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Moral Delusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Rodger Beehler
Rodger Beehler
Affiliation:
University of Victoria
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Extract

My question is whether a prevalent conception of morality can admit the existence of moral delusion. The conception of morality I refer to is that of a set of rules, or principles, ‘accepted’ or ‘assented’ to by persons, which stipulate that certain kinds of human act or behaviour are permitted, or required, while other kinds are to be avoided. This conception of morality can be found virtually everywhere, outside as much as within philosophy, in anthropology, sociology, political studies, history, literary criticism, psychology, and law. But it is to a particular philosophical instance that I shall attend here. The instance in question is an essay by Jonathan Bennett which appeared in this journal seven years ago under the title ‘The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn’. My reason for addressing myself to Bennett's paper will become clear as I proceed.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 56 , Issue 217 , July 1981 , pp. 313 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1981

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References

1 Bennett, Jonathan, ‘The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn’, Philosophy 49, No. 88 (04 1974), 123–134CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ibid., 123.

3 Ibid., 124.

4 Ibid., 124.

5 Ibid., 128.

6 Ibid., 128. The words are Himmler's, quoted by Bennett from a speech reported in Shirer, William L., The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 937–938Google Scholar. A fuller version of the speech in question can be found in Manvell, Roger and Fraenkel, Heinrich, Himmler (London and New York: Putnam, 1965), 135–137Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., 128.

8 Ibid., 129.

9 Ibid., 128–129.

10 Ibid., 127.

11 Ibid., 128.

12 Manvell, Roger and Fraenkel, Heinrich, Himmler (London and New York: Putnam, 1965), 137Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., 137.

14 Kersten, Felix, The Kersten Memoirs, transl. Fitzgibbon, C. and Oliver, J. (London: Hutchinson, 1956), 193Google Scholar. All italics in quotations from Kersten are mine.

15 That Himmler claimed to have protested against the order to exterminate the Jews is reported as well by Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: The Viking Press, 1964), 84Google Scholar.

16 Kersten, op. cit. Himmler repeatedly responds to Kersten's entreaties on behalf of the Jews that ‘the Führer would have him hanged’. (See for example pages 163 and 204 of Kersten's Memoirs.)

17 Ibid., 292.

18 Bennett, op. cit., 129.

19 Kersten, op. cit., 295. The remaining quotations in this section are from pages 294, 295, 297, 305–306, 307–308.

20 Bennett, op. cit., 128.

21 Ibid., 128.

22 Ibid., 133.

23 Quoted by Bennett, 125.

24 Ibid., 126.

25 Ibid., 126.

26 Ibid., 126.

27 Ibid., 127. (My emphasis.)

28 Ibid., 131.

29 Ibid., 131.

30 Ibid., 131.

31 Twain, Mark, Huckleberry Finn, Coveney, Peter (ed.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966), 60–61Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., 62. Even before this, on the third page of the novel, Huck makes some sharply independent scrutiny of Miss Watson's talk about heaven and hell: ‘… she was going to live so as to go for the good place. Well, I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it.’ But perhaps Bennett would object that this last is not ‘abstract’ enough.

33 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapter 27.

34 Huckleberry Finn, 143.

35 Ibid., 30,31. (My emphasis.)

36 Op. cit., 132.

37 For the relation of moral concern to this issue see Beehler, Rodger, Moral Life (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978)Google Scholar, Chapter I.

38 Huckleberry Finn, 283. This passage is also quoted by Peter Coveney in his introduction to the Penguin edition of the novel, and for much the same reason. In my view, Mr Coveney's introduction gets what he terms the ‘moral drama’ of the novel pretty well right, except that where Bennett characterizes Huck as torn between sympathy and (his) morality, Covency characterizes him as torn between two moralities: ‘the spontaneous morality of the heart’ and ‘a repressive morality’ (p. 21).

39 Hugh Trevor-Roper relates in his introduction to Kersten's Memoirs (p. 12) that Himmler is reported to have remarked: ‘Kersten massages a life out of me with every rub’—a remark which anyone who seeks to characterize Himmler as a moral zealot ought to ponder.

40 Kersten, Memoirs, 277. My emphasis.