- DanielCC
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Re: Positive Moral Arguments for Reproduction?
Greg wrote:
Do you think that the natural law approach is distinct from the virtue ethics approach, Daniel? While both are broad camps and they would tend to diverge (with some authors) on questions of obligations and moral absolutes, I don't know why they would be different.
Not in as much as (at least for me with my limited knowledge of the field) it would be difficult to give a 'pure' generic Virtue Ethics views. I tend, perhaps incorrectly, to use it as a broader label encompassing NL and related theories (for instance if I ever meet Quentin Smith I really want to take him up about the haunting similarity between his new secular ethical theory and NL).
You claim that the virtue ethics answer is intension with the Kantian maxim that people be treated as ends not means. But people can see reproduction as an act type as being perfective of themselves without understanding a common result of reproduction (a child) as means. In other words, the act of reproduction is seen as good and (consequently) pursued.
Though that potentially deals with the persons as means criticism I'm not sure it helps the overall moral situation qua reproduction as a positive. The child becomes less of a means to the parent's perfection and more of a by-product.
But, then, surely neither can you be using as an instrument someone who does not yet exist?.
No, that is a good point. One of the things I had intended to mention with the Anti-Natalists was that this part of the argument may well cut too deep for them with the consequence that one cannot wrong a non-actual person. I think it depends on whether we can intend a moral or immoral act against persons in general (that is any beings which would be designated by that label - not just actual person we are not acquainted with).
Going back to the idea of creation, and using a Platonic notion of the process of human craftsmanship and creativity (cf. Eric Gill and Ananda Coomaraswamy), might we be able to say that just as the craftsman starts with the Form of a work in his mind, which he then individuates (first in his mind when he plans in more detail the particular piece and then in the physical piece itself), it is the idea of a child that is aimed at until the individual child exists.
I'm not sure that helps though on as much as then one is intending the child qua child and not qua person. I doubt there is a Platonic form of Childhood though - all that would be bound up with the Form of Man.
But are their non-means only appraoches? I think that if my intention is to bring about new life because this is a good in itself, then I'm free of violating the Kantian maxim.
I'm not sure if I can put them in proper argument form at the moment, but I can think of a few more points that can be made in favour of the goodness of reproduction. One Platonic argument is that of creation. Man is made in the image of God, and God is the creator. It is a central aspect of man's being to be creative. Now, there are many ways he can do this, but to create and raise children as part of a loving, sacred marital bond is surely one of the most important outlets for such creativity.
I broadly agree in both cases (though think that the divine activity aspect should be phrased in such a way as it's clear that said activity is not perfective of the creator but instead a free spontaneous act of love akin to Eckhart’s notion of ebullitio). It's just finding a way to spell this out which proves difficult.
It's odd and in many ways dispiriting that not more time has be given to this question: after all the ushering in of a new life is most morally significant action one can engage in, far more so than murder - one cannot destroy a human soul but one can have a part in its creation, something which is beyond even the greatest of the angels, at least in Orthodox theology.
Last edited by DanielCC (10/17/2015 4:26 am)
- Jeremy Taylor
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Re: Positive Moral Arguments for Reproduction?
I'm not sure that helps though on as much as then one is intending the child qua child and not qua person. I doubt there is a Platonic form of Childhood though - all that would be bound up with the Form of Man.
But surely, although perhaps it is true many parents would naturally have a mental image of a child in their mind most of the time they dwell on the issue, this doesn't mean they do not wish to a person into the world. Just as the craftsman, though he begins with the form of a chair, has throughout the process a particular design for a chair more in his mind than the abstract form, so the parents are more concerned with the coming child but this doesn't exclude their aiming at a whole person. I don't think, anyway, it is especially the case that they must always keep the full mental image (which as we know is not the same as the concept) of an adult person in their mind, or even a child, any more than the skilled craftsman has to keep in mind always the image of the finished product whilst he was working. It seems to me it would be perfectly acceptabe simply to love their spouse and be open to reproduction, and then to act morally to their child when it is born.
I think one reason that traditional thinkers haven't worried so much about these questions is they assume being to be good. Anti-natalism does seem like a modern, pessimistic worry (though some Gnostic groups may prefigure it). It just isn't the sort of thing that would have occured to an Aquinas or an Eckhart and seriously preoccupied them, I believe.
- DanielCC
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Re: Positive Moral Arguments for Reproduction?
I think one reason that traditional thinkers haven't worried so much about these questions is they assume being to be good. Anti-natalism does seem like a modern, pessimistic worry* (though some Gnostic groups may prefigure it). It just isn't the sort of thing that would have occured to an Aquinas or an Eckhart and seriously preoccupied them, I believe.
It is and it does (bluntly I just point out that as Nietzsche did to Schopenhauer that if everything is meaningless then one is no more correct to will to reduce suffering than to will to increase it), and I think one of the Pessimistic philosophers have seen a return is because of knee-jerk, unreflective morality much popular secular rhetoric relies on, a point you yourself made in the Peter Hitchens’ thread.
Re Eckhart and Thomas, that may be true (in the last case though Aristotelean ethical theory had a negative impact – it retarded the development of the analysis of personhood pioneered by the Stoics and above all Augustine) though I still think it’s a project that should be carried out. Think of it as akin to Socratic dialogues wherein both parties know that Goodness or Courage exist but find themselves at first unable to adequately define them. Of course the point in my asking is more to weed out bad reasons
*I do think it is a very important issue though in as much as if an atheist brings up the Problem of Evil, which amounts to the claim that there could be no PSR for God's actualising this world, then they ought to be committed to the thesis that one ought not to reproduce. This of course is no problem for the Anti-Natalist but might well be uncomfortable for the sweet 'health and hedoism' Secular Humanist.
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Thread Starter- Greg
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Re: Positive Moral Arguments for Reproduction?
You claim that the virtue ethics answer is intension with the Kantian maxim that people be treated as ends not means. But people can see reproduction as an act type as being perfective of themselves without understanding a common result of reproduction (a child) as means. In other words, the act of reproduction is seen as good and (consequently) pursued.
Though that potentially deals with the persons as means criticism I'm not sure it helps the overall moral situation qua reproduction as a positive. The child becomes less of a means to the parent's perfection and more of a by-product.
I don't gather your point. On this view, people have a positive reason to reproduce. If one also argues that one can't contraceive, or that contraceptive acts are not really reproductive acts, then people have a positive reason to do something that leads to children, which defeats antinatalism.
The view that children are "byproducts" does not seem to me unattractive. (Of course, as I said in my original post, I think it's also acceptable for people to intend to procreate, and that does not seem to use children as means in an unacceptable way.) Natural lawyers, in both the old and new camps, certainly don't think that every sexual act has to be done with the intention of procreating.