The Principle of Sufficient Agreement

International Phenomenological Society

The Principle of Sufficient AgreementAuthor(s): Bertram MorrisReviewed work(s):Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Sep., 1964), pp. 1-15Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2105500 .Accessed: 02/06/2012 21:08

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THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT AGREEMENT

There are signs that the present state of ethical theory is increasingly turning toward anti-anti-intellectualism. Practical considerations, alone could dictate the wisdom of fostering as much as possible this, new turn. My interest here, however, is, not so much one of practical import as it is a theoretical concern to track down the source of the confusion. The thesis I accordingly wish to develop is that the confusion lies in a failure to distinguish between an "approval-command" kind of ethic and a "need- implementation" kind of ethic. The failure to distinguish the two and to limit each to its, own area of relevance deprives the understanding of any clear conception of the, nature of ethical theory. To try to remedy this deficiency I therefore wish to clarify the distinction and to seek grounds for its justification.

Common language amply shows, a connection between wants, wishes, desires, and their consequent requests for actions. The "I want X" is, at least in its, early appearances in life, connected with "You do Y!" The "I want" in this context is an expression of the desire for action which the agent by himself is ordinarily unable to complete and which requires therefore the aid of another. Otherwise the want would be expressed in direct action rather than in linguistic form. This is to say that the linguistic form is an admission of a degree of incapacity to act directly. In its most primitive form, the linguistic expression is stated in the first person singular and is directed to a second person singular. Hence, the familiar form, "I want you to do Y."

As various authors have sufficiently pointed out, there are innumerable varieties, as well as degrees of sophistication, of this kind of expression. Consequently, I would suggest that wants, desires, wishes, and the like, need to be understood as constituting a whole range of voluntaristic acts which arise from the depths of man's psyche. Moreover, they may subtly be converted in linguistic form into first or second person plural or even third person, singular or plural. All that is required is that in the process of conversion the demands for action are still operative and that the source of the demands is some want or wish which, whether or not satisfied by the agent appealed to, is an exhortation which does not logically commit him so to act. Consequently, there remains a gap between the

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demand made by the first person and the response which would satisfy it by the second person or persons.

The paradoxical nature of the demand is not difficult to locate. It arises by virtue of the fact that there are at least two persons involved in what it takes to consummate the action. Were there but one person who both wished and.acted consonant with the wish, no paradox would arise. If I want X and I act appropriately to get X, there is between the want and the act an intelligible transition. The gap appears only when there are two or more persons involved and when the desire for X by the first person makes no intelligible or reasonable demand on a second person to cater to the first-person desire.

It is appropriate, consequently, to speak of this class of actions as self-regarding actions. This is so, not because the speaker is consciously paying attention to himself, but only because there is no effective, rational connection between his wish and the action that he exhorts another to undertake. Although my wish may constitute a reasonable ground for my action, it constitutes no reasonable ground for obliging you to undertake the course of action which I would like you to do. In this sense the drive proceeds primarily from my will, and only secondarily from your will, and then only insofar as you yourself care to be moved to a corresponding action. For convenience's sake, the underlying principle may be called the principle of moral indifference and may be formulated as follows: When neither the motive, the intent, nor the consequences of an agent's act requires him to regard another as more than an instrument or an obstacle to its consummation, that act is nonmoral and therefore may be said to belong to the class of morally indifferent acts.

Morally indifferent acts are commonly regarded as being constituted as matters of taste. The virtue of so regarding them is that it safeguards them. They are relative. Tastes differ and there is no requirement to approve the tastes of another, or if one does, one does so by his own volition, and not because it contains any real rationale. Thus when the Pythagoreans were exhorted not to eat beans, the exhortation had no force beyond the voluntary members of the group. Another exhortation not to eat the heart of animals also appears to be arbitrary, even though the vegetarian begins to raise somewhat more formidable objections to the consumption of flesh. There is no doubt, however, that the question is of a different order when the heart happens to be a human heart. This is more than a question of fastidiousness of taste. The "I want you to provide me with a human heart to eat" begins to make the want not just one that another shouldn't satisfy, but one that shouldn't even be. Or if it must be then its satisfaction should take some innocuous form in the realm of fancy rather than in the realm of reality.

The single example perhaps suffices to show that we somewhere require

THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT AGREEMENT 3

a line to be drawn between matters of taste and matters of morality. When the principle of indifference is applicable, it is an impertinence to interfere with a person who does what he can to attain his objectives, including his ability to enlist others for the purpose. But the nagging question is, of course, when is and when is not the principle applicable? Some seem to say "always," some "never." But inevitably the bold answer, affirmative or negative, gives way to some qualification, and the "always" is qualified by limiting responsible undertakings to those areas in which knowledge can be the guide, even though it is tacitly or explicitly recog- nized that there are areas of inscrutability in which man must rely upon some initiative of his own. The whole question then can be - and of course has been - cast in terms of freedom. In this form the distinction may be drawn between freedom and the "higher freedom," or, more simply, between freedom and responsibility. "Responsibility" is, however, a complex term and deserves careful analysis. It connotes at the very least action that is undertaken with some knowledge of connections of things in nature, including the consequences of the action, and it also connotes the need for being accountable for the action undertaken. When one is accountable for an act, he may either excuse himself in the trivial sense of pointing to reasons for his faiulre to achieve an expected end, or more importantly, he may adduce grounds to show why his act is legitimate. In the latter case, by looking to the grounds of legitimation, he seeks in them not only objectivity in judgment but also an appeal to another or others, ideal if not actual, who will agree to, the reasonableness of his act. Objectivity in judgment and appeal to an impersonal judge are the two poles of accountability. But an even more important aspect of it is found in the actual consummation of an end in which the various persons touched by an act (or, more likely, a concatenation of acts constituting a program) are mutual agents and mutual beneficiaries of it. In this sense they come to have a community of interest, both in being active participants who further an end and also sensitive minds who appreciate and enjoy it. This double reference of a responsible, and therefore accountable, act to objective grounds which sustain it and to persons who complete it differentiates it from those acts constituted as matters of taste. The latter enjoy the luxury of irresponsibility, and whatever agreement occurs with respect to them is coincidental. The former, on the contrary, contain a reasonable ground for agreement and thus make approval justified, not arbitrary. I should like to refer to them as being constituted by sufficient agreement and the controlling principle consequently as being the principle of sufficient agreement.

The area of sufficient agreement, unlike that of moral indifference, contains grounds why men should agree. Based upon more than merely happy circumstance or upon miraculous coincidence, agreement of this


sort lends itself to analysis both of the kinds of natural facts which support it and of the kinds of human involvements which consummate it. For analytic purposes, these need separate treatment even though their separation gives an air of unreality to the reality that so desperately needs to be understood.

The province of ethics clearly is one which involves relations of persons acting with concern in the affairs of men. Although these affairs may destroy men, primarily they are meant-to sustain them, both in the conveniences and necessities of life and in, satisfying the deeper longings of the human psyche. In contrast to animal existence, the peculiarity of human existence consists in the intermeshing of these various considerations. Human life may be distinguished by the fact that men do practice various arts. And originally the arts they practice are the practical, not the fine arts. Being arts, however, they contain an elegance which is enhanced as men refine the tools by which they sustain themselves. Once they have discovered fire and invenetd the wheel and the myriads of other inventions that make life more composed, clearly they do not give them up except as they develop better means to their ends.

Warmth, capacity to move things easily, and for men themselves to move about and to come to know better their world - these are in human life self-justifying. Utility is primitive and contains in its very nature the indisputable answer to the question of values. Utility is usefulness in life. It overcomes part of the incidence of death and the ills associated with death. It makes life freer, and in eliminating some of the squalor, it makes life less animal-like. The myth of Prometheus is one which no present-day sophistication can quite ignore, however much the sophisti- cations have transcended the simple utilities associated with earlier crafts.

There are, of course, many problems that do arise in our attempts to understand utility, but among them is not the problem of whether utility is good. We may correctly doubt whether some things are utilities; we may reasonably dispute the priorities that are attributed to things; and we may justly insist that there exist other and higher dimensions of existence; but we cannot really deny that utility is good. We cannot because apart from it, there is no, such thing as civil life, since there would then be no means of sustaining or giving direction to life. The arts give men power over nature and their practice makes life worth living - just because it is life, civil life. To seek for the value of life in something outside it is to repudiate it; for then it can be only a means to something else. In itself, and apart from the arts, it would be not trivial but senseless. The point which needs to be made about civil life is that it both gives direction to human activities and it provides unique satisfactions. Many philoso- phers have not hesitated to speak of such satisfactions as moral values.


The reason why these values cannot be found beyond life is that the moral is the life of the flesh transformed by the demands and rewards brought about by men living together. In the modern mode this is called culture. Among other things, culture signifies that the way a person eats, moves about, makes things, enjoys things, even the, way in which he sleeps, is inextricably intertwined with how persons before him, as well as persons living with him, did or do these things. Morals are concerned with helping and hindering persons, making and remaking things, chal- lenging and being challenged, thinking, discussing, criticizing, and the like. None of these can be done without the, flesh - and without the world that keeps the flesh together. The question of ethics, then, is, not what another kind of life may be (and this is not the question which we are addressing), but the question of what this kind of life is, its involvements and its unique satisfactions. To carry forth the argument we need therefore to be clear about the fact, first, that civil life intimately relates man to nature and depends on knowledge, and secondly, that it intimately relates man to man and depends on working agreements. I shall deal with the first summarily; the second requires. more detailed analysis.

A condition of the arts being effectively practiced is a knowledge of the materials which are employed and which may be converted into more useful forms. This, requires knowledge in use, not just knowledge for its own sake - knowledge by which things can be manipulated for ends useful and desirable. By producing clothes, food, and shelter, a craftsman staves off the elements and disease. He comes to learn about structures of things, their capabilities, and their limitations. Also he comes, to learn about the timeliness of things, about when he should and when he should not inter- vene in the natural processes. His resultant expertise is even further facilitated by the fact that knowledge may be enlarged and that actions may be adjusted to and perfected in the demands of putting new knowledge to work.

In the sophistication of knowledge in the contemporary world, greater power is gained as knowledge becomes more abstract and more syste- matically inclusive. The story of this gain is well-known and need not be repeated. I would reiterate only that prediction is a prime factor in this knowledge. The laws of science enable us to examine events which confirm or disconfirm their validity. Although these remarks are com- monplace, they are worth repeating here because contemporary ethical theory persistently ignores them or denigrates them. The point is that they are not irrelevant and that by denigrating them we thereby isolate morals from the very conditions that make them important. The effect is to separate the emotions from both action and knowledge and thus to condemn man to suffer in his- subjectivities with no power of exit.


Traditionally, ethics has been regarded as a practical science: it is concerned with human actions and their bearings upon the kinds of relations persons can sustain with one another. Our concern may well be then to observe specifically how the practical arts are, not just practical in the sense in which they refer to getting things done that people may live, but also the way in which they can improve the quality of their relations to one another. The "good will" that is often regarded as central to men's ethical relations is surely not just an impotent feeling of wishing well to others; it is a way of acting in concert to make wishing well effective. Morals may consequently be regarded as integral to men's daily practices, because they are the embodiment of working agreements.

Writers on social theory have not wearied in telling us, that societies endure only as there are mechanics by which men act together to realize common ends. The reason they can make an impressive case is that these ends are expressed, not just in some vague feeling or in some mystical social ties, but through institutions which give them effect. States, markets, banks, laws, police forces, factories, farms, sport arenas, schools, labo- ratories, theaters, airplanes, newspapers, filling stations, and a host of other agencies too numerous to mention, give expression to the working agreements that keep a society going. Some minimal harmony of the various institutions of a society is necessary to permit men to arrange their affairs and to support them in their daily pursuits. Otherwise there can be only frustration and the deterioration of social life.

But if there must be minimal agreements to keep a society together, there are also bound to be constant disagreements and conflicts which tear it apart. The polarities of harmonies and conflicts appear to be inevitable concomitants of social life. Agreements are seldom abiding, and clashes, more or less severe, are certain to occur. Once our attention is focussed upon the matter, we seem to find that controversy is a permanent aspect of social life. Ambitions, fears, corruptions, together with a range of ever appearing spontaneities and vitalities, cannot but cause disequilibria in society. Old ways of doing things are constantly challenged, and, if men are not to perish, they must find ways of accom- modating themselves to the challenge of the new.

The most nagging of questions, then, is, 'How are men to compose their differences?' However the moral question may be conceived, this question appears to lead us directly to the issues basic to social ethics, at least in that range of answers which presupposes the existence of some minimal agreements, the expression of those agreements in working arrangements, and the consequent enhancement of life by virtue of those arrangements. A multitude of questions arise in connection with each of these presuppositions. I wish now to turn attention to some of them which seem to be of crucial importance.


Plainly, there can be no social life without some kind of agreements. Men can't live together in a state of war of all against all - in fact, they can't even live in such a state. I do not mean to suggest that the civil state somehow miraculously came into existence out of a noncivil state. On the contrary, I wish to assert that agreements could not arise but for previous agreements. This statement is not paradoxical; it is merely a way of acknowledging that new arrangements are possible because other arrangements are actual. Differences among men become apparent only as their expectations, which arose out of previous actions, are no longer satisfied. Somebody wishes to do' something in a new way, and in so acting he runs afoul of somebody else who wants to continue in the old way. Clashes occur, and when there is no immediate yielding by either, an appeal to somebody or something else is the only escape from the use of force. Arbitration can come about only as the antagonists are willing or are forced to accept the judgment of someone else or as they appeal to a mutually acceptable standard which happily permits them to resolve their differences. If, as seems to be the case, controversy is a permanent aspect of society, so is the necessity for resolving at least those differences which would otherwise rent it. We repeat then the question, 'What makes it possible for men to come to terms with one another?'

There are, of course, similarities among men. Although these may at times create harmonies, they are equally capable of creating discord. This is especially the case when the similarities lead men to want things which are not sharable or which in being shared largely arouse animosities. Similarity of animal appetites does not appear to be a very satisfactory ground for men's getting along with one another. There surely must be something deeper which is capable of securing strong ties, and which will at the same time bring about generous satisfaction of their appetites.

Appetites are often better satisfied by employing indirect actions to produce an increased measure of goods. The process requires that metic- ulous attention be paid to the character of the indirect actions in order to secure the intended ends. In social life the appetites are no longer recognizable as merely creature responses. They are modified by the arts that persons practice, together with the subtle relations they come to bear one another. By working together, men may even establish ties that not only are not essential to the utilities to be realized, but may even be detrimental to them.

There is a point beyond which a people cannot afford to ignore their utilities - that is, their social purposes that must be realized if they are to survive. Social purposes cannot display unlimited conflict. More often, they seem to cohere in some kind of pattern. Such a pattern exists by virtue of the nice adjustments of the various arts to one another, and


may be regarded as constituting the ethos of a people. The ethos is a function of the practical arts by which people live and relate themselves to one another.

The ethnic characteristics of a people, then, are the result of the kinds of activities in which they engage. This fact about a people is commonly acknowledged when we call them nomadic or agricultural or militaristic or industrial or any number of other names we use to refer to their basic arts. These arts, varying as they do from society to society, define, more than anything else what a society is, its peculiarities, its distinctive nature - in short, its ethos. Moreover, by defining its ethos in terms of the kind of arts it typically engages in we can come to see what kind of rationality a society can possess. No society can get along without practicing some arts - not just those of food getting, of protecting itself from cold and heat, or replenishing its population, of securing itself against invaders, and of taking care of whatever other appetites that must be satisfied. But of even more significance to its distinctive cultural life, a society must develop a host of other practices - both those which, like governing, limit the kinds of relations persons can have with one another, and those which encourage the expression of human cravings that well up from individual psyches and take form in social satisfactions. The practice of these arts requires expertise; their rationale depends in part upon at least a modi- cum of efficiency, and in part upon the satisfactory adjustment of ends to one another.

When new inventions give promise of further facilitating these ends, men are more than likely to adopt them. Not always, to be sure. But if not, then what really requires explanation is why they are not adopted; for the reverse is intelligible enough not to require explanation. If the wheel helps one to move heavy things, or boats to cross waters, or tele- stars to communicate over long distances, surely we don't have to defend their adoption. We don't even have to defend whether these ends are "really" worthwhile or whether they really contribute to the good life. The burden is upon those who would not adopt them to show good cause for rejecting them.

I am not suggesting that there are not various kinds of obstacles that some persons would try to place in the way of adopting new inventions. Sometimes the objections may be legitimate, and then analysis has the burden of showing what goods a people would be deprived of by adopting the new. More often the objection are specious, and then they represent emotional adhesions, possibly to some pet ideology. For the sake of the argument, however, we should indicate the kind of rationality that the practical arts do display in men's attempts to cope with their world.

Our assumption has been that the useful arts practiced in a society cohere to form a pattern more or less clearly in harmony with one


another. When this harmony becomes upset, it needs to be reassessed. The task of reassessment is easier if not everything becomes askew all at once. Daily life provides a whole set of activities that need not be radically modified. Only as crises face a people, especially such as those in industrial society today, is virtually every human activity affected. Although crises can cause the dissolution of society, they can also cause solidarity of interest in opposing the threat, real or alleged, to its con- tinued existence. Rationality cannot of course be guaranteed; but when it is not undermined by irrationalities of myths, ideologies, and gross stupidities, it can through discussion and public debate, informed by expertise, manifest itself in exploring the alternative solutions open to a people. Our question is then, 'What considerations are indispensable to reasonable solutions of social differences?'

No solution of a social problem is real unless those who are involved act differently afterwards than they did before. Otherwise it is a sham of some sort, existing in the realm of ideology rather than in that of reality. An authentic solution must therefore be concerned with utilities which possess a more or less precise definition and can be measured by reasonably unequivocal standards. If, for example, a labor union, after bar- gaining for and receiving higher wages, agrees to continue work, the agreement is consummated only if the real wages are actually increased, and not given only to be nullified by lowered purchasing power. Accord- ingly, unless some new concrete effects are observable, no genuine agreement has been achieved. The utilitarian principle is therefore the final test of whether an agreement is reached.

We can now state the principle of agreement as constituting a range of possible solutions of social problems varying between minimal and maximal utility, and containing therefore an indefinite number of possible solutions. By definition any such solution is rational, and the degree of rationality is in direct proportion to its degree of utility. Any proposed solution which falls below minimal utility entails that persons would be worse off than before, and that therefore they would be led to purposeless conflict or to other forms of degradation of human existence. At the other extreme is maximum utility, the best of all possible solutions; that is, utopia. In this case perfect accord would be reached, and men would find their highest fulfillment on earth. The "on earth" signifies that natural knowledge comes into play and that men gain maximum power by cultivating knowledge and by putting it to use in their mutual interests. However extravagant this alternative appears to be, it is only the pushing to the limit the human use of science and technology. This ideal of the peaceful arts may then be projected as the ideal of universal peace; that is, the antiparochial mentality which science requires in the exploration


of causal connections in nature and which technology utilizes in the employment of this mentality for serving human needs.

The principle of sufficient agreement properly belongs to, the area of civil agreements and differences. This limitation leaves open the question of whether there is a realm of morals independent of civil life. But regardless of the answer, we cannot but recognize that civil society flourishes only as the practical arts flourish. These arts, we have, further insisted, depend upon knowledge of causal connections in nature as well as upon working agreements among men. In the absence of the practical arts we might conceive of men having a kind of purposeless communion, but not a civil society in which their energies have direction and their social relations significant consummations. Agreements by which men carry on their social lives thus vary between those which are minimal and those which are maximal. Anything below minimal signifies that life is impoverished by reason of men's failure to practice those arts for which they have the technical capacities.

Significant agreements, that is, civil agreements, come about only as there is a basis for them in men's practical activities. They are not the result of wishes, pious hopes, or frenzied good will. In the language of the lawyer, we may say that they involve "consideration," either in the sense of actually supplying goods or services or in the promise to do so in response to the corresponding actions of another. Agreements are then constituted as relations between persons and depend upon worldly goods through which their activities are given substance. Consequently, the more extensive the utilities the greater are the opportunities for broadly conceived agreements and the more bound up with one another are persons' lives.

The urgency for entering into agreements arises from the disutilities which face men and which can be converted into utilities. A disutility is the practice of an art which thwarts life. By its very nature it creates conflict among men, for it undermines social purpose. A disutility is not even necessarily an advantage to him who practices it, because in causing disutilities to others he may actually be nullifying his own good.

Utilities are in fact constituted as social purpose, and since conflict upsets purpose, utilities are thereby jeopardized. The real questions then are not whether utilities should be realized, but the extent to which they should be realized and what should be left to the realm of indifference. Minimum agreement there must be - just because it makes minimum utility possible. Below that level people don't even got along and life becomes intolerable - hence, they kill or otherwise destroy one another, whether in the practice of cannibalism, genocide, inquisitions, or any other practices of torture and debilitation that men can devise. Zero


agreement is not a viable stage of human life. It has been variously characterized as chaos, tyranny, the state of nature, and the war of all against all. Above this, minimum agreement avoids, undue harshness in life.

The borderline instances are the most difficult of all for bringing about solutions of civil problems. Not only is the case for' utility not easily demonstrable in these instances, but also the force of habituation to old ways is not easily overcome. Only an enlightened people will willingly change old fashions, especially when the calculated risk is not over- whelmingly in favor of the new. An industrial people are more likely to change their practices, than nonindustrialized ones just because industrial technology often advances, by the introduction of slight changes. Tradi- tion having been broken, an industrial society welcomes novelty - sometimes even to its disadvantage. Yet characteristically, such a society introduces measured changes, both in policy decisions and in its practical arts.

Maximum agreement is probably never attainable, but in times of crises, a society may lessen conflict by mobilizing intelligence and by working toward solidarity. In less stringent times men's urgencies may be so disparate and the room for diversities so great that pressure to obtain maximum agreement is not required. Although there probably exists some kind of confused hunger for maximum agreement, most persons tend to shun it. Partly they are lethargic toward it, but partly they bear an animus against it in order to insure their privacy, whether or not privacy actually does cater to their best interests. But the insistence that privacy somehow represents the natural condition of man is, belied by history and by those who today assert their primary loyalty to the state. Maximum agreement as here used, however, signifies not total identification with society, but only the willingness to enter into' those arrangements which, on the basis of the practice of the peaceful arts, maximize the utility for the community of which the individual is a part. Where there is no basis for these utilities, likewise is there no basis for agreement. Enlightenment is necessary to the achievement of such ends, but the real pressure to achieve them comes from the need for resolving social conflicts.

Man is, inherently a civil being, for he is the only civil being there is. He lives in society; his early training must fit him for social life; and his life can never quite be lived without his getting along with others. Thus, however different persons are from one another, they are not so different that they can have nothing in common. Their fraternal bonds may be tenuous, but because man is educable they are always capable of being tied more securely. We can never be certain that differences are irreconcilable. Since, on the contrary, we can always correctly assert


that there is an objective basis for composing any differences, we can correctly assert the universality of the principle of sufficient agreement: There is always a good and sufficient reason why persons should compose their differences as civil beings, rather than to magnify them into irreconcilable hostilities.

The principle of sufficient agreement gives no aid to the belief in utopia. One cannot both live in the world and fashion it to fit his dreams. But one can expect to live in the world and to live with others and at the same time to explore new ways of acting and to experienec new satisfactions. In this sense, there is something basically correct in the eighteenth-century belief in progress. Man is infinitely perfectible in the sense that he is never quite without resources for coming to new agreements. Progress in this sense does not signify that man becomes perfect; it signifies only that his! choices can be civil rather than uncivil. The extent to which they are the former rather than the latter is the extent to which there is. progress. Progress is then the degree to which men actually extend their agreements in coping with their differences. It is accordingly universal in that it is applicable to all men at all times. The fact that it is not steady must be explained by their failures to act as civil beings. Men can always act uncivilly; this mode of action is nevertheless the mark of degradation.

Agreements are facilitated by the fact that they usually render former agreements unnecessary. New agreements constrain one to act in accor- dance with their terms. At the same time they make it possible to dissolve other agreements, which because of altered circumstances. are otiose. The advancement of the practical arts makes older arts useless and therefore also makes useless the regulations which were formerly required. The conception of property, conservation, waste, efficiencies, and inefficien- cies, for example, change with changing arts. The tightening of regulations in one area makes, possible their loosening in another. Nomads have a different conception of property from that of farmers. In modern industrial society, peaceful relations would alter our notions of security regulations, armaments, shelters, etc. Any advance makes what it sur- passes a needless chore. The whole system of rights and duties, which can intelligibly be derived only from the working arrangements necessary to a society, inevitably changes as the arrangements change. As. the duties which become essential to carrying out new arrangements become more inescapable so the old duties related to the old ways are nullified. Simi- larly, the rights related to the new are secured, whereas the rights related to the old are indifferently exercised as one sees fit. Hence they are no longer rights; they are now constituted simply as preferences.

With the advancement of the arts, life then becomes freer in the double sense that the necessary utilities are secured and that people are relieved


from the burden of pursuing antiquated social purpose. The double freedom they gain is the increased power consequent upon the practice of new utilities, and the release of their energies spent upon the old, which can now be spent upon other activities. This double sense of freedom constitutes the basis from which the principle of sufficient agreement derives. The alternative to it is the destruction of life. Between the two are compromises, more or less satisfactory, and so more or less justified.

Two objections yet need to be met, and can be done so summarily. The first is that the; principle of sufficient agreement implies an elitist, totalitarian society in which the individual loses his. identity. The second is that the principle implies a dreary utilitarian technocracy, which makes feelings irrelevant. Neither of these inferences is correct.

The principle of sufficient agreement stands opposed to an elitist, totalitarian society. The; individual is destroyed when his utilities are cut off, whether through his own failure or through other's, hostilities. Utili- ties, moreover, are not matters of arbitrary decree. They are the goods that men can enjoy as they practice the peaceful arts, founded in knowledge and supported by cooperative pursuit. These practices are undermined by arbitrary dictation. They are advanced by an attachment to the activities through which they produce their satisfactory results. Elite societies are based upon invidious comparisons, which hinder rather than expedite these results. They invoke snobbery and create prodigious dis- satisfaction. Values, however, are intrinsically enjoyable, for they are for persons. If values are not to be destroyed, they must be appreciated by those who create them, and because they are processes that are undertaken jointly; they are fully realized only when they are shared by all who bring them about. Otherwise persons are deprived of their whole- hearted attachment to the processes in which values are consummated. So far from this attachment being an obliteration of the individual, he asserts himself as a person only through them. The underlying principle is a corollary of that of sufficient agreement; namely, the principle of justice. Justice requires that there must be an equalization in the productive arts between the burdens necessary for their practice and the rewards which are their realization. This principle is abstract but not unfounded. It derives from the principle of sufficient agreement.

Justice is necessarily austere because it is procedural and corrective. It is an equation, whether what are equated are eyes or teeth or lives or burdens or pleasures or pains. Without the equation, however' some suffer that others may live as parasites. Through injustices some take advantage of others in ways that make agreement impossible. The office of justice is to nullify the taking of advantage, rather than to create something. Hence, it is abstract.


There needs to be therefore a further principle whose office is to mark the distinction between abstract justice and fulsome living. The latter involves two things. One, it involves human creativity in all its, ranges, from the spontaneity of emotion to the sustaining of men's, imaginative powers to the advancement of his intellectual capacities. It is the spirited aspect of life opposed to dullness, lethargy, and stupidity. Secondly, it implies that human creativity passes into productive actions which satisfy the demands for necessary goods and for sating artistic hunger. The principle which applies to both these demands may be called the principle of civility. It is concrete just because it relates utility and beauty. Sepa- rated, the one does lead to dreary technocracy, and the other does lead to effusive aestheticism. Taken together, they support each other in making for values at once liberative and vital. Expressive of the inner urges of the psyche, expressed in forms capable of being appreciated by men in the objective world, and founded in utilities essential to life, such forms of actions are expressions of the principle of civility. They make concrete what is only abstract in the principle of justice. Although burdens and rewards still satisfy the equation of justice, the burdens are now found to be liberative and the rewards expressive of vitalities that men enjoy in common. Sufficient agreement is reached when men constantly balance justice and civility in coping with their common concerns.

I return finally to a concluding remark on the relation between the principle of moral indifference and that of sufficient agreement. The bridge between them is the principle of civility. The minimal agreements that men are obligated to respect are those which sustain them in their common undertakings. Today, we have an obligation to support industrial technology, and the scientific advances which underlie it, because it alone can support us. The industrial arts are constituted as public services, whether, for example, in the fields of metallurgy, electronics, hydraulics, or biologics, in its many phases. Beyond these arts - and they do not include useless gadgetry or articles catering to invidious prestige values - there is ample opportunity for men to explore their inner souls and their outer world in useful or useless ways, as they see fit. Clearly, it is repug- nant to try to force agreement in areas where it is not socially required. And although our social requirements may extend to ever new areas, the area in which the principle of indifference applies can never be for human life nonexistent.

Even though formally there is in the area of indifference no just ground for attempting to force agreement, there, is nevertheless good reason to encourage actions which make civil life and private life complements of each other. We need to recognize that even the creativities and spontaneities are never so, novel as to have no relevance to the enhancement of


civil life. In fact, the chief end of education lies in the continuous effort to bring about rapprochements between the idiosyncrasies of individuals' lives and the opportunities provided by the advancement of the practical arts. Learning is not better because it is useless, even though useless things may turn out to be useful. Virilities - and knowledge is one of them - require not only immediate satisfactions but also consummatory ends. For analytic purposes, the principles of moral indifference and of sufficient agreement should be kept separate. For life, the two need to be seen as complementaries. Then the expressive arts, including the large area of education in which minds can savor their culture, become more pungently alive, for they are related to the utilities which give them substance. The sustaining of an intimate relation between the two, I suggest, is the clue to overcoming the irrationalities, that plague present-day ethical theory.

BERTRAM MORRIS.

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO.

Documents

The Principle of Sufficient Agreement