Henry David Thoreau

T. David Marshall

Marshall Philosophy Lecture Series

October 2012

Topic: Henry David Thoreau’s Essay, Civil Disobedience and the Importance of Active Citizenship

INTRODUCTION

“I went to the Woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out the marrow of life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner…”[1]

Henry David Thoreau was born in Concorde, New England, in 1817. He died in 1862. Civil Disobedience was published in 1849. This essay is cited as inspiration for some of the greatest thinkers of the last 2 centuries, including such giants of history as Mahatmas Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Thoreau was a rugged individualist and friend of humanity. He saw the individual as the singular and indivisible unit and source of morality, and felt that every man's nature was mutable and amenable to reason. The source of every man's sense of right and wrong, according to Thoreau, was his conscience. When Henry David Thoreau was sick and near-death he was asked if he had made his peace with God - to which Thoreau replied: “I did not know we had ever quarrelled”. Throughout his life, Henry David Thoreau sought to live by the dictates of his conscience, cost what may: this manner of living, he thought, rendered God's forgiveness unnecessary.

Thoreau was a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great transcendentalist philosopher. They lived together, as friends, for many years. Of philosophy Henry David Thoreau had this to say:

“To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.”[2]

This is Henry David Thoreau.

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE (Published 1849)

There are many ways to read Thoreau’s 1849 Essay. It is about civil disobedience – of course - but it is about the events of 1849; it is about slavery and his nation’s prosecution of an unjust war. It is also about Active Citizenship.

At the bottom of page 11, Thoreau states the following: “Action from principle - the perception and performance of right - changes things and relations…”

Throughout the essay Henry David Thoreau implores his reader to act from principle.

“The mass of men serve the State… not as men mainly, but as machines with their bodies. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; [Most men]… Put themselves on a level with wood and earth and a stone…Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward.”[3]

Being human, for Thoreau, is inextricably tied up with the notion of being “active”, and, of acting out of principles consonant with one’s conscience. Henry David Thoreau states, on page 6, that men who serve the state as mere machines - or what we might today call automatons – “have the same worth...as horses and dogs.” This is so, according to Thoreau, because such people, who allow themselves, unwittingly or wittingly, to be rendered mere things at the disposal or use of others, degrade the very thing that makes them different from beasts or objects – their independence in thought and action and their ability to choose the ends they seek.[4]

To this end, Thoreau is critical of his fellow citizen’s inaction with regard to some of the most pressing social issues of his day - among these, the issue of slavery:

“There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; while esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing[.] They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret…there are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.”[5]

Virtue and Active Citizenship, according to Henry David Thoreau, are one and the same. To be virtuous is to act with conviction and to “not leave to the mercy of chance” what the dictates of conscience require be done.[6] To abandon one's conscience, is to abandon what makes one fully human.

“Is there not the sort of bloodshed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.”[7]

According to Thoreau, impartiality is always partial, for it necessarily favours the status quo. Action from principle, on the other hand, and the perception and performance of right, stirs the individual moral agent from his slumber, and enlivens him to the evil he abets through his disinterest in his own moral power.

“It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support… I must first see, at the very least that I do not pursue [my own aims] sitting upon another man's shoulders.”[8]

Here, Henry David Thoreau states the obvious: it is not my duty to save someone from drowning but it is my duty to exercise my moral judgment and ensure I do not contribute to that person’s plight.[9]

CONCLUSION

At first blush, perhaps, Thoreau’s idea of Active Citizenship does not appear very active – “its not a man’s duty…to devote himself to the eradication of any…wrong” he says. But this is to miss the insight Thoreau provides the attentive reader. Just as Martin Luther King Jr.[10] would discover in his quest for greater racial equality in the United States, and, just as Ghandi discovered in his quest to liberate India from the clutches of the United Kingdom[11], Thoreau knew that the one condition necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.[12] As Thoreau rightly asserts, “The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue” in order to sustain it – nothing more.[13] Being an active citizen then, according to Thoreau, means only this: taking seriously one’s moral agency and duty to act according to the dictates of conscience in order to avoid either harming another, or lending one’s weight to the machine that would do so in one’s stead. Why all men have a conscience is so that they might use it in order to check themselves.  Its good use, when “well done, is done forever.”[14]

DISCUSSION and FACT-SCENARIO QUESTIONS

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[1] Walden

[2] Walden

[3] Civil Disobedience, pages 5 and 6

[4] For those interested in this topic of what it means to be Human, you may wish to read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason,

[5] Civil Disobedience, pages 8 and 9

[6] Civil Disobedience, page 9

[7] Civil Disobedience, page 15

[8] Civil Disobedience, page 10

[9] Civil Disobedience, See bottom of page 7

[10] See MLK Jr.’s discussion of what he terms “the moderate” in his Letter from Birmingham Jail

[11] Ghandi, in fact, used Thoreau’s example as a model in order to mount a campaign tactic that paralysed British India and ultimately helped hasten the United Kingdom’s departure from the sub-continent – this tactic became known simply as “non-cooperation”. 

[12] This adapted phrase is often attributed to the philosopher Edmund Burke; It also appears, with attribution to Burke, in Primo Levi’s book Survival in Auschwitz

[13] Civil Disobedience, page 11

[14] Civil Disobedience, page 14

UTILITARIANISM

T. David Marshall

Marshall Philosophy Lecture Series

November 2012

 

Topic: Utilitarianism and the Greatest Good (Happiness) for the Greatest Number Principle

Introduction

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.[1]

What does it mean to say that someone has acted morally, in any given situation?

Enter the following thought experiment:

Suppose a clerk at the local corner store sees a young child come to the counter with a handful of candy. Suppose also that the child does not know the price of the candy in his hand, and no one is with this child to chaperone the clerk’s conduct towards him. The child puts his fistful of change on the counter for the clerk to count.

If the clerk takes more change than is the price of the candy, most will certainly agree he has not acted properly towards this unsuspecting child. But what of the clerk’s motivations – do his motivations play any role in our determining whether or not the clerk has acted morally towards the young child if he, in all instances, in fact ends up taking the correct amount of change?

a)       Suppose the clerk thinks that this child might suspect something should he take too much change and believes thereafter the child will go about town telling potential customers of his having been cheated – would refraining from taking too much change, in this situation, be viewed as an act that has moral worth? Would we say that the clerk acted morally in this situation in having not taken more change than he was due?

b)       Suppose the clerk knows for a fact that this child will not suspect him, and so the clerk might cheat the child with total impunity. Cheating the child would also make the clerk very happy, and would not diminish the child’s happiness one bit. Nonetheless, in this scenario, the clerk reasons that cheating is wrong and so takes only the correct amount of change due. Would the clerk’s decision, in this case, be an act which has moral worth? Would we say that the clerk acted morally in this situation?

From a Utilitarian perspective, the answers to both “a” and “b” might strike you as a bit odd: In “a” the Utilitarian is likely to say that the action of the clerk is moral because it likely promotes the happiness of many future customers, along with the happiness of the child. In “b”, however, it is not entirely clear that a Utilitarian would say the clerk acted morally at all. If the child would not be harmed by the cheating, but the clerk would have enjoyed the cheating of this child greatly, it’s not entirely clear that a Utilitarian would favour giving the correct change at all!

Let me explain.

Utilitarianism

Think about the following Hypothetical conversation you and I might have:

What motivates you to get up in the morning? You might say simply, “my alarm clock” – but truly, why did you set your alarm, then? “An exam”, you reply. But then, can I ask, why do you want to take this exam? “Because I want to get good grades”, you retort. And why do good grades matter to you? “Because, I want to get a good job” you say. And why is a good job important to you? “Because I want to toil as little as necessary and for the greatest return” you tell me. And why is that important to you? “Because I want to be happy and avoid or lesson my pains and unpleasant efforts wherever I can” you blurt. Ah and why, can I ask, do you want to be happy? “What a silly question!” you say. “Because - that is why”.

Enter Jeremy Bentham – an English philosopher, lawyer, writer and social reformer who lived from 1748 to 1832. Bentham is recognized as the father of the moral theory of Utilitarianism – the idea that actions are right insofar as they promote happiness and lesson pain, and wrong insofar as they promote the opposite.

Bentham believed that all human action is undertaken with regard to two primary considerations: pleasure and pain. Bentham believed that all actions (as illustrated, above) can be traced to the dictates of these two inward “sovereign masters”; they “govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think”.

If one chooses poorly – say by not setting the alarm for an early morning exam – it is only, according to Bentham, because the individual has failed to properly weigh the attendant pleasures and pains accompanying this choice. For sure, one might enjoy a morning lay-in, but in exchange for this momentary pleasure, this individual might give up even greater pleasures (getting the degree or job, for example) or even suffer the pain of long-term failure, defeat, or poverty.

To test what is the right thing to do (what is the right action to be undertaken), in promoting happiness and lessoning pain, Bentham therefore devised a 7-part test:

1.       Ask how intense the pleasure to be had, or pain to be avoided, is

2.       Ask what is the likely duration of the pleasure to be had, or pain to be avoided

3.       Ask what is the certainty of the pleasure or pain that will result from the intended action(s)

4.       Ask what is the proximity of the pleasure or pain to the action to be undertaken (i.e. will the pleasure be long-delayed, or the pain far-off?)

5.       Ask how likely the pleasure or pain expected will lead to other pleasures or pains (fecundity)

6.       Ask how pure the pleasure or pains to result from the action will be (i.e. will the pleasure or pain be of nearly equal parts, or intermixed?)

7.       Ask of the number of persons to be affected by the action to be undertaken

What Makes Utilitarianism different from Pure Egoism?

In short, it is the 7^th consideration outlined in Bentham’s 7-part test which makes Utilitarianism unlike strict or pure Egoism.

Bentham believed that all persons can experience happiness or pain in approximately the same proportions and thus all persons are (approximately) equally entitled to seek pleasure or avoid pain. That is, according to Jeremy Bentham, no particular person has a greater claim to happiness than any other person, objectively speaking. Thus, favouring your own happiness, over that of other’s, would be irrational; 1=1, always. If you value your “1” more than others, it’s simply because you can’t do basic math.

Given then, that all humans are motivated by these two “sovereigns” (pleasure and pain), Bentham believed that one could not rationally rank any one person’s happiness above another’s – nor pass judgment on what any particular person might find enjoyable, or painful. “Pushin” said Bentham,  “is as good as poetry”.[2]

In determining then, how to rightly engage with others (i.e. in determining what are morally praiseworthy actions), Bentham states that one should act so as to promote happiness – the chief end of all human action – or seek to lesson its antithesis. Actions are right – are moral, insofar as they promote the ends of all human action (that is, the attainment of pleasures and avoidance of pains), and wrong insofar as they frustrate the achievement of these ends.

Lets try applying the principle of the Greatest Good for the Greatest Number in the following fact-scenarios.

Hypothetical Fact-Scenarios

1.       The year is 1884. You are a mate on a ship called the Mignonette. Your ship is overtaken by massive waves and you and 2 other men, along with a cabin boy who is about 17 years of age, seek refuge in a small, leaky life-boat. A month goes by - there is no food in the life-boat left to eat, and the last time anyone ate was 4 days ago. Against your advice, the young cabin boy, the night before, began drinking sea water. He is now out of his mind, sick and likely dying at the front of the boat. There are no ships on the horizon, and in the 1 month you and your 3 mates have been lost at sea, you have not seen any sign of rescue. There is little to no hope. Dudley, the oldest and strongest member on the life-boat signals to you to aid him in killing the dying cabin boy. He says that if you and he do so, everyone still alive will share the cabin boy's blood and flesh, and thereby survive at least a fortnight more. You are asked to join in the kill and will be rewarded for your efforts if you do.

What do you do? Why? 

2.       You are a doctor in a hospital in Hamilton Ontario. A young healthy single homeless fellow has come in for a routine, minor procedure that requires that he be put under general anaesthetic for a few hours. You also deal regularly with a number of patients at the hospital and know for a fact that there are 5 people in Ward “C” (which stands for “Critical”) who are in desperate need of organs such as a pancreas, kidneys, etc. The patients in Ward C are miserable in their current state – they have families and just want to live and be happy once again. Your single homeless patient is a former convict with no family and no home. His life is an unhappy one, filled with inner anguish and continual self-doubt. Your nurse, Ms. Ratchet, turns to you, just as the fellow is put under for the routine procedure, and proposes that the two of you work to harvest this homeless fellow’s organs for the benefit of your 5 Ward C patients. No one will miss this fellow, and no one will find out about your good deed, should you decide to do as Ms. Ratchet suggests. In the meantime, the blood work has come back on the homeless fellow – he is a match to all 5 Ward C Patients!

What do you do? Why? 

3.       You are a nurse at the Toronto General Hospital. Your patient, Mr. Jones, is dying. Mr. Jones is a kindly old man, who worked hard his entire life. He has amassed a great deal of cash over the years – and because he trusts you, Mr. Jones has told you, in strict confidence, where all his money is hidden – no other living soul knows of this hidden cash. It amounts to nearly $2 million dollars! Mr. Jones asks you to promise him that you will deliver the hidden cash to his equally well-off younger brother, Indiana Jones. Indiana is a single, older fellow who now lives in the woods and spends his remaining days fishing and trapping. He has given up any remaining interest in re-entering society, has no need for cars, planes and the like, and simply wants to enjoy his remaining days in utter solitude. Indiana never settled down and so has no a children or wife.  You look Mr. Jones in the eyes, hold his hand and promise him that you will deliver the hidden cash, as instructed.

Three days later, Mr. Jones dies. That same day, a young lady from the local orphanage approaches you and asks if you might be able to help her out. The orphanage she is in charge of is in desperate need of funds and many children’s lives will be greatly improved if only you could help her make its funding goal of $2 million happen. So far, no one has contributed to the fund, winter is coming, the furnace is broken and no funds are available to fix it. The orphanage’s roof is leaking badly and they have been having toxic mould issues which have resulted in many illnesses and the death of a young Mr. Oliver Twist. “Please sir” says the lady, “2 million dollars would greatly improve the happiness, and lesson the pain, of these poor, retched children.”

What do you do? Why? 

Conclusion

Do you find Bentham’s account of morality persuasive? If correct, Utilitarianism (a form of “consequentialism”) has far reaching implications for normative ethics. What is right, in any situation, is determined solely by reference to what good the intended action is likely to produce, and by how many people that good will be enjoyed by. Many radical results flow from this sort of calculation - not least of all because Utilitarian answers to moral dilemmas often scrape up against our basic intuition that some things are just plain wrong - no matter what the consequences. Whatever the case, it is clear that Utilitarianism, as a system of moral and ethical reasoning, has had far-reaching effects. It’s a simple, calculating, and persuasive theory and its impact on questions as diverse as ‘how to deal with terrorism’, or ‘how to effectively deliver healthcare in a resource-limited, finite system’, is clearly visible. But, what do you think?

T. David Marshall

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[1] Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism (1863) at chapter 2, page 2

[2] This is what Mill spends a fair amount of time disputing in his work, Utilitarianism, Chapter 2 (your reading for this week).

The Hamilton Spectator: Comments October 1st 2012

Didn’t Galileo show us? Truth is not found in authority and obedience

We have surely learned by now that fact is found in challenging the status quo, in seeking ‘heretical’ knowledge

It is not often I am stirred from my office chair in order to respond to what I read in our daily paper. Today, however, is one of those rare occasions upon which something has so incensed my moral and reasoning faculties as to warrant the effort.
On the Sept. 27 Comments page, I read the letter of Father Geoffrey Korz, entitled Religious Belief and the Search for the Truth. What Korz has advocated however, is utterly at odds with any rational search for it; authority is not a basis upon which one can be assured of any proposition’s truthfulness — no matter how much one might like it to be otherwise.
Take, as but one illustration of the falsity of Korz’s proposition, the trial of Galileo. In 1615 Galileo, the famed inventor and improver of telescopic devices, sat in utter terror as he awaited the Catholic Inquisition’s ruling that would determine his fate. Charged as a heretic for providing evidence and promoting the idea of a heliocentric universe, Galileo’s life hung in the balance. Chief censors of the central committee of the Catholic Church had sought, some 60 years earlier, to ban these “heretical” ideas — now the Church’s official doctrine (its Truth) was being “attacked” again by a rather reputable, if perhaps all too quiet, Italian inventor.
At the time it was remarked by many that not only was it “official doctrine” that the Earth was the centre of the universe, but that all of the holy texts agreed upon this Fact: The sun went ’round the earth, not the other way around. This was the Truth the authorities sanctioned — and if one questioned this Fact, one did so at one’s peril.
Today, thank goodness, most people understand as a matter of empirical evidence that Truth does not emanate from authority by virtue of its superior position, but rather because it just happens, in any particular case, to be right. Or, to put it more bluntly, we understand that simply saying one is right — coupled with the power to compel obedience — does not make that person correct; it just makes him or her an authority, and a pompous one at that.
And, just as it would be rather bold to charge Galileo with “intellectual laziness” for not having swallowed his Church’s geocentric beliefs whole, I think Korz’s charge that Catholics ought to toe the line or seek out the nearest door is — at the very least — a bit unfortunate. “Love it or leave it” is not the way a democracy works and it’s certainly not the way to better institutions such as the Church.
It is precisely this type of command-style micromanagement of official Facts and Truths that leads to the amplification of error, not its eradication. It silences innovation and discovery, stifles constructive criticism and prejudges new ideas as “wrong,” out of hand. These features, all of which are central to the discovery of Truth, are lost when authority is substituted for the hard work of rational inquiry — lonely and as persecuted a job as that may be.
This is all to say, of course, that if the Church really is interested in the search for Truth, it would do well to stop persecuting those who seek out knowledge and challenge the status quo. Institutions, just as often as people, get things wrong — often wildly so.
If, on the other hand, the Church is really interested in dictating what Facts and Truths are to be believed, well then, full steam ahead.
T. David Marshall lives in Cayuga and is a lawyer in Hamilton.

Jesus and Mohammad have a drink...