The Theory of Morality by Alan Donagan

Abstract

l.6~ BOO:J{ Rll}VIEWS 'the Theory of Morality. By ALAN DoNAGAN. The University of Chicago Press, 1977. Pp. xvi +278. That religion and morality iuay be conceptualized as genuinely distinct entities is hardly all that novel a notion, as the long natural-law tradition in Western thought bears ample witness. The potential problem posed for moral theory· by this distinction may be obscured by the clear and obvious fact that functioning moral traditions tend to be associated with religious traditions and that most people's ordinary moral judgments therefore reflect the general influence of whatever composite religious and moral tradition they happen to be a part, more often than not by inheritance. In secular society, however, the problematic element in the distinction between religion and morality has manifested itself with a vengeance as it were and has taken the form of· the conflicts between the inherited moral tradition, which in the West is, of course, Christian, and various systems of philoophical ethics which seem so contrary to that tradition. It is this situation and its attendant confusion concerning matters moral which serves, so to speak, as the basic background for this book, the stated purpose of which is to determine, first, what a theory of morality is a theory of and, second, what a philosophical theory of morality would be. With regard to the first of these issues, the author, whose goal after all is a philosophical system which will do justice to traditional morality (and to do so without the problems associated with that other noteworthy philosophical attempt at this, namely intuitionism) , is quite clearly concerned with conceiving morality in terms true to what it has historically meant to moralists themselves, that is, " a standard by which systems of mores, actual and possible, were to be judged and ·by which everybody ought to live, no matter what the mores of his neighbors might be" (p. 1). This way of approaching the subject naturally leads him to consider the contribution made to moral theory by the Stoics, whom the author sees as having been the first to have formulated. a reasonably clear conception of morality understood as a standard for judging systems of mores. Of particular importance , therefore,-especially in view of the actual moral traditions, the Jewish and the Christian, with which the book is most concerned and to which repeated references are made-is the Stoic assumption that there is a divine law, which expresses divine reason and for the ascertaining of which law human reason is, in principle at least, adequate. Thi~ divine law can, moreover, be distinguished from all other divine commands which do not express divine law, in this sense of divine law, and which are knowable, therefore, only by revelation. It is in this Stoic spirit that the author rejects both Anscombe's contention that morality can intelligibly be treated as a system of law only by presupposing a divine lawgiver and also her inference that those who deny BOOK REVIEWS 168 the existence of such a divine lawgiver, if they choose to discuss ethical topics, should follow Aristotle's example and do it by way of a theory of the virtues. In response, the author' argues that the conception of morality as virtue is not really an alternative to the conception of morality as law and sees a counterpart "precept of moral law" for each "precept of moral virtue." Moreover, as undoubtedly befits an approach based on such manifestly universalistic principles, he praises the Stoics for having conceived the divine law as valid for all men in virtue of their common rationality in contrast to Aristotle, for example, who " did not succeed in distinguishing moral virtue as such, the virtue of a man as a man, from political virtue, the virtue of a citizen of a good city " (p. 4) . Like Stoicism (although less obviously so, according to Donagan), Judaism and Chris~ianity also distinguished between the divine law, which is binding on all and is in principle at least ascertainable by all, and other, more particular divine commandments which are binding only on some. Obviously, it is these inherited moral traditions which constitute our common morality and with which, therefore...