For at least a decade, I have been trying to get more respect for prudential values (that which is good for individuals and groups), based on the view that they have been badly mistreated by philosophers who seem to care only about what is morally right or good. I take up that cudgel once again in my latest book review, that of Bas van der Vossen's Political Philosophy: The Basics. In that piece I complain that theorists are all too prone to worry about what makes a state or a law legitimate, without much care about what makes that state or law good for the people who are subject to it.
But I feel myself chastised! Near the end of her novel Mansfield Park, Jane Austen spends perhaps the longest time she ever devoted to a philosophical problem, on having the somewhat priggish cleric Edmund Bertram castigate (his then crush) Mary Crawford for making prudential values not just first, but only! That is, Mary is discovered by him to have been absolutely incapable of distinguishing between the two sorts of value. When Edmund finally comes to realize her blindness--something the book's heroine Fanny Price had understood for some time--the both devastated and astonished lover is able to get over his feelings for Mary and (finally!) attach them to (the also somewhat priggish) Fanny.
It's a brilliant multi-page passage. Edmund gives a detailed account to Fanny of his final talk with Mary, in this way trying to explain how Mary has fallen from his grace.
Fanny suggests that Mary has been cruel. But Edmund demurs. "Cruelty do you call it? We differ there. No, hers is not a cruel nature. I do not consider her as meaning to wound my feelings. The evil lies yet deeper: in her total ignorance, unsuspiciousness of there being such feelings....Hers are faults of principle, Fanny; of blunted delicacy and a corrupted, vitiated mind."
Edmund tries to make this clearer by explaining the way Mary treated the "dreadful crime committed by her brother and my sister [running off together, in spite of Edmund's sister's recent marriage to another man]....giving it every reproach but the right; considering its ill consequences only as they were to be braved or overborne by a defiance of decency and impudence in wrong; and...recommending to us a compliance, a compromise, an acquiescence in the continuance of the sin on the chance of a marriage." Mary did admit that the affair had been handled badly, but her thought was that whatever could now be done to mitigate the damage was in order. In her view, the whole kerfluffle might have been avoided if her brother had first married someone else for whom he apparently had feelings (Fanny). This would have been much better, Mary felt, because she believed it "would have all ended in a regular standing flirtation, in yearly meetings..."
What Mary advised Edmund and his family to now do was just be quiet about the whole matter and "let things take their course." On her view, it would surely be bad for Edmund's sister to leave her brother as a result of family interventions. She says that if anything is done to separate them now, "there will be much less chance of his [eventually] marrying her." And it is that which Mary thinks everyone should understand to be the main goal now that a clandestine elopement has taken place.
Edmund is thunderstruck by all of this. For he has come to see that Mary can think only of what course of action will conduce to the highest level of future well-being and never considers what is morally appropriate. She is unable even to comprehend that there might be some right or wrong here, regardless of what would work out for the best.
Well, I am concerned that my own above-linked comments on van der Vossen's treatment of whether Socrates "should" have fled Athens as his friend Crito wished may be construed to reflect a Crawfordian blindness to the question of what action would be right--and not just prudential--for Socrates under the circumstances. For I, too, generally focus on what can be expected to be most beneficial for all parties. So I want to stress here that I do not deny the existence of moral truths. Nor am I a relativist--cultural or otherwise--on these matters. I understand the distinction that Austen is highlighting and agree wholeheartedly with her. Furthermore, I believe the distinction she makes is important, and even insist that many self-described moral skeptics are confused on this score.
But I do resemble morality deniers in being doubtful about our ability to know that this or that proposition counts as a moral truth. Because I am unlike Edmund and Fanny in failing to trust to religious foundations for ethics, and because moral claims seem to me to be unlike empirical assertions in having no likely foundation other than "intuitions" and prudential considerations, I am hesitant to place much confidence in any conclusions claimed to emanate from some alleged "moral sense."
So, unlike Mary Crawford, I don't make prudential values to be either the "be-all" or "end-all" of value theory (and I include aesthetic values in this judgment). But I do think that we often have little else than humble prudential considerations to rely upon. As I have said elsewhere, I am comfortable putting prudential values at the kiddie table, but I have little faith in the pronouncements descending from the fancier place-settings--no matter how loudly and confidently they are declaimed.
I therefore hope I can be excused for thinking that it's possible that Socrates ought to have given a bit less weight to Austenian arguments here and paid significantly more attention to the pleas of his friend Crito.