CONTEMPORARY ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS
Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Spaemann
ARTHUR MADIGAN, S.J.
University ofNotre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
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C O N T E N T S
Introduction
CHAPTER 1 Anglo-American Moral Philosophy, 1950–1990
CHAPTER 2 Alasdair MacIntyre’s Revolutionary Aristotelianism
CHAPTER 3 The Liberal Aristotelianism of Martha Nussbaum
CHAPTER 4 The Personalist Aristotelianism of Robert Spaemann
CHAPTER 5 Issues Facing Aristotelians
Notes
Index
I N T R O D U C T I O N
In the fall of 1969, I enrolled in an introductory ethics course at the University of Toronto taught by David P. Gauthier, who went on to chair Toronto’s graduate Department of Philosophy and later to teach at the University of Pittsburgh. This course was a wonderfully lucid and well-organized introduction to mainstream Anglo-American moral philosophy. We used William K. Frankena’s Ethics, a summary of the main questions addressed in that moral philosophy and of the main answers to those questions. Included therein were various classical and contemporary readings.
Two aspects of the course left a deep impression on me. One was the opposition between deontological ethics and teleological ethics. I will have a good deal to say about deontological and teleological ethics in the pages that follow. For the moment, let me say, very roughly, that deontological ethics is a kind of ethics that focuses on duties and obligations, on what is right and what is wrong. A well-known example of deontological ethics is the ethics of Immanuel Kant, and perhaps the most famous, or infamous, example of Kant’s ethics in practice is the claim that one may never tell a lie, not even to save a human life. Again very roughly, teleological ethics is an ethics that focuses on fulfillments and satisfactions, on what things are good and bad for human beings. A well-known example of teleological ethics is the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill, who counseled that we should act in whatever way promotes the greatest possible good or satisfaction for the greatest
number of human beings. The standard objection, of course, is that the utilitarian principle could be used to justify all sorts of injustices, such as the punishment of innocent people.
The other aspect of Gauthier’s course that left a deep impression was G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy:The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy 33, no. 124 (1958): 1–19, with its criticism of both Kantian and utilitarian ethics. If Anscombe was right, the deontological ethics of Kant was incoherent and the teleological ethics of utilitarianism was really the abandonment of any ethics worthy of the name. In 1969, I was only beginning to understand the significance of Anscombe’s argument.
In the fall of 1979, I began to teach philosophy at Boston College. When, on occasion, I had the opportunity to teach ethics, I went back to Gauthier’s course, to Kant’s Groundwork for the MetaphysicsofMoralsand to Mill’s Utilitarianism, and to the problem of teleology and deontology. I tried to lead my students to appreciate the radical difference between the two and to make a reasoned choice in favor of one or the other. Most of them declined to choose. They insisted on affirming both deontology and teleology, refusing to accept the troubling implications of either. Disconcerting as it was for me, they wanted both. They knew better than I did.
In fall of 1981, I began to read Alasdair MacIntyre’s AfterVirtue. It was the first sustained critique of modern ethics and modernity that I had ever read. He acknowledged a debt to Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy,” but MacIntyre offered a different and much more detailed analysis of what had gone wrong in modern ethics. He also outlined an alternative to that ethics: an updated version of Aristotle’s ethics of the virtues. After Virtue opened up a new philosophical world.
In spring of 1986, at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC, I read a manuscript version of Martha Nussbaum’s The Fragility of Goodness. Here was a riveting example of how to read Greek philosophy in the light of Greek tragedy and Greek
tragedy in the light of Greek philosophy. At the same time, Fragility ofGoodnessset me a problem. Impressed by MacIntyre’s reading of Aristotle, and now attracted by Nussbaum’s reading, I did not see how the two readings could be combined. MacIntyre read Aristotle with a view to diagnosing what had gone wrong with modern moral philosophy and to prescribing what should be done about it. Nussbaum did nothing of the kind. Her Aristotle was opposing Plato, or opposing a kind of Platonism that sought to deny or eliminate the dimensions of fragility and vulnerability that are inherent in human life. From this point on, as I began to teach electives on the Nicomachean Ethics, I went back and forth between readings influenced by MacIntyre and readings influenced by Nussbaum. This was a stimulating and fruitful experience for me, but it must have baffled my students.
Early in the 1990s, my friend and colleague Paul McNellis, S.J., introduced me to the work of Robert Spaemann, who was then teaching at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, and whose work was only beginning to be noticed in the Anglo-American world. He persuaded me to read Spaemann’s Philosophische Essays. The more I read, the more impressed I was. Here was someone analyzing modernity in a way that owed much to Aristotle and Aquinas, but also speaking a philosophical dialect that owed much to Kant and Hegel. Here was someone sensitive to the achievements of modernity, especially its awareness of human dignity, but also critical of modernity on many different counts. Here was another distinctive Aristotelian voice.
It took years for me to see it, but MacIntyre, Nussbaum, and Spaemann were weaning me away from my focus on the opposition between deontological and teleological ethics. Later than I should have, I woke up to the fact that the differences among their readings of Aristotle, or, better, their forms of Aristotelianism, were more significant than the differences between Kant and Mill that had
held my attention for so long. This book is an attempt to pull together what I have learned from these three remarkable thinkers.
If MacIntyre, Nussbaum, and Spaemann are three of the more important figures in the revival of Aristotelian ethics, they are by no means its only representatives. It would have been worthwhile to study such Aristotelians as Henry Veatch and Mortimer Adler, to study the New Natural Law theory of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and Joseph Boyle, and to study the influence of Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, Timothy (now Sophie-Grace) Chappell, and others on Aristotelian ethics. The full history of the twentieth-century Aristotelian revival remains to be written, and it may be some time before anyone is in a position to write it. What has led me to focus on MacIntyre, Nussbaum, and Spaemann is that they have written not just for specialists but for educated and reflective general readers.
Time, as always, has marched on. MacIntyre’s and Spaemann’s more recent writings remain within the Aristotelian tradition, broadly understood. Nussbaum’s more recent work has moved in different directions. In this book I have focused on her earlier Aristotelian writings.
I have written Contemporary Aristotelian Ethics for readers who have not yet read MacIntyre or Nussbaum or Spaemann, but who want to understand their thought and are ready to engage with it in some depth and detail. I have attempted to take such readers fairly deep into the details of their thinking about ethics, but this book cannot substitute for the study of their works themselves. I have also written for readers who have some familiarity with MacIntyre, Nussbaum, and/or Spaemann, and who want to explore alternative forms of Aristotelian ethics. I have written for philosophers who, perhaps not committed Aristotelians, take Aristotelian ethics seriously as a live philosophical option. But most of all, I have written the book for educated and reflective readers, the people
whom MacIntyre calls “plain persons,” that is, the readers that MacIntyre, Nussbaum, and Spaemann themselves are addressing.
My debts are many and various. Alasdair MacIntyre and Martha Nussbaum have helped me at various stages in the genesis of this book. Margaret Holland has ably and generously commented on chapter 1, about Anglo-American moral philosophy in the period 1950 to 1990. Christopher Stephen Lutz has ably and generously commented on chapter 2, on MacIntyre. Margaret Holland and Paulette Kidder have ably and generously commented on chapter 3, on Nussbaum. Jeremiah Alberg, Oliver O’Donovan, and Robert Sokolowski have ably and generously commented on chapter 4, on Spaemann. I have learned much from these scholars and should no doubt have learned more. They have saved me from many mistakes. The errors and infelicities that remain are, of course, my responsibility.
I am grateful to Boston College and to the Fitzgibbons family for entrusting me with the Albert J. Fitzgibbons Professorship. It has been an honor. I would also like to thank Boston College for its support of a sabbatical leave in academic year 2017–18, in which this book came close to completion, and to the staff of the Boston College Libraries, who have helped it to completion in more ways than they can know. I am deeply indebted to the students I have taught at Fordham University, Boston College, John Carroll University, Marquette University, and Le Moyne College. My greatest debt is to the Philosophy Department at Boston College. Most of the work for this book was done during the ups and downs of my six years as department chair, 2010–16. I am deeply grateful to my colleagues. In ways that I cannot yet articulate, those ups and downs have made this a better book than it might have been. Whatever our differences, we have respected one another’s intellectual projects, and we have wanted the best for our students. As, I trust, did Aristotle.
My manuscript was received by University of Notre Dame Press in the summer of 2020 and was favorably reviewed. I thank the two reviewers for their helpful remarks and generous praise of my work. I would also like to thank two editors at UNDP: Stephen Little, who oversaw this project in its early stages, and Emily R. King, who has been overseeing the project since August 2022.
In the fall of 2020, I suffered two strokes, the first mild and the second not. I have been working very hard on my recovery and am making progress. I have received wonderful support from my Jesuit community, family, friends, and from the many physicians, nurses, and helpers who have seen to my immediate and long-term needs. They have been a blessing. I also thank Deborah De Chiara-Quenzer, a colleague and friend, who during this time helped me in completing the final stages of the project, including the communications with UNDP on my behalf.
Campion Center, Weston, Massachusetts April 2023
CHAPTER ONE
ANGLO-AMERICAN MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 1950–1990
The last two decades of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable revival of Aristotelian ethics in the Anglo-American philosophical world. This revival did not take place in a vacuum. It was in large part a response to a kind of ethics that was dominant in Anglo-American philosophical circles for most of the twentieth century and that has by no means disappeared. The revival cannot be properly understood without an understanding of that ethics. This first chapter will attempt to characterize Anglo-American moral philosophy not as it is today but as it was in the period roughly from 1950 to 1990.1
The choice of 1950 as a point of departure is an attempt to begin at a point where the influence of British analytic philosophy in North America was sufficiently advanced that one could speak of AngloAmerican moral philosophy.2 The choice of 1990 as a closing date is in recognition of two changes that had taken place in AngloAmerican moral philosophy by that time: increased attention to the history of ethics and the recognition of virtue ethics as a field in its own right.3
I have based this chapter on a survey of introductory ethics textbooks from the period in question. None of these introductions is authoritative in itself, but taken together they convey a reliable idea of the issues that Anglo-American moral philosophers were discussing and the philosophical categories in which they were discussing them. They thus reflect the ethics to which the Aristotelian revival is in large part a response.4
I have consulted the following introductions: Ewing, Ethics; M. Warnock, Ethics since 1900; Frankena, Ethics; G. J. Warnock, Contemporary Moral Philosophy; Harman, The Nature of Morality; Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy; and Raphael, Moral Philosophy. I have also consulted Kai Nielsen’s article on the problems of ethics in Edwards, EncyclopediaofPhilosophy.5
Someone who examines these introductory texts may at first be struck more by their dissimilarities than by their similarities. This should come as no surprise. Authors tend to draw on their distinctive experience as teachers. Publishers tend to claim that their introductions are different from, or better than, competing texts. Closer examination, however, discloses that these texts share a common core of authors, texts, and issues from the preceding two generations that they discuss, whatever else they may discuss. The following authors and titles capture this common core: G. E. Moore, PrincipiaEthica(1903); H. A. Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” (1912); W. D. Ross, TheRightandtheGood(1930); A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (1936); C. L. Stevenson, Ethics and Language (1944); and R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals (1952). The issues raised by these texts—the merits of naturalism and intuitionism, the relative priority of right and good, the positivist challenge to the meaningfulness of ethical language, and the responses to that challenge—are at the heart of AngloAmerican moral philosophy in our period.6
Some of the introductions limit themselves to the common core of authors and issues, for example, Mary Warnock’s Ethics since
1900, and Geoffrey Warnock’s Contemporary Moral Philosophy. When the introductions go beyond this common core, they do so in three main ways.
The first way is historical. Some of the introductions go back beyond Moore to the utilitarianisms of Henry Sidgwick, John Stuart Mill, and Jeremy Bentham, of which Moore was critical. Some go back to Kant and Hume or even further back. The introductions by Ewing, Frankena, Harman, Rachels, and Raphael all include this kind of historical material.
A second way is by offering typologies of different ethical theories. In this they are recovering the approach of Henry Sidgwick, TheMethodsofEthics(1874; 7th ed., 1906) and of C. D. Broad, Five Types of EthicalTheory (1930), but not necessarily following either of their classifications. Frankena’s typology of teleological ethics and deontological ethics, each with subtypes, seems to me the most explicit and detailed, but the introductions regularly contrast different normative theories with one another.
A third way distinguishes explicitly between first-order (or normative) ethics and second-order ethics (or metaethics) offering typologies of metaethics. When an introductory text does not mention metaethics or distinguish between normative ethics and metaethics, I take it that is because of the author’s pedagogical judgment about what beginning students need to know, not ignorance of the distinction itself. Again, I find Frankena’s delineation of naturalism, intuitionism, and noncognitivism to be the most explicit and detailed, but other introductions that talk about metaethics draw essentially the same distinctions. The technical terms in this paragraph will be explained shortly.
Anglo-American ethics in our period was characterized by a widely shared conception of what ethics is: the attempt to clarify ethical concepts and to critically examine ethical theories and the arguments for and against them.7 As a reflective activity, ethics does not simply accept the ethical views of parents, authoritative teachers, communities, and traditions. It subjects them to examination and criticism. Ethics is thus a matter of rational argument, of stating claims, explaining them, and giving reasons for them. Ethics includes both constructive arguments for various ethical theories and particular ethical claims and negative arguments against ethical theories and particular ethical claims.
Normative Ethics and Metaethics
Anglo-American ethics in this period takes for granted a distinction between first-order ethical questions and second-order ethical questions, or, as is more commonly said, between normative ethics and metaethics. The distinction is a tool of analysis and clarification. Most of the authors commonly studied in Anglo-American ethics— Hume, Kant, the utilitarians, Moore, and Ross—did not themselves distinguish explicitly between normative ethics and metaethics.8
Broadly speaking, normative ethics considers questions about value (what things are good or bad, what makes them good or bad) and obligation (what things we are obliged to do, what things we are obliged not to do, and why). Normative ethics includes normative ethical theories (about which more below) and particular ethical judgments. Metaethics, by contrast, steps back from ethical principles and particular ethical judgments to consider what they mean and how they are or might be justified. Anglo-American ethics typically envisioned metaethics as neutral with respect to issues in normative ethics and particular ethical claims. At the same time, it treated metaethics as clarifying and establishing the bases on which
normative ethics could proceed, or, as the case may be, exposing and demolishing the bases on which normative ethics might have tried to proceed.
Normative Ethical Theories: Teleological and Deontological
Three main families of normative ethical theories were in play: teleological ethics, deontological ethics, and divine command ethics. Let us begin with the first two. Here we need to distinguish between the broad senses of “teleological” and “deontological” and the stricter senses of these two terms.
In the broad sense, a teleological ethics is an ethics of fulfillment, that is, an ethical theory that focuses on what fulfills human beings (and in some versions, other sentient beings). In the broad sense, a deontological ethics is an ethics of obligation, that is, an ethics that focuses on duties or obligations that we have to one another and/or to ourselves (and in some versions, to other sentient beings). If we understand “teleological” and “deontological” in these broad senses, one and the same ethical theory can have both a teleological aspect and a deontological aspect. In such a case the question would then arise about whether one of these two aspects was prior to, more basic than the other. This question has been formulated as the question about the relative priority of the right and the good.9 Is the right, what human beings ought to do and ought not to do, more basic than the good, what is good for human beings, what fulfills them? Or is the good more basic than the right? A teleological ethics would be an ethics in which good is prior to right. A deontological ethics, by contrast, would be an ethics in which right is prior to good. But so long as the terms are taken in their broad senses, it is possible to envision both a deontological ethics with important
teleological features and a teleological ethics with important deontological features.
Alongside the broad sense, however, this ethics also knew of stricter definitions of teleological ethics and deontological ethics, such that the two were mutually exclusive. Thus Frankena:
A teleological theory says that the basic or ultimate criterion or standard of what is morally right, wrong, obligatory, etc., is the nonmoral value that is brought into being. The final appeal, directly or indirectly, must be to the comparative amount of good produced, or rather to the comparative balance of good over evil produced…. Deontological theories deny what teleological theories affirm. They deny that the right, the obligatory, and the morally good are wholly, whether directly or indirectly, a function of what is nonmorally good or of what promotes the greatest balance of good over evil for self, one’s society, or the world as a whole. They assert that there are other considerations that may make an action or rule right or obligatory besides the goodness or badness of its consequences —certain features of the act itself other than the value it brings into existence, for example, the fact that it keeps a promise, is just, or is commanded by God or by the state. Teleologists believe that there is one and only one basic or ultimate rightmaking characteristic, namely, the comparative value (nonmoral) of what is, probably will be, or is intended to be brought into being. Deontologists either deny that this characteristic is right-making at all or they insist that there are other basic or ultimate right-making characteristics as well.10
If we take teleological ethics and deontological ethics in these strict senses, there is no question of a theory’s being both teleological and deontological. A theory can be one or the other but not both.
The early utilitarians were also hedonists, and introductions to ethics in our period typically included discussions of hedonism. “Hedonism” is a highly ambiguous term. Frankena helpfully distinguishes four different things that people mean by it. One is that happiness and pleasure are the same thing. A second is that all pleasures are intrinsically good. A third is that only pleasures are intrinsically good. A fourth is that pleasantness is the criterion of intrinsic goodness.11
Introductions to ethics typically distinguished between a purely quantitative hedonism, attributed to Jeremy Bentham, that recognizes differing quantitiesof pleasure and pain but not different kindsof pleasure and pain, and a qualitative hedonism, attributed to John Stuart Mill, that recognizes not merely different quantities of pleasure and pain but different types or species of pleasure and pain. These introductions pointed out that the original utilitarian project of arriving at decisions by comparing the amounts of pleasure and pain that would result from different courses of action presupposed quantitative hedonism. Recognition of the qualitative diversity of pleasures and pains made this kind of calculation much more complicated if not impossible.
Moral philosophers in this period knew very well that utilitarianism is not the only form of teleological ethics and that Kantianism is not the only form of deontological ethics. Nonetheless, their introductory texts tended to focus on the utilitarianisms of Bentham and John Stuart Mill as the principal (most important, influential, interesting) versions of teleological ethics and on the ethics of Kant as the principal version of deontological ethics. They typically highlighted Kant’s insistence that genuine moral principles or maxims have to be universalizable, that is, they have to apply to every rational agent. Without going further into the complexities of Kant’s categorical imperative, they might raise the question whether universalizability was a sufficient condition for something to count as a moral principle or maxim. They typically highlighted the utilitarian
principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number. They might go on to note that some utilitarians thought that agents should evaluate each and every moral decision by direct reference to that principle (act utilitarianism), but others thought the principle should be used to develop and evaluate moral rules, which agents then ought to follow even if on occasion following them resulted in a less satisfactory result (rule utilitarianism).
It is possible to draw a distinction between individual acts and general rules within deontological ethics, but deontological ethicians have generally presented our obligations in the form of rules. This raises a variety of questions. What are these rules? Where do they come from, or what are they based on? What should we do if rules happen to conflict? In an attempt to answer this last question, W. D. Ross proposed the idea of a prima facie duty, that is, a real duty that might on occasion have to yield to a higher or more important duty.12 The notion of prima facie duties invites the further question of how we know which duties take precedence over other duties. That question would take us into metaethics, which we will consider shortly.
There was something attractive or appealing about utilitarianism: both its egalitarianism and its acute sensitivity to the effect of action on the welfare of people at large. Still, the principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number might seem to justify actions that many people would not think were justifiable, such as the sacrifice of innocent persons to benefit larger groups or to protect those groups from harm. There was something attractive or appealing about Kantianism: its insistence on respect for persons. Still, Kant’s ethics also appears to forbid any and all lying, even to people bent on committing murder.13 The combination of attractive points and difficulties in Kantianism and utilitarianism invites a number of questions. Is it possible to devise a form of teleological ethics that is not subject to the difficulties of utilitarianism? Is it possible to devise a form of deontological ethics that is not subject to the difficulties of
Kantianism? Is it possible, despite the incompatibility of teleological ethics and deontological ethics, strictly understood, to combine what is attractive in teleological ethics with what is attractive in deontological ethics?
Normative Ethical Theory: Divine Command
Anglo-American ethics recognized a third kind of normative ethical theory: divine command theory, also known as theological voluntarism. What divine command theories have in common is the idea that what it is right for people to do is what God commands them to do. Most if not all of these theories were developed in a Jewish or Christian context, with the biblical Ten Commandments as the prime examples of divine commands.
Not all introductions to ethics discussed divine command ethics, but some, such as Frankena’s, recognized two different types of divine command theory. In the first kind, the divine commands are simply that, commands, commands whose content could be, or could have been, different from what it is. The content of the divine commands is fundamentally arbitrary. For example, it is wrong to steal, because God forbids it, but God could have commanded people to steal, and then it would be right, indeed obligatory, for people to steal. The second kind of divine command theory rejects the view that the content of the divine commands is arbitrary. It posits that God commands people to do what is good for them and to refrain from doing what is bad for them.14
Egoism and Altruism
Given that the best-known version of deontological ethics, Kantianism, the best-known version of teleological ethics, utilitarianism, and at least some forms of divine command ethics can
place heavy demands on individuals, it was only natural that AngloAmerican ethics should face the problem of self-interest and the competing claims of egoism and altruism.
Moral philosophers recognized two different kinds of egoism: psychological egoism and ethical egoism. Psychological egoism is the view, really a thesis in psychology, that as a matter of fact human beings always act with a view to their own self-interest as they perceive it. To take an example: If someone cites instances of apparently selfless or self-sacrificing behavior, the psychological egoist replies, “They are doing it because they think it is in their interest to do it. Otherwise they would not be doing it.” Ethical egoism, by contrast, is not a factual claim but a normative claim: “People ought to act in their own self-interest.” Commending ethical egoism presupposes that it is possible, if undesirable, for people not to act with a view to their own self-interest. If psychological egoism were true, there would be no point to commending ethical egoism. We would all be acting for our own self-interest, real or perceived, already. Nonetheless, people sometimes blur the line between ethical egoism and psychological egoism, or even appeal to psychological egoism in support of ethical egoism. Some of the moral philosophers of our period criticized that appeal as fallacious. Some argued that psychological egoism is either false or trivially true.15
To judge by the introductions to ethics, moral philosophers in our period were not of one mind about how to reply to ethical egoism or even how to formulate the issue.16 One approach was to address the question, “Why should we be moral?” or “Why should we do what is right?” In response to this, Kurt Baier argued that a consistent egoist could not adopt specifically moral rules. Any rules that he or she might adopt would be merely rules of thumb, subject to self-interest, not genuinely moral rules, which would be superior to self-interest. He then developed what he called “the moral point of view,” which he thought could serve as a criterion by which to distinguish true
moral rules from false moral rules. Taking the moral point of view means doing things on principle, not out of self-interest. The principles in question are taken to apply to everyone, not just to some people. They must be for the good of everyone, not just the good of some people.17 Baier argues that we have good selfinterested reasons to adopt the moral point of view. I take it he means by that reasons genuinely to make that viewpoint our own, to adopt it as superior to considerations of self-interest, not just provisionally or as a rule of thumb: “The answer to our question ‘Why should we be moral?’ is therefore as follows. We should be moral because being moral is following rules designed to overrule self-interest whenever it is in the interest of everyone alike that such rules should be generally followed.”18 Very roughly, the argument is that pursuit of one’s long-term self-interest makes it reasonable to accept limits on one’s pursuit of short-term self-interest. The rational egoist ought to accept limitations on his or her egoism. Frankena’s reply to ethical egoism accepts Baier’s distinction between the viewpoint of self-interest and the viewpoint of morality. “Prudentialism or living wholly by the principle of enlightened selflove just is not a kind of morality.” “The moral point of view is disinterested, not ‘interested.’”19 He summarizes, more succinctly than Baier did, what the moral point of view actually is: “One is taking the moral point of view if one is not being egoistic, one is doing things on principle, one is willing to universalize one’s principles, and in doing so one considers the good of everyone alike.”20 But, Frankena suggests, it is at least arguable that living morally is a form of excellent activity and a part of living the good life. It could make good sense for people who are trying to make a rational decision about how to lead their lives to adopt the moral point of view. Somewhat along the same line, Rachels presents three arguments in favor of ethical egoism and criticizes all three. He presents three arguments against it, criticizes the first and second,
but finds that the third, from the arbitrariness of treating oneself differently from others, shows that ethical egoism fails as a moral theory.21
Statements of the moral point of view were open to the charge of stating a particular moral point of view, that of liberal modernity, not the viewpoint of morality as such. Thus Kai Nielsen wrote,
However universalistic his intentions, what in fact [Kurt] Baier is doing is to characterize what is the moral point of view for a restricted cluster of moralities and most paradigmatically for liberal morality. It is a point of view which, by the very way it is characterized, is inescapably committed to regarding the “moralities” of slave societies, of caste societies, Nietzsche’s conception of master morality and his conception of slave morality and (Nietzsche aside) the conception of morality held by Plato and Aristotle as not being opposing moralities all taking the moral point of view, but as not really being genuine moralities at all.
But theorists of the moral point of view could admit the charge, deny that the moralities of Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, or of slave and caste societies were in fact moralities, and say that morality and liberal morality are one and the same.22
Metaethical Theories: Naturalism, Intuitionism, Noncognitivism
Given the opposition between teleological ethics and deontological ethics, and the contrast between both of them and divine command ethics, the question naturally arises whether there are good reasons to accept or reject these theories, good reasons to prefer one approach to the others. This leads naturally to issues of metaethics,
that is, issues about the meaning and justification of ethical claims and ethical theories. Our Anglo-American ethics recognized three main types of metaethical theories: naturalism (sometimes called definism), intuitionism (sometimes called nonnaturalism), and noncognitivism.23
The core idea of naturalism is that moral judgments, and in particular judgments of moral goodness and moral obligation, can be derived from facts that are not in and of themselves moral. One common version of naturalist metaethics is the view that ethical conclusions can be based on facts about what is good (beneficial) or bad (harmful) for human beings. The distinction between moral claims and nonmoral facts invites questions about the meaning and reference of the terms “moral” and “morality,” questions that are taken more and more seriously in the latter part of our period.
The core idea of intuitionism is that moral goodness is not identical with any natural property. For any natural property, such as being pleasant, it is an open question whether it is good or not. Goodness is not something that we reason to but something that we intuit or recognize directly. Any attempt to reason from a natural property of a thing to the thing’s being good begs the question whether that property is in fact good and commits (in the words of G. E. Moore) the naturalistic fallacy.24 The intuitionist thus posits not just a distinction between facts and goods, facts and obligations, but an unbridgeable gap between them. The naturalist, by contrast, either denies the distinction or accepts it but argues that the gap between the two can be bridged.
The core idea of noncognitivism is that ethical theories and particular ethical judgments are not matters of knowledge. They are not known or knowable either in the way that the intuitionist thinks they are (by some direct intuition) or in the way that the naturalist thinks they are (by derivation from nonmoral facts). Noncognitivism thus denies the claims of naturalism and intuitionism. Noncognitivists typically also propose alternative accounts of ethical theories,
particular judgments, and utterances, that is, of what they, the various theories, really are if they are not expressions of knowledge. One such account is the emotivism of A. J. Ayer and C. L. Stevenson, roughly the view that moral utterances are not truth claims but rather expressions of feeling or attitude.25 Another is R. M. Hare’s prescriptivism, roughly the view that the point of moral utterances is to influence people’s behavior.26
Facts and Values, Is and Ought
Consideration of normative ethics and metaethics brings us to the matter of facts and values and to what is often called the “is–ought problem.” Introductions to ethics commonly raised this problem apropos of a passage from book 3, part 1 of David Hume’s Treatise ofHuman Nature, in which he argues, or has been taken to argue, that books of ethics generally commit the logical fallacy of passing from factual claims to claims about duties or obligations. The passage has been the focus of so much study and commentary that I will quote it here: “In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and isnot, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an oughtnot.”
This sort of inference is often called the “modal fallacy,” or a violation of “Hume’s law.” Whether or not this is the correct interpretation of the passage from Hume’s Treatise, it surfaces the question about the relationship between factual claims and ethical claims, or, as some would put it, the relationship between nonmoral claims and moral claims.27
The issue about the relationships of fact and value, fact and obligation, gave rise to a considerable literature, with some contributors holding that there is no passing from factual claims to ethical claims and others holding that there is some way to do precisely that.28 The details of these arguments need not concern us here. What united the two camps, however, was the assumption that there is enough of a difference between matters of fact and matters of value/obligation that the relationship between the two was a problem that needed to be faced. Some thinkers in our period questioned this assumption, perhaps most notably the Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam.29
Relativism and Skepticism
Anglo-American moral philosophers in our period were well aware of issues about the objectivity and justification of ethical claims. These issues were central to the whole project of metaethics. Challenges to these claims went by the names of relativism, skepticism, and subjectivism. So far as I can tell, there was no general agreement about how these challenges should be met.
Frankena’s distinction of three kinds of relativism is perspicuous.30 The first of these is descriptive relativism, of which the best-known form is cultural relativism. This is the claim, in effect a thesis in sociology or anthropology, that different groups of people, different cultures, have substantively different ethics, that is, they recognize different things as good or bad, different things as obligatory or forbidden. At a certain level this is clearly true. What is disputed is how fundamental these differences are and what they do or do not entail for normative ethics.
The second type of relativism is normative relativism. Normative relativism asserts that different cultures shouldact on their different ethical beliefs or principles. Where descriptive relativism says that
people in culture X and people in culture Y have and act on different ethical principles, normative relativism says that it is right for people in culture X to act on their ethical principles and right for people in culture Y to act on their different ethical principles. The Romans are right to do as the Romans do. If, for example, a certain culture regards the claims of honesty as taking precedence over the claims of family loyalty, then people in that culture ought to give precedence to the claims of honesty. But if a certain other culture regards family loyalty as taking precedence over honesty, then people in that culture ought to give precedence to the claims of family loyalty.
The third type of relativism is metaethical relativism. This is the view that there is no objective rational way of justifying ethical claims, and thus that different, even contradictory, ethical claims are equally justified, or rather equally unjustified. This would seem to be close to, if not identical with, ethical skepticism, which we will take up in a moment.
Some people have blurred the lines between descriptive or cultural relativism, on the one hand, and normative and metaethical relativism, on the other, or even appealed to cultural relativism in support of normative or metaethical relativism. Moral philosophers in our period tend to criticize those appeals as fallacious.31 The differences between cultures, even if they go very deep, are not sufficient to establish that either normative or metaethical relativism is true.
Introductions to ethics in our period did not agree about how to describe the challenges of relativism and skepticism, much less about how to meet them. Ewing discusses skepticism on pages 26–27, 98, and 110–11 of his Ethics and then gives pages 111–15 to cultural relativism. He also discusses what he calls the subjective view of ethics on pages 26–27 and 156–57. Harman, whose index includes only proper names, has no discussion of skepticism or relativism, but his chapter 3 is entitled “Emotivism as Moderate
Nihilism.” Raphael has no index entries for “skepticism” or for “relativism” but does have a couple of entries for “subjectivism.” Rachels has no entries for “skepticism” or for “relativism,” but his second chapter is concerned with cultural relativism and his third chapter with subjectivism. Frankena does not discuss skepticism as such, presumably because he thinks his discussion of metaethical relativism says what needs to be said about it. Readers who look up “Ethical Skepticism” in Paul Edwards’s EncyclopediaofPhilosophywill be referred to “Emotive Theory of Ethics,” “Ethical Relativism,” and “Ethical Subjectivism.”
Philosophers in our period apparently recognized that issues about the objectivity and justification of ethical claims were too complex and difficult to be treated, on anything beyond the simplest level, in introductions to ethics. On a higher or more technical level there was no general agreement about how these issues should best be treated.32 In this situation, I would suggest that we draw a rough-and-ready distinction between two different contexts in which problems of objectivity, justification, relativism, skepticism, and subjectivism come up for discussion. The first context is theoretical: the continuing effort to come to terms with the legacies of Moore, Prichard, Ross, Ayer, Stevenson, Hare, and the heirs to their arguments. The second context is more obviously practical, not to say existential: addressing requests to justify particular claims about duties and obligations, or trying to answer the general question, “Why should I be moral?”
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
This section will highlight five sets of problems or difficulties that remained unsolved at the end of our period.
A first set of difficulties, at the level of normative ethics, may be called, for short, the problem of deontological and teleological ethics.
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earned seventy-five dollars a month, put her baby out to nurse and returned to the White House, where we got regular reports as to the progress of the invalid and the infant, each of whom proceeded to do as well as could be expected.
The other servants in the White House are paid the usual wages, from twenty-five to fifty dollars, and are no more and no less efficient than other good houseworkers in other homes. The entire White House staff is paid by the Government, the only private servants in our employ being a Filipino valet who had been with Mr. Taft for a number of years, and my personal maid.
© Harris & Ewing.
TWO CORNERS OF THE WHITE HOUSE
KITCHEN
In fact, all White House expenses are paid by the Government except actual table supply bills, and Mr. Taft is fond of insisting upon his conviction that the country treats its President exceedingly well. He was the first President to receive a salary of $75,000.00 a year, and when the subject of his nomination was uppermost in political discussions he did not hesitate to say that he thought this increase from $50,000.00 was an absolute necessity. He did not expect to spend $75,000.00 a year, but he knew by careful calculation and by a knowledge of President Roosevelt’s expenditures that he would have to spend at least $50,000.00 a year and he thought he had a citizen’s right, even as President, to provide a small competence for his family, a thing which in his twenty years of poorly paid official service he had never had an opportunity to do. He was fifty years old with two sons and a daughter in school and college and, as Secretary of War at least, he had long been working for a wage which was insufficient. But the country really is good to its President. It does not make him rich by any means, but it enables him to banish the wolf a fair distance from his door if he is sensible enough to assist its generosity by the exercise of a mild form of prudence.
My first inspection of the White House on the evening of my husband’s Inauguration was casual, but the next day I assumed the management of the establishment in earnest and proceeded upon a thorough investigation which resulted in some rather disquieting revelations.
Mrs. Roosevelt, as the retiring Mistress of the White House, naturally would make no changes or purchases which might not meet with the approval of her successor, so I found the linen supply depleted, the table service inadequate through breakages, and other refurnishing necessary. There is a government appropriation to meet the expense of such replenishments and repairs, and every President’s wife is supposed to avail herself of any part of it she requires to fit the mansion for her own occupancy.
Perhaps nothing in the house is so expressive of the various personalities of its Mistresses as the dinner services which each has contributed. For my part I was entirely satisfied with the quiet taste displayed by Mrs. Roosevelt and contented myself with filling up the different broken sets in her service to the number necessary for one hundred covers.
I always enjoyed, however, using some of the old historic plates and platters at small luncheons and dinners. There are enough plates left of the Lincoln set to serve a course to a party of thirty. Though I speak of the different designs as expressive of personalities they represent, perhaps, various periods of popular taste rather than individual preference. Samples of all the different services, displayed in cabinets in the long eastern corridor, are among the most interesting exhibits in the White House.
From the day my husband became President I never knew for certain until I entered the dining-room just how many persons there would be at luncheon. He always did credit me with a miraculous ability to produce food for any number of persons at a moment’s notice and when he was Governor of the Philippines and Secretary of War I always had to keep an emergency supply cupboard, but I did not feel that I could carry with me into the White House the happygo-lucky attitude toward the formalities which I had enjoyed in those days, so meeting his sudden demands became a slightly more serious matter. His haphazard hospitality was of more concern to the servants than to me, however, and I think it is only his own gift for inspiring respectful devotion on the part of his household staff that ever enables me to keep a cook more than a week at a time.
During our first spring in the White House Congress was in extra session for the purpose of revising the tariff and Mr. Taft was in constant conference with the different Senators and Representatives. We had members of Congress at luncheon and dinner daily, and at breakfast quite frequently.
Always, in consultation with my housekeeper and the head cook, I made out the daily menus.
“How many for luncheon, Madame?” was the cook’s invariable question.
“I haven’t any idea,” was my invariable reply.
If no guests had, to my knowledge, been invited I would give instructions to have luncheon prepared for the family only, emergency provision being a thing understood. My day’s plans would then be sent over to Mr. Young, the Executive Social Officer, who had his office in the Executive wing of the building, and I would go on
about my accustomed duties and pleasures knowing that no surprise would find us quite surprised.
Along about eleven o’clock the house telephone would ring, or a note would be sent over, and announcement would be made that Mr. So and So would lunch with the President and Mrs. Taft. The table would be laid while the kitchen staff stood calmly by awaiting final orders. In another half hour might come the announcement of a second guest, or group of guests, whereupon the amiable butler would have to make a complete change in table arrangements. Only about a half hour before the stated luncheon hour did the cook ever consider it safe to begin final preparations, but too often for the maintenance of entire smoothness in domestic routine Mr. Taft would come across from the Executive offices anywhere from a half hour to an hour late, bringing with him an extra guest, or even a number of extra guests whose coming had not been announced at all.
This system, or this lack of system, obtained throughout my four years in the White House, but I and my capable and willing staff, all of whom were devoted to the President, eventually adjusted ourselves to it and I began to take great delight in the informal meeting of so many interesting and distinguished men at our open luncheon table.
I tried to insist that the dinner hour should always be properly respected, and it usually was. While we gave many informal, small dinners,—nearly every night as a matter of fact,—there were crowded into my first season from March until I became ill in May most of the big official functions which are a part of White House life always, as well as a number of entertainments which were a part of my own scheme of innovations.
Our first official entertainment was the Diplomatic Tea on the 12th of March, just eight days after the Inauguration, and before I had time to settle myself in the midst of my own belongings which were to fill the empty spaces left by the removal of Mrs. Roosevelt’s personal effects. At this tea we received the entire Diplomatic Corps, including all heads of Missions, and all Secretaries and Attachés, with their wives.
Nothing could be more statelily important. It was the first presentation of the Diplomatic Corps to the new President and though, having been for several years in Washington society, we
knew many of them quite well, the method of procedure was as formal as the State Department could make it. Explicit directions as to the manner in which they were to present themselves were sent in printed form to every diplomatic representative in Washington, but while an almost oppressive dignity marked the proceedings, our wide acquaintance made it possible for us to depart somewhat from the rigid form decreed and to lend to the occasion an air of general friendliness it could not otherwise have had.
It might be interesting to those not familiar with Washington life to know just what the prescribed ceremonies are for such an event. I confess that at first they seemed to me to be rather formidable, accustomed as I was to the dignities of government.
The guests are not received by the President and his wife as they arrive. They are requested to “present themselves (in uniform) at the East entrance and to assemble in the East Room at a sufficient interval before five o’clock to enable them by that hour to place themselves in the order of precedence, each Chief of Mission being immediately followed by his staff and ladies of his Embassy or Legation.” They are met in the East Room by the Secretary of State and other State Department officials, and by some of the aides-decamp on duty at the White House.
In the meantime the President and his wife take their positions in the Blue Room and exactly at five o’clock the doors are thrown open and announcement is made in the East Room that they are ready to receive.
The Dean of the Diplomatic Corps then steps forward, past the military aides stationed at the door leading into the Blue Room and is presented by the senior military aide to the President. He in turn presents each member of his suite, all of whom pass promptly on and are presented by another aide to the President’s wife, the head of the Mission being presented to her at the end of these ceremonies. Each Ambassador or Minister, in strict order of precedence, passes by with his staff, and they all proceed through the Red Room and into the state Dining Room where tea and other refreshments are served.
At the conclusion of the presentations the President and his wife usually retire and leave their guests to be entertained for a few formal moments by whomever has been invited to preside at the teatable, but Mr. Taft and I followed them into the dining-room to have
tea with them. I knew this was a departure from established custom, but it seemed a perfectly natural thing for us to do. I forgot to take into consideration the attitude of our guests, however. Our unaccustomed presence rather bewildered the diplomats for a moment. There were no rules to guide them in such an emergency and they didn’t know exactly what was expected of them. I had finally to instruct one of the aides to announce unofficially to the wives of some of the more important of them that nothing at all was expected, and that they should retire without making any adieus whenever they so desired. I was told afterward that nearly everybody was pleased with the innovation, and in the official White House Diary—kept for the purpose of establishing precedents, I suppose—it was recommended that it be followed on all future occasions of a similar nature.
At our first state dinner, given to the Vice-President and Mrs. Sherman, there were thirty-two guests, all Cabinet Officers, Senators and Representatives. To prove my claim to a natural tendency toward simple and everyday methods I need only say that even as the President’s wife it seemed strange to me to have our guests arrive without immediate greetings from their host and hostess. Many a time at Malacañan Palace and in other homes I have gone through the not unusual experience of a hostess who spends the last possible moments in putting “finishing touches” to preparations for a dinner, then hurries off to dress in record time that she may be able to meet her first arriving guest with an air of having been ready and waiting for ever so long.
But at the White House the guests assemble in whatever room may be designated and there, grouped in order of rank, await the entrance of the President and his wife. At this first formal dinner of ours the guests assembled in the Blue Room, the Vice-President and Mrs. Sherman being first, of course, and nearest the door leading into the corridor, while beyond them were the Cabinet officers, then the Senators and Representatives in order of seniority.
Upon our appearance the band began to play “The Star Spangled Banner”—which, let me say parenthetically, is almost as difficult a tune to walk by as Mendelssohn’s Wedding March—and played just enough of it to bring us to the door of the Blue Room. After we had shaken hands with everybody the senior aide approached Mr. Taft
with Mrs. Sherman on his arm and announced that dinner was served, whereupon Mr. Taft offered his arm to Mrs. Sherman and started for the dining-room.
THE EAST ROOM
For my first dinner I chose pink Killarney roses for table decorations and it would be difficult to express the pleasure I felt in having just as many of them as I needed by merely issuing instructions to have them delivered. The White House greenhouses and nurseries were a source of constant joy to me. I had lived so long where plants are luxuriant and plentiful that a house without them seemed to me to be empty of a very special charm and the head horticulturist remarked at once that during my régime his gems of palms and ferns and pots of brilliant foliage were to be given their due importance among White House perquisites. I filled the windows of the great East Room with them, banked the fireplaces with them and used them on every possible occasion.
The state Dining Room is one of the many splendid results of the McKim restoration and, next to the East Room, is the handsomest room in the White House. It is not so tremendously large, its utmost
© Harris & Ewing.
capacity being less than one hundred, but it is magnificently proportioned and beautifully finished in walnut panelling with a fireplace and carved mantel on one side which would do honour to an ancient baronial hall. A few fine moose and elk heads are its only wall decorations.
We had table-tops of all sizes and shapes, but the one we had to use for very large dinners was in the form of a crescent which stretched around three sides of the room. For any dinner under sixty I was able to use a large oval top which could be extended by the carpenters to almost any size. Indeed, I have seen it so large that it quite filled the room leaving only enough space behind the chairs for the waiters to squeeze their way around with considerable discomfort. On this table I used the massive silver-gilt ornaments which President Monroe imported from France along with his interesting collection of French porcelains, clocks and statuettes which still occupy many cabinets and mantels here and there in the house.
These table ornaments remind one of the Cellini period when silversmiths vied with each other in elaborations. Based on oblong plate glass mirrors, each about three feet in length, they stretch down the middle of the table, end to end, a perfect riot of festooned railing and graceful figures upholding crystal vases. Then there are large gilded candelabra, centre vases and fruit dishes to match. In their way they are exceedingly handsome, and they certainly are appropriate to the ceremony with which a state dinner at the White House is usually conducted.
The White House silver is all very fine and there are quantities of it. It is all marked, in accordance with the simple form introduced at the beginning of our history, “The President’s House,” and some of it is old enough to be guarded among our historic treasures.
When I went to live at the White House I found, much to my surprise, that this silver had always been kept in a rather haphazard fashion in chests, or boxes, in the storeroom. I decided to remedy this even though in doing so I was compelled to encroach somewhat upon the White House custodian’s already limited quarters. These quarters are a good-sized office with the house supply rooms opening off it, and a smaller room adjoining. They are on the ground floor just across the wide corridor from the kitchen. At one end of the
smaller room I had built a closet with regular vault doors and combination locks. I had the space divided into compartments, with a special receptacle for each important article, and velvet-lined trays in drawers for flat silver, each one of which could be slipped out separately. This silver closet became the joy of Arthur Brooks’ life, he being the War Department Messenger who was my right hand man all the time my husband was Secretary of War and who was appointed White House Custodian at our request a short time before Mr. Taft was inaugurated.
I was “at home” informally at the White House about three afternoons a week when my friends came to see me and when I received many ladies who wrote and asked for an opportunity to call. I always received in the Red Room which, with fire and candles lighted, is pleasant enough to be almost cosy, large and imposing though it be. I usually had twenty or more callers and I found this a delightful way of meeting and getting close to people as I could not hope to do at the great formal receptions.
As an example of one of these, I might cite my first afternoon reception to the Congressional ladies for which something like four hundred invitations were issued. I intended to carry this off without assistance, other than that rendered by the ladies I had asked to preside over the refreshment tables, but in the end I asked Mr. Taft to receive with me, a task never very difficult for him. There were no men invited, so he had the pleasure of shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with several hundred women, and he did it without a single protest. I made the mistake on this occasion of receiving in the East Room as the guests arrived, thinking that by so doing I could make the party somewhat less formal. But I only succeeded in having the stairway leading up from the east entrance overcrowded and in making the affair much more formal than it would have been had I followed the usual course of permitting the people to assemble in the East Room and to be received in the Blue Room on their way through to the Dining Room. It amuses me to find that Captain Butt in the Official Diary has carefully recorded all my mistakes as well as my successes for the supposed benefit of other Mistresses of the White House.
I do not wish to convey an impression that life in the White House is all a public entertainment, but there are a certain number of set
functions during every season which are as much a part of Washington life as is a Congressional session. But even with teas, luncheons, musicals, small dinners, garden parties and dances coming at short intervals between the more official entertainments, we still had many evenings when there were so few guests as to make us feel quite like a family party. Indeed, once in a while we dined alone.
We began immediately, as our first spring advanced, to make almost constant use of the porches and terraces which are among the most attractive features of the White House. The long terrace extending from the East Room I found to be a most delightful promenade for guests on warm spring evenings, while the corresponding terrace leading out from the Dining Room proved most useful for large dinner parties at times when dining indoors would have been rather unpleasant.
With Congress in session nearly all summer Mr. Taft gave a series of Congressional dinners and the last one he had served on this terrace. A curious incident marked the occasion for special remembrance. It was known that one of the Senators invited had never crossed the White House threshold because of his unfriendly feeling toward the administration. He paid no attention whatever to his invitation—a formal one, of course, requiring a formal answer— until the day before the dinner. He then called the White House on the telephone and asked if he would be expected to wear a dress suit. Mr. Hoover, who received the inquiry, replied that evening dress was customary at White House dinners, whereupon the Senator mumbled something at the other end of the line. Mr. Hoover asked him whether or not he intended to come. He replied that he guessed he would, and abruptly rang off.
The next evening the party waited for him for a full half hour before they decided to sit down without him, and even then his vacant place was kept open for him. He did not come nor did he ever offer any kind of apology or excuse for his extraordinary conduct. There are certain manifestations of so-called Jeffersonian simplicity in this country of ours that I am sure Jefferson would deplore if he lived in this day and generation.
MRS. TAFT ON THE POTOMAC DRIVE
The north verandah of the White House is pleasant enough, but it lacks the charm of seclusion peculiar to the south portico which runs around the oval Blue Room and looks out upon the broad south garden with its great fountain, and with Potomac Park, the River and Washington’s Monument in the background. This soon became our favourite retreat and we used to sit there in the ever lengthening spring evenings, breathing the perfume of magnolia blossoms, watching the play of lights on the tree-dotted lawns and on the Monument—which is never so majestic as in the night—and realising to the full the pleasant privilege of living in this beautiful home of Presidents.
Mr. Taft had a Victrola in the Blue Room and he never failed, when opportunity offered, to lay out a few favourite records for his evening’s entertainment. Melba and Caruso, the Lucia Sextette, some old English melodies, a few lively ragtime tunes; in those delightful surroundings we found a Victrola concert as pleasant a diversion as one could desire. With no applause, no fixed attention, no conversation, no effort of any kind required, my husband found on such quiet evenings a relaxation he was fully able to appreciate during that first trying summer.
That Manila could lend anything to Washington may be an idea that would surprise some persons, but the Luneta is an institution whose usefulness to society in the Philippine capital is not to be overestimated. At least it was so in my day; and for a long time before Mr. Taft became President I had looked with ambitious designs upon the similar possibilities presented in the drives, the river-cooled air and the green swards of Potomac Park. I determined, if possible, to convert Potomac Park into a glorified Luneta where all Washington could meet, either on foot or in vehicles, at five o’clock on certain evenings, listen to band concerts and enjoy such recreation as no other spot in Washington could possibly afford.
The Army officer in charge of Public Buildings and Grounds had a bandstand erected in an admirable location at the end of an ellipse, and we decided that the long drive theretofore known as “The Speedway” should be renamed Potomac Drive. Arrangements were made to have band concerts every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon from five to seven o’clock.
Saturday, the 17th of April, the concert began, and at five o’clock Mr. Taft and I, in a small landaulette motor-car, went down to the driveway and took our places in the throng. The Park was full of people. As many as ten thousand crowded the lawns and footways, while the drive was completely packed with automobiles and vehicles of every description. Everybody saw everybody that he or she knew and there was the same exchange of friendly greetings that had always made the Luneta such a pleasant meeting place. I felt quite sure that the venture was going to succeed and that Potomac Drive was going to acquire the special character I so much wished it to have.
I also thought we might have a Japanese Cherry Blossom season in Potomac Park. Both the soil and climate encouraged such an ambition, so I suggested that all the blooming cherry trees obtainable in the nurseries of this country be secured and planted. They were able to find about one hundred only. Then the Mayor of Tokyo, having learned of our attempt to bestow the high flattery of imitation upon his country, offered to send us two thousand young trees. We accepted them with grateful pleasure, but one consignment was found to be afflicted with some contagious disease and had to be destroyed. I watched those that were planted later with great interest
and they seem to be doing very well. I wonder if any of them will ever attain the magnificent growth of the ancient and dearly loved cherry trees of Japan.
One of the delights of living in the White House is in being able to entertain one’s friends from a distance with a confidence that they are being given a real pleasure and an experience of an unusual kind. More often than not we had house guests, old friends from Cincinnati, from New Haven, from the Philippines, from here, there and everywhere; friends with whom we had been closely associated through the years and who felt whole-hearted satisfaction in my husband’s attainment of the Presidency.
To be stared at is not pleasant because it keeps one selfconscious all the time, but one gets more or less used to it. And anyhow, I enjoyed a sort of freedom which Mr. Taft did not share in any way. While he would probably have been recognised instantly in any crowd anywhere, I found that in most places I could wander about unobserved like any inconspicuous citizen. It was a valued privilege.
My daughter Helen likes to tell about an experience she had one day in Philadelphia. She was a student at Bryn Mawr College and she went in to Philadelphia to do some shopping. Among other things she had to get herself some shoes. At the shoe store she was waited on by a girl who was anything but intelligently attentive. She had tried Helen’s patience considerably by suggesting in a certain nagging way that her superior knowledge of what was “being worn” deserved respect, and that Helen didn’t know what she wanted anyhow.
Helen selected some shoes and decided to have them charged to me, and she thought what a satisfaction it was going to be to reveal her identity to the patronising and offensive young person. The young person produced pad and pencil to make out the check.
“Please have them charged to Mrs. William Howard Taft,” said Helen with what I am sure was her loftiest air.
“Address?”
“Washington.”
The salesgirl held her pencil poised over the pad and with the familiar expression of satisfaction over a sale accomplished said pleasantly:
“D.
CHAPTER XVIII
SOME WHITE HOUSE FORMALITIES
My very active participation in my husband’s career came to an end when he became President. I had always had the satisfaction of knowing almost as much as he about the politics and the intricacies of any situation in which he found himself, and my life was filled with interests of a most unusual kind. But in the White House I found my own duties too engrossing to permit me to follow him long or very far into the governmental maze which soon enveloped him.
I was permitted fully to enjoy only about the first two and a half months of my sojourn in the White House. In May I suffered a serious attack of illness and was practically out of society through an entire season, having for a much longer time than that to take very excellent care of myself. During this period my sisters, Mrs. Louis More, Mrs. Charles Anderson, Mrs. Laughlin and Miss Maria Herron, came from time to time to visit us and to represent me as hostess whenever it was necessary for me to be represented.
But even in my temporary retirement, as soon as I was strong enough to do anything at all, I always took a very lively interest in everything that was going on in the house, and from my apartments on the second floor directed arrangements for social activities almost as if I had been well.
I didn’t even have the privilege of presiding at all my first year garden parties, though this was a form of hospitality in which I was especially interested and which, I believe, I was able to make a notable feature of our administration. Garden parties are very popular in the Far East and I think, perhaps, I acquired my very strong liking for them out there, together with a few sumptuous notions as to what a garden party should be like.
The Emperor and Empress of Japan give two each year; one in the spring under the cherry blossoms to celebrate the Cherry Blossom season, and one in the autumn in the midst of chrysanthemums and brilliant autumn foliage. These are the events of the year in Tokyo, marking the opening and the close of the social season, and society sometimes prepares for them weeks ahead, never knowing when the Imperial invitations will be issued. The time depends entirely on the blossoming of the cherry trees or the chrysanthemums in the Imperial Gardens. When the blooms are at their best the invitations are sent out, sometimes not more than two days in advance, and society, in its loveliest garments, drops everything else and goes. It would be very nice, of course, to have always some such special reason for giving a garden party, but it is only in the “Flowery Kingdom” that the seasons are marked by flowers.
Nothing could be finer than the south garden of the White House. With its wide lawns, its great fountain, its shading trees, and the two long terraces looking down upon it all, it is ideally fitted for entertaining out of doors. And I must mention one other thing about it which appealed to me especially, and that is the wholesomeness of its clean American earth. This is lacking in the tropics. There one may not sit or lie on the ground, breathing health as we do here; the tropic soil is not wholesome. Not that one sits or lies on the ground at garden parties, but the very feel of the earth underfoot is delightfully different.
I determined to give my first garden party at the White House as soon as spring was sufficiently far advanced to make it possible. I issued invitations, 750 of them, for Friday, the 7th of May, planning at the same time three others to complete the season, one each Friday during the month.
In order to put possible bad weather off its guard, I made the invitations simply for an “At Home from 5 to 7 o’clock,” because all my life the elements have been unfriendly to me. Whenever I plan an outdoor fête I begin to consult the weather man with the hopeful faith of a Catherine de Medici appealing to her astrologer, but for all my humble spirit I very frequently get a downpour, or else a long drawn out and nerve-trying threat. Quite often the lowering clouds have passed and my prayers for sunshine have been rewarded, but
quite often, too, I have had to move indoors with an outdoor throng for whom no indoor diversions had been arranged.
By way of preparation for my first garden party I had a large refreshment tent put up in the northwest corner of the garden where it would be handy to the kitchen and serving rooms, while under the trees here and there I had tables spread at which a corps of waiters were to serve tea during the reception. The Marine Band I stationed behind the iron railing just under the Green Room. For any kind of outdoor entertainment at the White House the band had always been placed in the middle of the lawn between the south portico and the fountain, but I thought, and correctly, that the house wall would serve as a sounding board and make the music audible throughout the grounds. I arranged to receive under one of the large trees in a beautiful vista looking south.
No sooner were my plans completed, however, than the weather man predicted rain. It was coming, sure. Of course, I knew it would, but I had had too much experience to think of coming in out of the rain before it began to come down. I always sustain my hopeful attitude until the deluge descends.
About half past three it began to rain in torrents and I saw all of my festive-looking preparations reduced to sopping wrecks before there was even time to rush them indoors. By five o’clock, when it was time for the people to begin to arrive, it had stopped raining, but the lawns were soaked and the trees were dripping dismally, so I directed the band to move into the upper corridor, as usual for afternoon affairs, had the refreshment tables spread in the state Dining Room and took my by that time accustomed position to receive the long line of guests in the East Room.
A week later I had better luck. I sent out the same kind of invitations, made the same kind of preparations, slightly elaborated, and was rewarded with a perfect mid-May day.
The guests arrived at the East Entrance, came down the Long Corridor, out through one of the special guest dressing-rooms, and down the long slope of the lawn to the tree where Mr. Taft and I stood to receive them, with Captain Archibald Butt to make the presentations. At the next garden party I requested the gentlemen to come in white clothes, in thin summer suits, or in anything they chose to wear, instead of in frock coats. Some young people played
tennis on the courts throughout the reception; it was warm enough for bright-coloured parasols and white gowns; the fountain made rainbows and diamond showers in the sun, and altogether it was a most pleasing picture of informal outdoor enjoyment. Each year after that the four May garden parties were among the most popular entertainments of our social season.
The question of a “Summer Capital,” as the President’s summer home is called, was quite a serious one for us to settle. We had been going to Murray Bay for so many years that we had few affiliations with any other place, and we were most uncertain as to what we might be able to do.
We finally selected a number of likely places and made our choice by the process of elimination. One location was too hot, another had a reputation for mosquitoes, another was too far away, another hadn’t first-class railway, postal and telegraph facilities, and another, worst drawback of all, had no good golf links. It wouldn’t have been a livable place for Mr. Taft without golf links because golf was his principal form of exercise and recreation. Also the whole family agreed that we must be near the sea, so our search finally narrowed to the Massachusetts coast. I decided on the North Shore, as the coast from Beverly to Gloucester is called, because it had every qualification for which we were seeking, including excellent golf at the Myopia and Essex County clubs. Then, too, it had a further attraction in that the summer homes of a number of our friends were located there, or in the near vicinity.
© Harris & Ewing.
THE
WHITE HOUSE
GARDEN
AND WASHINGTON’S
MONUMENT FROM THE SOUTH PORTICO
I went up in the spring to Beverly Farms, with my friend Miss Boardman, and inspected houses for three days, finally selecting one, principally for its location. It stood near the sea and its velvety green lawns sloped all the way down to the sea-wall. From its verandah one could see out across Salem Harbour to Marblehead.
The house itself was a modern frame cottage, as simple as anything well could be, with a fine verandah and a dormer windowed third story. It was large enough for the family and for such visitors as we inevitably would have to accommodate, but besides the Taft family, which was numerous enough at that time, there were Captain Butt and a large corps of secretaries and stenographers, to say nothing of the Commander of the Sylph, the President’s smaller yacht, who all had to be within call when they were wanted. Then, too, there was the necessity for Executive Offices and I didn’t think it would seem like having a vacation at all if the Executive Offices could not be somewhere out of sight so that they might sometimes be out
of mind. The President didn’t expect to be able to spend much of his time away from Washington the first summer but when he did come to Beverly I wanted him to feel that he was at least partially detaching himself from business. So another house was found in the town, yet on the seashore, and was fitted up for Executive Offices and as a home for the office staff and Captain Butt. The secret service men, like the poor, we had with us always, but it never seemed to me that they “lived” anywhere. They were merely around all the time. They were never uniformed, of course, and looked like casual visitors. They used to startle callers by emerging suddenly from behind bushes or other secluded spots—not I am sure because of a weakness for detective methods, but because they concealed comfortable chairs in these places—and asking them what they wanted. It was sometimes most amusing and sometimes rather trying, but as long as there are cranks and unbalanced persons such precautions will be necessary for the protection of Presidents, and anyhow, one gets so used to the men as almost to forget what they are there for.
We did not go to Beverly the first summer until the third of July. Captain Butt preceded us to make final arrangements for our reception on the Fourth, and the servants and motor cars had been sent on several days before. I was still in such ill health that it was necessary to avoid the excitement of the inevitable crowds, so when our private car “Mayflower” arrived in Beverly the welcome ceremonies were purposely subdued. A great crowd was present at the station, but at Mr. Taft’s request no speeches were made. Shortly after we arrived at the house the Mayor of Beverly, with a committee of citizens, called, an address of welcome was delivered, to which Mr. Taft responded and cordial relations were established. But nothing more occurred even though it was the Fourth of July.
Mr. Taft spent just one day with us, then hurried away to keep a bewildering number of engagements here and there before he returned to Washington, where Congress was still in stormy session over the tariff bill.
He came back in August to spend a month with us, and then the little sea-side colony, which we had found as quiet as the woods, except for the lavish hospitality of its people, became indeed the nation’s summer capital. Nobody found it inconvenient to come to
