I've seen a lot of debates on this site regarding the place that religion has in our lives. Implicitly linked to this is the concept of morality, and of sainthood (not in a strictly "Catholic" sense, but in the sense of someone who behaves according to a code of behavior). To further the discussion, I am contributing a portion of a paper I wrote concerning morality and human behavior. It is very long, just to forewarn you.
On Conceptions of a Moral Saint: Wolf and Adams
In a paper published in the Journal of Philosophy in 1982, Susan Wolf writes, “I don’t know whether there are any moral saints. But if there are, I am glad that neither I nor those about whom I care are among them” (Wolf, 419). She continues, “I believe that moral perfection, in the sense of moral saintliness, does not constitute a model of personal well-being toward which it would be particularly rational or good or desirable for a human being to strive” (Wolf, 419). Her paper then proceeds to offer a serious indictment of maximal devotion to morality, the key trait that she attributes to moral saints. [1] In the same journal, in 1984, R. W. Adams responds to Wolf’s contention, agreeing that morality is not a suitable object of maximal devotion. However, he then argues that this fact does not mean that morality is not suited for devotion to a more limited extent, as part of a broader context. This is because “sainthood is an essentially religious phenomenon… [and] it is reasonable to seek its central feature in the saint’s relation to God” (Adams, 398). Adams writes that these “religious saints” are to be differentiated from Wolf’s idea of moral saints: “there are saints – people like St. Francis of Assisi and Gandhi and Mother Teresa – and they are quite different from what Wolf thinks a moral saint would be” (Adams, 392). It is here that Adams believes that Wolf loses her way: her foundational argument, that “in a life perfectly ‘dominated by a commitment to improving the welfare of others or of society as a whole’ there will not be room for other interests” (Adams, 395),[2] cannot account for the ‘religious saint,’ because maximal devotion to God is fundamentally different from maximal devotion to morality, and religious saints do not labor under the restrictions noted by Wolf. Furthermore, by asserting the ability of a religious saint to focus maximally on God rather than on morality, Adams solves the ‘meta-moral’ dilemma that Wolf poses on pages 438-439 of her manuscript.[3] Adams’s work is fundamentally important, if found to be valid, because it demonstrates the existence of moral paragons who are not so limited that they cannot also be interesting people. But in order to accept his conclusions we need to analyze his paper in order to ensure that it does the work that it is supposed to.
For the purposes of this analysis, we can break Adams’s argument down into four distinct portions that are theoretically interrelated. First, he argues that “real saints,” such as Jesus and Gandhi, are not the “unattractive” (Wolf, 426), “bland” (Wolf, 422) people that Wolf identifies. Second, he summarizes Wolf’s arguments concerning morality and establishes a definitional basis for discussion. Third, he introduces the religious nature of sainthood and how an understanding of this concept significantly reduces the force of Wolf’s claims; finally, he explains how a maximal devotion to God functions as an effective answer to Wolf’s critique of devotion to the meta-moral in lieu of maximal devotion to morality. Careful study will reveal that Adams provides an adequate response to Wolf on all four fronts, though there are areas where further explication and evaluation of his arguments have the potential to strengthen his position.
In order to begin an assessment of Adams’s paper, it is first necessary to establish that, by Adams’s definitions, Jesus and Gandhi, our chosen exemplars of sainthood, can indeed “fit the glove” of sainthood adequately, for in our exploration of their behaviors we will uncover actions that will call their status as moral paragons into doubt. Furthermore, it is important for our comprehension of Adams’s work that we can understand them to be saints because much of Adams’s work is partially based on drawing a contrast between Wolf’s conception of “moral saints” and “real saints,” by which he means “religious saints.”
If we define sainthood as maximal devotion to morality (the “moral sainthood” of Wolf), then a failure to act in such a way that every action is as moral as possible disqualifies one from sainthood. Religious saints, on the other hand, operate under no such onus. “They are not in general even trying to make their every action as good as possible” (Adams, 396). Therefore, even if we find that Adams’s chosen exemplars of sainthood have performed actions that are not maximally moral, it does not necessarily follow that they cannot be saints. When assessing religious sainthood, we need to understand that “saintliness is not perfectionism, though some saints have been perfectionistic in various ways” (Adams, 396). Furthermore, this means that an action that disqualifies a person from moral sainthood will not necessarily result in a parallel disqualification from religious sainthood. The primary qualification for a “real saint,” for Adams, is a maximal devotion to the central figure of religion: God.[4] In other words, as long as a religious saint’s actions are consistent with an aspect of Godliness (not necessarily the moral aspect), then his or her sainthood retains its integrity.
We have already seen that Adams believes that real saints, such as Gandhi or Jesus, bear little resemblance to “moral saints” as described by Wolf; in fact, a great deal can be learned by “contrast[ing] the actuality of sainthood with Wolf’s picture of the moral saint” (Adams, 392). He adequately summarizes most of Wolf’s superficial conception of moral saints when he writes:
Wolf argues that moral saints will be “unattractive” (426) because they will be lacking in individuality and in the “ability to enjoy the enjoyable in life” (424), and will be so “very, very nice” and inoffensive that they “will have to be dull-witted or humorless or bland” (422). But real saints are not like that (Adams, 392).
George Orwell’s depiction of Gandhi in Reflections on Gandhi (1968) works to dispel the myth of “very, very nice” sainthood with an account of Gandhi’s willingness to sacrifice the lives of his family by refusing them restorative chicken broth on principle. The “nice saint” image is further shattered by an account in the New International Version of the Bible wherein an enraged Jesus charges into a temple and attacks the resident moneylenders with a whip. These specific examples can serve to bolster Adams’s general assertion that real saints, such as Jesus and Gandhi, don’t fit Wolf’s characterization of saints as being bland by demonstrating both saints’ individuality and their ability to act against popular thought (ie: while they are saints, they are not “moral saints”[5]).
One might claim, however, that these examples, instead, undermine the assertion that Jesus and Gandhi are really saints at all (ie: that they should be not treated as moral paragons), but neither of these examples is inconsistent with Adams’s description of religious sainthood. While both of these scenarios would disqualify the participants from Wolfian moral sainthood,[6] a maximal devotion to God (or, in Gandhi’s case, the Spirit of Truth) does not prevent or indict these actions. For example, although charging into a temple and whipping moneylenders is not an acceptable action for a moral saint whose every action should be focused on helping others, Christian theology holds that God looks down upon the generation of monetary profit in a holy building (New International Version). Therefore, we can understand Jesus’s action to have been taken to fulfill that edict. While the attack on the moneylenders cannot be sait to be maximally moral (he could have asked them nicely), it is still consistent with maximal devotion to God.
However, Adams glosses over another key characterization that Wolf applies to moral saints that proves to be somewhat more problematic:
He will be very reluctant to make negative judgments of other people. He will be careful not to favor some people over others on the basis of properties they could not help but have (Wolf, 421).
It doesn’t seem to be the case that our chosen exemplars of sainthood, Jesus and Gandhi, fail to make negative judgments of other people, insofar as they are both comfortable with branding the actions of other people as being “wrong.” But they do try to favor all people equally, despite properties that they could not help (or even could help[7]) but have. For example, in the farewell note to his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi writes, “To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself” (Gandhi, 1929). This statement espouses the lack of favoritism to one’s friends and family that Gandhi himself often displayed throughout the course of his life. If this is true, then it would seem to imply that someone such as Gandhi or Jesus would not be a good friend or family member, for the essence of those types of relationships is grounded in a kind of love that is differentiated from that which is reserved for everyone else. Perhaps this facet of their character alone would be sufficient for some people to support Wolf’s comment that “Perhaps what I have already said is enough to make some people begin to regard the absence of moral saints in their lives as a blessing” (Wolf, 421).
To answer this criticism, Adams can reuse[8] his idea of a boundless source of energy for the “task at hand.” Perhaps, for a religious saint, a lack of favoritism for specific people is not a limiting factor; a saint who could treat everyone as a beloved family member (as opposed to Wolf’s conception of “treating a family member like everyone else”) would be a good person indeed, and someone of the type who we would prefer to occupy the world. In other words, given a scenario in which a person (presumably a saint) shows no favoritism to specific people, it seems as though Wolf would assume a limited capacity of a specific unit of relation (such as “care”), and such a limited capacity, when spread out across a larger population, provides less to each person. Adams, arguing from his “boundless source” perspective, describes saints who are free to provide everyone with maximal care regardless of the number of people being favored.
Wolf would be free to respond that several “real saints,” despite their supposed capacity for boundless care, have not been devoted family members (recall the example of Gandhi). However, there is no reason to assume that Gandhi treated his family as he did by a matter of necessity. In other words, while saints may have a boundless capacity for care, it is not the case that they would have to exercise it in order for it to exist. This suggests that some saints have had the possibility for improvement, but have not, for one reason or another, chosen to exercise it: though he didn’t, Gandhi could have had a “special” love for his wife and his children. Recall that, according to Adams, religious saints do not have perfection as a necessary quality for their existence as moral paragons. Therefore, a saint can be “very good” while still having room for improvement. Ideally, if we assume that the application of “care” or “love” can be described both in terms of magnitude and in terms of category, then a saint could apply equal amounts of love to all people, with certain people receiving a different category of love (such as familial love), while not violating the primary principle of fairness with regard to distribution of caring. The fact that Gandhi does not adopt this ideal construct does not imply that he is not a saint at all. Rather, it suggests that he is, as we have discussed, maximally devoted to God, but not to his family: he could fulfill both conditions, but that bipartite fulfillment is not necessary for us to accept him as a saint. Although these superficial differences are illustrative of the outward differences between the two conceptions of saints, it will be even more instructive to further examine the lines of thinking that are used to develop these two types of saint.
Wolf’s conception of maximal devotion to morality, the foundational aspect of moral saints, can be described as a general assumption “that one ought to be as morally good as possible and that what limits there are to morality’s hold on us are set by features of human nature of which we ought not to be proud” (Wolf, 419). As we have already noted, Wolf does not believe that moral saints are the type of people that we wish would populate the world. However, “the reasons why a moral saint cannot, in general, encourage the discovery and development of significant nonmoral interests and skills are not logical but practical reasons” (Wolf, 421). In other words, when every action that one takes must be devoted to morality, defined as “a commitment to improving the welfare of others or of society as a whole” (Wolf, 420), one doesn’t have time to develop significant nonmoral traits, such as skills in piano playing or tennis. The existence of these traits in a moral saint would have had to occur by “happy chance” (Wolf, 425). Based on his summary, it is fair to say that Adams understands these points well, and it appears as though he also understands how Wolf develops her conception of a moral saint. To respond to these claims, he uses the notion of a “boundless source of good” to discuss the essence of sainthood. Because this contention is both unique and key to the entire debate about moral sainthood, it seems best to quote it at length:
Wolf’s moral saint sees limited resources for satisfying immense human needs and unlimited human desires, and devotes himself wholly to satisfying them as fully (and perhaps as fairly) as possible. This leaves him no time or energy for anything that does not have to be done. Not so the saints. The substance of sainthood is not sheer will power striving like Sisyphus (or like Wolf’s Rational Saint) to accomplish a boundless task, but goodness overflowing from a boundless source. Or so, at least, the saints perceive it.
They commonly have time for things that do not have to be done, because their vision is not of needs that exceed any possible means of satisfying them, but of a divine goodness that is more than adequate to every need. They are not in general even trying to make their every action as good as possible, and thus they diverge from Wolf’s first criterion of moral sainthood (Adams, 396).
This argument is intended to answer Wolf’s criticism that saints have no time for non-moral acts of individual perfection. However, Wolf could easily reply that thousands of people across the world, struggling together,[9] could produce a similar scenario in which a saint is not alone in his or her struggle.[10] But this mirroring condition would obviously not excuse a lapse in moral activity on the part of the moral saint. The fact that a saint is not alone in helping others[11] does not necessarily mean that there is less of a need for maximization of morality among moral saints unless the world reaches a state where there are no problems. In such a world as this one, as it exists, there will never be a point when someone does not need help, and this fact places a moral constraint of maximization on anyone attempting to be a saint.
But to this Adams could respond that a devotion to God is still different: As an infinite being, God does not need the help of any particular person to meet the needs of humanity. He may want it, and He may ask for it, but the extent of His will is not limited to Wolf’s conception of morality. In other words, a maximal devotion to God does not necessarily imply a maximal devotion to morality, because God’s will is not limited to morality. Therefore, one can be a religious saint while still taking time to improve oneself. In fact, there are several examples in the Bible where Jesus focuses on his own needs to the exclusion of those of his followers, especially near the time of his death, when he ignores others’ requests and prays to calm himself (New International Version). If we accept Adams’s contention that Jesus was a saint, then it cannot be inconsistent with sainthood to take time for oneself instead of maximizing the good of others: “In fact saints have typically been intensely and frankly interested in their own condition, their own perfection, and their own happiness. Without this interest they would hardly have been fitted to lead others for whom they desired perfection and happiness. What enables them to give of themselves unstintedly is not a lack of interest in their own persons, but a trust in God to provide for their growth and happiness” (Adams, 396).
There also appears to be nothing in the doctrine of religious sainthood that mandates a minimal level of morality, as defined by Wolf. Adams contends that a man such as Gandhi “exemplifies only certain types of sainthood” (Adams, 398), and that other types, including those that focus on maximization of human excellence, are available to those people who aspire to sainthood. This does not mean, however, that a religious saint, by nature of an absence of maximal devotion to morality, can perform morally wrong acts with impunity. Rather, it is to say that not every action taken by a religious saint needs to be morally good as long as those actions are consistent with a maximal devotion to God. This means that a saint who is not maximally devoted to morality can still be moral as long as the standard for morality is not maximization.[12]
This debate leads us to the “meta-moral” dilemma that we noted in the beginning of this paper. Wolf defines a meta-moral theory as something that “gives us principles… on the basis of which we can develop and evaluate more comprehensive personal ideals” (Wolf, 438-439). She believes that maximal devotion to a meta-moral theory will inherently produce the same problems as maximal devotion to morality itself, because, just as a moral theory can’t serve as an “ultimate, comprehensive guide for action,” a meta-moral theory fails in a similar manner (Wolf, 438-439). She therefore implies that all of the limitations and undesirable qualities exhibited by moral saints would also be exhibited by “meta-moral saints.”
Interesting enough, religion, as described by Adams, seems to meet Wolf’s criterion for a meta-moral theory.[13] He writes, “Religion is richer than morality, because its divine object is so rich. He is not too narrow to be a suitable object of maximal devotion” (Adams, 400). But if Wolf is correct, then a religious saint will exhibit the same qualities and have the same problems as a moral saint, and we have already seen that this is not necessarily the case.
This provides us with a true conflict, the solution to which is not at all obvious. For Wolf, it seems as though maximal devotion to any ordered theory (moral or meta-moral) will result in saints displaying the characteristics that she uses to describe “moral saints” (such as a disinterest in working toward individual perfection and human excellence). She argues, for instance, that the fact that meta-moral theories inherently suffer from the same problems that moral theories do “suggests that, at some point, both in our philosophizing and in our lives, we must be willing to raise normative questions from a perspective that is unattached to a commitment to any particular well-ordered system of values” (Wolf, 438-439). In doing this,[14] Wolf believes that we avoid eschewing our potential human excellences that exist outside of the moral arena. Adams recognizes this, and it is in response to this recognition that he writes that “[God] is not too narrow to be a suitable object of maximal devotion” (Adams, 400). He then continues,
Since He is a lover of beauty, for instance, as well as commander of morals, maximal submission of one’s life to Him may in some cases (as I have argued) encompass an intense pursuit of artistic excellence in a way that maximal devotion to the interests of morality, narrowly understood, cannot…what I have argued is that the breadth of the Creator’s interests makes possible a conception of sainthood that does not require…hostility [to forms of human endeavor and achievement]” (Adams, 400).
If we assume that religious practice, in its purest form, as it would be practiced by saints, consists of a maximal devotion to God, then it is constituted as the practice of a meta-moral theory because part of a maximal devotion to God consists of following His moral laws when one makes action-guiding decisions and develops personal ideals. But, at the same time, because God is also a “lover of beauty,” and, by association, its instantiations in music, athletics, and other such pursuits forming the whole of personal excellence of which Wolf writes, but instantiations that are yet unrelated to morality, a religious saint can practice maximal devotion to God, functionally devoting him or herself to this meta-moral theory, while not ignoring human excellence in the least; each person vying for sainthood is able to develop, using religion as a basis of decision-making, a balance of morality and non-moral excellence. The infinite nature of religion can account for the fact that we can differentiate religious saints from Wolf’s conception of “moral saints” or “meta-moral saints,” even though religious saints are, technically speaking, meta-moral saints. The religious saints are meta-moral saints without Wolfian limitations on their behavior: they do not have to behave as if they are “act-moralists” trying to maximize the moral content of their every decision, just because they are maximally devoted to a system of belief that includes morality.
[1] This is not merely to say that moral saints have this trait by happenstance, but, rather, that this particular trait inherently defines a moral saint (both the Loving Saint and the Dutiful Saint).
[2] This is Adams’s restatement of Wolf’s argument, but it is a fair summary.
[3] Wolf proposes that “there is a temptation to seek a metamoral – though not, in the standard sense, metaethical – theory that will give us principles, or, at least, informal directives on the basis of which we can develop and evaluate more comprehensive personal ideals…I do not see how a metamoral theory could be constructed which would not be subject to considerations parallel to those which seem inherently to limit the appropriateness of regarding moral theories as ultimate comprehensive guides for action” (Wolf, 438-439). In the later parts of his paper, Adams differentiates a belief in God from an exclusive focus on morality. That this answers Wolf’s dilemma, as noted, is not readily apparent but will be one of this author’s contentions later in the paper.
[4] Further discussion of this point appears further on in the paper.
[5] To use the phase as a specific descriptor as generated by Wolf.
[6] They show evidence that Jesus and Gandhi are not maximally devoted to morality.
[7] One thinks of Jesus here, who was known for a tendency to associate with people who performed actions that he felt to be wrong, such as prostitution. While these are properties that such people could help, he still did not express prejudice toward them.
[8] Though this upcoming point would, in fact, be the first instance of his use of this line of thinking in the argument, and his existent use would become the second (re-use).
[9] To produce moral good
[10] Sisyphus’s rock would be much less burdensome if 1000 people were charged with pushing it.
[11] We use the example of other people here simply because it is easier to visualize the help (ie: visualizing 1000 people complete a task is easier than imagining one saint and God completing the task), but a religious saint would claim that “God helps them” in much the same way. Either way, Wolf’s point would be similar: for moral saints, assistance with one’s moral tasks does not excuse inactivity unless the saint is in a situation where there is no one who needs help.
[12] And it is not for the religious saint.
[13] That this is the case is not obvious, but we will develop an argument for it slightly later in this paper.
[14] Asking these normative questions outside of our moral or meta-moral systems.
What did you have to write this for? Just curious, it is very long but good.
It was a graduate class in contemporary ethics that I took last Spring... and thanks!