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Show Chapter VIII. The Problem of Rational Final Ends 332 (9) the moral point of view and its governing principles are therefore detached from the ground projects, character, and human point of view of individual human agents. 3.2.1.3. Integrity and Alienation What, then, are "moral integrity" and "moral alienation"? The foregoing conclusions enable us to answer this question relatively straightforwardly. Moral integrity is a state of the agent in which the agent views the world from what Nagel would call the subjective perspective, i.e. that of his own projects and ground projects. From this perspective the agent is disposed to act on the patterns of feeling and desire that constitute those projects, and does so unselfconsciously, i.e. without formulating universalistic principles to which he intends his behavior to conform. Williams articulates the concept of moral integrity most explicitly in "Utilitarianism and Moral Self-Indulgence." There he characterizes integrity as neither a virtue nor a disposition nor a motive. "It is rather that one who displays integrity acts from those dispositions and motives which are most deeply his, and has also the virtues which enable him to do that." [UM, 49] In this sense, moral integrity may conflict with universalistic moral principles, such as those definitive of Utilitarianism. [UM, 51] And in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, he describes with approval Aristotle's ideal of the life of practical reason as including "certain excellences of character or virtues, which are internalized dispositions of action, desire, and feeling [EL, 35] ... It is an intelligent disposition. It involves the agent's exercise of judgment, ... and so it is not simply a habit. It also involves favorable and unfavorable reactions to other people, their character and actions." [EL, 36] These last passages are important, for they suggest that Williams' concept of moral integrity does not involve a lack of rational reflection, just an absence of "universalistic principles." [UM, 52] Rational but nonuniversalistic deliberation presumably would deploy particular instances of universal principles of means-end reasoning such as, In order to get into law school, I will have to pass the LSATs. The rational reflection of a morally integrated agent is characteristically directed at the object of his desires or projects, not at himself as subject of them. [UM, 48; EL, 10] Moral alienation, by contrast, is a state of the agent in which the agent views the world and her projects from the impersonal moral point of view, is disposed to sacrifice them to the requirements of moral principle, and does so with a self-conscious awareness of conforming to those requirements. Thus we are alienated from our moral feelings if we "come to regard those feelings from a purely utilitarian point of view, that is to say, as happenings outside one's moral self." [CU, 104] We are alienated from our actions if, "when the © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
