F. H. Bradley Is Not a Nut

The late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century philosopher F. H. Bradley is not at the center of contemporary philosophical discussion, but he was, in my opinion, one of the greats, and, in his book Ethical Studies (first published in 1876) he raises some important questions criticisms of utilitarianism, mainly of the sort favored by John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick. The topic should be of interest to Rothbardians, because Murray Rothbard was also strongly opposed to utilitarianism. Bradley wrote in an old-fashioned style that may not be to the taste of modern readers, but he often expressed himself with great literary power and grace.

Utilitarianism calls for us to maximize happiness, and Bradley’s first point against this is that people can’t specify what happiness is: “Alas! The one question which no one can answer is, What is happiness?—which everyone in the end can answer is, what happiness is not.”

Utilitarians might reply to this that there is one type of utilitarianism that can be specified, namely, that it consists in maximizing pleasure:

Pleasure is something that we can be sure of, for it dwells not we know not where, but here in ourselves,. . . This is real, because we feel and know it to be real; and solely by partaking, or seeming to partake, in its reality do other ends pass for, and impose on the world as happiness.

But this reply falls victim to a fatal objection: “And if there be any one thing which well-nigh the whole voice of the world, from all ages, nations, and sorts of men, has agreed to declare is not happiness, that thing is pleasure, and the search for it.” Bradley next goes on to consider several rounds of replies and counter-replies, which I won’t go into here.

Bradley turns to a very important point, which can be used in many philosophical contexts besides the one we are here considering. Some utilitarians argue that if you don’t accept their doctrine, you have to rely on mysterious “intuitions” to tell you what is morally right or wrong. (This remains a very popular argument by contemporary utilitarians). Bradley’s answer to this is that to show what is wrong with a competing view does nothing to establish your own view as correct. You haven’t shown that there are no other theories than the ones you are examining, and even if you came up with an exhaustive list, you haven’t ruled out the possibility that we have no successful theory in the area you are dealing with though perhaps people will in the future think of one.

With brilliant satirical wit, Bradley provides a parable to illustrate his point, and this has become famous in literary circles:

If we wished to cross an unknown bog, and two men came to us, of whom the one said, “Some one must know the way over this bog, for there must be a way, and you see there is no one here besides us two, and therefore one of us must be able to guide you. And the other man does not know the way, as you can soon see; therefore I must”—should we answer, “Lead on, I follow?”

Utilitarians usually acknowledge that it is practically impossible, for any given situation, to know what course of action will maximize happiness. Instead, they say, we need to rely on rules that will tell us what to do. This response remains very popular today, and “rule utilitarianism” and “two-level utilitarianism” are variants of it.

Bradley raises two related difficulties with this response. First, what is the source of the authority of the rules?

It being admitted that life is to be regulated on probabilities, the question then occurs, Who is to judge of the probabilities? . . . Why is that to be to me a law? What does it rest upon? What others have done and found? Will others be responsible for me then?

This leads to the second difficulty. Suppose you agree that the rules are good ones. Why can’t you say that even taking this into account, and also taking into account that your violating the rule may set a bad precedent, it still seems better to you in this particular instance to violate the rule?

I might, if I pleased, for argument’s sake admit. . .that every previous departure from rules has been a failure, and has decreased the surplus [of pleasure over pain]. But now the matter stands thus: I have taken all pains to form an opinion. I have no doubt whatever that in this instance the breaking of a rule will increase the surplus. . .What right have you, what right has the world to tell me to hold my hand, to make your uncertain opinion the standard rather than the certain end?

Morality is supposed to tell you, at least in certain cases, what you ought to do and what you ought not to do. Can utilitarianism do this? Bradley argues that it cannot. The best it can do is to say that people have a feeling that doing the wrong thing would violate their conscience. But if conscience is just a feeling, it seems to follow that if you lose the feeling, you are free to do whatever you want. And this makes no moral sense:

This is a serious matter; and I should say that any theory which maintains that a man may get rid of his sense of moral obligation if he can, and that if he does so, the moral obligation is gone, is as grossly immoral a theory as ever was published.

I’ll close with one more problem that Bradley raises for utilitarianism, though there are many others as well. Utilitarianism calls for us to maximize everybody’s pleasure, and some utilitarians go so far as to say we should maximize the pleasure of all sentient creatures, but how do you get from maximizing your own pleasure to maximizing everybody’s pleasure?

What seems clear to me is this—Pleasure is the one end, or it is not. If it is not, then Hedonism goes. If it is. Then my pleasure is my end. The pleasure of others is neither a feeling in me, nor an idea of feeling in me. If it seems to be so, this is a mere illusion. If what is not my feeling or its idea is my end, then the root of Hedonism is torn up. If so, the argument from the individual to the race disappears, because pleasure is not the sole end of the individual.

Bradley is sometimes a tough nut to crack, but the nut is worth cracking.