What Is the Question? What Is the Answer? The Relation between Meta-ethics and Normative Ethics or On the Good Life

Gertrude Stein is famously said to have asked Alice Toklas, “What is the answer?” and upon hearing only silence then asked, “In that case, what is the question?” It occurs to me now that the distinction between meta-ethics and normative ethics could be put in similar terms, as follows. Meta-ethics is in the business of figuring out what question to ask about ethics; normative ethics is then the business of offering an answer (or answers) to that question. 

Here is how this division of labor comes into play with my ethics of desirism. I propose that the proper question to ask about ethics is How shall I (or we) live? or What shall I (or we) do? and not the moralistic How ought one (everyone) live? or What ought one (everyone in such-and-circumstances) do? In other words, ethics is about how to live but not about morals (understood as categorical and commanding). I have called this proposal desirism because the import of the “shall” is to ascertain how to achieve what we (oneself or any group of like-minded people) want for ourself and/or for everybody, rather than the moral import of “ought” to do what is required of us without regard to our desire to do (or not do) it. 

It is crucial to note that the wanting I have in mind is really wanting. Heretofore I have taken this to mean what we rationally want, or what we want all things considered. More recently I have moderated this stipulation to refer to a robustly reflective attitude: All desirism recommends is that we think before acting, in a broad but informal sense of “thinking” that includes seeking out experience, study, dialogue, and whatever else constitutes “the examined life.” This is still desirism because what it calls for is that we vet our desires.[1] 

However, I now think it might make more sense to shift this recommendation to reflect to the normative side of ethics. Thus my meta-ethical thesis or recommendation would be that ethics poses the question, How can I get what I want for myself and the world? Then the normative answer I propose is that you vet your desires before acting. If you do this, I predict, you will end up acting in ways that are more conducive to what you really want for yourself and the world than if you had simply acted on your unreflective desires or according to the (reflective or unreflective) dictates of morality. And this too, then, is desirism, since it is clarifying the role of desire in ethics, that is, the meaning of the wanting that ethics is intended to address on the desirist account.[2] 

But now that I have partitioned off rationality in this way, I realize that I want to add two further components to the normative mix. For I do not believe that rationality is enough to provide us with a good life,[3] even though I view it as essential to it. 

Certainly, then, I would also want all of us to be compassionate. A total egoist could be perfectly rational in the pursuit of their selfish goals; but that is not the kind of person I am, nor would want to be, nor would want anybody else to be. 

But neither would I want (myself or anybody) to be totally selfless. The easiest way for me to reach this conclusion is to examine how I feel about others. Would I, for instance, want my partner to be totally selfless and cater to my every need and desire without regard to her own happiness? Heavens no! The joy of our relationship would vanish if I did not believe that I was making her happy. So I like that she has a robust self-interest. 

But neither would I want her to be totally selfish, since if she did not, for example, care about me for my own sake, I would be put off. I am also stirred by her caring about other animals for their own sake, and showing this by, for example, her making the self sacrifice of adopting a vegan diet. I would not love her nearly as much as I do if not for that. 

So I now feel that the life I would hold up as the human ideal, and hence the normative answer to the question ethics poses, contains three components: rationality, compassion, and self-interest. I conceive rationality as purely instrumental, as the way to assess whether one’s desires are what one really wants and to ascertain how to go about trying to satisfying them in the most effective manner.[4] Compassion is then an essential desire I would urge us all to cultivate. A healthy sense of self-interest completes the ethical triumvirate. 

Various objections could be lodged against each component. Thus: 

One might hold that self-interest, in combination with rationality to yield what is formally called egoism, could do the job that compassion is commonly thought to be needed for, thereby rendering the latter unnecessary for the good life. After all, helping others or treating them well can lead to great personal rewards, so a truly rational egoist would act beneficently as a rule without the need for any compassion. Thus, does not my wanting my partner to be happy only function as an extension of my own rational self-interest? Happy spouse, happy house. However, as my example of veganism shows, making personal sacrifices on behalf of others has an inner glow that egoism cannot match; so I for one would not care to live in an egoistic world. More significantly, certain features of the kind of world most of us would want to live in may simply be unsustainable, or unreliably so, if our paramount motivational resource were rational self-interest; and so indifference to the welfare or dignity of others for their own sake would hardly be something to recommend as a component of the good life. 

But then one might hold that it is self-interest which is superfluous, since compassion in combination with rationality can do the job. There are three arguments for this. First is that a person who is totally focused on the welfare of others will be advised by reason to take care of themself too, since you can’t do much good for others if you yourself are in constant need or distress. Second is that a compassionate person who goes about helping others in an effective way will derive so much satisfaction from doing so that there will be no need for any additional satisfaction from fulfilling purely personal desires. But while I do think those arguments contain much merit, I am not convinced that they are applicable to most humans. While there may be some beatific saints in the world, I imagine that the average person would succumb under the conditions of total deprivation of purely personal satisfactions. 

In answer to my reply the objector could add that allowing or even requiring purely personal pursuits to the compassionate person’s repertoire would therefore be advised by reason; and this would still make it unnecessary to stipulate self-interest as a separate criterion of the good life, since, again, its presence would already be accounted for by stipulating compassion and rationality alone. But I am not sure if this argument is anything other than clever. My point remains: Actual human beings require purely personal regard as part of the mix of their fundamental motivations if they are to have a good life (as I conceive it).[5]  

Finally, the objector could argue that compassion (plus reason) suffices simply because it should be understood to include compassion for oneself as well as for others. While this is an admirable sentiment, it is again, I think, little more than a clever or verbal “save.” The word “compassion” is normally used to describe a feeling about others, not oneself; so rather than adding an extended meaning, I think it makes sense to call a spade a spade and stipulate self caring as a separate component of the good life.

As for rationality: Is this really necessary for a good life? Might not there be good reason to forgo a calculative approach to life, which insists on undergirding every decision with reflection? Wouldn’t stipulating or recommending the cultivation of compassion and/or self-interest, as the case may be, be sufficient for a good life? Here again I grant the reasonableness of the consideration, in this case that the best is the enemy of the good, but I do not think the intended conclusion follows. First of all, both compassion and self-interest surely have a big stake in whether they can be effective; and rationality is simply a means of enhancing such effectiveness. Secondly, rationality itself, as the objection itself shows, is capable of advising us not to overdo deploying it. Moderation in all things. 

So I conclude that the triple scheme makes sense as a normative ethics or prescription for the good life, or at least a good life, and specifically for someone like me. Incidentally, one implication is that a person living a good life such as this one would nevertheless be liable to sadness and anxiety, and on behalf of themself and others. However, the three components of rationality, compassion, and self-interest would constitute a system of checks and balances that kept the sadness and anxiety within reasonable limits.[6]

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[1] I am unsure whether to allow moral desires into the mix. The attitude I have in mind is one that is thoroughly amoral, secular, and empirical. Thus, it is not based on any belief in moral right and wrong or religious virtue and sin etc. Clearly people do have desires to do the right thing or what God commanded and so forth. But desirism already presumes that such desires have been put to rest or at least are going to be ignored in deciding what to do. I note, however, that they have been put to rest via the same process of vetting, albeit in the meta-ethical context of considering the nature of ethics.

[2] Thus, desirism is both a meta-ethics and a normative ethics. This is not unprecedented in ethics. The model that comes to mind is Kantianism, which also proposes both a meta-ethics and a normative ethics. Kant’s meta-ethics, the foil of desirism, is that ethics is about morals, which is to say, about categorical imperatives or the categorical imperative. Kant’s normative ethics is then (in one of several formulations) the categorical imperative never to treat anyone merely as a means. I happen to like the idea of not treating people (or other animals, for that matter) merely as a means, but I do not think it is categorical. The idea appeals to me for various reasons, but there will be circumstances when other reasons override its appeal. For example, I would (I hope) be motivated to lie to the machete-wielding madman who was asking me the whereabouts of my friend. I would thereby be treating the madman merely as a means to the safety of my friend. The reason is that I would really want to protect my friend. That’s good enough for my ethics.

[3] In nonmoralist terms, I am referring to the life we would want to live, all things considered.

[4] Note, then, that my notion of rationality (or reflection) assesses ends as well as means. This might be thought of as in conflict with my characterization of rationality as purely instrumental. (A tip of the Hatlo hat to chatGPT for this observation.) However, if reflection helps me to figure out what I really want, it seems to me still to be acting as a tool. There is no suggestion of an assessment via objective standards. Whatever results from reflecting on one’s desires would be one’s desirist motivation; someone else could very well end up with a different motivation via the same process.

[5] An analogous objection and reply could be made with regard to egoism: Maybe egoism would call for being genuinely caring about others. OK, but the upshot would still be that compassion is a necessary component of the good life.

[6] I would like to thank Jane Merritt for valuable input to this essay.