Morality is tough stuff, and most people would likely find it unrealistic to strive for absolute compliance with what morality requires of us. I am personally quite content to mostly do what I think is right and tolerate occasional lapses as part of being a well-rounded human being. If we always did what morality required of us, it would seem that we could never tell off-color jokes or have a laugh at someone else’s expense, or even pull a harmless prank on someone. All would be forbidden due to the possibility that someone might be harmed, or simply because another course of action would be preferable.
Have you ever known someone who was too good, who seemed to always do the right thing and never give in to temptation of any kind? These people, although admirable, tend to be rather uninteresting and not the types of people that you want to spend New Years Eve with, for example. Susan Wolf, a prominent moral philosopher, defines the extreme version of the moral exemplar as a moral saint. She suggests that not only is moral sainthood an undesirable goal, it is also somewhat unhealthy.
Moral saints take the requirements of morality to the extreme. They do not have many hobbies or interests, because there is always a greater good to be had in helping others. In fact, the happiness of the moral saint is crucially linked to the happiness that other people experience. Our happiness is their happiness, and they find little fulfillment in self-interested desires.
Moral saints cannot participate in indulgent activities, such as gourmet cooking or mastering a musical instrument. The moral saint’s resources are better spent on feeding the poor than buying gourmet cheeses, while the time commitment of becoming an accomplished musician is deemed inappropriate in light of the greater good that one could bring about by helping others.
Moral saints are equally unable to enjoy potentially offensive jokes, or spend an evening at the opera. They must always consider what course of action would bring about the most good. Their own interests or enjoyments are irrelevant by comparison.
The moral saint is not a fun person to hang out with, nor the type of person that you would want as your friend. Equally, the moral saint is not a terribly healthy person, in that they have no definable identity outside of their commitment to morality. Thus, we would not want to be a moral saint any more than we would want to know a moral saint.
Wolfe does draw a distinction between Loving Saints and Rational Saints, and our discussion has focused primarily on the Loving Saint. The Rational Saint acts as morality requires because it is their duty, while the Loving Saint does so because their happiness lies in making others happy. In either case, however, the moral saint fails to recognize some important aspect of human fulfillment, namely that there is more to life than doing the right thing all the time.
This is something that most people know, but that moral philosophers often forget. While Joe Everyman clearly acknowledges that life, and his own happiness, is complex and requires a diversity of interests and meaningful activities, somehow moral philosophers have missed this. Even the esteemed Immanuel Kant, often regarded as one of the greatest thinkers of all time, believed that if interests or desires motivated our actions, they did not qualify as moral acts.
Wolfe’s point is an important one. We should not be so preoccupied with doing what is right that we fail to enjoy all life has to offer. Some of my previous articles have discussed pluralistic moral conceptions, which focus on the diversity of human ends and the impossibility of reducing them all to a single value that moral theory can successfully account for. Wolfe seems to be making the same kind of point, that morality is simply not the whole picture.
Outside of academia’s ivory tower, this truth becomes obvious. Human beings cannot be satisfied by being moral saints. We need inappropriate jokes, meaningful hobbies, and selfish pursuits in order to find the happiness and fulfillment that we are all seeking. To reduce this to a single moral value is, frankly, ridiculous. So next time you find yourself forgoing your moral commitments in order to do something fun, remember to give yourself a break. Nobody really likes a moral saint anyway.
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