Shithead Chive Shitter

A PHILOSOPHICAL/ETHICAL MATTER

“would it be ok to shit in someone’s garden if the gardener was an unsociable curmudgeon? we need mm to speak to that. that’s a philosophical/ethical matter.” Good dog Molly (05/31, 8:07AM)

Ethics, being the third major branch of philosophy after ontology and epistemology, asks the question, “What ought I to do?” But how is the question to be engaged? On what grounds will an ethical reply be forthcoming? If total relativism is to be avoided – in the present case the shitter maintains that what she ought to do is purely a matter of private concern for her alone – some acceptable grounds must be advanced which will support her ethical reply. What are those grounds?

As it happens I am presently reading Stanley Cavell’s “The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy” (1979). What would Cavell have to say about the case of the chive shitter? How would he approach the question, “What ought I to do?”

Cavell wants to approach the question in “the time-honored method of moral philosophers, comparing the assessment of moral claims with the assessment of claims to knowledge”. The way we acquire and assess knowledge, in other words, is normative for rationality itself and, by extension, if the way we acquire and assess the rules of morality are similar, then it is equally a rational exercise, one for which cogent reasons might be advanced.

But Cavell is not happy with this. “But I have too often felt that the question of what makes the acquisition and assessment of knowledge a rational process,” he writes, “has itself been assumed as obvious.” In other words,
there are no further rational grounds upon which the concept of rationality itself might be erected. Such grounds are simply assumed rather than demonstrated. In still other words, there can be no epistemological grounds that can be deployed to answer the moral question, “What ought I to do?” In still other words, the answers to moral questions are “sui generis” (“of its own kind”), exclusively proper to morality itself. So where do we go from here?

Two paths appear to beckon. The “deontological” path demands that we follow the rules laid down in general, conventional morality. “Do unto others,” and that sort of thing. But there is considerable slippage between the generality of such rules and their application in specific cases such as the woman shitting in the curmudgeon’s chives. Indeed, she might well say that since he an unsociable curmudgeon she can then shit in his chives with moral impunity, with a clear conscience. In other words, there is no clear application of any deontological rule that covers her shitting in his garden. She might not even object if the gardener shit in hers,

On the other hand the path of moral intuitionism leads to the claim that the answer to the question “What ought I to do?” can be answered only as the consequence of one’s a direct insight into both morality itself and its application in specific cases such as that of the chive shitter. Unlike the moral deontologist, the moral intutionist need give no reasons understood simply as conventional rule-following. The intuitionist “feels” that she knows what she ought to do and that feeling trumps any conventionalist objections. The fact that she felt that the gardener was an unsociable curmudgeon, in her view, provided sufficient grounds for shitting in his chives.

So the answer to the question, “What ought I to do?” in the case of the chive shitter is, quite simply, do whatever you want. Go ahead, have a good one.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!