This book, consisting of fourteen chapters written by a truly impressive list of contributors, is essential reading for anyone interested in the moral philosophy of W.D. Ross or its application to contemporary ethical problems. Some parts of the book are primarily hermeneutical and contextual. They are primarily devoted to, e.g., how to interpret some Rossian concept or how Ross relates to predecessors and contemporaries like Moore, Price, Prichard, and Sidgwick, and thus belong primarily to the history of philosophy. Other parts are primarily constructive and analytic. They are primarily devoted to, e.g., critically evaluating some claim by Ross, suggesting amendments to Rossianism, or applying Rossianism to some novel problem, and thus are primarily exercises in contemporary ethics or metaethics. Of course, the line sometimes blurs. Still, there is some range here, and this ensures that the book has something to offer those who are mostly interested in just one project or the other, even as it also ensures that they may find some parts less useful than others. I cannot discuss everything worth discussing, and where I offer critical comments in what follows, they sometimes concern precisely the parts of the book I found most engaging, such that these comments should not be taken as detracting from either those chapters or the book as a whole.
After an introduction by the editors, Robert Audi and David Philips, in chapter two Audi attempts to illuminate a variety of different Rossian views and concepts, often by asking where they fit in light of contemporary categories (e.g., determining how the Rossian concept of a prima facie duty relates to the idea of a moral reason). In chapter three, Roger Crisp examines the notion of a prima facie duty and its historical origins. He then argues that appealing to prima facie duties could have helped Aristotle account for the fact that an act which isn’t right can nonetheless have something to be said for it and can also help address the modern ‘all or nothing’ problem.
In chapter four, Garrett Cullity defends six potential amendments of Ross aimed at improving his theory. In chapter five, Brad Hooker likewise proposes a list of amendments after some brief remarks on the structure of Ross’ theory. A highlight of this chapter is the discussion of Rossian design of social institutions and the extent to which this may require altering Ross’ conception of justice. Both chapters cover so many topics that they are difficult to summarize, but they were among my favorites in the book.
Chapter six, by David Phillips, is titled “Can Sidgwick and Ross Converge in Moral Theory?” Phillips answers yes, and he argues more broadly that there are serious commonalities between them which make them closer to begin with than we might have thought. Chapter seven, by Sabine Roeser, argues that Ross’ theory can be useful in real-world decision-making and also that Ross would do better to understand moral intuitions as a form of cognitive emotion. I thought the former part could have attended more to the standard criticism that Rossianism is insufficiently action-guiding, especially in public decision-making contexts, insofar as it leaves us without much guidance on how to weigh different prima facie duties against one another in concrete situations where they conflict.
This question is among those addressed in David Kaspar’s chapter eight. The focus is on whether Rossianism can explain what makes right acts right, a question Kaspar attempts to answer by analyzing the metaphysical status of the fundamental elements of Ross’ theory. But he also applies that analysis to the question of how we might go about making decisions in hard cases. The main idea is that, for Ross, there are three fundamental determinants of the deontic status of an act: its kind (e.g., lying vs. assault), the relations of those involved (e.g., strangers vs. siblings), and the effect of the action on relevant values (e.g., an assault that causes only minor harm vs. one that causes intense, prolonged suffering). Sometimes one action clearly outweighs another along a certain dimension: e.g., all else equal, assault is worse than lying, and seriously injuring someone is worse than lightly scratching them. We then know the act is worse overall unless the alternative outweighs it on some other dimension: e.g., the lie will be much more harmful. The idea is that we can use this framework to help discern the right answer in hard cases, but I wasn’t entirely sold. There will still be hard cases involving weighing across dimensions, and perhaps also within dimensions, and I worry that these may just be the hard cases we had anyway. Or, to put it another way, the cases where application of the tripartite framework is clear may be cases where we could already intuit the answer – we already knew that grievously assaulting a family member is worse than harmlessly lying to a stranger. But I am not confident about this criticism, and I think the idea deserves further development.
In chapter nine, Philip Stratton-Lake addresses the familiar difficulty Rossianism faces in accounting for actions which are permissible but not obligatory, especially given the maximizing nature of the prima facie duty of beneficence. E.g., for Ross, it apparently cannot be, as commonsense suggests, that running into the burning building is supererogatory, while refraining is still permissible. If the prima facie duty of beneficence to run in is stronger than other relevant prima facie duties, then I am obliged to run in, despite the great risk it poses to me; meanwhile, if it is outweighed by some other duty, running in is wrong. Stratton-Lake suggests modifying the duty so that it requires ‘not that we produce as much value as we can by benefiting others, but that we value the good of others appropriately’ (p. 155), giving us more latitude. Other authors in the volume (such as Hooker) also discuss the problem of permissibility, and it seems to me that there are less radical ways for Ross to address the problem – perhaps by just adding a permission to, within limits, prioritize the lesser good of myself and those close to me over the greater good of strangers. But it could still turn out that Stratton-Lake’s amendment is desirable for other reasons.
In chapter ten, Thomas Hurka and Bowen Chan analyze and critically evaluate Ross’ theory of virtue and vice. They reject some aspects of it (like Ross’ claim that any amount of virtue outweighs any amount of pleasure) but also argue that it has some important advantages over the theories of Aristotle and Kant. This was also one of my favorite chapters. In chapter 11, Natasza Szutta and Artur Szutta argue for a greater affinity between Rossianism and virtue ethics than is sometimes realized, and also that virtue ethicists can fruitfully incorporate Ross’ prima facie duties as principles of right judgment.
In chapter 12, Gwen Bradford surveys and critically discusses Ross on aesthetic value. This chapter was another favorite for me and I think she suggests a number of plausible improvements on Ross’ view, though at times I had worries about particular arguments. E.g., she suggests that Ross’ instrumentalism, according to which beauty and beautiful objects are only instrumentally valuable due to their ability to trigger aesthetic experiences, implies that ‘the sum total of value in the world… plummets by a great deal when the visitors leave and the museum closes at night’, so that ‘insofar as we have reason to promote the good, we have reason to, say, have people stay up all night admiring the artworks, so as to maintain the level of value in the world from art’ (p. 220). But all parties should agree that aesthetic experience does have value, or else there would be no reason to open the museum at all. So all parties must have some explanation of why we don’t have people stay in the museum at night so as to preserve that value. (Maybe there is some reason to after all, but it’s outweighed, including by opportunity costs.) This seems to me independent of the question whether there is also some further value still present at night intrinsic to the art itself.
In chapter 13, L. Nandi Theunissen argues against Ross that all value is personal, in the sense of being value for someone, focusing specifically on intellectual and aesthetic value. In chapter 14, Anthony Skelton considers Ross’ hierarchical theory of value. As mentioned earlier, among other things, Ross thinks any amount of virtue outweighs any amount of pleasure. Like Hurka and Chan earlier, Skelton rejects this view, arguing Ross would have done better to adopt a more moderate, heterarchical view analogous to his theory of the right.
Ross has, especially given the resurgence in his ethics over the past few decades, to some extent become part of the air we breathe. His largest contributions, such as the theory of prima facie duties, have influenced and been refined by so many others that it can be hard now to see them as significant and groundbreaking – a bit like the way a modern reader can find Shakespeare to be full of cliches. We might wonder if this doesn’t render returning to Ross himself redundant, except out of historical interest: perhaps the best parts have all been taken up and improved by others, while the parts that haven’t been are rightfully forgotten. I think one of this book’s major achievements is in showing instead that Ross remains a fruitful dialogue partner for contemporary ethicists.
