On Human Nature

by Roger Scruton

For such consequentialist thinkers, all moral problems are, in the end, arithmetical.

The entanglements that bind us to each other in specific and historical bonds of right and duty have no secure place in their calculations. Of course others do not matter to us equally, and the many claims on us may be more or less demanding, more or less rewarding, more or less strong. But when it comes to considering what matters in itself—in other words, what morality demands of us—such facts, for the consequentialist mind-set, sink into the background, to reappear only as a qualification to other and more abstractly grounded features of our condition.

That is but one reason for thinking that the idea of an “optimific principle” is both obscure in itself and unable to do the work that consequentialists require of it. Take away the trolleys and the lifeboats and we rarely know how to calculate “the best,” either in the particular case or when considering the application of principles. The consequences of our actions stretch infinitely outward in both space and time. The best of intentions can lead to the worst of results. And values are many and in tension with each other. What place should we accord to beauty, grace, and dignity—or do these all creep into our deliberations as parts of human happiness? There is no knowing how either Parfit or Singer would answer such a question, for their writings are devoid of moral psychology and have little or nothing to say about what happiness consists in, by what scale it should be measured, or what human beings gain from their aesthetic and spiritual values.

overlook the actual record of consequentialist reasoning.

Modern history presents case after case of inspired people led by visions of “the best,” believing that all rational beings would adopt those visions if only they would think about them clearly. The Communist Manifesto is one such vision. It gives a picture of “the best” and argues that all would work for it, the bourgeoisie included, if only they understood the impeccable arguments for its implementation. Those who stand in the way of revolution are self-interested; but they are also irrational and would change sides if they thought seriously about principles that...

Lenin and Mao, who put this document into practice, were adept ...

The moral arithmetic always came out in their favor, as they switched the trolley of history from one set of possible victims to another. And when the fat man had to be pushed from the bridge, there was always someone ready to do ...

The result was the total destruction of two great societies and irreversible damage to the rest of us. Why suppose that we, applying our minds to the question of what might be best in the long run, would make a better job of it? Moreover, is not this possibility—indeed probability—of error at the root of what is so objectionable in consequentialism, which turns wrongdoing into an intellectual mistake, thereby excusing it? When the Kaiser, looking back on the calamity of World War I, said, “Ich hab’ e...

Compared with our immediate obligations, founded in relations of accountability and dependence, consequentialist arguments have an arbitrary appearance and depend for their credibility on a hypothesis about consequences that is rarely more than wishful thinking.

This means that, in a deontological morality of the kind I have been advocating, concepts such as right and desert will have an important role.

Rights and deserts, then, enable us to establish a society in which consensual relations are the norm, and they do this by defining for each of us a sphere of personal sovereignty from which others can be excluded. And rights and deserts define duties too. My right is your duty, and if I do not deserve what you do to me, then you have no right to inflict it.

For those and related reasons, getting clear about the concept of the person is, for us, an intellectual priority. Those who build a universal political doctrine on the foundation of human rights are in need of a theory that tells them which rights belong to our nature—our nature as persons—and which are the product of convention.

In every area of political conflict today we find the concept of the person at the center of the dispute yet treated as a mere abstraction, with little or no attention to its social and historical context.

Libertarians emphasize freedom but give us no real account of the origins of freedom or its metaphysical basis.

Communitarians emphasize social dependence but fail to explore the difference between the groupings of animals and those of free beings, whose associations are founded in contract and consent and whose social fulfillment comes only in the mutual recognition of their individual autonomy.

If this is so, then we should conclude that the libertarian and the communitarian each give one-half of the truth. Freedom and accountability are coextensive in the human agent. And the dialogue through which we address each other involves a search for reasons that have weight for you as much as for me.

To develop fully as persons, I have argued, we need the virtues that transfer our motives from the animal to the personal center of our being—the virtues that put us in charge of our passions. These virtues are not available outside a tightly woven social context. Without socially endorsed forms of education, without families and spheres of mutual love, without the disciplined approach to erotic encounters, our social emotions will surely not be fully centered in the “I.” Human beings find their fulfillment in mutual love and self-giving, but they get to this point via a long path of self-development, in which imitation, obedience, and self-control are necessary moments.

The arguments given for these positions are invariably secular, egalitarian, and founded in an abstract idea of rational choice.

The first criticism is that the contractarian position fails to take our situation as organisms seriously.

For us humans, who enter a world marked by the joys and sufferings of those who are making room for us, who enjoy protection in our early years and opportunities in our maturity, the field of obligation is wider than the field of choice.

We are bound by ties that we never chose, and our world contains values and challenges that intrude from beyond the comfortable arena of our agreements.

In the attempt to encompass these values and challenges, human beings have developed concepts that have little or no place in liberal theories of the social contract—concepts of the sacred and the sublime, of evil and redemption, that suggest a completely different...

If consensual sex is ever condemned on this view, it is because the consent of one party has been obtained by manipulation or by the abuse of power, as between teacher and pupil or doctor and patient.

for it turns us toward a sphere that cannot be reached by any merely human effort and cannot be known except in this way.