it (I nearly said oodles, but refrained); it is now at my command. I do with it what I like. I don’t have to beanywhere at a certain time, or only have a fixed amount of time to get something done, always a bit behind, never satisfied with my life-in-time. Now I luxuriate in time, relishing its endlessness, its generosity. Working for money is bad for your relationship to time, but working for pleasure makes you appreciate time. I am sure most people need time therapy: you are married to it for life and it can be a bitch (as Heidegger would say).

I am trying to capture and convey the existential aspects of what we call retirement. It isn’t a stopping; it’s a starting. It isn’t the end of life but the beginning of a new life. Imagine if at retirement you were given a new identity, a new lease on life—perhaps a new body with a refreshed brain. People don’t even recognize you as the same (so fit, so handsome!). Retirement would then seem like rebirth, a type of metamorphosis (I see a Star Trek episode). That’s the way to think of it–like a release from slavery, a liberation. It isn’t the beginning of the end, a slow decline into uselessness; it’s like waking up to a new and brighter future. True, you still have advancing age to deal with, but now you are free to be what you want to be. The existentialist values freedom; retirement is freedom. We shouldn’t call it “retirement”, like a tennis player retiring injured from a match; it is more a kind of recrudescence, a rebirth, a becoming alive.

Epistemological Origins

What causes human (and animal) knowledge? Is it nature or God? The classical empiricists thought it was nature acting on the senses (for most knowledge anyway) not God. The classic rationalists thought it was God acting miraculously on the soul (for some knowledge anyway) not nature. Either nature implants the knowledge via experience or God implants it by divine intervention. Nowadays we talk about nature and nurture, the senses or the genes, with no God mentioned. What is the correct answer? It is that nature implants all knowledge of all kinds, but not necessarily by means of the senses. The reason knowledge exists is that nature caused it to exist. In the most obvious cases we have empirical concepts instilled either by individual learning or by natural selection operating on ancestral organisms. In the latter case the knowledge is implanted by the usual biological mechanisms of inheritance, as organisms adjust to their environment—physical, psychological, social, etc. There is no innate knowledge not geared to facts about the world. This includes facts concerning what is traditionally assigned to the a priori—logic, mathematics, language, ethics.[1]We have knowledge of these things because of the things themselves (you don’t need to have knowledge of non-existent or nonsensical things). God plays no role and is not needed. In this sense all knowledge, a prioriand a posteriori, is derived from the natural real world, not from a supernatural source such as God. Whether innate or acquired, the knowledge derives from natural processes involving the objects of such knowledge—not from a separate reality called God. So, empiricism is right in its claim that we don’t need miraculous installation by a divine being and that all knowledge stems from the natural world—even if some is innate. But empiricism is not right that all knowledge has sensory sources encountered during the individual’s life-time. We could call the correct view “Empirical Rationalism” or “Empirical Nativism”, where “empirical” contrasts with “divine” or “supernatural”. The correct theory thus coincides with neither of the classic positions, as commonly understood. Even if all knowledge were innate, the correct view would still be a form of empiricism in the sense that all knowledge (of any consequence) comes from the non-divine natural world—though not all knowledge is acquired through the senses of the individual knower (we could consistently claim that it derives from ancestors’ senses via the genes). This view could be called “Nativist Empiricism”, contrasted with “Nativist Theism”. All knowledge is caused by the natural world, one way or another, but there is room for disagreement about what part of the natural world causes it—the individual organism’s present environment or its ancestral history. So, classic empiricism was basically right about the origins of knowledge, except for the small point that not all knowledge enters through the senses of the individual. Some knowledge enters the individual’s mind through a separate channel, though equally nature-dependent (where nature includes the subject matter of a priori knowledge).[2]

[1] I am assigning these facts to nature in the broadest sense—they are not part the supernatural world, even if they are different from other kinds of natural fact.

[2] I am looking here at the broader issues, historical and substantive, concerning the debate between empiricists and rationalists. Does knowledge originate in natural facts about the universe, independently of God, or does it arise from acts of God directed at human wellbeing and morality. The same kind of debate existed in the seventeenth century about the causes of motion: does it come from the laws of nature or from an act of God? Is it secular or supernatural? We have the same debate later on the origins of life: is it caused by natural processes in which God has no part or is it a result of divine action? We are less exercised by such questions as our predecessors, since the rise and success of science. The empiricism-rationalism debate was caught up in the same opposition: does knowledge need a divine explanation or can nature do all the work? From that perspective differences over nature and nurture are incidental.