Desk Copy

One day at the beginning of a semester when I was teaching in college I received an email from a secretary at the school whom I knew barely as an acquaintance. She told me that her daughter had signed up for my course and would I be so kind as to give her my desk copy of the textbook so that her daughter wouldn’t have to buy it. 

This request shocked me by its brazenness. It was just so wrong and so ridiculous. First of all, I hardly knew this person, so it’s not even as if it were a friend asking for a favor. It was instead, so far as I could tell, the expression of a prerogative she felt she had in virtue of being a member of the staff and in some sense therefore a colleague. Perhaps there was also the implication that if I did her this good turn, she would be more likely to do me one in future when I might need something she could help me with. 

Second, it struck me as a pure breach of basic ethics. Why was her daughter entitled to a free ride? Perhaps she was already getting a break on or even exemption from tuition because the offspring of a staff member. But that would be something contractual between the secretary and the university, whereas the present request was personal. 

Well, in those days I was a moralist, and so I not only turned down the request but expressed my condemnation of it. Bingo: I had instantly made myself an enemy. 

Now that I am an amoralist (although I grant that a moralist could also find a better way forward than the one I chose at the time, but that’s only because a moralist can defend anything whatever by some process of casuistry [he writes cynically; but more on this below]) I see a much better way to handle the situation. First of all, the secretary was doing nothing wrong … because nobody ever is. So this meant I need only consult my own desires in order to figure out what to do. 

More precisely, the amoralist ethics I espouse, which I call desirism, advises that one vet one’s own desires rationally. So I reflect thus. The secretary must have made this request in conformity to some practice that is generally accepted at the university, else she would not have made it so casually. So my initial reaction was probably, in this respect, more out of line than her request. And for all I knew, she is in all other respects (by my own lights) the most wonderful person on Earth. And in any case, she could not have done otherwise than she did (as I believe, being a metaphysical determinist). 

Furthermore, there is no big deal here (again, even by my lights). Is it unfair to the other students who have to pay for their books? That’s a stretch. Again, since the daughter may be getting free tuition, why not also free books? Who is to decide that such an arrangement is fair or unfair? Wouldn’t the students who do not have such advantages fully enjoy taking them if they had a parent working for the university? I doubt that any of them would refuse the benefits on the ground that it was unfair to other students. They would certainly think of it as something “owed” to them, or, more precisely, to their parent, who might normally foot the bill and whose salary is probably pretty low, perhaps even in anticipation of there being perqs such as this, both contractual (free tuition) and informal (free books).

Finally, it is indeed nice to have friends, and acceding to this request would win me one.

No, let me not say “Finally,” for these are merely the thoughts that have occurred to me at this moment of reflection as I write about a past event. I am totally open to additional input, from my own mind in future, from other minds (such as yours, Dear Reader). An obvious source would be the secretary herself, although I would have hesitated to tread there since even to frame her request as an ethical issue could be off-putting to her unless she happened to be philosophically trained or a natural philosopher.

Note also that no “conclusion” “follows” from these considerations. Only a moralist might think so, relative to moral “principles” conveniently selected or tailored to the situation. (That’s what I mean by casuistry.) However, they are enough to moveme to recommend to my former self that I accede to the request … or that, if I still had some reason that moved me not to, to turn it down in as politic a way as possible so as not to make an enemy. For example, I could say, “Oh, I’m sorry, but I do need the desk copy for myself, since I usually keep my original copy at home and another in my office to have on hand in case a student comes by.” Note also that I could speak this truthfully or untruthfully; in other words, this could be the actual reason I didn’t want to hand over the book to her, or not. But since I also have a strong desire (on various grounds or simply intrinsically) to err on the side of honesty in all dealings, I would probably abstain from the latter if I had a different reason.

This little “amoral moment” is intended to illustrate amoralism in practice. A moralist could object that it may work well enough for trivial episodes like this one, “but what about Hitler?” Right (though Don Corleone or Boss Tweed might be more apt comparisons, to emphasize the way granting small “favors” can become habitual and escalate, ultimately eroding character and institutions and thereby wreaking various sorts of havoc). But my answer to that – here as in many previous writings including several books – is that Hitler was himself a moralist, so playing the Hitler card isn’t going to do any good. (Indeed, is it absurd to speculate that if Hitler hadn’t been committed to his racist agenda as a moral imperative, there would have been no Holocaust?) The bottom line, as I see it, is: What are we actually motivated to do? Attaching moral labels to people and their actions can serve a motivating purpose. But my empirical hunch is that nonmoral considerations serve just as well, and often better, to motivate us; and moral labeling, and the attitudes attendant on that, introduce a further source of trouble in the world. I think a straight appeal to reason is more likely to dissuade a potential Hitler in the first place; but failing that, we (who oppose him) must rely on our own desires to prevent him from carrying out his desires. Adding morality to the mix only underscores our respective desires with some kind of semi-divine sanction, and this, as I have argued extensively elsewhere, is a source of its own ills, particularly by stoking intransigence and conflict.

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