A few weeks ago, a philosophy professor was arrested and charged with offences of viewing multiple images of child pornography on his computer. Obviously I have no idea whether he is guilty or innocent. But however this story ends, I didn’t share the apparently common reaction that this was especially shocking because he was a philosopher.
The surprise seems to come from the assumption that philosophy involves the careful study of ethics and that would tend to make people more ethical. This is questionable for several reasons.
First of all, most philosophers are not moral philosophers. In fact, most deal with issues that have little to do with living a good life at all. Much as many of us romanticise the study of the “examined life”, it is a poor description of much contemporary academic philosophy. We have no reason to think that philosophers specialising in philosophy of science, metaphysics, logic, aesthetics, epistemology to name but five are any more likely to be better human beings than mathematicians, physicists or historians.
Even if we take moral philosophers as a subset, I doubt that they are on average more virtuous than anyone else. One reason I have for thinking this is that we have learned from our intellectual cousins in psychology that much of our reasoning is a form of rationalisation. Moral philosophers could very easily be not morally superior to others, simply better at giving moral justifications for their actions.
I’m reminded of a story I was told of a philosopher who said they would take over a rotating, onerous administrative role after their research leave, only to refuse to do so when the time came. When reminded of his promise he replied that he hadn’t promised he would do it, merely said that he would. It sounds like a parody of semantic hair-splitting and I can’t quite believe it’s true. But even if it isn’t, less audacious versions of the linguistic and logical contortions the story portrays are all-too familiar.
What’s more, thinking seriously about ethics can undermine moral conviction just as easily – perhaps more so – than it can bolster it. Among the most popular moral theories of recent centuries, for instance, are Nietzsche’s complete rejection of morality and an emotivism that reduces all ethical claims to nothing more than expressions of approval or disapproval.
Even when moral philosophy doesn’t lead to the rejection of morality, it very often does lead to the rejection of conventional morality. This is often a very good thing. Conventional morality has historically supported cruelty to animals, the subjugation of women and even racism. But precisely because philosophers learn not to trust received opinion and question everything, they are more likely to seriously question whether it is in fact morally wrong to view child pornography.
It isn’t difficult to construct the outlines of the kinds of arguments that a philosophically sophisticated viewer of internet child pornography would use. To take just one, assuming some kind of utilitarianism, they could argue that they are not responsible for having the desires they have and that as long as they don’t harm anyone by acting on them, nothing bad has happened. If they view images online, they could easily argue that as long as this does not lead to more children being abused than if they had not done so, then the utilitarian calculation comes up positive, because they would get some pleasure and no one would pay for it in pain. Indeed, they might think that providing this outlet is better than trying to completely suppress their urges, as it reduces the risk that they might actually harm a child themselves.
I don’t buy that argument for one minute, in part because it makes assumptions that are empirically dubious. But moral philosophers have not always been particularly bothered about the empirical validity of their premises and there is a horrific logic to the argument. Indeed, I have heard very similar arguments made against other sexual taboos, such as incest in certain circumstances. I would be very surprised indeed if there weren’t several philosophers who would endorse a version of it, though not publicly, for obvious reasons.
Given studies suggest up to 5% of the male population has paedophilic desires, we have to assume philosophy harbours as many such people as any other field. Comforting though it would be to think that the practice of philosophy kept these desires in check, we should be open to the worrying possibility that it might on some occasions have the exact opposite effect.
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