Notes
« L’utilité (est) le seul principe qui se soutienne en argumentant » (La Table des ressorts de l’action (Paris, Cahiers de l’Unebévue, 2008), p. 79).
Je traduis mot à mot le projet défini par les Principia Ethica : « I have endeavoured to write ‘Prolegomena to any future Ethics that can possibly pretend to be scientific’ » (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 35. [Nous nous contenterons désormais de citer le texte par son titre Principia Ethica, suivi du n° de la page].
Nous pensons évidemment à Stuart Mill qui n’oppose pas son utilitarisme à la morale kantienne.
Que l’on songe à Marvin Hare.
Texte bien connu par Moore qui le cite au même titre que le Livre I du Traité. Il cite, à notre connaissance beaucoup moins souvent l’Enquête sur les principes de la morale et le Livre III du Traité de la nature humaine.
Traité de la nature humaine, L. III, Part. I, sect. II, in : La morale (Paris, GF-Flammarion, 1993), p. 67.
On sait, par exemple, que Bentham aurait bien voulu réécrire son œuvre, contre l’avis de Dumont, à partir du principe de bonheur et non plus à partir du principe d’utilité. Je ne sais si Moore pense réellement à ce point d’histoire lorsqu’il écrit : « What I am maintaining is that the reasons which he actually gives for his ethical propositions are fallacious ones so far as they consist in a definition of right. What I suggest is that he did not perceive them to be fallacious, that, if he had done so, he would have been led to seek for other reasons in support of his Utilitarianism ; and that, had he sought for other reasons, he might have found none which he thought to be sufficient. In that case he would have changed the whole system –a most important consequence. It is undoubtedly also possible that he would have thought other reasons to be sufficient, and in that case his ethical system, in its main results, would still have stood. But, even in this latter case, his use of the fallacy would be a serious objection to him as an ethical philosopher » (Principia Ethica, p. 71). Mais, qu’il y ait ou non pensé, son argument reste aussi valable contre l’argumentation fallacieuse de l’utilitarisme benthamien.
Le désiré est alors retourné en désirable (Principia Ethica, p. 160). L’argument est tourné contre Stuart Mill de la façon suivante : « Mill’s first argument is that because good means desired, therefore the desired is good, but having thus arrived at in ethical conclusion, by denying that any ethical conclusion is possible, he still needs another argument to make his conclusion a basis for Hedonism. He has to prove that we always do desire pleasure or freedom from pain, and that we never desire anything else whatever ».
Moore ne remet pas en question « that pleasure was a good criterion of right action –that the same conduct which produced most pleasure would also produce most good on the whole. But this would be by no means entitle us to the conclusion that the greatest pleasure constituted what was best on the whole: it would still leave open the alternative that the greatest quantity of pleasure was a matter of fact, under actual conditions, generally accompanied by the greatest quantity of other goods, and that is therefore was not the sole good » (Principia Ethica, p. 163). On trouve un discours très comparable dans l’Ethics (Londres, Williams & Norgate), p. 49. [Nous nous contenterons désormais de citer ce dernier livre par son titre Ethics, suivi du n° de la page].
Ethics, pp. 48-49 ; 51-52.
Principia Ethica, pp. 70-71.
Si je dispose d’une urne qui contient 10.000 boules rouges et blanches, je puis me demander combien il faut faire de tirages pour avoir une bonne idée du rapport de boules rouges et de boules blanches qui existe dans l’urne. C’est le problème de Bernoulli. Je ne pose pas le même problème si, ne disposant que de quelques tirages, je me demande si le rapport que j’ai obtenu peut être affirmé avec raison de 10.000 boules. Il est clair que je puis appliquer le rapport obtenu qu’en risquant de me tromper. La règle de Bayes évalue ce risque.
« Trifling scruples and trifling verbal difficulties may be raised in opposition to the principle of utility, but no real and distinct objection can be opposed to it. Indeed, how can it be combated, if not by reasons drawn from the principle itself? To say that it is dangerous, is to say that to consult utility is contrary to utility. The difficulty in this question arises from the perversity of language ». (The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Bowring, I, (Edimbourg, Tait, 1843), pp. 11-12).
Ce caractère d’organicité des valeurs est sans doute l’un de ceux sur lequel Moore a le plus insisté ; plus que Hume en tout cas, qui s’était contenté de qualifier leurs constituants d’intermingled. Voir le principe des unités organiques dans Principia Ethica, p. 36. Robert Peter Sylvester en a légitimement souligné l’importance dans The moral philosophy of G. E. Moore (Philadelphie, Temple University Press, 1990), pp. 63-64.
Principia Ethica, p. 141 : « If, as I hope is now plain, the pleasure would be comparatively valueless without the consciousness, then we are bound to say that pleasure is not the only end, that some consciousness at least must be included with it as a veritable part of the end ».
Principia Ethica, p. 142 : « Either pleasure by itself would be all that is desirable, or a consciousness of it would be more desirable still. Both these propositions cannot be true; and I think it is plain that the latter is true ; whence it follows that pleasure is not the sole good. » Les utilitaristes ne sauraient dire que « seul le plaisir est bon comme fin » ; quand ils le disent, ils ont absolument tort, car ils ne peuvent donner raison de ce qu’ils disent. Voir Principia Ethica, p. 141.
Principia Ethica, p. 72 : « Our first conclusion as to the subject-matter of Ethics is that there is a simple, indefinable, unanalysable object of thought by reference to which it must be defined. By what name we call this unique object is a matter of indifference, so long as we clearly recognise what it is and that it does differ from other objects ».
Moore en retient un instant l’idée pour le bien, même si c’est pour la repousser : « What, then, is good ? How is good to be defined? Now, it may be thought that this is a verbal question. A definition does indeed often mean the expressing of one word’s meaning in other word. But this is not the sort of definition I am asking for » (Principia Ethica, p. 58). Toutefois, ne pouvant trouver de telle définition, ne sera-t-il pas contraint de recourir, lui aussi, à quelque paraphrase ? La paraphrase ne fait que donner un équivalent du mot ; elle place le mot dans une autre phrase.
Nous construisons le mot sur le paradigme husserlien de psychologisme, de sociologisme ou d’historicisme.
La critique la plus sévère du mot se trouve chez The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Bowring, III, (Edimbourg, Tait, 1843), pp. 273-274 : « Pureté fait partie de ces mots auxquels un sens flatteur <,eulogistic> s’est attaché ; de ces mots sous le couvert desquels un jugement sans fondement circule ordinairement et qui sont, par là, autant d’instruments entre les mains de la fallace. L’objectif et, malheureusement, jusqu’à un certain point, l’effet de l’usage du mot pureté est d’exprimer et, pour ainsi dire, par contagion, de produire et de propager un sentiment d’approbation envers l’état de chose ou la pratique qu’elle sert à désigner – un sentiment de désapprobation envers l’état de chose ou la pratique opposés ».
Moore dénonce l’argument faussement apparent suivant lequel, « if we see a whole state to be valuable, and also see that one element of that state has no value by itself, then the other element, by itself, must have all the value which belongs to the whole state. The fact is, on the contrary, that, since the whole may be organic, the other element need have no value whatever, and that even if it have some, the value of the whole may be very much greater » (Principia Ethica, pp. 144-145). Le plaisir donne lieu à pareille illusion : « Pleasure does not seem to be a necessary constituent of most valuable wholes ; and, since the other constituents, into which we may analyse them, may easily seem not to have any value, it is natural to suppose that all the value belongs to pleasure » (p. 145).
Ethics, p. 26.
Cette méfiance est tangible dans les Principia : « Since the practical guidance afforded by pleasure is small in proportion as the calculation attempts to be accurate, we can well afford to await further investigation, before adopting a guide, whose utility is very doubtful and whose trustworthiness we have grave reason to suspect » (p. 159).
Ethics, pp. 62-63 : « I explained that I should say of one whole, A, that it contained more pleasure than another, B, whenever A and B were related to one another in either of the five following ways : namely (1) when A and B both contain an excess of pleasure over pain, but A contains a greater excess than B ; (2) when A contains an excess of pleasure over pain, while B contains no excess either of pleasure over pain or of pain over pleasure ; (3) when A contains an excess of pleasure over pain, while B contains an excess of pain over pleasure ; (4) when A contains no excess either of pleasure over pain or of pain over pleasure, while B does contain an excess of pain over pleasure ; and (5) when both A and B contain an excess of pain over pleasure, but A contains a smaller excess than B ».
Ethics, p. 27 : « It must be remembered that in every case we shall be speaking of the total quantities of pleasure and pain caused by the actions, in the strictest possible sense ; taking into account, that is to say, absolutely all their effects, however remote and indirect ».
Ethics, p. 28.
Moore parle plutôt, il est vrai, d’univers.
Aristote le cite dans l’Ethique à Nicomaque, en 1106 b 35 : « L’honnêteté n’a qu’une seule forme, mais le vice en a de nombreuses ».
Ethics, p. 32 : « It is obviously possible, theoretically at least, that, among the alternatives open to an agent at a given moment, there may be two or more which would produce precisely equal amounts of pleasure, while all of them produced more than any of the other possible alternatives ; and, in such cases, our theory would say, any one of these actions would be perfectly right. It recognises, therefore, that there may be cases in which no single one of the actions open to the agent can be distinguished as the right one to do: that in many cases, on the contrary, several different actions may all be equally right ; or, in other words, that to say that a man acted rightly does not necessarily imply that, if he had done anything else instead, he would have acted wrongly ».
Ethics, p. 33 : « When we say that a man ‘ought’ to do one particular action, or that it is his ‘duty’ to do it, we do imply that it would be wrong for him to do anything else. And hence our theory holds that, in the case of ‘ought’ and ‘duty’ we may say, what we could not say in the same of ‘right’, namely, that an action ought to be done or is our duty, only where it produces more pleasure than any which we could have done instead ».
Ethics, p. 34 : « A voluntary action may be ‘right’ without being an action which we ‘ought’ to do or which it is our duty to do. It is, of course, always our duty to act rightly, in the sense that, if we don’t act rightly, in the sense that, if we don’t act rightly, we shall always be doing what we ought not. It is therefore true, in a sense, that whenever we act rightly, we are always doing our duty and doing what we ought. But what is not true is that, whenever a particular action is right, it is always our duty to do that particular action and no other. This is not true because, theoretically at least, cases may occur in which some other action would be quite equally right, and in such cases, we are obviously under no obligation whatever to do the one rather than the other: whichever we do, we shall be doing our duty and doing as we ought. And it would be rash to affirm that such cases never do practically occur ».
Principia Ethica, p. 199.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Un mouvement tournant établit, chez Hume, l’universalité ou une sorte d’objectivité à l’opposé de la subjectivité supposée du sentiment. L’écartèlement entre deux genres de sentiments devient alors évident. Il faut stabiliser l’objectivité et nous savons déjà que Hume, qui n’est pas un philosophe novateur du langage, puisqu’il estime que le travail a été fait par Locke et Berkeley, accorde néanmoins au langage la fonction de fixer cette objectivité et d’assurer l’universalisation. Puis le mouvement revient vers la subjectivité, parce qu’il faut expliquer comment on passe de l’approbation universelle à l’obligation. L’obligation est un retour à la subjectivité parce qu’il faut bien, pour que l’éthique ou la morale soit effective, qu’elle fasse règle pour l’individu. La représentation inversée qu’est l’approbation universelle, déjà objet de miroir et détachée, à cet égard, doit devenir impérative. Les trois moments sont particulièrement nets dans l’Enquête sur les principes de la morale, pp. 189-190 et ils sont repris un peu plus loin pp. 191-192.
Bentham, en tout cas, semble n’avoir lu que celui-là et il fait grand cas de ce livre quand il trace l’histoire de l’utilitarisme, que ce soit dans la version courte de l’article ou dans sa version longue.
Ethics, pp. 35-36 : « The relation between ‘right’ and what ought to be done is not on a par with that between ‘wrong’ and what ought not to be done ».
Principia Ethica, p. 156 : « Each man’s happiness is the only thing desirable : several different things are each of them the only thing desirable. This is the fundamental contradiction of Egoism ». Un peu auparavant, p. 152, il avait résumé la contradiction fondamentale de l’égoïsme : « that an immense number of different things are, each of them, the sole good ». Aussi, p. 151.
Some Problems of Philosophy, Routledge, Muirhead, Londres, New York, 2005, pp. 314-315. Dans un sens très voisin de celui de Klein, Moore parle de « groupe d’espaces ».
Moore se trouve, pour le coup, en position de montrer que l’égoïsme n’est pas universalisable. Le point est particulièrement évident dans les Principia, p. 153.
Moore réfute l’égoïsme en établissant qu’elle est prétendument une doctrine des fins alors qu’elle est seulement une doctrine des moyens (Principia Ethica, p. 153) ; comme s’il était possible de séparer les fins et les moyens. Un peu plus loin, p. 158, on le voit se demander très péniblement si « le plus grand bonheur pour le plus grand nombre » est seulement le moyen du bien recherché ou s’il est la fin, c’est-à-dire ce qui est recherché. Page 141, Mill est tancé pour avoir « confondu les moyens et la fin ». Sa façon de critiquer Bentham et de focaliser l’intérêt sur le retournement s’effectue à l’aide des catégories de la fin et des moyens. Le principe d’utilité est un moyen d’atteindre le bien ; il ne saurait, en revanche, être une fin de l’éthique (Principia Ethica, pp. 69-71).
On relèverait le même phénomène avec les notions d’intrinsèques et d’extrinsèques, dont la distinction se rattache d’ailleurs à la précédente. Voir Principia Ethica, pp. 73 et suivantes. Une action est intrinsèquement meilleure qu’une autre si l’univers qu’elle est censée constituer avec toutes ses conséquences apporte plus de plaisir que l’univers constitué par l’action B avec laquelle on la compare. Voir Ethics, p. 57.
« Utility was an unfortunately chosen word. The idea it gives is a vague one. Dumont insists on retaining the word. He is bigoted, old, and indisposed to adopt what is new, even though it should be better » (The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Bowring, X, (Edimbourg, Tait, 1843), p. 582)
Point qui, dans l’utilitarisme benthamien, n’a pas échappé à Marx.
Moore fait brillamment ressortir que le principe d’utilité, quand on s’en tient à sa fameuse formule (le plus grand bonheur pour le plus grand nombre) n’est pas une formule hédoniste : elle inclut l’existence d’un grand nombre de personnes, ce qui n’a pas grand chose à voir avec le plaisir. Principia Ethica, p. 158.
Principia ethica, p. 159 : « The most that it can be said for it [utilitarianism] is that it does not seriously mislead in its practical conclusions, on the ground that, as an empirical fact, the method of acting which brings most good on the whole does also bring most pleasure. Utilitarians do indeed generally devote most of their arguments to shewing that the course of action which will bring most good on the whole does also bring most pleasure ».
Ethics, pp. 52-53. Le problème n’est pas de savoir à quoi le plaisir est associé, mais de considérer le plus grand plaisir.
Principia Ethica, p. 239 : « All of these emotions are essential elements in great goods; they are parts of organic wholes, which have great intrinsic value. But it is important to observe that these wholes are organic, and that, hence, it does not follow that the emotion, by itself would have any value whatsoever, nor yet that, if it were directed to a different object, the whole thus formed might not be positively bad ».
Principia Ethica, p. 36 : « I would wish it observed that, when I call such propositions ‘Intuitions’, I mean merely to assert that they are incapable of proof ; I imply nothing whatever as to the manner or origin of our cognition of them ». Voir aussi, p. 35.
Encore qu’il penche vers un utilitarisme de la règle, comme on le voit dans les Principia, quand il réfute l’égoïsme, pp. 150-153.
Principia Ethica, pp. 60-61 : « I suppose it may be granted that ‘good’ is an adjective. Well, ‘the good’, ‘that which is good’ must therefore be the substantive to which the adjective ‘good’ will apply: it must be the whole of that to which the adjective will apply, and the adjective must always truly apply to it. But it is that to which the adjective will apply, it must be something different from that adjective itself ; and the whole of that something different, whatever it is, will be our definition of the good ».
Ethics, p. 57 : « If we had to choose between two actions, one of which would have as its sole or total effects, an effect or set of effects, which we may call A, while the other would have as its sole or total effects, an effect or set of effects, which we may call B, then, if A contained more pleasure than B, it always would be our duty to choose the action which cause A rather than which cause B. This, our theory asserts, would be absolutely always true, no matter what A and B might be like in other respects ».
« It is because of a pleasure, which I already have –the pleasure excited by a mere idea- that I desire the wine, which I have not. And I am ready to admit this, I say: I cannot vouch that it is the true psychological doctrine; but, at all events, it is not prima facie quite absurd. And now, what is the other doctrine, the doctrine which I am supposing held, and which is at all events essential to Mill’s argument? It is this. That, when I desire the wine, it is not the wine which I desire but the pleasure which I expect to get from it. In other words, the doctrine is that the idea of a pleasure not actual is always necessary to cause desire; whereas my doctrine was that the actual pleasure caused by the idea of something else was always necessary to cause desire. It is these two different theories which I suppose the Psychological Hedonists to confuse: the confusion is, as Mr. Bradley puts it, between a ‘pleasant thought’ and the ‘thought of a pleasure’. » (Principia Ethica, pp. 121-122). The Elements of Ethics étaient peut-être plus explicites encore : « (The Hedonists) are bound, by the term of their claim, to maintain even that non existant pleasure is good, nay that it is he sole. For can we not distinguish pleasure from existence ? (…) When they say ‘Pleasure is good and the sole good’, then we ought to mean ‘Pleasure is good and the sole good’: just as 2 x 2 is 4, we do mean that this is true, whether 2 and 4 exist or not. But I do not wish to press this claim against the Hedonists. I do not imagine that any of them would seriously maintain that non existential pleasure is the sole good. I am willing they should accept my amendments to their original resolution, the amendment that the word existent be inserted before the word pleasure, whenever it occurs. But even so, I do maintain that their resolution is absurd » (G. E. Moore, (1903), TheElements of Ethics, trad. T. Reagan, Philadelphie, Temple University Press, 1991, Lecture IV, p. 78).
Principia Ethica, p. 141 : « Utilitarians do arrive, and even those at which they ought logically to arrive, are not far from the truth. But in so far as their reason for holding these conclusions to be true is that ‘Pleasure alone is good as an end’, they are absolutely wrong; and it is with reasons that we are chiefly concerned by any scientific Ethics ».
Principia Ethica, p. 71 : « For it is the business of Ethics, I must insist, not only to obtain true results, but also to find valid reasons for them. The direct object of Ethics is knowledge and not practice; and any one who uses the naturalistic fallacy has certainly not fulfilled this first object, however correct his practical principles may be ».
Moore ne renie pas la parenté de l’éthique avec la casuistique : « So far a Ethics allows itself to give lists of virtues, or even to name constituents of the Ideal, it is indistinguishable from Casuistry » (Principia Ethica, p. 56).
Principia Ethica, p. 239 : « I have pointed out the two facts that the presence of some emotion is necessary to give any very high value to a state of aesthetic appreciation, and that, on the other hand, this same emotion, in itself, may have little or no value : it follows that these emotions give to the wholes of which they form a part a value far greater than that which they themselves possess ». Hume, pour sa part, s’étonnait, comme il le confiait à un ami, de la surévaluation de l’argument par analogie dans les questions théologiques.
Le postscriptum à la lettre du 10 mars 1751, adressée à Gilbert Elliott of Minto, est extrêmement intéressant à cet égard. Ayant demandé à son correspondant de l’aide pour trouver des arguments en faveur du théisme, Hume lui soumet la difficulté suivante touchant l’argument téléologique : « Cléanthe admet, en effet, dans la seconde partie, que toute inférence est fondée sur la similitude des œuvres de la nature avec les effets ordinaires de l’esprit. Sinon elles devraient apparaître comme un pur et simple chaos. La seule difficulté est de comprendre pourquoi les dissimilitudes qui l’accompagnent n’affaiblissent pas l’argument. Et, en effet, il semblerait bien, par l’expérience et le sentiment, qu’elles ne l’affaiblissent pas autant qu’on aurait pu spontanément s’y attendre. Une théorie qui résoudrait une telle difficulté serait tout à fait la bienvenue » [David Hume, The Letters of David Hume, Oxford, Greig, 1932, I, p. 157. (Nous traduisons)].
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