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The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 15.3 (2001) 190-194



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Scales: Human and Otherwise--On Moral and Material Complexity

Dennis J. Schmidt
Villanova University


An optimist is someone who believes that this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who fears that that is true.

My disagreement with the thesis--and even the evidence--animating Professor Lachs's article is basic. There is no point in going tit for tat, offering an example of the mess we have made of the world as a counterexample to the way we have pulled ourselves together by means of material improvements in life. Such an exchange could go on endlessly, and pointlessly. Since this is the case it seems a wiser strategy to respond to his argument by outlining something of an alternative set of claims and concerns, and try to suggest thereby something of what I find missing in Professor Lachs's--I am tempted to say Dr. Pangloss's --position. I will do this by outlining a set of theses that are formulated in response to the provocations of Professor Lachs's arguments. Most of all, I want to argue--against Lachs--that there is no essential relation between material conditions and moral life. While I would not be willing to argue that there is absolutely no link between these matters (I would argue that Hegel is right when he claims that relationality is all-embracing), I would not accept what seems to be Lachs's claim, namely, that there is a causal relation at work here: "progress" in material life seems to "cause," or at least promote, a corresponding "advance" in moral life. If there indeed is any direct relation between moral and material life, it might be better described as the opposite of the view Professor Lachs has represented. I would prefer to say that [End Page 190] "progress" in moral life might well promote a very real reticence with regard to any passion for "advances" in material life. But, while I would be closer to accepting this view than the view Lachs champions, I would rather make the more balanced claim that the relation between the realms of the moral and of the material is complex and full of entanglements that do not tend in any single direction. To subscribe to Lachs's view is to risk the dangerous conclusion that by devoting ourselves to being "better off" we will end up being morally "better." But such is simply not the case.

Let me ward off one potential misunderstanding from the outset: nothing I say speaks against the effort to make our lives healthier or more comfortable. Even though I do not believe that e-mail has improved real communication (although it undeniably facilitates the exchange of information in the world, something which we ought not confuse with real communication), I also do not want to "drink putrid water" and so I celebrate those things that make it possible for us to have clean water. One need neither buy, nor reject, the workings of technology whole cloth. Nor does what I want to say argue against mobilizing our material resources and technological innovativeness to make food, medicine, shelter, and other material needs more readily available and better adapted to our real needs. To have concerns about the unbridled affirmation of technology, to criticize the technological imperative that seems to drive the world today, is not to condemn in one fell swoop the inventiveness with which we shape our lives, even though a more cautious relation to technology might be recommended. It is rather to argue that the capacity for the production of even clearly beneficial material goods does not signal in any way that a culture is "better" morally. With this clearly declared, let me announce the theses according to which I prefer to consider the question of the relation between the moral and the material.

First, at the risk of great oversimplification, let me say that I believe that the scale of moral life is small, while the horizon of...

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