Much time has passed since Jonathan Bennett brought the case of Huckleberry Finn to the attention of moral philosophers.Footnote ¹ For Bennett, we know, Huck Finn is supposed to have done right (in not turning Jim over to the slave catchers), somewhat paradoxically, by setting aside his convictions as to what is right, and acting on the basis of ‘feelings’. Some, in the meantime, have questioned this attempt to link Huck's feelings for Jim with the praiseworthiness of his action, even while in many cases sharing his (Bennett's) anti-intellectualism – i.e. his opposition to the general idea that an intellectual grasp of some truth as to the right thing to do plays a decisive role in moral responsibility.Footnote ² In opposition to such views, however, I will argue that what this case demonstrates is, if anything, the indispensable role of the agent's moral beliefs – always considered in the light of their epistemic status – in any suitable account of the moral praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of actions.

I. A Dilemma for Bennett

We begin with the briefest of stage setting. Huck and Jim are nearing their planned turn onto the Ohio River, which for Jim can only mean freedom. He is both overjoyed and anxious; but Huck is conscience stricken. To be party to Jim's freedom, he sees as a wrong done to his owner. Jim, perhaps sensing this, makes an effort to further ingratiate himself, reminding Huck that he's the best friend ‘ole Jim's’ ever had. Hearing all of this, as Huck puts it, ‘takes all the tuck’ out of him. When the slave catchers arrive, he lies to them, saving Jim, even at the expense of his own conscience. After the episode is over, Huck says that I ‘knowed very well I had done wrong’ but despairs of even trying to set things right.

Next, we return to Bennett's contention that Huck's refusal, or inability, to turn Jim over to the men is to be celebrated as a triumph of feeling (of ‘sympathy’) over ‘bad morality’ and its inevitable support: conscience. Such ‘fellow feeling’ Bennett contrasts with moral judgment. He writes: ‘My sympathy for one in distress may lead me to help him, or even to think that I ought to help him; but in itself it is not a judgment about what I ought to do but just a feeling for him in his plight.’Footnote ³

Let us fasten on Bennett's fundamental contention: it is good that when conscience would serve a bad morality, it is blocked by such feelings as sympathy. One immediate response to this would be that conscientious action is praiseworthy when, but only when, it is based on beliefs that have been formed in an ‘epistemically responsible’ manner. (We leave this term, for the present, without further characterization.) To our opening, then, Bennett would evidently have a choice of these two responses:

(A) He may decline this suggestion entirely, and hold that even if relevant beliefs are arrived at in an epistemically responsible way, they may yet be morally wrong—in which case, he could insist, it is praiseworthy to act on such feelings as would induce one to do what is morally right.

(B) He may accept this suggestion, but add that an epistemically responsible decision must take feelings into account (in an epistemically responsible way).

Now each position, it is important to recognize from the start, has at least one apparently serious, built-in difficulty:

The (B) option may seem unexceptionable, as far as it goes. After all, it urges no more than epistemic responsibility in one's moral thinking. The problem is that it is very unclear that it would underwrite Huck's decision. For the requirement that one take feelings into account must recognize that these will be weighed mainly according to one's other relevant beliefs, including moral beliefs. In Huck's case, these remain part of the morality of his time and place, and so are likely to support turning Jim in.

The (A) option is arguably even more problematic. Suppose on Monday, I am about to do the wrong thing (but which I responsibly believe to be the right), but am led by feelings to do the right thing instead; and that on Tuesday, I am about to do the right thing (which I responsibly believe to be right), but am again led by feelings – this time to do the wrong thing. In both cases, I regard myself as having acted wrongly. Now, if I were to be congratulated for going with ‘feelings’ in the first case, and condemned for going with feelings in the second, I would rightly regard all of this as extremely arbitrary. It is as though I am being praised for betting a ‘hunch’ that came out right in the one case; and condemned for betting a hunch which came out wrong. Unless there is something I should have seen concerning the difference between these cases, which would contradict the supposition of that I am epistemically responsible, it remains arbitrary to praise me in the one case and condemn me in the other – whether these are moral choices or mere bets.

Now, at least some of what Bennett says, toward the end of his paper, will suggest that ultimately he supports only the less controversial (B) position: that sympathy must only be taken be taken (responsibly) into consideration. So, for instance, he writes that just as one recognizes that some of one's beliefs are liable to be false, without being able to say this of any given one, one needs to maintain such an attitude towards the various items in one's morality, concluding that ‘I must try to keep my morality open to revision, exposing them to whatever valid pressures there are – including pressures from my sympathies.’Footnote ⁴

This, quite clearly, is to endorse the more intellectualist stance in which sympathies are given fairly narrow berth: note particularly Bennett's reference to ‘valid pressures’ (emphasis added) – which suggests that he has in mind a procedure quite different from Huck's. Again, had Huck (unlikely as this might have been) employed this procedure, he probably would have seen his way clear to turning Jim over to the slave catchers. A feeling comprehended is, after all, a feeling in large measure discounted.

II. Epistemic Responsibility vs. Praiseworthiness

Bennett, then, is faced with a dilemma, endorse a seemingly unreasonable procedure (A) or no longer find Huck's decision praiseworthy. But certainly we, for our part, can take no great comfort in Bennett's plight. For we would seem faced with the same difficulty: what will be our ‘way out?’

What I will ultimately suggest begins by calling attention to a distinction between the notion, which we have lately been employing, of an epistemically responsible belief, and that of an epistemically praiseworthy one. Just as a morally cautious action may qualify as morally responsibleFootnote ⁵ without deserving anything more than faint praise, the same can be true with respect to belief and the risk of error. Now in part this may be judged merely a difference in degree: the exhibition of such good qualities as make a decision ‘merely responsible’ would sometimes make it praiseworthy had they been exhibited to a significantly greater extent. Still, this difference is also in part one of kind: of what kind of epistemically desirable quality one exhibits. As we noted, the morally cautious approach is more responsible than praiseworthy. On the epistemic side, this is suggestive of William James's emphasis on the difference between the intellectual obligation to ‘pursue truth’ and that to ‘avoid error.’Footnote ⁶ For what is typically lacking in one who is ‘responsible but not particularly praiseworthy’ in the intellectual domain is boldness more than caution, intellectual courage more than deference to the views of others, openness to what is new and unfamiliar more than allegiance to the well-tried —and so forth. The idea, then, is that caution and related qualities may contribute greatly to epistemic responsibility, but that sometimes, at least, a greater openness to new truth, a greater courage (and perhaps other relevant traits) would result, if not in a more responsible, certainly in a more praiseworthy belief.

Let us apply this distinction to Huck's case. First, let us allow that Huck's belief (that he should turn Jim in) could qualify as epistemically responsible. An epistemically safe course, in this case, would rely on currently accepted opinions and opinion-leaders of one's community, especially in the case of one who, like Huck, is young and uneducated. Such a course, however, is not necessarily (very) praiseworthy, especially not if greater open-mindedness, intellectual courage, and such like qualities would have led to an opposite course. Of course, Huck does not take that course. Even so, we can say on his behalf that he does possess a certain measure of these qualities, and that perhaps their operation would have resulted in an epistemically praiseworthy belief (that he should help Jim) except for limitations of education and intellectual (‘critical thinking’) ability for which Huck is presumably not blameworthy. Huck does, after all, act as though he had this praiseworthy belief.

Is that a sufficient basis, though, for finding Huck's action – not just what he might have done (with suitably praiseworthy beliefs), but what he actually did do (without them) – morally praiseworthy? Consider, first, a case in which someone does the right thing, but for what are clearly the wrong motives. Here this agent might have had, but for factors for which she is not to blame, the right motives – but it is notable that we do not find her praiseworthy on that basis. In general, we do not find one praiseworthy for motives she might have had – or, for that matter, for actions she did not accomplish – even when what prevented this was not her fault. If someone has slipped Alexander a drug preventing the normal operation of his vaunted courage in battle, he may not be blameworthy for exhibiting cowardice, but he can hardly be termed praiseworthy. In short, there is a clear difference between being praiseworthy and being ‘not blameworthy for not being praiseworthy’ – and Huck, arguably, would merit only the latter, not the former and more honorific, label.

Still, we will need to consider, before reaching any final verdict concerning Huck, this kind of fairly resourceful attempt to defend his praiseworthiness:

The first, let us concede, is praiseworthy for his action, but is the second any less praiseworthy for his? The second's motives, like Huck's, we suppose to be good; and, for some, as we shall see, that is enough for praiseworthiness, even if he does not recognize them to be so. In any event, a distinction can be drawn here between: (a) motives which would have been good, except for factors for which one is not to blame; and (b) motives which are good, and which would have been regarded as such, but for factors beyond one's control. Certainly, the distance from genuine praiseworthiness marked by (a) is greater than that of (b); and Huck's case falls at worst under (b), not (a). We shall return to this point.

III. Arpaly on Moral Praiseworthiness and Huck Finn

In her essay, “Moral Worth” and in her book, Unprincipled Virtue (on which I will draw hereFootnote ⁷) Nomy Arpaly exploits the Huck Finn case to argue for a notion of moral praiseworthiness based on what she calls ‘responsiveness to reasons’. On this conception, as she puts it, ‘for an agent to be praiseworthy for doing the right thing is for her to have done the right thing for the relevant moral reasons – that is, the reasons for which she acts are identical to the reasons for which it is right.’Footnote ⁸ How praiseworthy one is will depend, however, not just on one's reasons (and their moral value), but on the depth of one's moral concerns, measured in terms of such factors as the motivational strength of this concern and one's emotional reaction to its satisfaction or frustration.Footnote ⁹

Still, let us observe that nothing in this notion of ‘depth of concern’ alters what is most distinctive in Arpaly's position: that moral praiseworthiness does not require that the agent believe that what she is doing is the right thing.Footnote ¹⁰ Thus, for Arpaly, the agent need not regard the reasons for which she acts as making, or even as tending to make, her action right. In the present case, Huck has come to recognize Jim as a fellow human being, as the equal of himself, and has acted on this recognition, according to Arpaly, but without bringing any such recognition to full consciousness – let alone regarding it as making his action right.Footnote ¹¹

For Arpaly, then, it will be the actual, as opposed to the believed, moral value of one's reasons that confers (or does not confer) praiseworthiness on one's actions. I find this claim troublesome, however. First, recall the (A) view, and its difficulties. The mere fact that one feeling led to a good and another to a bad act did not render an agent praiseworthy in the one case and blameworthy in the other – not independently of what the agent was in a position to see concerning this matter. Of course, on Arpaly's view, one would only be praiseworthy for acting on a feeling if this formed the basis of why the act were right. So let us make appropriate substitutions. Suppose that on Monday, I am about to do the wrong thing (but which I responsibly believe to be the right), but am led by reason R to do the right thing instead; and that on Tuesday, I am about to do the right thing (which I responsibly believe to be right), but am again led by reason R – this time to do the wrong thing. In both cases, I regard myself as having acted rightly. In both cases I have responded to the same reason. It turns out, of course, that R is the basis of a right action in the one case, and not in the other – but why should this reflect credit or blame on me?

Consider, then, a case in point. I am Huck Finn and on Monday I help Jim out, responding to the praiseworthy reason Arpaly cites (the recognition of Jim's co-humanity with my own). On Tuesday, however, I give similar aid to an escaped convict, again responding to reasons of co-humanity. In both cases, I have an epistemically responsible belief that my action is wrong; again, in both the same reason is operative. In the first case, we suppose, this reason justifies my action; in the second, that it does not. But, of course, this difference is lost on me. Am I to be praised for doing the right thing in the first case? Surely, only if I am to be blamed for doing the wrong thing in the second.

Now it may be said: ‘Huck should know better than to help an escaped convict, but the case of an escaped slave is more complicated.’ This is, no doubt, true. It invokes, however, an epistemic perspective that I would defend; but which Arpaly and Bennett, for their part, reject (or leave us with no obvious way to accommodate). To act on an epistemically irresponsible belief (that what one is about to do is right) is, at the very least, prima facie wrong. In fact, even if we alter the present case, so that it may qualify as ‘right’ to help the escaped convict (say, because he is actually innocent and will be murdered by the sheriff upon being restored to captivity), as long as none of this is known to Huck, he can hardly claim credit for saving an innocent man's life. If, so far as Huck is in a position to see, this is an ordinary case of ‘escaping from the law,’ he is epistemically irresponsible to think that it is right to help the man to escape, and morally blameworthy (irresponsible) to do this.

Let us try to understand this last discussion of reasons and moral responsibility in a somewhat more expansive way. An agent, first of all, is not a mere conduit wherein ‘reasons’ issue in good or bad actions. Reasons may to a greater or lesser degree be present; they may to a greater or lesser degree work their influence; they may to a greater or lesser degree have moral value. But the distinctive way in which responsibility arises is that practical reason (including, most relevantly, one's capacity for evaluating the strength of these reasons) comes into play. Seen in this regard, Arpaly's notion of being responsive to a moral reason must be judged as, at best, ambiguous. If being ‘responsive’ simply means being affected by, I see nothing here distinctive of human responsibility; I see only the human being as a kind of playground in which motives work their will. If, however, responsiveness involves some element of value recognition or estimation, then it will not achieve the kind of belief-independence that Arpaly seeks. In particular, it will not secure Huck's praiseworthiness.

One last point in this connection: talk of ‘recognition’ of the value of a reason captures only one side of responsibility in this connection: its positive, praiseworthy aspect. On the other side, there is one's possible culpable failure to properly estimate a reason. Thus, in the case of a bad reason, one's culpability may lie in one's thinking of it as good; or it could lie simply in one's failure to recognize it as bad, thus allowing it to influence one's act without suitable rational intervention.Footnote ¹² In either case, one's capacities regarding practical reason have their role to play – even if this is only by way of creating the possibility of a blameworthy failure.

IV. Character, Reason, and Responsibility

We have been led to question two closely related approaches to the Huck Finn case, and to moral responsibility generally. On these, the inherent moral value of a given factor or its capacity to lead to some morally good result (action) renders the agent praiseworthy for acting on this factor. Here we take note of the existence of bigger fish to fry, but of much the same type. If we cannot actually fry, or even catch, many of them, their existence is still important to remark upon. I refer to the very general idea of a ‘character view’ of moral responsibility: the idea that moral responsibility is tied to the moral virtues and vices expressed in a given action; thus, that

Despite the importance (historical and analytical) of this conception, unless modified (or clarified in some suitable way), it is subject to the same difficulty as the approaches to the Huck Finn case already considered. Thus, consider the following rather straightforward suggestion. Huck's act is praiseworthy insofar as the traits it exemplifies – not only ‘sympathy’ but kindness and openness to the humanity of another – are morally good ones. Of course, in some measure Huck does regard these (presumably) as good. Still, these points should be noted:

First, insofar as they influence his act of helping Jim, they do so quite independently of his approval of them – or even any view he has of their relevance to the present case. They work on him (that may certainly be allowed), but he does not choose to act on them. He does not exploit them; if anything, they exploit him. So, again, the notion that he deserves credit for acting on them; and, for that matter, the notion that he acts on them at all – these remain highly suspect.

Second, Huck's actual attitude toward these traits might be fairly characterized in these terms: he regards them as in the present case less significant than other moral responsibilities he has (most notably, to Jim's owner). This, then, but adds to the previous point: not only do these good traits work independently of his evaluation of them, they work contrary to what he most values. Why, then, the question remains, should Huck gain credit for their influence on what he does?

Here a historical point is in order, concerning Aristotle. Although we have credited him as the father of the character view, we must also recognize the importance Aristotle places on the factors of moral choice and practical reason. Insofar as character, for Aristotle, is displayed in choice; insofar as choice is distinctively a matter of the kind of ‘deliberation’ of which rational beings are distinctively capable, the actual shape of an Aristotelian character view need not be subject to the above difficulties.Footnote ¹⁴ By the same token, insofar as Huck's exhibited traits are not connected to any relevant choice or deliberation, insofar as they are not connected to his capacities of practical reason at all, a distinctively Aristotelian character approach lends no support to his praiseworthiness for exhibiting them in the present case.

On such an Aristotelian approach, then, credit for good character cannot by-pass factors pertaining specifically to one's beliefs concerning what is good. Even if choice and deliberation, for Aristotle, pertain to means rather than ends, this is still relative to a perception – quite lacking in the Huck Finn case – of some valued end, means of whose attainment seeks. Huck does not deliberate as to best way of helping Jim because that is not an end he believes valuable, or sufficiently valuable, to be worthy deliberating about. Huck may have all sort of good character traits, some of which are exemplified in his act of helping Jim. The problem is that these are not exemplified in the right sort of way for him to derive genuine credit for this – certainly not on this kind of broadly Aristotelian approach to character, reason, and morality.Footnote ¹⁵

V. Responsibility vs. Moral Responsibility

Here, before congratulating ourselves too quickly on the defeat of any kind of ‘anti-Aristotelian’ view of the Huck Finn case – or of moral responsibility generally – we must consider this possible response:

The strategy behind this objection, then, is to partition off morality and moral reasons from some broader recognition of the value and the strength of one's reasons and motives. One way to counter this strategy (and to show in the process how the issue of ‘the moral’ functions as a red herring here) is to focus on the agent's belief concerning the strength of his reasons. Huck, it seems apparent, does not think that reasons pertaining to Jim's humanity are the strongest – irrespective of whether he would wish to classify these as ‘moral’ (and of course the very idea of making such philosophical classifications is foreign to Huck). Huck surely thinks that reasons pertaining to the rights and well-being of Jim's owner are paramount.

Now, to be sure, we may want to allow that Huck could have thought of the reasons pertaining to Jim's humanity as stronger, without thinking of them necessarily as ‘morally stronger.’ Let us briefly pursue that possibility. In that case, we will distinguish praiseworthiness from some narrower notion of moral praiseworthiness, and may well wish to grant Huck the former while denying him the latter. The important matters here, however, remain unchanged. First, the previous critique of belief-independent accounts of the importance of reasons (and feelings) for moral responsibility remains in force. This latest account of responsibility may be independent specifically of moral beliefs, but not of value judgments in a broader sense. On this score, it succeeds mainly in splitting responsibility (and its connectedness to belief) into two categories: there is moral responsibility (narrowly construed) and its association with moral beliefs, and there is moral responsibility (more broadly construed) with its association with value judgments belief (more broadly construed).

VI. Conclusion: ‘Hard Cases Make for Bad Law’

We are in a position, finally, to return to a distinction suggested in part II: between factors excusably preventing one from having a given praiseworthy motive (even if one did the right thing anyway), and factors excusably preventing one from appreciating the value of this motive (even if one acts on it anyway). Here, first of all, we need not, and have found in our most recent discussions nothing that should lead us to, reject this distinction as entirely irrelevant to questions of moral praiseworthiness. Still, insofar as moral praiseworthiness crucially depends not just on such motives, reasons, or traits as one in some sense ‘acts upon’ – but on the distinctive role of practical reason in appreciating these and choosing to act upon them, we must reach this conclusion. Even as there remains a difference between (a) being praiseworthy for acting on a certain good trait which one recognizes to be good; and (b) not being blameworthy for not acting on that trait (because it was not one's fault that one failed to possess it at the time in question) – there must also be a difference, albeit a somewhat lesser one, between (a) and (c) acting on a certain good trait which one excusably fails to recognize as good.

Huck, then, does show good character and he does come reasonably close to gaining credit for this display. Certainly, Huck is not to blame for those factors that hold him back from full praiseworthiness; but this does not mean that he is praiseworthy – let alone in some narrower way ‘morally praiseworthy’ – for not turning Jim in.

There is a familiar saying that ‘hard cases make for bad law’ and Huck Finn's is admittedly a hard case, for moral philosophy if not for law. We have amply noted some of the difficulties attendant on treating it as a paradigm of moral praiseworthiness or even as an entering wedge for a view by-passing the agent's moral beliefs. We have tried to treat it, much to the contrary, as an interesting case of near praiseworthiness – interesting especially because Huck arguably expresses in his act qualities of openness that could easily have led to a praiseworthy belief (on which he could have acted in a praiseworthy way). Moral praiseworthiness, however, as we have also noted, needs to be based on actual achievements, not blameless shortfalls.