Pope's Letter for St. Anselm Celebration
"One of the Brightest Figures in the Tradition of the Church"

AOSTA, Italy, APRIL 28, 2009 - Here is the text of the letter Benedict XVI sent to Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, retired archbishop of Bologna, on the occasion of the ninth centenary of the death of St. Anselm. The message was read April 21, the saint's feast day, at a solemn Mass in the Aosta cathedral in honor of the philosopher and theologian.



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In view of the celebrations in which you, venerable brother, will take part as my legate in the illustrious city of Aosta in honor of the ninth centenary of the death of St. Anselm, which took place in Canterbury on 21 April 1109, I would like to give you a special message in which I wish recall the main features of this great monk, theologian and pastor of souls, whose work has left a deep mark on the history of the Church.

The anniversary is indeed an opportunity not to be missed to renew the memory of one of the brightest figures in the tradition of the Church and in the history of Western European thought. The exemplary monastic experience of Anselm, his original method of rethinking the Christian mystery, his subtle philosophical and theological doctrine, his teaching on the inviolable value of conscience and on freedom as the responsible adherence to truth and goodness, his passionate work as a shepherd of souls, dedicated with all his strength to the promotion of "freedom of the Church," have never ceased to arouse in the past the deepest interest, which the memory of his death is happily reigniting and encouraging in many ways and in different places.

In this memorial of the "Magnificent Doctor" -- as St. Anselm is called -- the Church of Aosta cannot but be recognized, the Church in which he was born and which is rightly pleased to consider Anselm as her most illustrious son. Even when he left Aosta in the time of his youth, he continued to carry in his memory and in his heart the bundle of memories that was never far from his thoughts in the most important moments of life. Among those memories, a particular place was certainly reserved for the sweet image of his mother and the majestic mountains of his valley with their high peaks, and perennial snow, in which he saw represented, as if in a fascinating and suggestive symbol, the sublimity of God. To Anselm - "a child raised in the mountains," as Admero his biographer calls him, ("Vita Sancti Anselmi," i, 2) - God appears to be that of which you cannot think of something bigger: perhaps his intuition was not unrelated to the childhood view of those inaccessible peaks. Already as a child he thought that in order to find God it was necessary to "climb to the summit of the mountain" (ibid.). In fact, he will realize more and more that God remains at an inaccessible height, located beyond the horizons which man is able to reach, since God is beyond the thinkable. Because of this, the journey in search of God, at least on this earth, will never end, but will always be thought and desire, the rigorous process of the intellect and the imploring inquiry of the heart.

The intense desire to know and the innate propensity for clarity and logical rigor will push Anselm towards the "scholeae" [schools] of his time. He will therefore join the monastery of Le Bec, where his inclination for dialectic reflection will be satisfied and above all, where his cloistered vocation will enkindle. To dwell on the years of the monastic life of Anselm is to encounter a faithful religious, "constantly occupied in God alone and in the disciplines of heaven" -- as his biographer writes -- in order to achieve "such a summit of divine speculation that would enable him by a path opened by God to penetrate, and, once penetrated, to explain the most obscure and previously unresolved questions concerning the divinity of God and our faith and to prove with clear reasons that what he stated belonged to sure Catholic doctrine" ("Vita Sancti Anselmi," i, 7). With these words, his biographer describes the theological method of St. Anselm, whose thought was ignited and illuminated in prayer. It is he himself that confesses, in his famous work, that the understanding of faith is an approach toward a vision, which we all yearn for and which we all hope to enjoy at the end of our earthly pilgrimage, "Quoniam inter fidem et speciem intellectum quem in hac vita capimus esse medium intelligo: quanto aliquis ad illum proficit, tanto eum propinquare speciei, ad quam omnes anhelamus, existimo (Cur Deus homo, Commendatio).

The saint desired to achieve the vision of the logical relationships inherent to the mystery, to perceive the "clarity of truth," and thus to grasp the evidence of the "necessary reasons," intimately bound to the mystery. A bold plan certainly, and it is one whose success still occupies the reflections of the students of Anselm today. In fact, his search of the "intellectus" [intellect] positioned between "fides" [faith] and "species" [vision] comes out of the source of the same faith and is sustained by confidence in reason, through which faith in a certain way is illuminated. The intent of Anselm is clear: "to raise the mind to contemplation of God" (Proslogion, Proemium). There remain, in any event, for every theological research, his programmatic words: "I do not try, Lord, to penetrate your depth, because I cannot, even from a distance, compare it with my intellect, but I want to understand, at least up to a certain point, your truth, which my heart believes and loves. I do not seek, in fact, to try to understand it in order to believe it, but I believe in order to understand it."[Non quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam] (Proslogion, 1).

In Anselm, prior and abbot of Le Bec, we underline some characteristics that further define his personal profile. What strikes us, first of all, is his charism as an expert teacher of spiritual life, one who knows and wisely illustrates the ways of monastic perfection. At the same time, one is fascinated by his instructive geniality, which is expressed in that discernment method -- which he names, the "via discretionis" (Ep. 61) -- which is a small image of his whole life, an image composed of both mercy and firmness. The peculiar ability which he demonstrates in initiating disciples to the experience of authentic prayer is very peculiar: in particular, his "Orationes sive Meditationes," eagerly requested and widely used, which have contributed to making many people of his time " anime oranti" [praying souls], as with his other works, have proved themselves a valuable catalyst in making the Middle Ages a "thinking" and, we might add, "conscientious" period. One would say that the most authentic Anselm can be found at Le Bec, where he remained thirty three years, and where he was much loved. Thanks to the maturity that he acquired in a similar environment of reflection and prayer, he will be able, as well in the midst of the subsequent trials as bishop, to declare: "I will not retain in my heart any resentment for any one" (Ep. 321).

The nostalgia of the monastery will accompany him for the rest of his life. He confessed it himself when he was constrained, to his deepest sorrow and that of his monks, to leave the monastery to assume the Episcopal ministry to which did not feel well disposed: "It is well known to many," he wrote to Pope Urban II, "the violence which was done to me, and how much I was reluctant and contrary, when I was brought as a bishop to England and how I explained the reasons of nature, age, weakness and ignorance, which were opposed to this office and that absolutely detest and shun scholastic duties, which I cannot dedicate myself to at all without endangering the salvation of my soul" (Ep. 206). He confides later with his monks in these terms: "I have lived for 33 years a monk -- three years without responsibility, 15 as prior, and as many as abbot -- in such a way that all the good people that knew me loved me, certainly not by my own merits but for the grace of God, and the ones that loved me most were those that knew me most intimately and with greatest familiarity" (Ep. 156). And he added: "You have been many to come to Le Bec ... Many of you I surrounded with a love so tender and sweet that each one had the impression that I did not love anyone else in the same way" (ibid.).

Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury and beginning, in this way, his most troubled journey, his "love of truth" (Ep. 327), his uprightness, his strict loyalty to conscience, his "Episcopal freedom" (Ep. 206), his " Episcopal honesty" (Ep. 314), his tireless work for the liberation of the Church from the temporal conditionings and from the servitude of calculations that are incompatible with his spiritual nature will appear in their full light. His words to King Henry remain exemplary in this respect, "I reply that in neither baptism nor in any other ordination that I have received, did I promised to observe the law or the custom of your father or of the Archbishop Lanfranco, but the law of God and of all the orders received" (Ep. 319). For Anselm, the primate of the Church of England, one principle applies: "I am a Christian, I am a monk, I am a Bishop: I desire to be faithful to all, according to the debt I have with each" (Ep. 314). In this vein he does not hesitate to say: "I prefer to be in disagreement with men than, agreeing with them, to be in disagreement with God" (Ep. 314). Precisely for this reason he feels ready even for the supreme sacrifice: "I am not afraid to shed my blood, I fear no wound in my body nor the loss of any material good" (Ep. 311).

It is understandable that, for all these reasons, Anselm still retains a great actuality and a strong appeal, in as much as it is fruitful to revisit and republish his writings, and together meditate continuously on his life. For this reason I have rejoiced that Aosta, on the occasion of the ninth centenary of the death of the saint, has distinguished itself with a set of appropriate and intelligent initiatives -- especially with the careful edition of his works -- with the intention to make known and loved the teachings and examples of this, its illustrious son. I entrust to you, Venerable Brother, the task of bringing to the faithful of the ancient and beloved city of Aosta the exhortation to remember with admiration and affection this great fellow citizen of theirs, whose light continues to shine throughout the Church, especially where the love for the truths of faith and the desire for their study by the light of reason are cultivated. And, in fact, faith and reason -- "fides et ratio" -- are united admirably in Anselm. I send, with these heartfelt sentiments through you, venerable brother, to the Bishop, Monsignor Giuseppe Anfossi, the clergy, the religious and the faithful of Aosta and to all those who take part in the celebrations in honor of the "Magnificent Doctor," a special apostolic blessing, propitiatory of an abundant outpouring of heavenly favours.

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Utilitarianism       By Stephen Buckle  
Friday, 05 January 2007

Probably the most persuasive ethical theory in contemporary ethical debates  is utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism is one of the most prominent of modern moral philosophies, and the most controversial. Its denial that moral rights are the basic currency of moral thinking – and the manifold consequences of this denial in a wide range of significant practical issues – is well known. What is not so well understood, however, is where utilitarianism came from, and why, under the more general rubric of "ethical consequentialism", it now enjoys such respect in academic meta-ethical debates. This paper aims to throw some light on these issues, and, by doing so, to identify utilitarianism’s fundamental commitments – and to indicate why the academic preoccupation with "ethical consequentialism" is a distraction from the main issue.

What is Utilitarianism?

Utilitarianism, as a distinct moral doctrine, is commonly traced to the writings of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). His book, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, published in 1789, the year of the French Revolution, can be considered to have launched utilitarianism upon the (Anglophone) world. This conjunction of events brought Bentham considerable fame, since utilitarianism was thought to capture the progressive spirit of the Revolution. His reformist writings made him the godfather of a group called the Philosophic Radicals, who advocated a series of reforms based on utilitarian principles. Prominent amongst the Radicals was James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill.

Bentham’s utilitarianism proclaimed that the worth of any action lay entirely in its usefulness (or utility) for human beings. Hence the doctrine’s name. But the distinctive character of the doctrine depended on his further specification of what counted as useful: he claimed that human happiness was the measure, and further stipulated that happiness was not some abstruse philosophical ideal, but merely pleasure. His further stipulation that each person’s pleasure counted for the same gave the doctrine the practical edge which has always been, for its advocates, one of its primary attractions: it meant that alternative courses of action could be assessed for their moral worth simply by adding up their consequences in terms of the pleasure (+1) or pain (–1) imposed on those affected. The best course of action was simply the course of action that generated the highest score. Moral mathematics was born.

Utilitarianism thus construed can be divided into two component parts: its form and its content. The formal component is its model of reasoning, that is, its consequentialism: the conviction that alternative courses of action are to be measured purely by their consequences. This element has become the main focus of attention in recent years, and explains why "consequentialism" has become the preferred mode of self-description amongst philosophical sympathizers. But things were not always so. In the beginning, it was utilitarianism’s content that was the more striking and (to its followers) more attractive component of the theory. The absence of any appeal to higher authorities or to metaphysical ideals made it appear the ideal theory for a new secular age.

The principal source of complaint from its sympathetic critics lay in the thought that the secularism achieved was too crude, psychologically speaking. The reduction of happiness – and, by extension, all human ideals – to the mere quantity of (physical) pleasure led John Stuart Mill to describe Bentham’s position as moral philosophy reduced to the "principles which regulate trade". So Mill proposed a compromise view – indebted to the hierarchical moral psychology of Plato – in which pleasures could be divided into higher (intellectual) pleasures and lower (physical) pleasures, such that the higher always trump the lower. (He famously observed: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied".) But this proposal found little favour amongst his fellow-utilitarians, because it destroyed what most found so attractive about the new theory: its promise of mathematically-certain moral conclusions.

The pursuit of this promise – principally in the hands of twentieth-century economists – led to a significant change in the theory itself. The basic currency of utilitarianism, pleasure, allowed only very limited, and indeed misleadingly limited, quantification. Bentham had "solved" the problem by stipulating that everyone was to count for one. As a principle of basic human equality, this may be all very well. But as a principle of moral mathematics, it allowed only the crude measures: pleasure = +1, pain = –1. But pleasures and pains come in degrees, so, even if everyone is equal in general value, the intensities of their pleasures and pains, and therefore their specific values, need not be. So any serious attempt to measure the highest utility must fail. A different measure was therefore needed.

The new measure proposed dispensed with the theory’s prior focus on subjective satisfactions (i.e. on happiness or pleasure). It replaced this hidden standard with a thoroughly public one: preference-satisfaction, or, in cruder terms, getting what you want. The advantage of this change is entirely to do with quantifiability: while it is impossible to measure the degree of happiness or pleasure achieved by a certain action or policy, it is perfectly possible to measure the extent to which preferences have been satisfied. If Person A wants a new Mercedes every year, whereas Person B wants good hospitals, it will be obvious to all whether, or to what extent, a given action or social policy delivers them the objects of their desire. It will even be possible to measure various alternative social policies by the number of preferences each can be predicted to satisfy. The dream of moral mathematics can thus be saved; so the economists, and, following them, the utilitarian philosophers, came to advocate the greatest level of preference-satisfaction as the practically-rational – and thus the moral – standard by which possible actions or social policies are to be judged. This theory is known as "preference utilitarianism", to distinguish it from the original, hedonic, theory. (Perhaps the best-known version of preference utilitarianism is Peter Singer’s ethical theory.)

Consequentialism and the form of practical reasoning

"Consequentialism" is the name for the formal part of the utilitarian doctrine: the view that all practical reasoning is in terms of consequences, such that the best course of action is necessarily that course of action that produces the best consequences. It is distinct from utilitarianism in that it resists stipulating what those consequences are. As such, it can be thought of as an all-embracing doctrine about what decisions or actions must be like to be practically rational – and so is commonly adjudged by philosophers to provide a sophisticated background test for all practical decision-making.

Since consequentialism does not tell anyone what to do – it cannot, because it resists telling us which consequences count – it is not itself an ethical theory. But it is plainly not neutral with respect to ethical theory, since it rules out – as irrational – any variety of ethical thinking that fails to fit the consequentialist pattern. Consequentialism thus seems to provide powerful background support for utilitarianism, by removing all non-consequentialist theories from serious consideration. Given that most traditional ethical doctrines are not obviously fitted to the consequentialist mould, the upshot is that traditional ethical values – the source of criticisms of utilitarian doctrines – can be set aside as mere prejudice obstructing the implementation of progressive moral opinion. Consequentialist practical rationality thus sweeps the field clean for utilitarianism’s triumph.

Consequentialism and rational choice theory

In this light, it is plainly important to examine the credentials of the consequentialist theory of practical rationality. In brief, it can be described as the view that rational choice consists in choosing some good outcome; that it is more rational to choose the best amongst alternative possible goods; and so rational choice and action is to be defined in terms of maximizing good outcomes. Ethics then plugs into this basic framework by specifying in what terms the good outcomes are to be understood, i.e. in terms of happiness or desire-satisfaction or character-development or even some variety of ideal-attainment. Ethically good action will therefore be the attempt to maximize the specified good outcome.

Rationality is thus defined purely in terms of the maximizing tendency, and not at all in terms of the actual values pursued: the rational choice conception is neutral with respect to actual values. This is commonly taken to be the strength of this conception of rationality: its neutrality is attributed to its degree of abstraction and so also of explanatory power. This is, however, only half true. For varieties of choice and action that uncontroversially fit into this pattern, the abstraction and so explanatory power of this conception of rationality is undeniable. But it is certainly not the case that ethics uncontroversially fits the pattern: as mentioned above, traditional ethics is not purely consequentialist, and so needs to be redefined in order to fit. Traditional norms or duties have to be reconceived as desires (and perhaps also, as an intermediate step, as values). Such reconception is plainly not a neutral process, so why should it be accepted?

In order to explain this, a thoroughly non-neutral commitment of modern rational choice theory needs to be brought to the fore: its conception of reason as a calculative capacity in the service of given values. The calculative aspect lies in the fact that rationality on this model essentially amounts to adding up the quantity of goodness of each alternative, in order to choose the highest scoring alternative. The givenness of the values is plain from the fact that the model accords them no theoretical attention whatsoever. Reason is thus conceived as a service industry, a method applicable to one’s values in order to assist in their attainment: the values themselves are not open to rational assessment. Why not? The standard rationale for this view is that values are not subject to rational assessment because values are subjective. They come into the world through human desires, and do so because they are in fact nothing more than human desires. (And, it is usually added, since humans are all different and desire different things, values are wholly personal – what each person desires.)

The model of reason built into rational choice theory is thus a version of the "Humean" (or instrumental) theory of reason: reason serves desire, and does so by calculating how desires are most efficiently satisfied. Reason cannot therefore judge between alternative desires; and, given that values and desires are equated, reason cannot judge between alternative values. This theory of reason amounts to a reinterpretation of human nature: specifically, of the idea that the human being is the rational being. Traditionally, this meant that the human being is a being who acts in the light of rationally-acquired knowledge of the world, including knowledge of objective goods. In the Humean reinterpretation, it means only that the human being is a being which calculates how to satisfy its desires: it is an animal distinguishable from other animals only by its greater capacity to figure out how to get what it wants. To see what is lost in this reconception, it is only necessary to observe that it implies no difference in dignity between animal and human life. So the idea that there is a distinctive dignity to human beings turns out to be unjustified on this conception.

Form and content issues: a summary

One central task of an examination of consequentialist modes of ethical thinking must therefore be to examine the form of rationality built into such thinking: the Humean model of practical rationality. This will require a direct assessment of the basics of modern rational choice theory: its conception of rationality (and implicit conception of human nature); and its equation of norms (or duties) and values and desires.

Utilitaranism adds to this form a distinctive content. So examination of the specifically utilitarian brands of consequentialism requires assessing the distinctive content of utilitarian values: of the ethical value of a hedonic conception of happiness ("classical" utiliatarianism), and, especially, of the ethical value of the mere fact of getting what one wants (preference utilitarianism). The impact of these values on practical ethical questions then needs to be identified and assessed. This will include, among other things, their impact on such commonly-employed notions as the meaning and dignity and quality of a human life.

Concluding remarks

At bottom, utilitarian moral theory is a consequence of the empiricist revolution in modern philosophy. Empiricism denied innate knowledge and restricted what could be known to human experience. But it did more than that. It implicitly denied that human beings were the truth-seeking rational beings that the ancient and medieval worlds had taken them to be. Hume’s dethroning of reason has to be seen in this light.

At the same time, however, modern empiricism accepted Aristotle’s view that experience can deliver only useful knowledge. So a reason that only serves passion is a calculative capacity concerning only which of the available alternative actions is the most useful. Any idea of moral truth, or even of value other than usefulness, has simply been set aside. In consequence, all that is needed to generate specific utilitarian theories is to settle on a criterion of usefulness. Bentham’s hedonic standard and the economists’ preference-satisfaction standard are the two most widely-accepted criteria, and so the most influential theories. It is plain that both implicitly rule out the distinctive concerns of a rational being, as traditionally understood, and so both fit the Humean recasting of the human being.

The "ethical consequentialism" that so preoccupies the academic moral philosophers, with its attempt to legislate for acceptable moral positions by reference merely to (its account of) the form of practical reasoning, is thus a distorting lens through which to comprehend human morality. This apparently formal category in fact predisposes filling out ethical theory according to the narrowed content imposed by empiricism’s restriction to the useful, and so is not the neutral category it purports to be. In the end, then, the fundamental division between utilitarianism and its traditional rivals will not be settled by the formalist preoccupations of so much contemporary meta-ethics. What is fundamentally at issue is the nature of the human being.
Philosopher Stephen Buckle teaches at the Australian Catholic University.

Notes

(1) The view was certainly in the wind elsewhere (a point often neglected in Anglophone philosophical writings), and Bentham’s claim to originality is not beyond dispute. Karl Marx, for example, claimed that Bentham "simply reproduced in his dull way what Helvétius and other Frenchmen had said with wit and ingenuity in the eighteenth century". (Karl Marx, Capital, trans. Ben Fowkes (Harmondsworth, Penguin: 1976), I, 758n.)) Marx here thinks of Bentham as a nineteenth-century figure, since it was in the early nineteenth century that his influence was at its height.

(2) See, for example, James E. Crimmins, Secular Utilitarianism: Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford University Press, 1990).

(3) John Stuart Mill, "Bentham", in John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, Utilitarianism and Other Essays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987), 156.

(4) John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Oxford University Press, 1998), 57.

(5) The fact that getting what you want might not make you happy is a residual embarrassment to the theory, about which philosophers occasionally fret. The economists, for their part, have ignored happiness as a goal, despite its popularity as a measure of a successful life. Why? Several possibilities suggest themselves: because it is not measurable and so not to be accepted as a scientific concept; or because they have assumed that getting what you want equals happiness; or even because they have defined happiness in terms of preference-satisfaction. In short, they have swept the problem under the carpet.

(6) See Aristotle, Metaphysics, I. 1 (many editions); and cf. John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), e.g. I. i. 5: "We shall not have much reason to complain of the narrowness of our minds, if we will but employ them about what may be of use for us".

(7) The point, and its limiting effects on human life, are central concerns in a famous 19th-century examination of the utilitarian spirit, Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons (1861). See, in particular, Bazarov’s remark that "we base our conduct on what we recognize as useful"; Fathers and Sons (Harmondsworth: Penguin (1975), 123.

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