ALTRUISM OR DECENCY?

It was rush hour. Waves of people, most dressed in black, moved across one another, toward or away from the metro station. Some were transferring to connecting regional trains or to those slated for longer routes. Others were coming in from the cold outside, heading down long sets of stairs and through cavernous halls toward the platforms. Those people seemed to carry the chill in with them, their breath still steaming as they entered the station. In many ways it was like rush hour in any big city. But when a train arrived at the platform where I was waiting, I noticed something different.

Crowded as the platform was, leaving little room to move, none of the passengers boarded the train until everyone who was exiting had gotten off. There was even a moment of hesitation, a second's pause, before the first passengers embarked. One person near the doors of the train craned his head to look inside, checking to see whether anyone else had yet to alight. Only then was there a general movement to board.

The scene was something I gradually learned to expect in Copenhagen. My experience growing up in New York City was very different. There was impatience to get on the subway, an impatience that I shared. For some, more than a few, that impatience led to a sidelong movement, slicing through the exiting crowd and boarding the train while others were still trying to leave. The idea that there would be a moment's hesitation between the last person leaving and the first one entering was unthinkable. If someone did that we would all be wondering what was wrong with them. Perhaps they were tourists, or just clueless.

In Copenhagen it is not like this. People wait for one another, and not only at train stations. I have never seen someone push ahead of another in line or act impatiently at another's momentary faltering. There, the closest I have come to being berated is in the looks I received when stepping inadvertently into a bike lane. But after all, it can't be fun for a biker to swerve around someone who doesn't know that he is in the middle of traffic.

It's important not to romanticize this phenomenon, both because it isn't that romantic and because it would betray my point. In most respects, Copenhagen is like a lot of other big cities. People do not smile at strangers on the street. There is no sense of overt camaraderie on trains, buses, or elsewhere. While the word tak — thanks — is ubiquitous in its various forms for the smallest of favors, or even for expected service (Danes seem to seek out opportunities to thank others), the social feel of Copenhagen will be familiar to those who have wandered through other large urban areas. It is not that Copenhageners, or Danes in general, display a greater warmth toward others than one finds elsewhere. (In fact, I found more public warmth in Athens, and Greeks are not renowned for waiting patiently in lines.) Rather it is that they seem to recognize, or better to acknowledge, that those others are there. Others, just like oneself, have schedules they're trying to meet, plans they're seeking to accomplish, projects that are carrying them forward. I too have a life I am trying to carry on, a life whose requirements have brought me here, to this metro platform, at this moment. But so do these people leaving the train. And that is a fact I should take into account or, even better, inculcate as a natural part of my own behavior. This acknowledgment is the basis — the moral core — of what I am going to call decency.

This is a book about that decency. It is not a book about being an exemplary moral person, what is sometimes called an altruist. Nor is it a book about how to fulfill our basic moral requirements, the least we might owe to one another. Much of contemporary discussion of morality seems concerned with such issues, in ways I will canvass in a moment. My concern is different. Simply put, most of us want to be better than moral mediocrities and yet don't see ourselves as altruists; how then might we think about living morally? How might we frame our approach to morality? I use the word decency to capture one way to do so. Decency, as I articulate it, is not concerned with traditional concepts in moral philosophy such as duty, right, utility, intent, obligation, or the Good. Or, more precisely, it cuts across all these concepts. I am not interested here in questions of what the ultimate good is or how to conceive our duties or whether we are obliged to craft the best moral character we can manage. Philosophers far more capable than I am have debated these questions across the centuries. My interest is more pedestrian. Most of us are incapable of living lives that are beacons of moral light. Yet most of us also desire to be morally decent people, and we have some more or less inchoate sense of how that might go. Is there some way to frame moral decency that would enlighten us as to what we are up to in some of our better moments, a frame that at the same time might act as a reflective standard for maintaining or even multiplying those moments? Such is the project of this book.

PHILOSOPHY REFLECTS ON MORALITY

Before I unfold my own view, let's pause to consider the current state of philosophical reflection on morality. Even those who are not vocationally immersed in such reflection — which is almost everyone — will likely have at least a breezy familiarity with the moral concepts that characterize current moral debates. For instance, questions of whether the ends justify the means or the importance of intending to do the right thing are familiar to all of us. Philosophical reflection approaches such questions in a more formal way, with different language, but the roots of that reflection can always be traced back to perennial human concerns.

We might divide philosophical moral positions into three types: consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. If we investigate these positions, we will see that they do not give us the guidance we need if what we're after is not altruism but simple moral decency. The first position conveniently announces in its name where it thinks the proper moral stakes lie: in the consequences. This is the position that the ends in fact do justify the means. Of course, not all ends justify any means — which is what some people often mistake for the definition of consequentialism. Rather, it is the view that we ought to act in a way that promotes the most good (however "good" is defined) at the lowest moral cost. If this sounds like an economic version of morality, it should. Consequentialists would like to incorporate all the (alleged) precision of economics into moral decision-making. Plus, they believe that ultimately results are what matter. To put it another way, the moral bottom line for consequentialists lies in contributing to making the world a better...