![could prescribe. The first drug will ameliorate the symptoms, but will
not cure the patient. The doctor knows that one of the other two drugs
will cure the patient completely, and the other one will kill the agent.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t know which is which. According to hyper-
objectivism, the right one to prescribe is the one that will actually cure
the patient. According to prospectivism, the right one to prescribe is the
safe drug, even though the doctor knows that that would not be the best
possible option.
The most common argument for prospectivism over hyper-objectivism
can be characterized in terms of the responsibility constraint. Prospec-
tivism does a better job of meeting the responsibility constraint than the
hyper-objectivist account of rightness. The thought is something like
this: ‘what we really ought to do, cannot be what an omniscient agent
would do. Rather, it must be based on a more realistic agent. We couldn’t
reliably do what an omniscient agent would do, and so we couldn’t
possibly be blameworthy for not doing what an omniscient agent
would do.’ Agents are not usually responsible for doing or failing to do
the hyper-objectivism-right act because, although it is available in some
sense, it is not sufficiently accessible to them.⁷ Or, to put the same point a
different way, on a hyper-objectivist account of rightness we will have
excuses too often. Excuses will be the norm, not the exception.
As P. F. Strawson points out, the standard way to have an excuse is to
have done something bad, but without having intended it that way. In
Strawson’s terms, the relevant bad quality of will is absent, and so the agent
is not, after all, responsible for the injury (Strawson, 1962, in Watson, 2003,
77). This is consistent with J. L. Austin’s distinction between a justification
and an excuse. Austin avoids the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and instead uses
non-deontic terms: “In the one defence, [justification] . . . we accept respon-
sibility but deny that it was bad: in the other, [excuse] we admit that it was
bad but don’t accept full, or even any, responsibility” (1956, 2). We could
put Austin’s point in deontic terms: a justification involves admitting that
you did the act but denying that it was wrong, whereas an excuse involves
admitting that the act was wrong, but denying responsibility for it. An
excuse here is a release from blameworthiness. Denying responsibility is
not denying causal responsibility, it is denying blameworthiness.
⁷ This is Howard-Snyder’s argument (1997).
](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-34-320.jpg)
![WINTER-SOLSTICE
FESTIVAL.
symbol of productive power and heat, or of life, attribute of the life-
endowing Shiva; among the Egyptians it represents the yearly
rejuvenation of germs and blossoms. The snake Agathodæmon
appears with ears of grain and poppies, as the symbol of fertility. If
the god exhibits this nature of his, in spring, in the rain, then the
snake is a suitable attribute. In India, snakes are genii of seas, and
the Punjab, whose fertility is assured by the yearly inundations, has
the name of snake lands (Nagakhanda), and claims an ancient
worship. The sustaining water-god, Vishnu, also received the snake
attribute. Among the Chinese, the water could be represented by a
snake. The Peruvians call the boa constrictor the mother of nature.
The idea of the yearly renewal of nature is also connected with that
of time forever young, and the Aztecs, therefore, encircle their cycle
with a snake as the symbol of time. The more positive signification
which the snake, placed by the side of the humming-bird, gives to
Huitzilopochtli, is that of a soothsaying god, like the snake Python
among the Greeks. The snake signified 'king' among the Egyptians,
and this suits Huitzilopochtli also, who may properly enough be
considered the real king of his people. If, as connected with
Huitzilopochtli, the snake also represents the war god, on account of
its spirited mode of attack, I cannot with certainty say, but the myth
as well as the worship places it in this relation to the war goddess
Athene. Although the idea of a national and a war god is not quite
obscured in the snake attribute, yet the nature side is especially
denoted by it, as in the southern countries, where snake worship
prevailed; the reference to the southern nature of this god is quite
evident in the snake attribute. In the north, moisture, represented
by the snake, has never attained the cosmological import which it
has in the hot countries of the south. There, the snake rather
represents an anticosmogonic, or a bad principle.[VIII-15]
Mr Tylor, without committing himself to any extent
in details, yet agrees, as far as he goes, with
Müller. He says: "The very name of Mexico seems
derived from Mexitli, the national war-god, identical or identified with](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-58-320.jpg)
![the hideous gory Huitzilopochtli. Not to attempt a general solution of
the enigmatic nature of this inextricable compound parthenogenetic
deity, we may notice the association of his principal festival with the
winter solstice, when his paste idol was shot through with an arrow,
and being thus killed, was divided into morsels and eaten, wherefore
the ceremony was called the teoqualo, or 'god-eating.' This, and
other details, tend to show Huitzilopochtli as originally a nature-
deity, whose life and death were connected with the year's, while his
functions of war-god may be of later addition."[VIII-16]
Of this festival of the winter solstice the date and further particulars
are given by the Vatican Codex as follows:—
The name Panquetzaliztli, of the Mexican month that began on the
first of December, means, being interpreted, 'the elevation of
banners.' For, on the first day of December every person raised over
his house a small paper flag in honor of this god of battle; and the
captains and soldiers sacrificed those that they had taken prisoners
in war, who, before they were sacrificed, being set at liberty, and
presented with arms equal to their adversaries, were allowed to
defend themselves till they were either vanquished or killed, and
thus sacrificed. The Mexicans celebrated in this month the festival of
their first captain, Vichilopuchitl. They celebrated at this time the
festival of the wafer or cake. They made a cake of the meal of
bledos, which is called tzoalli, and having made it, they spoke over it
in their manner, and broke it into pieces. These the high priest put
into certain very clean vessels, and with a thorn of maguey, which
resembles a thick needle, he took up with the utmost reverence
single morsels, and put them into the mouth of each individual, in
the manner of a communion—and I am willing to believe that these
poor people have had the knowledge of our mode of communion or
of the preaching of the gospel; or perhaps the devil, most envious of
the honor of God, may have led them into this superstition in order
that by this ceremony he might be adored and served as Christ our
Lord. On the twenty-first of December they celebrated the festival of
this god—through whose instrumentality, they say, the earth became](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-59-320.jpg)
![DECORATIONS OF
TLALOC.
again visible after it had been drowned with the waters of the
deluge: they therefore kept his festival during the twenty following
days, in which they offered sacrifices to him.[VIII-17]
The deity Tlaloc, or Tlalocateuchtli, whom we have
several times found mentioned as seated beside
Huitzilopochtli in the great temple, was the god of
water and rain, and the fertilizer of the earth. He was held to reside
where the clouds gather, upon the highest mountain-tops, especially
upon those of Tlaloc, Tlascala, and Toluca, and his attributes were
the thunderbolt, the flash, and the thunder. It was also believed that
in the high hills there resided other gods, subaltern to Tlaloc—all
passing under the same name, and revered not only as gods of
water but also as gods of mountains. The prominent colors of the
image of Tlaloc were azure and green, thereby symbolizing the
various shades of water. The decorations of this image varied a good
deal according to locality and the several fancies of different
worshipers: the description of Gama, founded on the inspection of
original works of Mexican religious art, is the most authentic and
complete. In the great temple of Mexico, in his own proper chapel,
called epeoatl, adjoining that of Huitzilopochtli, this god of water
stood upon his pedestal. In his left hand was a shield ornamented
with feathers; in his right were certain thin, shining, wavy sheets of
gold representing his thunderbolts, or sometimes a golden serpent
representing either the thunderbolt or the moisture with which this
deity was so intimately connected. On his feet were a kind of half-
boots, with little bells of gold hanging therefrom. Round his neck
was a band or collar set with gold and gems of price; while from his
wrists depended strings of costly stones, even such as are the
ornaments of kings. His vesture was an azure smock reaching to the
middle of the thigh, cross-hatched all over with ribbons of silver
forming squares; and in the middle of each square was a circle also
of silver, while in the angles thereof were flowers, pearl-colored, with
yellow leaves hanging down. And even as the decoration of the
vesture so was that of the shield; the ground blue, covered with
crossed ribbons of silver and circles of silver: and the feathers of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-60-320.jpg)
![PRAYER TO
TLALOC.
PRAYER FOR RAIN.
yellow and green and flesh-color and blue, each color forming a
distinct band. The body was naked from mid-thigh down, and of a
grey tint, as was also the face. This face had only one eye of a
somewhat extraordinary character: there was an exterior circle of
blue, the interior was white with a black line across it and a little
semi-circle below the line. Either round the whole eye or round the
mouth was a doubled band, or ribbon of blue; this, although
unnoticed by Torquemada, is affirmed by Gama to have been never
omitted from any figure of Tlaloc, to have been his most
characteristic device, and that which distinguished him specially from
the other gods. In his open mouth were to be seen only three
grinders; his front teeth were painted red, as was also the pendant,
with its button of gold, that hung from his ear. His head-adornment
was an open crown, covered in its circumference with white and
green feathers, and from behind it over the shoulder depended other
plumes of red and white. Sometimes the insignium of the
thunderbolt is omitted with this god, and Ixtlilxochitl represents him,
in the picture of the month Etzalli, with a cane of maize in the one
hand, and in the other a kind of instrument with which he was
digging in the ground. In the ground thus dug were put maize leaves
filled with a kind of food, like fritters, called etzalli; from this the
month took its name.[VIII-18]
A prayer to this god has been preserved by
Sahagun, in which it will be noticed that the word
Tlaloc is used sometimes in the singular and
sometimes in the plural:—
O our Lord, most clement, liberal giver and lord of
verdure and coolness, lord of the terrestrial paradise, odorous and
flowery, and lord of the incense of copal, woe are we that the gods
of water, thy subjects, have hid themselves away in their retreat,
who are wont to serve us with the things we need and who are
themselves served with ulli and auchtli and copal. They have left
concealed all the things that sustain our lives, and carried away with
them their sister the goddess of the necessaries of life, and carried](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-61-320.jpg)
![VENGEANCE OF
TLALOC.
the fowls and birds of precious feather, such as the quechotl and the
caguan, fly and sing and suck the herbs and flowers. And let not this
come about with thunderings and lightnings, symbols of thy wrath;
for if our lords the Tlalocs come with thunder and lightning the
whole people, being lean and very weak with hunger, would be
terrified. If indeed some are already marked out to go to the earthly
paradise by the stroke of the thunderbolt, let this death be restricted
to them, and let no injury befall any of the other people in mountain
or cabin; neither let hurt come near the magueys or the other trees
and plants of the earth; for these things are necessary to the life
and sustenance of the people, poor, forsaken, and cast-away, who
can with difficulty get food enough to live, going about through
hunger with the bowels empty and sticking to the ribs. O our Lord,
most compassionate, most generous, giver of all nourishment, be
pleased to bless the earth and all the things that live on the face
thereof. With deep sighing and with anguish of heart I cry upon all
those that are gods of water, that are in the four quarters of the
world, east and west, north and south, and upon those that dwell in
the hollow of the earth, or in the air, or in the high mountains, or in
the deep caves, I beseech them to come and console this poor
people and to water the earth; for the eyes of all that inhabit the
earth, animals as well as men, are turned toward you, and their
hope is set upon your persons. O our Lord, be pleased to come.[VIII-
19]
This is a prayer to Tlaloc. But it was not with
prayers alone that they deprecated his wrath and
implored his assistance; here as elsewhere in the
Mexican religion sacrifices played an important part. When the rain
failed and the land was parched by drought, great processions were
made in which a number of hairless dogs, common to the country,
and good to eat, were carried on decorated litters to a place devoted
to this use. There they were sacrificed to the god of water by cutting
out their hearts. Afterwards the carcasses were eaten amid great
festivities. All these things the Tlascaltec historian, Camargo, had](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-65-320.jpg)
![seen with his own eyes thirty years before writing his book. The
sacrifices of men, which were added to these in the days of
greatness of the old religion, he describes as he was informed by
priests who had officiated thereat. Two festivals in the year were
celebrated to Tlaloc, the greater feast and the less. Each of these
was terminated by human sacrifices. The side of the victim was
opened with a sharp knife; the high priest tore out the heart, and
turning toward the east offered it with lifted hands to the sun,
crushing it at the same time with all his strength. He repeated this,
turning in succession towards the remaining three cardinal points;
the other tlamacaxques, or priests, not ceasing the while to darken
with clouds of incense the faces of the idols. The heart was lastly
burned and the body flung down the steps of the temple. A priest,
who had afterwards been converted to Christianity, told Camargo
that when he tore out the heart of a victim and flung it down, it
used to palpitate with such force as to clear itself of the ground
several times till it grew cold. Tlaloc was held in exceeding respect
and the priests alone had the right to enter his temple. Whoever
dared to blaspheme against him was supposed to die suddenly or to
be stricken of thunder; the thunderbolt, instrument of his
vengeance, flashed from the sky even at the moment it was clearest.
The sacrifices offered to him in times of drought were never without
answer and result; for, as Camargo craftily insinuates, the priests
took good care never to undertake them till they saw indications of
coming rain; besides, he adds—introducing, in defiance of nec deus
intersit, a surely unneeded personage, if we suppose his last
statement true—the devil, to confirm these people in their errors,
was always sure to send rain.[VIII-20]
Children were also sacrificed to Tlaloc. Says Motolinia, when four
years came together in which there was no rain, and there remained
as a consequence hardly any green thing in the fields, the people
waited till the maize grew as high as the knee, and then made a
general subscription with which four slave children, of five or six
years of age, were purchased. These they sacrificed in a cruel](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-66-320.jpg)
![SACRIFICES OF
CHILDREN.
manner by closing them up in a cave, which was never opened
except on these occasions.[VIII-21]
According to Mendieta, again, children were sometimes offered to
this god by drowning. The children were put into a canoe which was
carried to a certain part of the lake of Mexico where was a whirlpool,
which is no longer visible. Here the boat was sunk with its living
cargo. These gods had, according to the same author, altars in the
neighborhood of pools especially near springs; which altars were
furnished with some kind of roof, and at the principal fountains were
four in number set over against each other in the shape of a cross—
the cross of the rain god.[VIII-22]
The Vatican Codex says that in April a boy was sacrificed to Tlaloc
and his dead body put into the maize granaries or maize fields—it is
not clearly apparent which—to preserve the food of the people from
spoiling.[VIII-23] It is to Sahagun, however, that we must turn for the
most complete and authentic account of the festivals of Tlaloc with
their attendant sacrifices.
In the first days of the first month of the year,
which month is called in some parts of Mexico,
Quavitleloa, but generally Atlcaoalo, and begins on
the second of our February, a great feast was made in honor of the
Tlalocs, gods of rain and water. For this occasion many children at
the breast were purchased from their mothers; those being chosen
that had two whirls (remolinos) in their hair, and that had been born
under a good sign; it being said that such were the most agreeable
sacrifice to the storm gods, and most likely to induce them to send
rain in due season. Some of these infants were butchered for this
divine holiday on certain mountains, and some were drowned in the
lake of Mexico. With the beginning of the festival, in every house,
from the hut to the palace, certain poles were set up and to these
were attached strips of the paper of the country, daubed over with
india-rubber gum, said strips being called amateteuitl; this was
considered an honor to the water-gods. And the first place where](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-67-320.jpg)
![children were killed was Quauhtepetl, a high mountain in the
neighborhood of Tlatelulco; all infants, boys or girls, sacrificed there
were called by the name of the place, Quauhtepetl, and were
decorated with strips of paper dyed red. The second place where
children were killed was Yoaltecatl, a high mountain near Guadalupe.
The victims were decorated with pieces of black paper, with red lines
on it, and were named after the place, Yoaltecatl. The third death-
halt was made at Tepetzingo, a well-known hillock that rose up from
the waters of the lake opposite Tlatelulco; there they killed a little
girl, decking her with blue paper, and calling her Quetzalxoch, for so
was this hillock called by another name. Poiauhtla, on the boundary
of Tlascala, was the fourth hill of sacrifice. Here they killed children,
named as usual after the locality, and decorated with paper on which
were lines of india-rubber oil. The fifth place of sacrifice was the no
longer visible whirlpool or sink of the lake of Mexico, Pantitlan.
Those drowned here were called Epcoatl, and their adornment
epuepaniuhqui. The sixth hill of death was Cocotl,[VIII-24] near
Chalcoatenco; the infant victims were named after it and decorated
with strips of paper of which half the number were red and half a
tawny color. The mount Yiauhqueme, near Atlacuioaia, was the
seventh station; the victims being named after the place and
adorned with paper of a tawny color.
All these miserable babes before being carried to their death were
bedecked with precious stones and rich feathers and with raiment
and sandals wrought curiously; they put upon them paper wings (as
if they were angels); they stained their faces with oil of india-rubber,
and on the middle of each tiny cheek they painted a round spot of
white. Not able yet to walk, the victims were carried in litters shining
with jewels and awave with plumes; flutes and trumpets bellowed
and shrilled round the little bedizened heads, all so unfortunate in
their two whirls of hair, as they passed along; and everywhere as the
litters were borne by, all the people wept. When the procession
reached the temple near Tepetzinco, on the east, called Tozocan, the
priests rested there all night, watching and singing songs, so that
the little ones could not sleep. In the morning the march was again](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-68-320.jpg)
![SPOLIATION OF
CÆSAR FOR THE
CHURCH.
resumed; if the children wept copiously those around them were
very glad, saying it was a sign that much rain would fall; while if
they met any dropsical person on the road it was taken for a bad
omen and something that would hinder the rain. If any of the temple
ministers, or of the others called quaquavitli, or of the old men,
broke off from the procession or turned back to their houses before
they came to the place where the sacrifice was done, they were held
for infamous and unworthy of any public office; thenceforward they
were called mocauhque, that is to say, 'deserters.'[VIII-25]
More ludicrous than diabolical are the ceremonies
of the next feast of Tlaloc. In the sixth Aztec
month, the month Etzalqualixtli, there was held a
festival in honor of the gods of water and rain.
Before the commencement of this festival the idol priests fasted four
days, and before beginning to fast they made a procession to a
certain piece of water, near Citlaltepec, to gather tules; for at that
place these rushes grew very tall and thick and what part of them
was under water was very white. There they pulled them up, rolled
them in bundles wrapped about with their blankets, and so carried
them back on their shoulders. Both on going out for these rushes
and on coming back with them, it was the custom to rob anyone
that was met on the road; and as every one knew of this custom the
roads were generally pretty clear of stragglers about this time. No
one, not even a king's officer returning to his master with tribute,
could hope to escape on such an occasion, nor to obtain from any
court or magistrate any indemnification for loss or injury so
sustained in goods or person; and if he made any resistance to his
clerical spoilers they beat and kicked and dragged him over the
ground. When they reached the temple with their rushes they
spread them out on the ground and plaited them, white with green,
into as it were painted mats, sewing them firm with threads of
maguey-root; of these mats they made stools, and chairs with
backs. The first day of the fast arrived, all the idol ministers and
priests retired to their apartments in the temple buildings. There
retired all those called tlamacaztequioagues, that is to say, 'priests](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-69-320.jpg)
![attention to the matter and have him punished therefor. Some
offered instead of dough four little pies or four pods of green pepper.
A careful scrutiny was also observed to see if any one had any dirt
on his blanket, or any bit of thread or hair or feather, and that no
one should trip or fall; for in such a case he had to be punished; and
as a consequence every man took good heed to all his steps and
ways during these four days. At the end of each day's offerings,
certain old men, called quaquacuiltin came, their faces dyed black,
and their heads shaved, save only the crown of the head, where the
hair was allowed to grow long, the reverse of the custom of the
Christian priests. These old men daily collected the offerings that
had been made, dividing them among themselves. It was further the
custom with all the priests and in all the temples, while fasting these
four days, to be wakened at midnight by the blast of horns and
shells and other instruments; when all rose up and, utterly naked,
went to where were certain thorns of maguey, cut for the purpose
the day before, and with little lancets of stone they hacked their
ears, staining the prepared thorns of maguey and besmearing their
faces with the blood that flowed; each man staining maguey-thorns
with his blood in number proportioned to his devotion, some five,
others more, others less. This done all the priests went to bathe
themselves, how cold soever it might be, attended by the music of
marine shells and shrill whistles of baked clay. Every one had a little
bag strapped to his shoulders, ornamented with tassels or strips of
painted paper; in these bags was carried a sort of herb ground fine
and made up with a kind of black dye into little longish pellets.[VIII-
26] The general body of the priests marched along, each one
carrying a leaf of maguey in which the thorns were stuck, as in a
pincushion, which he had to use. Before these went a priest with his
censer full of live coals and a bag of copal; and in advance of all
these walked one carrying a board on his shoulder of about a span
broad and two yards long, hollowed apparently in some way, and
filled with little rollers of wood that rattled and sounded as the
bearer went along shaking them.[VIII-27] All the priests took part in
this procession, only four remaining behind to take care of the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-71-320.jpg)
![RELIGIOUS
DISCIPLINE.
temple-building, or calmecac, which was their monastery. These four
during the absence of the others remained seated in the calmecac
and occupied themselves in devotion to the gods, in singing and in
rattling with a hollow board of the sort mentioned above. At the
piece of water where the priests were to bathe there were four
houses, called axaucalli, 'fog houses,' set each toward one of the
four quarters of the compass; in the ablutions of the first night one
of these houses was occupied, on the second night another, and so
on through all the four nights and four houses of the fog. Here also
were four tall poles standing up out of the water. And the
unfortunate bathers, naked from the outset as we remember,
reached this place trembling and their teeth chattering with cold.
One of their number mumbled a few words, which being translated
mean: this is the place of snakes, the place of mosquitos, the place
of ducks, and the place of rushes. This said, all flung themselves into
the water and began to splash with their hands and feet, making a
great noise and imitating the cries of various aquatic birds.[VIII-28]
When the bathing was over, the naked priests took their way back
accompanied by the music of pipes and shells. Half dead with cold
and weariness they reached the temple, where drawing their
mantles over them they flung themselves down in a confused heap
on the rush mats, so often mentioned, and slept as best they could.
We are told that some talked in their sleep, and some walked about
in it, and some snored, and some sighed in a painful manner. There
they lay in a tangled weary heap not rising till noon of the next day.
The first thing to be done on waking was to array
themselves in their canonicals, take their censers,
and to follow an old priest called Quaquacuilti to
all the chapels and altars of the idols, incensing them. After this they
were at liberty to eat; they squatted down in groups, and to each
one was given such food as had been sent to him from his own
house; and if any one took any of the portion of another, or even
exchanged his for that of another, he was punished for it.
Punishment also attended the dropping of any morsel while eating, if
the fault were not atoned for by a fine. After this meal, they all went](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-72-320.jpg)
![to cut down branches of a certain kind called acxoiatl, or, where
these were not to be found, green canes instead, and to bring them
to the temple in sheaves. There they sat down, every man with his
sheaf, and waited for an arranged signal. The signal given, every
one sprang up to some appointed part of the temple to decorate it
with his boughs; and if any one went to a place not his, or wandered
from his companions, or lagged behind them, they punished him—a
punishment only to be remitted by paying to his accuser, within the
four days of which we are now speaking, either a hen or a blanket or
a breech-clout, or, if very poor, a ball of dough in a cup.
These four days over, the festival was come, and every man began it
by eating etzalli, a kind of maize porridge, in his own house. For
those that wished it there was general dancing and rejoicing. Many
decked themselves out like merry-andrews and went about in parties
carrying pots, going from house to house, demanding etzalli. They
sang and danced before the door, and said, "If you do not give me
some porridge, I will knock a hole in your house;" whereupon the
etzalli was given. These revels began at midnight and ceased at
dawn. Then indeed did the priests array themselves in all their glory:
underneath was a jacket, over that a thin transparent mantle called
aiauhquemitl, decorated with parrot-feathers set cross-wise.
Between the shoulders they fastened a great round paper flower, like
a shield. To the nape of the neck they attached other flowers of
crumpled paper of a semi-circular shape; these hung down on both
sides of the head like ears. The forehead was painted blue and over
the paint was dusted powder of marcasite. In the right hand was
carried a bag made of tiger-skin, and embroidered with little white
shells which clattered as one walked. The bag seems to have been
three-cornered; from one angle hung down the tiger's tail, from
another his two fore feet, from another his two hind feet. It
contained incense made from a certain herb called yiauhtli.[VIII-29]
There went one priest bearing a hollow board filled with wooden
rattles, as before described. In advance of this personage there
marched a number of others, carrying in their arms images of the
gods made of that gum that is black and leaps, called ulli (india-](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-73-320.jpg)
![the shoulders were carried the incense-bags embroidered with little
white shells—bags made of tiger-skins, as before described, for the
chief priests, and of paper painted to imitate tiger-skin in the case of
the inferior priests. Some of these satchels were fashioned to
resemble the bird called atzitzicuilotl, others to resemble ducks. The
priests marched in procession to the temple, and before all marched
the priest of Tlaloc. He had on his head a crown of basketwork,
fitting close to the temples below and spreading out above, with
many plumes issuing from the middle of it. His face was anointed
with melted india-rubber gum, black as ink, and concealed by an
ugly mask with a great nose, and a wig attached which fell as low as
the waist. All went along mumbling to themselves as if they prayed,
till they came to the cu of Tlaloc. There they stopped and spread
tule mats on the ground, and dusted them over with powdered tule-
leaves mixed with yiauhtli incense. Upon this the acting priest placed
four round chalchiuites, like little balls; then he took a small hook
painted blue, and touched each ball with it; and as he touched each
he made a movement as if drawing back his hand, and turned
himself completely round. He scattered more incense on the mats,
then he took the board with the rattles inside and sounded with it—
perhaps a kind of religious stage thunder in imitation of the thunder
of his god. Upon this every one retired to his house or to his
monastery and put off his ornaments; and the unfortunates who had
been ducked were carried at last to their own dwellings for the rest
and recovery that they so sorely needed. That night the festivities
burst out with a new glory, the musical instruments of the cu itself
were sounded, the great drums and the shrill shells. Well watched
that night were the prisoners who were doomed to death on the
morrow. When it came they were adorned with the trappings of the
Tlaloc gods—for it was said they were the images of these gods—
and those that were killed first were said to be the foundation of the
others, which seemed to be symbolized by those who had to die last
being made to seat themselves on those who had been first killed.
[VIII-30]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-75-320.jpg)
![IMAGES OF THE
MOUNTAINS.
above. Lastly all returned to their monasteries, and the green rush
mats spread there were thrown out behind each house.[VIII-31]
We have given the description of two great festivals of the Tlalocs—
two being all that are mentioned by many authorities—there still
remain, however, two other notable occasions on which they were
propitiated and honored.
In the thirteenth month, which was called
Tepeilhuitl, and which began, according to
Clavigero, on the 24th of October, it was the
custom to cut certain sticks into the shape of snakes. Certain images
as of children were also cut out of wood, and these dolls, called
hecatotonti, together with the wooden snakes, were used as a
foundation or centre round which to build up little effigies of the
mountains; wherein the Tlalocs were honored as gods of the
mountains, and wherein memorial was had of those that had been
drowned, or killed by thunderbolts, or whose bodies had been buried
without cremation—the dolls perhaps representing the bodies of
these, and the snakes the thunderbolts. Having then these wooden
dolls and snakes as a basis, they were covered with dough mixed
from the seeds of the wild amaranth; over each doll certain papers
were put; round one snake and one doll, set back to back, there
appears next to have been bound a wisp of hay, (which wisp was
kept from year to year and washed on the vigil of every feast), till
the proper shape of a mountain was arrived at; over the whole was
then daubed a layer of dough, of the kind already mentioned. We
have now our image of the mountain with two heads looking
opposite ways, sticking out from its summit. Round this summit
there seem to have been stuck rolls of dough representing the
clouds usually formed about the crests of high mountains. The face
of the human image that looked out over these dough clouds was
daubed with melted ulli; and to both cheeks of it were stuck little
tortillas, or cakes of the everywhere-present dough of wild amaranth
seeds. On the head of this same image was put a crown with
feathers issuing from it.[VIII-32] These images were made at night,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-77-320.jpg)
![KILLING IMAGES
OF THE
MOUNTAINS.
returned with the wisp to make of it anew the image of a mountain.
[VIII-33]
The fourth and last festival of Tlaloc which we
have to describe, fell in our December and in the
sixteenth Aztec month, called the month
Atemuztli. About this time it began to thunder
round the mountain-tops, and the first rains to fall there; the
common people said, "Now come the Tlalocs," and for love of the
water they made vows to make images of the mountains—not,
however, as it would appear, such images as have been described as
appertaining to the preceding festival. The priests were very devout
at this season and very earnest in prayer, expecting the rain. They
took each man his incense-pan or censer, made like a great spoon
with a long round hollow handle filled with rattles and terminating in
a snake's head, and offered incense to all the idols. Five days before
the beginning of the feast the common people bought paper and ulli
and flint knives and a kind of coarse cloth called nequen, and
devoutly prepared themselves with fasting and penance to make
their images of the mountains and to cover them with paper. In this
holy season, although every one bathed, he washed no higher than
the neck, the head was left unwashed; the men, moreover,
abstained from their wives. The night preceding the great feast-day
was spent wholly, flint knife in hand, cutting out paper into various
shapes. These papers called tetevitl, were stained with ulli; and
every householder got a long pole, covered it with pieces of this
paper, and set it up in his court-yard, where it remained all the day
of the festival. Those that had vowed to make images of the
mountains invited priests to their houses to do it for them. The
priests came, bearing their drums and rattles and instruments of
music of tortoise-shell. They made the images—apparently like
human figures—out of the dough of wild amaranth seed, and
covered them with paper. In some houses there were made five of
such images, in others ten, in others fifteen; they were figures that
stood for such mountains as the clouds gather round, such as the
volcano of the Sierra Nevada or that of the Sierra of Tlascala. These](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-79-320.jpg)
![images being constructed, they were set in order in the oratory of
the house, and before each one was set food—very small pies, on
small platters, proportionate to the little image, small boxes holding
a little sweet porridge of maize, little calabashes of cacao, and other
small green calabashes containing pulque. In one night they
presented the figures with food in this manner four times. All the
night too they sang before them, and played upon flutes; the regular
flutists not being employed on this occasion, but certain small boys
who were paid for their trouble with something to eat. When the
morning came, the ministers of the idols asked the master of the
house for his tzotzopaztli, a kind of broad wooden knife used in
weaving,[VIII-34] and thrust it into the breasts of the images of the
mountains, as if they were living men, and cut their throats and
drew out the hearts, which they put in a green cup and gave to the
owner of the house. This done, they took all the paper with which
these images had been adorned, together with certain green mats
that had been used for the same purpose, and the utensils in which
the offering of food had been put, and burned all in the court-yard of
the house. The ashes and the mutilated images seem then to have
been carried to a public oratory called Aiauhcalco, on the shore of
the lake. Then all who assisted at these ceremonies joined
themselves to eat and drink in honor of the mutilated images, which
were called tepieme. Women were allowed to join in this banquet
provided they brought fifteen or twenty heads of maize with them;
they received every one his or her share of food and pulque. The
pulque was kept in black jars and lifted out to be drunk with black
cups. This banquet over, the paper streamers were taken down from
the poles set up in the court-yards of the houses and carried to
certain places in the water that were marked out by piles driven in—
we may remember that our whirlpool of Pantitlan, in the lake of
Mexico, was one place so marked—and to the tops of the
mountains, and left there as it would appear.[VIII-35]
In taking leave here of Tlaloc I may draw attention to the
prominence in his cult of the number four, the cross, and the snake;](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-80-320.jpg)
![THE MOTHER-
NOURISHER.
various names seem dependent on the varying aspects of the maize
at different stages of its growth; others seem to have originated in
the mother-like nourishing qualities of the grain of which she was
the deity. Müller lays much stress on this aspect of her character:
"The force which sustains life must also have created it. Centeotl
was therefore considered as bringing children to light, and is
represented with an infant in her arms. Nebel gives us such a
representation, and in our Mexican museum at Basel there are many
images in this form, made of burnt clay. Where agriculture rules,
there more children are brought to mature age than among the
hunting nations, and the land revels in a large population. No part of
the world is so well adapted to exhibit this difference as America.
Centeotl is consequently the great producer, not of children merely,
she is the great goddess, the most ancient goddess."[IX-1]
Centeotl was known, according to Clavigero, by
the titles Tonacajohua, 'she who sustains us;'
Tzinteotl, 'original goddess;' and by the further
names Xilonen, Iztacacenteotl, and Tlatlauhquicenteotl. She was
further, according to the same author, identical with Tonantzin, 'our
mother,' and, according to Müller and many Spanish authorities,
either identical or closely connected with the various deities known
as Teteionan, 'the mother of the gods,'[IX-2] Cihuatcoatl, 'the snake-
woman,' Tazi or Toci or Tocitzin, 'our grandmother,' and Earth, the
universal material mother. Squier says of Tiazolteotl, that "she is
Cinteotl the goddess of maize, under another aspect."[IX-3]
She was particularly honored by the Totonacs, with whom she was
the chief divinity. They greatly loved her, believing that she did not
demand human victims, but was content with flowers and fruits, the
fat banana and the yellow maize, and small animals, such as doves,
quails, and rabbits. More, they hoped that she would in the end
utterly deliver them from the cruel necessity of such sacrifices, even
to the other gods.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-83-320.jpg)
![MEDICINE-
GODDESS.
With very different feelings, as we shall soon see, did the Mexicans
proper approach this deity, making her temples horrid with the
tortured forms of human sacrifices. It shows how deep the stain of
the blood was in the Mexican religious heart, how poisonous far the
odor of it had crept through all the senses of the Aztec soul, when it
could be believed that the great sustainer, the yellow waving maize,
the very mother of all, must be fed upon the flesh of her own
children.[IX-4]
To make comprehensible various allusions it seems well here to sum
up rapidly the characters given of certain goddesses identical with or
resembling in various points this Centeotl. Chicomecoatl[IX-5] was,
according to Sahagun, the Ceres of Mexico, and the goddess of
provisions, as well of what is drunk as of what is eaten. She was
represented with a crown on her head, a vase in her right hand, and
on her left arm a shield with a great flower painted thereon; her
garments and her sandals were red.
The first of the Mexican goddesses was, following the same
authority, Cioacoatl, or Civacoatl, the goddess of adverse things,
such as poverty, downheartedness, and toil. She appeared often in
the guise of a great lady, wearing such apparel as was used in the
palace; she was also heard at night in the air shouting and even
roaring. Besides her name Cioacoatl, which means 'snake-woman,'
she was known as Tonantzin, that is to say, 'our mother.' She was
arrayed in white robes, and her hair was arranged in front, over her
forehead, in little curls that crossed each other. It was a custom with
her to carry a cradle on her shoulders, as one that carries a child in
it, and after setting it down in the market-place beside the other
women, to disappear. When this cradle was examined, there was
found a stone knife in it, and with this the priests slew their
sacrificial victims.
The goddess of Sahagun's description most
resembling the Toci of other writers, is the one
that he calls 'the mother of the gods, the heart of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-84-320.jpg)
![the earth, and our ancestor or grandmother (abuela).' She is
described as the goddess of medicine and of medicinal herbs, as
worshiped by doctors, surgeons, blood-letters, of those that gave
herbs to produce abortions, and also of the diviners that pronounced
upon the fortune of children according to their birth. They worshiped
her also that cast lots with grains of maize, those that augured by
looking into water in a bowl, those that cast lots with bits of cord
tied together, those that drew little worms or maggots from the
mouth or eyes, those that extracted little stones from other parts of
the body, and those that had sweat-baths, temazcallis, in their
houses. These last always set the image of this goddess in the
baths, calling her Temazcalteci, that is to say, 'the grandmother of
the baths.' Her adorers made this goddess a feast every year, buying
a woman for a sacrifice, decorating this victim with the ornaments
proper to the goddess. Every evening they danced with this
unfortunate, and regaled her delicately, praying her to eat as they
would a great lady, and amusing her in every way that she might not
weep nor be sad at the prospect of death. When the dreadful hour
did come, having slain her, together with two others that
accompanied her to death, they flayed her; then a man clothed
himself in her skin, and went about all the city playing many pranks
—by all of which her identity with Tozi seems sufficiently clear. This
goddess was represented with the mouth and chin stained with ulli,
and a round patch of the same on her face; on her head she had a
kind of turban made of cloth rolled round and knotted behind. In this
knot were stuck plumes which issued from it like flames, and the
ends of the cloth fell behind over the shoulders. She wore sandals, a
shirt with a kind of broad serrated lower border, and white
petticoats. In her left hand she held a shield with a round plate of
gold in the centre thereof; in her right hand she held a broom.[IX-6]
The festival in which divers of the various manifestations of the
mother-goddess were honored, was held in the beginning of the
eleventh Aztec month, beginning on the 14th of September;
Centeotl, or Cinteotl, or Centeutl, or Tzinteutl, is however
represented therein as a male and not a female.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/19280285-250523162909-b596195d/85/Ways-To-Be-Blameworthy-Rightness-Wrongness-And-Responsibility-Elinor-Mason-85-320.jpg)
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- 6. Ways to be Blameworthy
- 8. Ways to be Blameworthy Rightness, Wrongness, and Responsibility Elinor Mason 1
- 9. 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Elinor Mason 2019 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2019 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2018968142 ISBN 978–0–19–883360–4 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
- 10. Contents Preface and Acknowledgements vii I. Introduction l 1. Methodology 2 2. The Arguments 8 2. Subjective Obligation 17 1. ObjectiveRightness:Hyper-objectivism and Prospectivism 20 2. SubjectiveObU萨lion andPraise会 and Blame,vorthiness 23 3. SubjectiveObU萨tion and Action Guidance 27 4. Anchoring SubjectiveObli胪tion: The True Morality 31 5. Grasping Morality 37 6. Formula血g SubjectiveObligation: Beli亟 42 7. Formulating SubjectiveObli胪tion: Trying to Do Well by Morality 46 8. Conclusion 48 3. Trying to Do Well by Morality 50 1. Trying Over Tune 52 2. Trying and the AccessibilityRequirement 53 3. A,wreness of the Aim 56 4. Trying and Indirect Strategies 61 5. Strong and Weak Senses of Trying 62 6. Trying to Do Well by Morality:An Analogy 70 7. Faili.ngto Try 71 8. Conclusion 73 4. Ordinary Praiseworthiness and Blameworthiness 75 1. Compe血g Accounts of SubjectiveObligation 76 2. Pure Subjectivismand Conscience Respectworthiness 78 3. The Moral Concern View. tbe Searchlight ViCv,and the ReflexivityR勺uiremmt 83 4. OrclinaryPraise- and Blameworthiness 93 5. Conclusion 97 5. Praise and Blame 100 1. Ordinary Blame 102 2. Ordinary Praise 107 3. D如中eel Blame (and Blameworthiness) 112 4. Detached Praise (and P面艾worthiness) 123 5. Conclusion 125
- 11. vi CONTENTS 6. Excuses 127 1. Mitigating Orcumstances 128 2. ML~edMotivations and LocalDetached Blameworthiness 135 3. Excusesand Detached Blame: FormativeCircumstances 145 4. Conclusion 150 7. Exemptions 152 1. Deeply Morally Ignorant but Un血paired Agents 154 2. Culpable Ignorance 158 3. Moral Moti四tion and Wolf's Asymmetry 160 4. Psychopaths and Moral Knowledge 169 5. Psychopaths, Moral Outliers, and Morality Defiers 174 6. Conclusion 177 8. Taking Responsibility 179 l. Ambiguous Agency 181 2. Liability 185 3. Remorse and Agent Regret 187 4. Taking Responsibilityin Relationships 191 5. Impersonal Relationships and Implicit Bias 196 6. AvoidingBlameworthiness 200 7. The Psychologyof Taking Responsibility 202 8. Extended Blameworthinessand the Shapeof Remorse 204 9. Conclusion 206 9. Conclusion 208 Bibliography 215 Name Ind釭 229 Index 232
- 12. Preface and Acknowledgements I completed the first draft of this book while on research leave from Edinburgh University, on a Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellowship at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity. I am heavily indebted to many people, but a few stand out as being heroically helpful. Michael McKenna read several drafts and was unfail- ingly generous: this book has benefited enormously from his astute comments and suggestions. Gunnar Björnsson has not only discussed these ideas with me on numerous occasions, and read various sections at various points, but also arranged a workshop on the final draft in Gothenburg. I am incredibly grateful to him and to the other commen- tators on that occasion for their careful and insightful criticisms (Krister Bykvist, Andreas Brekke Carlsson, Ragnar Francén, Robert Hartman, Kristin Mickelson, and András Szigeti). I am also immensely grateful to Guy Fletcher for organizing a reading group on an early draft at the University of Edinburgh, and to the other participants (Matthew Chrisman, Guy Fletcher, Kieran Oberman, Euan MacDonald, Mike Ridge, Debbie Roberts, Simon Rosenqvist, and Patrick Todd). Both of these reading groups transformed my own understanding of what I wanted to say in various ways, and I feel very privileged to have had the chance to benefit from such impressive and willing interlocutors. I would also like to specially thank Matthew Talbert for extensive and constructive com- ments in his role as a reader for Oxford University Press, almost all of which I have gratefully incorporated into the final version. There are many others who have helped me in various ways, reading and commenting on chapters, discussing the ideas at various stages, and providing general intellectual support and stimulation. I would particu- larly like to thank Luc Bovens, Ruth Chang, Stewart Cohen, Ben Colburn, Julia Driver, David Enoch, Fred Feldman, Alex Guerrero, Elizabeth Harman, Matt King, Tori McGeer, Jennifer Morton, Rik Peels, Doug Portmore, David Shoemaker, Holly Smith, Jonathan Spelman, and Monique Wonderly. I would also like to thank Peter Momtchiloff at Oxford University Press for advice and encouragement.
- 13. I have been fortunate in being invited to present sections of this work in various contexts, and I have learned a lot from comments and questions on those occasions. I would especially like to thank my colleagues in philosophy at Edinburgh, who have heard several iterations of these ideas and have tirelessly provided helpful feedback. I would also like to give special thanks to my fellow fellows and faculty at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton, for a wonderful sabbatical year in 2015–16. Additionally, I am very grateful to organizers and audiences at the University of West Virginia, University of Pennsylvania Law School, Fordham Law School, Glasgow University, University of York, Warwick University (CELPA), The Arizona Workshop on Normative Ethics, The New Orleans Workshop on Agency and Responsibility, University of Colorado, Boulder, The Responsibility Project at the University of Goth- enburg, University of Oslo, and the St Andrews Workshop on Blame. Some parts of this book draw on previously published work. My overall argument draws on my 2015 Philosophical Studies paper, where I originally sketched my account of different kinds of blameworthiness (‘Moral Ignorance and Blameworthiness’, Philosophical Studies 172 (11) (2015): 3037–57). Section 3 of Chapter 2 summarizes some arguments that I originally presented in my ‘Do the Right Thing: An Account of Subjective Obligation’ in Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Nor- mative Ethics, Oxford University Press (2017): 117–37. The arguments of Chapter 6 draw on the arguments I presented in ‘Moral Incapacity and Moral Ignorance’ in Rik Peels (ed.), Perspectives on Ignorance from Moral and Social Philosophy, Routledge (2016): 30–51. The argument about taking responsibility that I present in Chapter 8 appears in ‘Respecting Each Other and Taking Responsibility for our Biases’ in earlier versions in Marina Oshana, Katrina Hutchison, and Catriona Mackenzie (eds.), Social Dimensions of Moral Responsibility, Oxford University Press (2018): 163–84. I am grateful to the publishers for granting permission to reuse material here. Finally, I would like to thank my family. First, thank you to my father, Donald Mason, who introduced me to philosophy, and has been a constant source of encouragement, not to mention a careful reader and editor. I am very grateful and appreciative. Most of all, I thank my husband, Eric Freund, for endless love and support, and my children, Inez and Leon, for inspiration and joy. viii
- 14. 1 Introduction On a very simplistic view of blameworthiness, a view that nobody holds, we are always blameworthy when we act wrongly and always praise- worthy when we act rightly. Of course the relationship between rightness and wrongness on the one hand, and praise- and blameworthiness on the other, is more complex than that. Wrongness and blameworthiness must come apart to some extent, although perhaps not completely. It seems undeniable that it is possible to act wrongly without being blameworthy. Similarly, it seems obvious that one can act rightly without being praise- worthy, and not just because the bar for praiseworthiness seems higher than the bar for blameworthiness: clearly one can act rightly without deserving any credit at all. On the other hand, there is surely some essential relationship between our moral concepts, rightness and wrongness, and our responsibility related concepts, like praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. To be praiseworthy must involve the idea that the agent has done something right—has acted rightly in some sense. And likewise, an agent who is blameworthy must have acted wrongly in some sense. My overall aim in this book is to shed light on our notions of praise- and blameworthiness. Clearly, moral praise- and blameworthiness must have something to do with the agent’s relationship to right or wrong action. But what, exactly? We need to know what ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’ mean in this context. We should not take for granted that there is an independent account of rightness and wrongness that we can simply help ourselves to. In this book I defend a pluralistic view of both our deontic concepts and our responsibility concepts. I argue that there are three different ways to be blameworthy: ordinary blameworthiness, detached blame- worthiness, and extended blameworthiness. The first way is closest to the way that we ordinarily think of praise- and blameworthiness, and so I call it ‘ordinary praiseworthiness and blameworthiness’, and refer Ways to be Blameworthy: Rightness, Wrongness, and Responsibility. Elinor Mason, Oxford University Press (2019). © Elinor Mason. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198833604.003.0001
- 15. correspondingly to ‘ordinary praise and blame’. I argue that ordinary praise- and blameworthiness are essentially connected to a particular conception of rightness and wrongness, that which is used in subjective obligation.¹ Agents are blameworthy in the ordinary way when they have acted wrongly by their own lights. Subjective obligation and ordinary blameworthiness apply only to those who are within our moral commu- nity, that is to say, those who understand and share our value system. By contrast, the second sort of blameworthiness, detached blameworthiness, can apply even when the agent is outside our moral community, and has no sense that her act is morally wrong. We blame agents for acting objectively wrongly, even if we do not have any view about their state of mind in so doing. Finally, I argue for a third sort of blameworthiness, extended blameworthiness, which applies in some contexts where the agent has acted wrongly, and understands the wrongness, but has acted wrongly entirely inadvertently. In such cases the agent is not personally at fault in the ordinary sense, but, I argue, the social context may be such that she should take responsibility. 1. Methodology The methodology I use in coming to this account of how we should use our concepts is a sort of reflective equilibrium. We need to think both about the way we actually use these concepts and about what we want from them. We want our concepts to be clear and well defined, we want as many as we need, we want to be able to make some fairly fine-grained distinctions, and of course we want them to serve the purpose that we have them for. We might end up doing some conceptual engineering: adjusting our concepts to better suit our needs. On one common view, a view I share, both our moral concepts and our responsibility concepts are there to regulate and make sense of our interpersonal engagement. We should decide on which concepts to use, and how to use them, on the basis of how those concepts function in our relationships. ¹ Throughout the book I assume that ‘rightness’, ‘obligation’, and ‘ought’ are corollaries, and likewise for the converses, ‘wrongness’, ‘prohibition’, and ‘ought-not’. I am aware that, pragmatically, ‘ought’ seems less strong than ‘obligation’, and similarly, ‘ought-not’ seems less strong than ‘prohibition’, but I set that complication aside here.
- 16. The project that I am engaged in straddles ethics and moral responsibility. Insofar as it is ethics, what I am doing might be described as falling into the field known as ‘normative ethics’, to be contrasted with ‘meta-ethics’. By that I mean that I am not primarily concerned with the ultimate truthmakers for claims about rightness or wrongness. I am not arguing about relativism and realism. Rather, I am interested in what limits our deontic concepts and makes them proper deontic concepts: how the concepts of rightness and wrongness function, what the conditions are for ascribing them, and how they relate to other normative concepts. Likewise, though we do not tend to talk about ‘meta-responsibility theory’ and ‘normative responsibility theory’, I am doing normative responsibility the- ory. I am not concerned with questions about free will and determinism, but with when responsibility concepts are correctly attributed. My aim is to investigate how responsibility attributions interact with other responsibility concepts, and with normative concepts.² Both normative ethics and meta-ethics are well developed as sub- disciplines and (although it is sometimes controversial) function inde- pendently. Normative ethicists ask questions about the subject matter of rightness and wrongness (Is lying wrong? Is harming wrong? Does animal suffering matter morally? What about the environment?) and also (the questions I am interested in) about the structural conditions that apply to the normative concepts (e.g. Can an agent act rightly or wrongly accidentally? Can non-agents act rightly or wrongly? Is right- ness a maximizing notion?). In normative ethics it is common to take these questions seriously independently of any commitment to any of the various possible meta-ethical positions. By contrast, the literature on free will and responsibility has focused much more on the meta issues, on whether we have free will and whether we might have moral responsibility even if we don’t have free will. ² Much of the literature on moral responsibility is focused on the ‘meta’ debate—the debate about whether we can account for moral responsibility in the absence of free will. That includes the work of R. J. Wallace, who gives us an account of responsibility according to which an agent is responsible when it is appropriate to hold her responsible, and it is appropriate to hold her responsible when she has violated an obligation that we accept (1994). Wallace is arguing that this is what makes responsibility attributions true. Wallace’s terminology is different to mine here: he has a normative account of responsibility in the sense that he thinks we should use normative considerations rather than factual ones to determine when someone is responsible.
- 17. Normative responsibility theory is in its infancy.³ I am engaged in the project of normative theorizing about responsibility, which I take to be analogous to normative theorizing in ethics. I examine our deontic con- cepts, and explore their relationship to responsibility concepts, praise- and blameworthiness. I ask what the relationship is between these two sets of notions, how they limit each other, and what else shapes them. I start with rightness and wrongness. Standards of right action are sensible—of interest to us—only if it is sometimes possible for us to meet the standard. No account of rightness would claim that it can be right to do things that are always impossible for us, such as teletransport. However, there is a further condition on a sensible account of right action: it must be reasonably easy to act rightly on purpose, at least under the right condi- tions. As I put it in this book, there is a ‘responsibility constraint’ that applies to all conceptions of rightness. That is just to say that useful deontic concepts must, to some degree (I will be giving an account of the various appropriate degrees) be related to what we could be responsible for. There are different concepts of rightness and wrongness, and they differ in the extent to which they correlate with praise- and blameworthi- ness. I suspect that we most often use the concepts of rightness and wrongness in a moderately objective sense. I start by elucidating a useful objective concept of rightness that does not correlate exactly with praise- worthiness, but is not entirely independent of it. In other words, it meets a weak version of the responsibility constraint. It is not hyper-objective, but it is nonetheless an objective account of rightness, in that it is independent of the agent who is acting on that occasion. ³ Gary Watson and Michael Zimmerman have, in different ways, done a lot of work on normative responsibility, though neither describes it as such. Michael McKenna (2012), Manuel Vargas (2013), and David Shoemaker (2015) all have recent books that seem to me to be clear examples of work on normative responsibility in my sense. McKenna focuses on the overall shape of our responsibility concepts, arguing that they must be seen as part of a communicative practice; Vargas likewise focuses on the overall shape, arguing that the background justification for particular practices is consequentialist. Shoemaker focuses on the correctness conditions for blame, giving a pluralist account of what sort of quality of will is relevant to responsibility. I contrast my account with Shoemaker’s at various points, but the main difference is that whereas Shoemaker’s is a sentimentalist account, arguing that there are various reactive attitudes that are fitting in response to various qualities of will in the blamee, mine is more radically pluralist. On my view there can be more to blame- worthiness than quality of will, and more to blame than sentiment, and the fundamental sorting issue is the way in which the agent acted wrongly.
- 18. This leads to the important question, what is it that fundamentally makes agents praiseworthy or blameworthy? If an agent can act wrongly without being blameworthy, what is it that makes her blameworthy when she is blameworthy? This has historically been a question in the literature on free will and responsibility, and is associated with the notion of desert. The thought has been that we need to find something in virtue of which the agent deserves to be blamed, where the challenge is made harder if we think that to blame is to impose suffering. If determinism is true, if we are all at the mercy of causal forces, and not the source of our own actions in any deeply meaningful sense, it is notoriously hard to say how we could deserve blame.⁴ In this book I do not frame the issue in terms of desert. I provide an account of the conditions under which it is fitting to blame people. The account I give is consistent with various different views about desert, and about compatibilism and incompatibilism. My aim is to give a convin- cing story about the connections between acting wrongly in a certain way and being blameworthy. My story is not supposed to transcend or justify the normative realm: I am interested in the normative conditions of blame, the question of when it is appropriate to blame people within the terms of our practices, not the metaphysical conditions that might make blame appropriate. I develop the idea that there is one special sense of wrongness, subjective wrongness, that correlates with ordinary blameworthiness. This is not the way we always use the term ‘wrongness’. I think we usually use the terms ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’ in a moderately object- ive sense. But we do sometimes use deontic concepts in a way that suggests that to act wrongly is pretty much automatically to be blame- worthy. For example, we might say that a doctor who randomly picks a medicine off the shelf acted wrongly, even if what she did turned out very well. What we mean is that, by her own lights, what she did was bad, and blameworthy. This is subjective wrongness. There has not been a huge amount of interest in or analysis of subjective rightness and wrongness.⁵ ⁴ See, for example Pereboom (2001) and elsewhere. Pereboom doubts that we can give an account of the normative conditions for blame that are anything but consequentialist. I do not address that head on in this book, but I give a non-consequentialist account. ⁵ Holly Smith is an exception; I discuss her work in what follows. I refer to her views as presented in her published papers, but her arguments are developed in more detail in her book, Making Morality Work, in press as I write this.
- 19. I argue for an account of subjective rightness and wrongness, and I show that it does correlate with, and illuminate, our concepts of praise- and blameworthiness. Our account of subjective rightness should capture our sense that what an agent does, from their own point of view, is what makes them praiseworthy. In a nutshell, I argue that to act subjectively rightly is to try to do well by morality. I show that trying to do well by morality relates to praise- and blameworthiness in the appropriate way. An agent who sincerely tries to do well by morality is praiseworthy (even if she goes astray in various ways), and an agent who fails to try to do well by morality is blameworthy. The equivalence between acting subjectively wrongly and being blameworthy is mutually explanatory. In understand- ing each in terms of the other, we make better sense of these ideas. This picture is harmonious with a bigger picture, according to which our blaming practices are essentially interpersonal, and inextricably linked with the fact that we exist in a moral community with others.⁶ We blame others in our moral community in an ordinary way when they knowingly do something that violates our moral standards. On my account ordinary blame makes sense because it attaches to subjective wrongdoing. In blaming in the ordinary way, we are appealing to the agent’s own sense of what they ought to have done, by the light of the values we share. Those outside our moral community can be blamed, but in a very different way: they can be blamed with detached blame, which is not communicative. In thinking about the conditions that make blame fitting, I look at both individual cases and the bigger picture. In ethics there are simpler and more complex accounts of the shape of our concepts, and the same is true in thinking about moral responsibility. In ethics, a wonderfully neat and simple account of the overall shape of our normative concepts is consequentialism. Notoriously, consequentialism clashes with our ⁶ The idea that we should understand moral responsibility practices in terms of inter- personal interactions is of course due to P. F. Strawson (1962). See Shabo (2012) for a defence of the Strawsonian view that responsibility practices and relationships are deeply intertwined. Recent commentators have pointed out and developed Strawson’s emphasis on the moral community, and the communicative aspects of our moral responsibility practices—see Watson (2004 and elsewhere), Hiernonymi (2004), Darwall (2006), Scanlon (2008), McKenna (2012), and Macnamara (2015a). I draw on much of this work in what follows.
- 20. intuitions about particular cases. The price for theoretical neatness is intuitive implausibility in many situations. At the other extreme is Ross- style pluralism, which gives us plausible answers a lot of the time, but no pleasing theoretical neatness. This same structure appears in thinking about responsibility, though as writers on responsibility do not usually think of things in this frame- work it is not as easy to characterize their views in these terms. Take debates about quality of will. One very neat sort of view says that all responsibility depends on quality of will. The justification for thinking about quality of will might be understood as a way of answering worries about metaphysical free will.⁷ But we might also understand it as a contribution to normative theorizing: thinking about the justifying and unifying account of the substance of our responsibility practices—why do we hold P responsible but not Q? How do excuses work? And so on. Neater theories, that attempt to reduce all responsibility practice to one sort of quality of will are less able to match up with our pre-theoretical intuitions about cases. Messier, pluralistic theories do better at accom- modating our messy intuitions, but of course must be marked down for lack of theoretical neatness. I end up with a pluralistic view of both normative ethical concepts and responsibility concepts. I argue that reflecting on what we need from our responsibility practices allows some cases of blaming that are not based on quality of will. Sometimes we need to blame people for things that they have done with no bad quality of will at all. Here I am following Bernard Williams into the deep end of a pluralistic view. As Williams puts it: Everywhere, human beings act, and their actions cause things to happen, and sometimes they intend those things, and sometimes they do not; everywhere, what is brought about is sometimes to be regretted or deplored, by the agent or by others who suffer from it or by both; and when that is so, there may be a demand made by himself, by others, or by both. Wherever all this is possible, there must be some interest in the agent’s intentions, if only to understand what has ⁷ Strawson is often interpreted as arguing that our reactions to quality of will in others are what make sense of our moral responsibility practices. Bennett (1980) certainly takes Strawson to be a projectivist, as do later commentators who take themselves to be improv- ing on Strawson’s projectivism by giving an account of when it is appropriate to have the reactive attitudes—Wallace (1994), Fischer and Ravizza (1998). My own view is that Strawson’s most interesting contributions here should not be read as a contribution to the compatibilism/incompatibilism debate at all; rather, they are a contribution to norma- tive responsibility theorizing.
- 21. happened . . . it must be a possible question how the intentions and actions of an agent at a given time fit in with, or fail to fit in with, his intentions and actions at other times . . . These really are universal materials. What we must not suppose is that they are always related to one another in the same way or, indeed, that there is one ideal way in which they should be related to one another. (1993, 55–6) I think Williams is right about this. In the end, we cannot expect the four elements he speaks of, cause, intention, state of mind, and appropriate response, to relate in exactly the same way in every circumstance. I argue, in a Williams-esque vein, that we can be blameworthy for more than just what we intend, and for more than just what comes from our deep motivations. I argue that sometimes people should take responsibility for what they do through glitches or automated psychological processes. 2. The Arguments In Chapter 2 I introduce the responsibility constraint, which is a way to put the claim that our normative concepts, rightness and wrongness, are essentially related to responsibility concepts. The responsibility con- straint is vague as it stands, and in this chapter I explore various ways to cash out the fundamental thought. I argue that there is a sensible objective account of rightness and wrongness that meets a fairly weak version of the responsibility con- straint. The point of an objective account of rightness is to provide a general benchmark for behaviour, a standard that we should strive to meet. The account of objective rightness I favour, prospective rightness, does not abstract away from all uncertainty, but takes into account reasonable factual ignorance. Thus, when we look at what is prospect- ively right, we are thinking about what it would be reasonable to do in the circumstances. We are not just thinking about what would be best, but about what agents like us might be expected to do. I then turn to the concept of rightness that I am really interested in, subjective rightness. I argue that the point of an account of subjective obligation is to give us a story about what makes the agent praise- or blameworthy. Objective obligation specifies a target, which the agent may or may not hit. Hitting the target would be good, but sometimes agents miss through no fault of their own. So even if we know that an agent fulfilled (or failed to fulfil) her objective obligation, we do not
- 22. necessarily know how to appraise her. By contrast, the notion of sub- jective obligation identifies what it is in the agent’s own psychology that renders her praise- or blameworthy. There are two ideas that are associated with the notion of subjective obligation: that it should be action guiding, and that it should be access- ible to the agent. I show that there are various complexities here. Subjective obligation can be neither fully action guiding, nor fully access- ible. However, it is important that an account of subjective obligation is able to explain the plausibility and element of truth in these two ideas. The account I develop explains the limited sense in which subjective obligation is action guiding (I argue that the subjectively right thing to do genuinely ought to be done, there is a genuine imperative there, even if this is not always immediately helpful), and I argue that the accessibility requirement is limited in some ways, but that there is a general reflexivity requirement that is met, the agent must know what she is doing in that she must have background knowledge of her aim. This account makes sense of praise- and blameworthiness. The standard way to formulate subjective rightness is in terms of the agent’s beliefs: something like, ‘an agent acts subjectively rightly when she does what she believes is the most morally suitable thing to do’. I argue that the belief formulation cannot make sense of a crucial element of our subjective obligation: our ongoing and continuous obligation to improve our beliefs, and to be alert to new evidence. If we base subjective obligation on belief, we cannot criticize an agent who acts on her current beliefs, even if those beliefs are faulty. I argue that in order to make sense of our duty to improve our beliefs we need a practical aim, and that is exactly what is involved in the concept of ‘trying’. Thus our subjective obligation is not to do what we believe is morally suitable, but to try to do well by morality. For both the belief formulation and the trying formulation of subject- ive obligation, there arises a question about whether we are talking about the value system that the agent happens to have, or the correct value system. I argue that for subjective rightness to align with praiseworthi- ness in the right sense, we need some sort of anchor in the correct moral view. (I initially defend this idea in Chapter 2 and develop the argument in Chapter 4). I argue that an agent acts subjectively rightly when she tries to do well by the standards of what really is morally appropriate. In other words, she has to get morality right. My account of subjective obligation thus depends on an agent having a grasp of the correct morality.
- 23. In the book I use a capital letter to denote that I am talking about the one true Morality, ‘The True and the Good’, as Susan Wolf calls it (1990). I talk of this as if it is an objective meta-ethical fact, but that is just a way of talking. The view is not that this must be metaphysically real, rather the view is that we need to refer to our shared understanding of the moral facts. I leave it open to fill in the meta-ethical account of the status of these facts. All I need here is that it makes sense to us to talk about getting morality right and getting it wrong—and it clearly does, in sharp contrast to our views about the tastiness of Marmite, for example, which we obviously take to be a non-factive issue. It is important to point out that my account of Morality is broad, and allows for reasonable error. One can ‘have a grasp of Morality’ in my sense without getting everything right. There is room for reasonable disagree- ment (I defend that in Chapter 2). Also, although I think that most people do have a grasp of Morality, I do not want to imply that people have all the answers at their fingertips. The claim is rather that people would assent to the main tenets of Morality if they thought through their most seriously held convictions and commitments, and that they can use their knowledge of Morality to figure out what to do on particular occasions. In Chapter 3 I give an intuitive account of the sense of trying that I am interested in here. Acting subjectively rightly and trying are both subject to some sort of accessibility requirement. I argue that in the case of trying, this is best understood as a reflexivity requirement: the agent must know what she is doing.Trying to do something involves having the goal as a conscious aim. A flower is not trying to turn towards the sun and similarly, I argue, human behaviour may be causally affected by an aim without its being the case that the agent is trying to achieve that aim. At the same time, we can be trying to do things that we are not aware, at the time, of trying to do. Thus, surprisingly, it may sometimes be the case that we are acting subjectively rightly and do not know it, or believe that we are acting subjectively right but are not. I defend this consequence of my view by arguing that there is no theory that can fully meet an accessibility requirement, and so the accessibility requirement must be relaxed. I use the concept of trying in a broad sense, so that it applies to doings as well as ‘setting oneself ’. When an agent is trying to do well by Morality, she must seek more information when necessary, including about the nature of Morality. It is essential that she has a good grasp of
- 24. Morality in the broad sense: her basic understanding of Morality gives her a framework for resolving uncertainties within Morality. I conclude with an account of failing to try, which correlates with ordinary blameworthiness. It is important to be able to distinguish between failing to try and merely not trying. A lazy agent might not try to save a trapped kitten in a situation where she knows that there is a trapped kitten, and that counts as failing to try. But if the agent had no idea that the kitten was there, her not trying is not failing to try. Again, the crucial factor is knowledge. Someone who grasps Morality, and has it as an aim, can fail to try. Someone who does not grasp Morality may ‘not try’, but they do not count as failing to try. The reflexivity requirement, the idea that the agent must be able to recognize what she is doing, is essential to my account of the connection between subjective obligation and praise- and blameworthiness. In Chapter 4, I give an account of ordinary praise- and blameworthiness, and show how these link up with subjective obligation. On my account, an agent is praiseworthy if she tries to do well by Morality. Praiseworthiness requires that the agent has Morality (at least broadly) correct. An agent is praiseworthy when she acts according to the true value system, not merely when she acts on her conscience. Correspondingly, an agent acts subject- ively wrongly when she fails to try to do well by Morality. I contrast my account with rival views of what is necessary and sufficient for praiseworthiness. On the one hand, there is a common view that being motivated in the right direction is sufficient for praise- worthiness. This is a view often held by attributionists, those who argue that choice and control are less important to moral responsibility than the deep motivations that drive an agent, or the agent’s ‘deep self’ as it is often put.⁸ On this sort of account, moral concern, or being motivation esteemworthy (in my terminology), is all that is needed for praiseworthiness: the agent might not know that her motivations are good, and might even think her motivations are leading her astray. ⁸ The terminology is contested, but I will use the term ‘attributionist’ to refer to views that base moral responsibility for acts on the agent’s deep character and motivations rather than on what she does knowingly. I am referring here to Arpaly and Schroeder’s work on praise- and blameworthiness—see Arpaly and Schroeder (1999) and Arpaly (2003) in particular. As well as Arpaly and Schroeder’s work, attributionism is developed (in various different ways) by Watson (1996, reprinted in 2004), Angela Smith (2005 and elsewhere), Scanlon (1998 and elsewhere), Sher (2009 and elsewhere), and Talbert (2008 and elsewhere).
- 25. I argue that this account fails to do justice to our ordinary account of praise- and blameworthiness. We do think that there is something to admire in people who have good motivations, but we do not think them fully praiseworthy. And so why not make a distinction here? We should agree that motivation esteemworthiness is a necessary component of praiseworthiness, but it is not the whole story: moral knowledge is also necessary. I argue that that is a better account of praiseworthiness and, in particular, it makes sense of the reflexivity requirement: the require- ment that an agent be able to recognize the moral status of her own behaviour and judge her action as something she should or should not have done. I also address a rival from the other end of the spectrum, the ‘Search- light’ theorist, to use George Sher’s term (2009), who argues that the only way to be blameworthy is to have full awareness of the wrongness of one’s action, either at the time of action or at some earlier time from which the current action was predictable.⁹ I argue that this takes the reflexivity requirement too seriously. On the best understanding of the reflexivity requirement, agents can be blameworthy just so long as it makes sense to say that they should have known what they were doing at the time. All this requires is a good grasp of Morality in general. In Chapter 5 I discuss the nature of praise and blame. I argue that my account of ordinary praise- and blameworthiness meshes with an account of praise and blame as essentially communicative. I argue, using Michael McKenna’s phrase (2012), that we should see praise and blame (though not necessarily the whole responsibility system) as being part of a conversation. Agents who are praise- or blameworthy in the ordinary way have the right background knowledge and background aim to engage in a meaningful conversation about their behaviour. Blame is a response to a certain sort of fault, and can involve a demand for acceptance of the blame, apology, remorse, reparation, and so on. The blamee who engages in the conversation should accept the blame, and be willing to move through the various steps of the conversation, to apolo- gize, to make reparations, and eventually, in some but not all cases, to ask for and accept forgiveness. Praise is, perhaps surprisingly, roughly sym- metrical. To praise someone is to open a sort of conversation with them, ⁹ This sort of view is defended by Levy (2013 and elsewhere), Rosen (2002 and else- where), and Zimmerman (1997 and elsewhere).
- 26. and to make certain demands: chiefly the demand that the praise be accepted. What makes these exchanges possible is the shared moral community, the shared value system. This leads to a discussion of another sort of praise and blame, which I call ‘detached praise and blame’. These are reactive attitudes that we take to those who act wrongly, but without acting subjectively wrongly. Detached blame is not communicative. It is closer to what Strawson calls the ‘objective attitude’. It does not demand an answer, it is an assessment of the agent’s behaviour more than a demand that she behave better. Yet it is genuine blame, it is an emotional reaction to the agent that goes beyond a mere judgment of blameworthiness. Disdain and contempt are good examples of reactions that are often involved in detached blame. Furthermore, drawing on Scanlon’s account of blame (2008), I argue that detached blame may involve a modification of the relationship: the blamer sees, not so much that something has been damaged in her relationship, but rather, that something that she might have hoped was possible is not in fact possible. The blamee does not have the attitudes that qualify her for proper interpersonal engagement. As with ordinary blame and ordinary praise, detached blame and detached praise are symmetrical. We might see that someone has very good attitudes, or is deeply motivated towards good things, but if that person lacks a grasp of Morality; if they lack an awareness of the right- making features of their actions qua right-making features, then we cannot praise them in the ordinary way. However, we can think well of them, we can approve of them, we can admire them: we find them to be praiseworthy in the detached way. In Chapter 6 I argue that the sorts of factor that count as excusing differ between the two sorts of blameworthiness. In the case of ordinary blameworthiness, the usual sort of excuse is a simple excuse: something that shows that the agent was not acting subjectively wrongly after all. There may also be partial excuses and mitigating circumstances, but, I argue, in the end they are also ways of showing that the agent was not acting as subjectively wrongly as it first appeared. In the case of detached blameworthiness, various factors that explain why the agent has a bad will can also function as an excuse. Thus, bad upbringing, bad social or epistemic environment, and so on, can be excuses, in the sense that they should undermine our detached blame responses. We come to see the agent as less of an agent when we reflect on the facts that explain their
- 27. bad will, and retreat to an even more objective stance than that implied in detached blaming. I have still not covered all of the terrain of wrongdoing and blame- worthiness. There are mixed cases, cases where an agent has tried very hard, but still does badly. Someties, of course, the explanation for doing badly constitutes an excuse. If an agent is pushed, or is non-culpably ignorant, her efforts may not result in success, but it is clear that she is not blameworthy. Other cases are not so clear. An agent may have mixed motives: imagine an agent tries very hard to do well, and the explanation for her failure is that her own deep motivations are very poor. For example, an agent may try very hard to be calm and polite, but her deeply misanthropic character and vile temper get the better of her: she says mean things in an explosion of rage. In mixed cases like that, we can say that the appropriate stance to take is complex. An agent can be in our moral community, and yet have a character trait, or tendency, that is not properly under her agential control. I argue that that doesn’t mean that she has an excuse, the trait is still part of her agency, and thus we are bound to have some sort of blaming reaction. It is appropriate to think the agent praiseworthy in the ordinary way for trying hard, and even to praise her, but also to think that a local detached blameworthiness applies. This makes sense of the real complexity in our reactions: we would naturally disdain such agents for their bad traits, and modify our relationships accordingly, while still acknowledging that they are praiseworthy in the ordinary way for trying hard to do well by the right values. This picture of the two sorts of blame takes very seriously the idea that moral community is an essential notion in understanding blame. Like Strawson, I think that relationships, both our fairly impersonal relation- ship with others in our moral community and our personal relationships, are essential to understanding how responsibility attributions and blameworthiness work. If someone is not in our moral community, the way in which we blame them changes, and rightly so. We cannot expect a response from someone who is outside our moral community. In Chapter 7 I discuss exemptions from ordinary blameworthiness, and consider what exactly determines the boundaries of the realm of detached blame. In Chapter 4 I argued that moral knowledge is essential to ordinary blameworthiness. Here I focus on arguing that deep moral ignorance is sufficient for being outside our moral community, and in
- 28. the realm of detached blame. Someone like Susan Wolf ’s JoJo (1987) may not lack any general capacities, or even any general moral capacities, but if he is deeply morally ignorant, he is not in our moral community, and communicative blame would be infelicitous. I also address cases where the agent seems to have moral knowledge, but lacks a capacity to act well. I use Wolf ’s asymmetry thesis as a counterpoint, to argue that incapacity does not undermine either praise- or blameworthiness. So long as the agent is not acting in a compulsive or pathological way (in which case they would not be responsible at all for the act), an incapacity to act well, just like an incapacity to act badly, is consistent with being responsible and praise- or blameworthy. George Washington is said to have been unable to tell a lie. I argue that so long as he fully understood that lying was wrong, that fact that he had no option but to tell the truth does not undermine his praiseworthiness. Similarly, so long as someone understands Morality, and they are acting on their own volitions, they can be blameworthy, even if in a sense parallel to Washington’s incapacity, they are incapable of acting well. Finally, I consider what we might mean we talk about psychopaths, and I argue that one way to understand psychopathology is in terms of a lack of moral understanding, which would render psychopaths outside our moral community, and thus exempt from ordinary blame. It is conceivable that there are people who understand which things are right and wrong without understanding the way in which Morality is reason giving. If there are people like that, they are morally ignorant. In Chapter 8 I argue for a third sort of blameworthiness, ‘extended blameworthiness’. Sometimes an agent seems blameworthy even though she has not manifested bad will at all. To borrow an example from Randolph Clarke (2014, 165), imagine that I have promised my spouse that I will get milk on the way home. Imagine that there is nothing that I have failed to do that I should have done in order to remember. Thus, it seems that I am not blameworthy for the ignorance. However, it also seems plausible to Clarke, and to me, that I am blameworthy for there being no milk. One might simply deny this. But it seems to many, including myself, that there must be a way of making sense of some sort of blameworthi- ness here. However, neither ordinary blame nor detached blame seems appropriate. I argue that in this sort of case, agents should take respon- sibility. This is not simply liability (which obviously is taken on or imposed in negligence type cases). It is more than that, it is a real
- 29. blameworthiness, a licence for the offended party to feel something approaching resentment, and for the offender herself to feel remorse. I give an account of the appropriate reactions of the offender here, and suggest that we should recognize that there are shades of agent regret, and that at one end, when an agent is willing to take ownership of the action, agent regret shades into remorse. The amount of blame that is appropriate does not always correspond with the amount of remorse that is appropriate, and one important feature of extended blameworthi- ness is that the sort of blame conversation that is appropriate has different norms to the sort that is appropriate when the agent has a clearly bad will. I argue that what licenses a blame conversation at all are the require- ments of our personal relationships. Sometimes, when an agent fails to meet standards that apply to her, and her own agential involvement is ambiguous, her relationships require that she take responsibility, that she accept extended blameworthiness. Relationships require a degree of emotional investment, not just in doing the relevant duties, but in the attitudes surrounding them. I argue that having a disposition to feel remorse for inadvertent fault can be an important sign of investment. It is not always necessary, and it is usually not necessary at all in imper- sonal relationships. When it is necessary, it does not license the full blame part of the conversation. Rather, extended blameworthiness correlates with a trun- cated blame conversation, where the blamer should usually be satisfied with apology and remorse from the blamee as the end of the conversation. At that point, the blamer can let go—the person at fault has shown that she is invested in the relationship, that she cares more about the wrong- doing than about being a stickler about the limits of her own agency. The underlying rationale for extended blameworthiness is no different to the rationale for any other kind of blameworthiness. Our responsibil- ity practice has a function, the very same function as our morality practice, of course, of regulating and rationalizing our relationships. This is why there are such different ways of blaming those who are in our moral community and those who are outside it. This is how we can make sense of responsibility even without bad will. And this is why we care so much about the conditions of rightness and wrongness, and of praise and blame.
- 30. 2 Subjective Obligation In this chapter, I defend an account of subjective obligation. I start with the question, ‘how should we define right and wrong?’ I am not con- cerned with which things are right and wrong, such as whether lying is wrong, or whether we ought to act so as produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Rather, I am concerned with the conditions that limit when we can appropriately say that an agent’s behaviour is wrong, as opposed to merely bad. An avalanche might be bad, but it is not wrong. Avalanches are not agents, and assuming an avalanche is not caused by agents, the concept of wrongness is simply not applicable. But even agents sometimes behave in ways that, although definitely bad, do not seem wrong. If a doctor prescribes a drug that entirely unpre- dictably ends up killing the patient, we do not usually say that the doctor has acted wrongly. This is because we are not responsible for all the bad things we cause. In other words, there is a ‘responsibility constraint’ on our concepts of rightness and wrongness.¹ My aim in this chapter is to elucidate that constraint. I will argue that we have different notions of rightness that correspond to different understandings of the responsibility constraint. Here is a rough formulation: The Responsibility Constraint: A normative theory must give an account of right and wrong action such that an agent could reasonably be deemed responsible for her action. There are at least two ideas associated with the responsibility constraint. One is the idea that deontic concepts should make sense of assessment of the agent, the other is that deontic concepts should be able to guide ¹ As I said in footnote 1 in the Introduction, I assume that ‘rightness’, ‘obligation’, and ‘ought’ are corollaries, and likewise for the converses. Ways to be Blameworthy: Rightness, Wrongness, and Responsibility. Elinor Mason, Oxford University Press (2019). © Elinor Mason. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198833604.003.0002
- 31. action. In order to make sense as assessment and guidance, deontic concepts must have some essential connection to human agency and capacities. But what is the connection? The responsibility constraint obviously rules out an account of rightness that instructs the agent to do things that are not possible for the agent, such as teletransport. As consequentialists have argued, it may also rule out accounts of rightness that allow all causal consequences to be relevant to rightness.² Plausibly, rightness could not depend on consequences that I (non-culpably) do not know about or are not up to me. Beyond that, however, it is not easy to see how our deontic concepts are limited. We must think about what we need from our concepts of rightness and wrongness (and their corollaries, ought and obligation), what we are doing with them, and what makes them useful. I argue that we should be pluralists here: there are different ways to think about rightness and wrongness, and they are useful for different things. We can think of accounts of rightness on a scale, from hyper-objective rightness, which meets only a very weak version of the responsibility constraint, to subjective rightness, which meets a much stronger version of the respon- sibility constraint.³ In this chapter I argue that we need both a moder- ately objective account of rightness, such that rightness is defined independently of particular agents’ capacities and knowledge, and also a subjective account of rightness, that correlates with praise- and blameworthiness. Even objective accounts of rightness need to meet some version of the responsibility constraint. For an account of objective rightness to be useful, it must have at least some connection to the abilities of ordinary agents. A conception of rightness that said that the right action is the one ² See e.g. Frances Howard-Snyder (1997). ³ Unfortunately, the terminology is not completely standardized. Michael Zimmerman talks about objectivism, prospectivism, and subjectivism. I follow him in using the term prospectivism, but whereas he contrasts objectivism and subjectivism, I prefer to use ‘objectivism’ as an umbrella term, and distinguish between hyper-objectivism and prospec- tivism. Frank Jackson (1991) contrasts objective consequentialism with the ‘decision- theoretic’ approach (which is what I am calling prospectivism); Graham Oddie and Peter Menzies (1992) distinguish between actual-outcome consequentialism, objectivism (which is what I am calling prospectivism), and subjectivism. Bart Gruzalski (1981) talks about ‘actual- consequence consequentialism’ and ‘foreseeable consequence consequentialism’. Julia Driver (2011) discusses a distinction between ‘evaluational externalism’, which bases rightness on factors that are external to agency, and ‘evaluational internalism’, which bases rightness on factors internal to agency.
- 32. that an omniscient and omnipotent being would identify is not of interest to us. It serves none of our purposes. Objective rightness gives us an independent standard to aim for, and a measure of achievement, so it must be at least possible to do what counts as objectively right, and to do it non-accidentally. On objective accounts of rightness and wrongness, it is possible that an agent could act wrongly without being blameworthy, or act rightly without being praiseworthy.⁴ It is possible, in other words, that an agent could stumble on a wrong action by accident, without any bad intent. She could act wrongly, but have an excuse. It seems important to leave room for that, to be able to say that this action is wrong, but that the agent herself is not at fault. More subjective accounts of rightness, that is, accounts that meet a stronger version of the responsibility constraint, tie rightness and wrongness more closely to the agent’s own point of view. As a result, it is plausible that subjective rightness is correlated with praise- and blameworthiness, and possibly, though I will explain this in a way that partly debunks it, action guidance. That is to say, an agent who acts subjectively rightly is thereby praiseworthy, and an agent who acts subject- ively wrongly, is thereby blameworthy. Roughly speaking (I will elaborate on this in what follows), on the subjective account of obligation, the agent’s point of view is supreme, and so the agent cannot act subjectively wrongly by accident. To act subjectively wrongly is to act wrongly by one’s own lights. My main purpose in this chapter is to defend an account of subjective obligation. I start my account of subjective obligation with the common idea that it needs to be accessible. I argue that subjective obligation does not in fact need to be fully accessible. Rather, subjective obligation should be anchored in the true Morality. I argue that it should be action guiding, but not in the rich sense that people often intend when they say that subjective obligation should be action guiding. Subjective obligation is a genuine imperative, but if an agent cannot identify the right action, it does not necessarily help her to identify the right action. ⁴ G. E. Moore argues that objections to the objectivist accounts of moral obligations confuse blameworthiness with ‘having violated an obligation’. Moore argues that the two things are distinct, that one can be blameworthy without having violated an obligation (1912, 192–3). Peter Graham (2010, 93–4) argues along similar lines.
- 33. Finally, I argue that we cannot formulate subjective obligation in terms of the agent’s beliefs about what ought to be done. Rather, we need to formulate subjective obligation in terms of trying: an agent is fulfilling her subjective obligation when she is trying to do well by Morality. 1. Objective Rightness: Hyper-objectivism and Prospectivism In this section I give a brief overview of the objectivist position. I think there is a place for many different objectivist notions, so long as we are clear about what we are talking about, though, as I explain below, I favour prospectivism for the main objectivist role. Objectivist accounts of our deontic concepts are useful as a standard to aim for, and as a way to assess past performance and learn from it. These purposes give us a way to assess different contenders for the primary objectivist sense of rightness. Objective rightness has been discussed fairly thoroughly in the litera- ture, especially with reference to consequentialism (which, of course, seems particularly vulnerable to worries about the definition of rightness overreaching itself and including things that the agent could not possibly be responsible for), but also more generally. The debate has polarized around two accounts of the objective sense of rightness, which I will refer to as ‘hyper-objectivism’ and ‘prospectivism’.⁵ The difference between different sorts of account of objective rightness can be brought out by considering an example, forms of which appear in various places in the literature (see Jackson, 1991, 462–3 and Regan, 1980, 264–5).⁶ Imagine a doctor has a choice between three drugs she ⁵ Defenders of hyper-objectivism (not necessarily consequentialist accounts) include Henry Sidgwick (1874), G. E. Moore (1912), W. D. Ross (1930), David Lyons (1965), Lars Bergstrom (1996), Fred Feldman (1986; 2003), Julia Driver (2001; 2012), and Peter Graham (2010). Defenders of prospectivism include Jeremy Bentham (1789), John Stuart Mill (1863), J. J. C. Smart (1973), Bart Gruzalski (1981), Frank Jackson (1991), Graham Oddie and Peter Menzies (1992), Brad Hooker (2000), Mark Timmons (2012), Frances Howard-Snyder (1997), Michael Zimmerman (2006; 2008), Elinor Mason (2013), and Errol Lord (2015). In my ‘Consequentialism and Moral Responsibility’ (2019a) I examine the way in which the responsibility constraint applies to consequentialism. ⁶ Fred Feldman discusses a version of this example in Feldman (1986, 46–7), but Feldman’s conclusion remains that what you ought to do is to prescribe the drug that would actually be best. More recently Parfit gives a version of the example (2011, 159). Parfit’s overall conclusion is that there are many senses of right and wrong and that they are all useful.
- 34. could prescribe. The first drug will ameliorate the symptoms, but will not cure the patient. The doctor knows that one of the other two drugs will cure the patient completely, and the other one will kill the agent. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know which is which. According to hyper- objectivism, the right one to prescribe is the one that will actually cure the patient. According to prospectivism, the right one to prescribe is the safe drug, even though the doctor knows that that would not be the best possible option. The most common argument for prospectivism over hyper-objectivism can be characterized in terms of the responsibility constraint. Prospec- tivism does a better job of meeting the responsibility constraint than the hyper-objectivist account of rightness. The thought is something like this: ‘what we really ought to do, cannot be what an omniscient agent would do. Rather, it must be based on a more realistic agent. We couldn’t reliably do what an omniscient agent would do, and so we couldn’t possibly be blameworthy for not doing what an omniscient agent would do.’ Agents are not usually responsible for doing or failing to do the hyper-objectivism-right act because, although it is available in some sense, it is not sufficiently accessible to them.⁷ Or, to put the same point a different way, on a hyper-objectivist account of rightness we will have excuses too often. Excuses will be the norm, not the exception. As P. F. Strawson points out, the standard way to have an excuse is to have done something bad, but without having intended it that way. In Strawson’s terms, the relevant bad quality of will is absent, and so the agent is not, after all, responsible for the injury (Strawson, 1962, in Watson, 2003, 77). This is consistent with J. L. Austin’s distinction between a justification and an excuse. Austin avoids the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and instead uses non-deontic terms: “In the one defence, [justification] . . . we accept respon- sibility but deny that it was bad: in the other, [excuse] we admit that it was bad but don’t accept full, or even any, responsibility” (1956, 2). We could put Austin’s point in deontic terms: a justification involves admitting that you did the act but denying that it was wrong, whereas an excuse involves admitting that the act was wrong, but denying responsibility for it. An excuse here is a release from blameworthiness. Denying responsibility is not denying causal responsibility, it is denying blameworthiness. ⁷ This is Howard-Snyder’s argument (1997).
- 35. When we talk about excuses in everyday life we can be talking about a host of different things. There are different kinds of excusing condition, some of which are better described as exempting conditions, and there are also partial excuses, and mitigating circumstances.⁸ What I am inter- ested in here is relatively simple. The kind of excuse that would prolif- erate on the hyper-objective account of rightness is the kind that applies when an ordinary agent is not responsible for a particular act. I will call this a ‘simple excuse’. Here is a useful way to characterize simple excuses: an agent has a simple excuse when her agency is not impaired, but it is blocked.⁹ It could be blocked by someone else (who thwarts her in some way), or by circumstances (which cause unavoidable ignorance, or cause some physical impairment, e.g. sudden paralysis). This is the simplest form for an excuse: it looks as though I did it, but in fact, my agency was blocked, my motives were not flawed after all. On a hyper-objectivist account of rightness, agents will often be non- culpably ignorant of the right action. Take Jackson’s doctor. There is no way she can know which drug will cure the patient. So if she fails to do the right action, she will have a simple excuse: she didn’t know which action the right action was. On a prospectivist account of rightness it is possible to have a simple excuse, but for most people, prospectively wrong action will be blame- worthy most of the time. The prospectively right action is (roughly) the one a reasonable agent would do. Most of the time we can strive towards being reasonable, and manage it. However, sometimes we do not identify what it would be prospectively right to do, even when we are sincerely trying our best.¹⁰ So the question is, which account should we prefer? The underlying issue here concerns what we want from an account of objective rightness. Being able to point to the very best possible action is interesting, but it does not capture anything that is particularly useful to us. ⁸ I come back to exemptions, partial excuses, and mitigating circumstances in more detail in Chapter 6. ⁹ This is the idea that Michael Tooley uses to defend his view that capacities are what determine rights: Tooley distinguishes between capacities that are immediately exercisable, and capacities that are blocked, and contrasts both with mere potentialities (1972, 149). ¹⁰ Zimmerman is quite explicit about this (2008, 71). How common excuses will be depends on how demanding the standard for prospectively right action is: if it demands full rationality it will be much more common to have an excuse than if it only demands being reasonable.
- 36. We are interested in praise- and blameworthiness, which clearly the hyper-objective account is unable to capture. But more moderate object- ivist accounts do not perfectly capture praise- and blameworthiness either. It is always possible that an agent acts prospectively wrongly without being blameworthy. Another thing we are very interested in is moral education, in teaching other people how to do better, and in learning how to do better ourselves. Objective standards for right action are good for that: we want to be able to point to what an agent should have done, and say, ‘that’s the right action in this case’. However, if we point to the very best possible action in a Jackson style case, we will not learn anything about what we should have done, or what we should encourage our children to do. The very best action is not one that we can genuinely recommend under that description—it is so often inaccessible. Thus an account of objective rightness that is roughly an account of what the reasonable agent would do, seems about right. It is pitched at a level that is not unattainable, and is genuinely something to aspire to and aim for. You need an excuse for not doing what is prospectively right, and it will not be easy to point to one. The prospectivist account gives us a standard to aim for, something that we should usually be able to achieve. Usually, doing something that is prospectively wrong will be blameworthy, usually, prospective rightness is accessible to us. Of course, in the end, all this is just another way of saying that prospectivism is more intuitive, that it fits better with our other concepts and ideas. Prospectivism meets the responsibility constraint in a way that seems particularly important and relevant.¹¹ 2. Subjective Obligation and Praise- and Blameworthiness We might think that what we want from subjective obligation is simply that it captures what an agent ought to do from their own point of view. But, as I shall argue here and will continue to argue in Chapter 4, that is not a good way to characterize our ambitions for an account of subjective ¹¹ In my 2013 I give an argument for prospectivism that aims to show that prospectivism is superior to hyper-objectivism because it builds uncertainty into rightness. Again, that is a way of cashing out the basic intuitive attractiveness of prospectivism.
- 37. obligation. Rather, what we want is an account of what an agent ought to do, such that if they do it, they will be praiseworthy, and if they do not do it, they will be blameworthy. I will start by motivating that aim, explain- ing why it is important to give an account of subjective obligation that correlates with praise- and blameworthiness. What are we trying to latch on to when we talk about praise- and blameworthiness? As I argued above, not simply acting rightly or wrongly, as clearly, on a standard moderately objective sense of rightness and wrongness, there is no necessary connection between acting wrongly and being blameworthy. According to an objective account of obligation, such as prospectivism, there are various ways that an agent can act wrongly and nonetheless have an excuse. She may be non-culpably ignorant of some relevant fact, or she may have tripped, or have been pushed. In those cases, an agent is not blameworthy, and she may even be praiseworthy. So my question here is, what is it that she is doing in such a case that renders her praiseworthy? And conversely, when an agent is blameworthy despite her act having good results, what is it that makes her blameworthy? I should stress here that my question is not a question about ‘desert’ in anything but a very deflationary sense.¹² I am not claiming that when an agent acts subjectively wrongly she deserves blame, in the sense that that is what justifies the suffering that goes with being blamed. Rather, we want to give an explanation of what is going on when it is fitting to praise ¹² Derk Pereboom contrasts basic desert (which he is sceptical about) with consequen- tialist reasons that one might have for blaming someone. Pereboom argues that basic desert cannot be justified because we do not have free will (2001. The argument is further developed in his 2014). As Michael McKenna points out, there is no reason to think that any account of blameworthiness must be committed to a basic desert thesis. “ . . . contrary to Pereboom’s approach to a theory of moral responsibility which is tied to desert, if some other way of cashing out the propriety of the reactive attitudes is defensible, say, along the lines of fittingness within a conversation , as I have suggested, and if this allows us to make good sense of our moral responsibility practices, then perhaps one need not commit to fairly taxing views about the suffering of others merely by committing to a proper theory of moral responsibility . . . ” (McKenna, 2012, 118). As the italics indicate, McKenna himself is not sure that we can talk about blameworthiness without talking about desert. My own view is that we can: what I offer can be read as a defence of blameworthiness as a relation of fittingness between certain behaviour (violating subjective obligation) and blame. However, my view is compatible with a more ambitious account of desert. In fact, I do not think that imposing suffering is an essential part of blame, so the burden on me to justify blame is lighter than on those who think that hostile attitudes are essential. I come back to this in Chapter 5.
- 38. or blame an agent. Obviously, we have to say something that adverts to the agent’s actual engagement in the situation. Joel Feinberg calls this the ‘aboutness principle’ in his discussion of desert (1970): we must be able to say something about the agent. My aim is to defend an account of what activity of an agent makes blame fitting. I focus on what the relevant agential activity is, rather than on exactly how the condition of fittingness works, or what that means for theories about desert, or what desert requires. This is the sense in which my work is in normative responsibility theory rather than in the meta-level theory, the debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists. Of course, it is very controversial what, exactly, we should say about the conditions that make blame fitting. The thought I start with here is that it is very plausible that we should say something about what the agent is doing; about her activity. It seems prima facie plausible to say that when an agent is praiseworthy despite her act having turned out badly, it is because of what she was up to, her agential contribution. Further, it seems plausible that we should be able to describe the fitting- ness conditions for moral praise or blame in terms of right or wrong action. For an agent to be morally blameworthy it seems, there must be some sense in which she acted wrongly. My argument in this book is that it is natural to think of the relevant thing that the agent was doing as violating her subjective obligation. I have not yet given an account of subjective obligation, so this claim is hard to assess. Roughly, I think that to act subjectively wrongly is to act badly by one’s own lights. More precisely, acting subjectively wrongly means knowingly failing to try to do well by Morality. Of course, that is very controversial. First, it will be rejected by those who think that praiseworthiness does not require any self-aware morally good action. Rather, such people argue, what makes an agent praise- worthy is just that she is in fact motivated in a good way, and this cannot be characterized as acting subjectively rightly. Nomy Arpaly uses the case of Huckleberry Finn to make the point vivid: Huck is not acting morally from his own point of view, in fact he thinks he is doing the wrong thing, and yet, Arpaly argues, he is praiseworthy (2003). I address that chal- lenge in Chapter 4. Second, there are those who will object that although one may be praiseworthy when one acts subjectively rightly, it is not the only way to be praiseworthy (and conversely, acting subjectively wrongly is only one
- 39. way to be blameworthy), surely there are also other ways. I agree with that, and in what follows I argue for pluralism about praise- and blame- worthiness. However, I think that acting subjectively wrongly is a central and important way to be blameworthy, and understanding it properly sheds light on our overall understanding of blameworthiness. In what follows, in saying that an agent who acts subjectively wrongly is blame- worthy, I mean that she is blameworthy in the ‘ordinary’ way. I say more about what ordinary blameworthiness and ordinary blame are in Chapter 4. Finally, my suggestion that acting subjectively wrongly is automatic- ally to be blameworthy will invite the objection that it is possible to have an excuse, even when one is acting subjectively wrongly.¹³ An agent may be under enormous stress, or she may be in the grip of some sort of temporary glitch, or fugue. I will answer that briefly here, and I explore the issue more fully in Chapter 6. As I say, the view I defend is that when an agent is praiseworthy, it is because she was trying to do well by Morality; in a case where she is blameworthy, she was failing to try to do well by Morality. The first thing to say is that an agent who appears to act subjectively wrongly will often appeal to an excuse. But, and here is the crucial point, the excuse has the form, ‘it looks as though I am acting subjectively wrongly, but actually I am not’. She might say for example, “I did push him down, but I thought he was attacking me”. Simple excuses aim to convince the would-be blamer that things were not quite as they appeared. The plea is that the agent didn’t really do the thing it looked as though she did: she did not do it under the relevant description. Here is another way to put it: the agent may have acted objectively wrongly, but she did not act subjectively wrongly, and so she is not blameworthy. An agent can have a simple excuse for acting prospectively wrongly, but she cannot have a simple excuse for acting subjectively wrongly. If you are acting subjectively wrongly, then, by definition, you know what you are doing under the relevant description. Of course, an agent may be so impaired that she is not responsible at all. It seems possible someone could be acting subjectively wrongly, but not qualify as a responsible agent in the most basic sense. In that case, we do not think of the agent as blameworthy because we do not think of her ¹³ Thanks to Michael McKenna and Doug Portmore for pressing me on this.
- 40. as responsible at all. But there is another worry here, which is that a competent agent could genuinely be acting subjectively wrongly, and yet have a complex excuse. Circumstances may be such that she is less blameworthy than she otherwise would have been. I address various ways to understand this thought in Chapter 6, where I suggest that there may be mitigating circumstances and complex partial excuses, but their role is to show that the agent was not acting as subjectively wrongly as it first appeared. Insofar as the agent is acting subjectively wrongly, she is blameworthy. In the rest of this chapter I will expand and defend my account of subjective rightness and wrongness. My aim in giving an account of subjective obligation is to give an account of the agent’s action in moral terms—an account of the way in which the agent is acting morally wrongly by her own lights—which specifies the conditions under which agents are blameworthy in the ordinary way. 3. Subjective Obligation and Action Guidance I have just argued that what we are looking for from an account of subjective obligation is an account of rightness and wrongness that is reliably correlated with praise- and blameworthiness. But there is another aspect of our hopes for a notion of subjective obligation. It seems to many that action guidance is an important part of what we want from a norma- tive theory. Even without a clear account of what ‘action guidance’ is, it seems obvious that neither the hyper-objectivist nor the prospective con- ceptions of rightness can reliably deliver action guidance. Rightness in those senses will often be inaccessible to actual agents.¹⁴ The notion of accessibility is very important here. Both praise- and blameworthiness and action guidance are somehow connected to it: it is the possible inaccessibility of hyper-objective and prospective obligations that means that an agent may not be responsible for not complying, and means that they are not action guiding. Subjective obligation, by con- trast, should be accessible, and should be able to deliver on both ¹⁴ Some of the material in this section originally appeared in Elinor Mason, ‘Do the Right Thing: An Account of Subjective Obligation’, in Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, vol. 7. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2017): 117–37. Reprinted by permission from Oxford University Press.
- 41. praiseworthiness and action guidance. Or so it might seem. So perhaps the responsibility constraint that we are hoping to meet should be expressed as follows: The Strong Responsibility Constraint (Accessibility): rightness will be accessible to the agent, so she is praise- or blameworthy for right or wrong action, and rightness is action guiding. The idea that a moral theory should be action guiding is widely espoused.¹⁵ But it is not completely clear what qualifies a theory as action guiding. Frank Jackson says: “the fact that a course of action would have the best results is not in itself a guide to action, for a guide to action must in some appropriate sense be present to the agent’s mind. We need, if you like, a story from the inside of an agent to be part of any theory which is properly a theory in ethics” (1991, 466–7). It seems that we somehow have to shift the focus of the moral instruction from hitting the target to something that the agent is more in control of, something that the agent is able to do. We might simply translate the objectivist instruc- tion, which mentions a target that is external to the agent, into an instruction that mentions only the agent’s beliefs about that target. Instead of saying, ‘do the right thing’, we should say, perhaps, ‘do what you believe the right thing to do is’.¹⁶ However, on one construal of action guidance, this will not do. An instruction that simply shifts focus from the target to the agent’s beliefs regarding the target may not be helpful. If an agent has no clue what is right, an instruction to do what she believes is right will not help. Moving from talking about the world to talking about beliefs about the world does not increase the action guidingness of an instruction. Consider Ross’s proposal, that the (subjectively) right thing for some- one to set himself to do is what “he thinks to be morally most suitable in the circumstances as he takes them to be” (1939, 61). Imagine someone sincerely asking for advice in a difficult moral situation. Such a person might say, “I don’t know how things will turn out, though I have a good ¹⁵ For arguments that theories should be action guiding see Bart Gruzalski (1981), James Hudson (1989), Frank Jackson (1991), Elinor Mason (2003), Andrew Sepielli (2009; 2012), Holly Smith (2010; 2011b; 2012), Fred Feldman (2012), and Mark Timmons (2012). ¹⁶ See Prichard (1932) and Ross (1939). (Ross changed his view from an objectivist view to a subjectivist one after being convinced by Prichard.) Doug Portmore notes that pure subjectivism is not action guiding (2011, 22), as does Andrew Sepielli (2012, 60).
- 42. guess. But more worryingly, I am not sure whether keeping a promise is more important than producing good consequences—what should I do?” On Ross’s view, this person ought to do what they think is most morally suitable. But they don’t know what’s most morally suitable—that’s the whole problem. A fully subjective view like Ross’s is action guiding only in a very weak sense. It tells us to obey our conscience, but no more than that. The lesson here is that there are two ways to think about action guidance. We can think about it primarily in terms of helpfulness, so that what we are looking for is a set of instructions that helps an agent who lacks information. There is no point is saying to someone who is learning to ride a bicycle, ‘don’t fall off ’. The point is to teach them how not to fall off. A good teacher will say useful things like, ‘keep your knees and feet close to the bike’. They will give instructions that will result in the aim being achieved. Call this the ‘helpfulness interpretation’ of action guidance. On the other hand, we can think of action guidance in a different way, such that moving from an instruction about a target to an instruction about beliefs about a target is a relevant difference. The point of such a change is to move from something the agent cannot necessarily do to something they can do. Let’s call this the ‘accessibility interpretation’ of action guidance, so that for a theory to be action guiding is just for it to give an instruction that is always going to be accessible to the agent. Writers who argue that normative theories must be action guiding usually have the helpfulness interpretation in mind (e.g. Feldman, 2012; Holly Smith, 2010; 2012). They point out that instructions to ‘do the right thing’ are not helpful, we need to know what to do—we need something more usable. But should we be looking for action guidance in the helpfulness sense? The prospects for an immediately helpful instruction that always applies are bleak.¹⁷ There is simply too much variation in the circumstances in which action guidance is needed. Different people in different contexts need hugely varying amounts of information to make an instruction usable. Take a simple example: a cake recipe. A recipe aimed at advanced chefs can take all sorts of knowledge for granted. A cake recipe aimed at children must spell out ¹⁷ I argue this in more detail in Mason (2017), where I discuss Holly Smith’s account of a hierarchy of secondary decision principles (Smith 2012). See also Michael Zimmerman’s argument in chapter 4 of his 2014.
- 43. each stage. Furthermore, when mistakes are made, as they inevitably will be in the moral realm, we still have subjective obligations, and what we ought to do depends on what wrong turns we took. This is enormously complex, and not something that we cannot expect our moral theory itself lay out in advance. Moral theories cannot always provide an immediately helpful instruction that we can use as a subject- ive guide to action. Subjective obligation is not the same as a decision procedure. It is not a demand for particular contextually sensitive advice. We need that, of course, but we must get that from each other, from past experience, from self-help books and so on, not from our moral prin- ciple. We should let go of the idea that the subjective ‘ought’ can be action guiding in a substantive sense, that it can give immediately helpful advice.¹⁸ Let’s return to the accessibility sense of action guidance. On Ross and Prichard’s view, we should do what we take to be most morally suitable. As I pointed out, that may not be very helpful, we may not have enough of a clue about what is morally suitable. But in that case, they would insist, we should nonetheless do the best we can, and we really should do that. We just have to rely on a weak sense of what it is to choose an option that is ‘the most x’ within a range of options. In a weak sense, we pick the option we take to be most x even in the case when we plump between a number of options that appear equally x, or which we cannot rank. Compare an instruction to pick the numbers you think most likely to win the lottery. In a weak sense, following that instruction simply involves writing down any set of numbers, as all sets are, from the point of view of the agent, equally likely to win the lottery. So Prichard and Ross’s pure subjectivism is action guiding in the accessibility sense. The crucial point about action guidance in the accessibility sense is that it involves a direct instruction. The subjective ‘ought’ says, ‘you ought to do φ!’, and that is more than just a way of saying, ‘φ would be good’. Compare that to hyper-objective and prospective rightness, which are ways of talking about the ideal thing to do. It is very useful (for moral ¹⁸ I think this is what Fred Feldman concludes in the end too, though he does not put it quite like that. Feldman starts by looking for secondary principles to make sense of subjective obligation, but ends up saying that all we can do is “identify the acts in this particular case that seem most nearly consistent with the general policy of maximizing utility where possible while avoiding things that put people at excessive risk of serious harm . . . perform one of them” (2012, 167).
- 44. learning, for advice, and so on) to have senses like that. But these senses of rightness are essentially subjunctive. They are not actually instructions. Morality does not say, ‘do what is hyper-objectively right!’, or ‘do what is prospectively right!’ Rather, it says something subjunctive: ‘this is what it would be best to do’, or ‘this is what a reasonable person would do’. So it is true that an account of subjective obligation should be action guiding, that it should meet the accessibility version of the strong responsibility constraint, properly understood. And this explains the way in which action guidingness is connected to praise- and blame- worthiness: an agent who does not do what she subjectively ought is defying a genuine instruction. What she subjectively ought to do is what she really should no, no matter what. She may lack information, but there is nonetheless something that is accessible to her, something that she ought to do. Different accounts of subjective obligation vary on what they take to be accessible (it is usually beliefs, but I will argue that we should focus on the agent’s trying). They also vary on how to understand the moral outlook that is relevant to subjective obligation. Ross and Prichard’s account is subjective all the way down, they think that you act subjectively rightly when you act according to your own sense of what is morally appropriate, whatever that is. On my view, by contrast, we ought to try to do well by the standards of the true Morality. I defend that in the next section. 4. Anchoring Subjective Obligation: The True Morality I have argued that subjective obligation is not action guiding in the sense of giving us advice we can follow. Rather, subjective obligation is action guiding in a different sense, it is accessible, and so it issues a genuine imperative. I now turn to the other general idea that seems to be motivating the need for an account of subjective obligation: the idea that subjective obligation will correlate with praise- and blameworthiness. The version of the responsibility constraint that we are now working with says: The Strong Responsibility Constraint (Accessibility): rightness will be accessible to the agent, hence she is praise- or blameworthy for right or wrong action, and she should genuinely do what her subject- ive obligation tells her to do. :
- 45. The accessibility requirement directs us to the agent’s own view of things. An agent may not have fully rational credences, but there is an important sense (the subjective sense of obligation) in which she should base her action on her own best credences. So long as she is sincerely doing her best, trying, as I shall argue, an agent seems praiseworthy for acting on her own best assessment of a situation. However, though this seems right for an agent’s assessment of the non-moral aspects of the situation, I do not think that the same applies to the agent’s assessment of the moral facts. I argue that subjective obligation is the obligation to try to do well by the standards of the correct value system, where I do not mean anything hugely ambitious by ‘correct’. Insisting on a particular value system might seem counterintuitive. If we introduce an objective element into subjective obligation, something that is not necessarily accessible to the agent, like a particular value system, then it seems we have undermined the point of subjective obligation. I will defuse the force of that worry in what follows. The main point is that, for those to whom the notion of subjective obligation applies, subjective obligation is accessible. Only those who have a grasp of Morality (as I designate the relevant value system) count as acting subjectively rightly when they try to do well by their value system. Those outside our moral community are in a different category, and different concepts of rightness and blameworthiness are relevant. I defend this in more detail in the next few chapters. Here I focus on defending the objective element in subjective rightness. It is uncontroversial that objective accounts of rightness, even mod- erately objective accounts, such as prospectivism, are permitted to use the correct value system to anchor the theory.¹⁹ After all, such accounts do not aim to be fully accessible to the agent in any case. The justification for using the correct account of value is that we are interested in a ¹⁹ Jackson bases his prospectivism on the true value system. He describes the values that figure in the expected utility calculation in terms of idealized desires, “We can think of consequentialism’s value function as telling us what, according to consequentialism, we ought to desire. For a person’s desires can be represented—with, of course, a fair degree of idealization—by a preference function which ranks state of affairs in terms of how much the person would like the state of affairs to obtain, and we can think of consequentialism as saying that the desires a person ought to have are those which would be represented by a preference function which coincided with consequentialism’s value function” (1991, 464; see also Jackson, 1986, 352). Zimmerman, by contrast, uses the values that it would be reasonable to have (2014, 36).
- 46. standard that we should aim for, that can be pointed out as worth attaining, independently of the limitations of particular agents. We can say, ‘Amin should have chosen the other charity to give money to, this one is not efficient’, even when Amin was not in a position to know that. And, when using an objective notion of rightness, if we think of someone who is giving their money to a morally horrible organization, even if they carefully choose which morally horrible organization they want to give it to, we can say that what they did was objectively wrong. However, it might seem that accounts of subjective rightness should base subjective rightness on the agent’s actual value system, whatever that happens to be. This has the advantage of ensuring that acting subjectively rightly is fully accessible, and that is the rationale that is implicit in both Prichard’s and Ross’s fully subjective accounts of obli- gation (Prichard, 1932; Ross, 1939). Both Prichard and Ross take it that an agent must always be able to know what is subjectively required of her: obligation is based on what the agent believes, not what is actually the case, and that includes her value system. But there are various disadvantages to defining subjective obligation this way. First, it seems that there is unacceptable bootstrapping. As Michael Zimmerman points out, on this account of subjective rightness, agents who don’t believe that they have any obligations don’t have any, and those who have horrendous moral beliefs are acting rightly just so long as they believe that they are acting rightly (2008, 13–14). Ross and Prichard both anticipate this objection. Prichard attempts to resolve it by saying that we should not understand rightness as some- thing that belongs to actions, rather it belongs to the agent: “ . . . when we make an assertion containing the term ‘ought’ or ‘ought not’, that to which we are attributing a certain character is not a certain activity, but a certain man” (1932, 99). Ross says something similar—the idea is that the point of subjective rightness is not to pick out an independent characteristic that the act has because of the fact that the agent takes it to be right. Rather, the agent’s taking it to be right means that it is right for the agent. We can accept that, and still worry that the account of subjective rightness presented by Ross and Prichard is uninteresting. A fully sub- jective account of rightness picks out something, but it is something that we might not think central to our responsibility practices. What one subjectively ought to do in this sense is, basically, to follow one’s :
- 47. conscience. Anyone can follow their conscience, there is no external target in that at all. However, as I shall argue in more detail in Chapter 4, following one’s conscience does not seem sufficient for praise- worthiness. When we say that someone is praiseworthy, we are saying more than that they followed their conscience. The full subjectivist could defend their account by arguing that acces- sibility is crucial, and that subjective rightness in this sense would not be the whole story about the agent’s action. The full subjectivist could point out that once we have a firm grip on a moderately objective account of rightness, we have the resources to show how someone whose values are badly misguided has gone wrong. We can say that they are acting subjectively rightly insofar as they are doing what they see as morally appropriate, but they are acting wrongly in the prospective sense of rightness. Arguably, this gives up on the idea that subjective obligation might capture praise- and blameworthiness, instead all it captures is acting on conscience, but perhaps that is the best we can do. Perhaps subjective obligation is not a very interesting notion. However, I think there is another way to go here. We should say that acting subjectively rightly is indexed to a specific value system. On this picture, subjective obligation is always accessible, but not to everyone. Only those who accept the relevant value system can act subjectively rightly by that value system, and of course, for those people, the value system is accessible. This has the possible disadvantage that it leaves out a group of people who do not accept that value system, and we have to say something about them and the ways they might be blameworthy. I return to that in later chapters, and defend a different sort of blameworthiness for those outside our moral community. I argue that this is not a disadvantage but, rather, fits with our practices, which are essentially interpersonal. Crucially, my way of thinking about subjective obligation leaves the potential for a correlation between subjective obligation and praise- or blameworthiness in a rich sense. To act subjectively rightly is to act rightly by one’s own lights, but if subjective rightness is indexed to a particular value system, we have built in that those lights are beamed in the right direction, at least, given the value system in question. So acting subjectively rightly is not merely acting on conscience, it is also having the right sort of motivations. I shall argue in Chapter 4 that acting on conscience plus being motivated the right way (with some added subtle- ties) are together sufficient for our ordinary sense of praiseworthiness.
- 48. The question then is, what value system should we anchor subjective obligation in? We could say that subjective obligation is always relative to a particular moral theory—call this ‘theory-relative subjectivism’. On this sort of view, a utilitarian acts U-subjectively rightly, and is U-praiseworthy when she does what she believes she ought to do by utilitarian standards.²⁰ On this picture, we would never be giving an overall assessment of subjectively right action or praiseworthiness, but rather, a very narrow theory-relative assessment. Such narrowness is undesirable. Ordinary people do not usually think in terms of philosophical moral theories, and yet we want to assess their actions by something like a subjective standard, and we want to praise and blame them. But if an action is subjectively right only by the standards of a moral theory, then only self-identified utilitarians can act subjectively rightly in the ‘U-sense’, and only self-identified Kantians can act subjectively rightly in the ‘K-sense’, and so on. There are very few such people. Even philosophers are not usually certain about moral theories. And yet, it seems that philosophers have subjective obligations, which are partly obligations to figure out what they should actually do, in the real world. Ideally, an account of subjective obligation applies to ordinary people, who are trying to figure out what to do given their ordinary value system. This brings us to the issue of obligations in the face of uncertainty. Subjective obligation, I argued, is a genuine imperative, the agent really ought to do what is subjectively right. And whereas she may simply fail to know what her objective obligation is, what she ought to do subjectively is to figure out the best course of action in the face of uncertainty about the situation. So, for example, Amin must decide which charity to give money to, even though he does not know all the relevant facts. He must use the information he has, and deal with uncertainty as best he can. It is important to notice that Amin must be using moral information as well ²⁰ James Hudson (1989) argues that we should see subjective obligation as relative to theories in this way, arguing that a theory cannot be expected to say anything about what ought to be done by anything other than the lights of the theory. This is also how both Holly Smith and Fred Feldman understand subjective obligation. I don’t think there is anything incoherent about this (in fact it has the same structure as my own view). I just think that because it is so narrow, it is a less interesting way to use the various concepts. The theory- relative sense of subjective rightness is not incompatible with my sense, and could be used alongside Morality-relative subjective rightness if there was some pay-off for doing that. :
- 49. as non-moral information: he is not just thinking about probabilities, but thinking about values, about which values are in play, and which are most relevant here. It seems very plausible that an account of subjective obligation should deliver the verdict that in going through this process, Amin is doing what he subjectively ought to do by the lights of his own value system. This is a version of the accessibility point: our objective obligations are not always accessible to us, but our subjective obligations can be worked out by looking at the available information. So, what should we say about moral uncertainty? It is perfectly pos- sible that someone is uncertain between two opposing value systems, but of course, they cannot look to the value systems themselves for guidance on how to decide between the two. Each view can only provide reasons that come from within that view. Any reasons that transcend the two views must be reasons of some other sort.²¹ The right thing to do by Utilitarianism is one thing, the right thing to do by Kantian Deontology is another thing. If Utilitarianism and Kantian Deontology are, in some sense, part of a larger value system, then we can choose between them on the basis of that. However, if Utilitarianism and Kantian Deontology are simply divergent competing theories of morality, a choice between them cannot be based on either account of rightness and cannot be based on a larger moral theory to which they both belong. An agent who is hedging their bets between white supremacism and egalitarianism is not making a moral choice, they are (if anything) making a rational choice between two opposing moral views. Thus there is no requirement that subjective obligation should cover radical normative uncertainty. There may be better or worse ways of deciding in the face of radical normative uncertainty, but that would ²¹ James Hudson makes this point in defending an account of subjective obligation, but it applies equally to prospective obligation. Hudson says, “The purpose of a moral theory (subjective utilitarianism, for example) is to tell the agent how she should use whatever information she has available at the moment of decision. . . . Any moral theory, in telling the agent what to do, will ignore the agent’s possible commitment to other moral theories” (1989, 224). See also Andrew Sepielli (2009). Ted Lockhart has produced a detailed account of what we should do when faced with normative uncertainty, and his account deals with all and any normative uncertainty. Lockhart’s conclusion is that we should maximize expected moral rightness. Lockhart argues that it is possible to compare different accounts of value, and thus to hedge our bets between different moral theories (Lockhart, 2000). On my view we must be comparing the different accounts by reference to some higher standard, and the best way to think of that higher standard is as Morality as I define it here: the broad view we all more or less agree on.
- 50. be an evaluation of rationality, not of morality. However, given the desideratum that subjective obligation applies to ordinary people, it seems that subjective obligations should apply when the agent is in the grip of non-radical normative uncertainty. Non-radical normative uncertainty is uncertainty within a larger value system, where compari- sons and compromises can be made on the basis of the larger value system, the ‘covering value’ as Ruth Chang calls it (1997).²² Again, then, the question is, what value system is subjective obligation indexed to? The foregoing considerations point us to a broad value system that covers a spectrum of philosophical and non-philosophical views about rules, principles, and intrinsic goods. I refer to this view as Morality, with a capital ‘M’. For the purposes of this book, I take ‘Morality’ or ‘M’ as a placeholder for a fully worked out theory of a broad and plausible value system. A full defence would be another book. But I will assume that this is the correct value system in a broad sense. By ‘M’ I mean the best version of our current value system, a cleaned-up version of common sense morality, the highest common denominator rather than the lowest. We might be radically mistaken about this, but we have to work on the assumption that we are on the right track, that our value system is, at least roughly, correct. 5. Grasping Morality Morality contains a mixture of general principles for action, accounts of what is valuable or intrinsically good, and rules for deciding what to do. However, M does not tell us what to do. An agent could count as having a good grasp of M, and yet in a particular case not be able to see what she should do. General principles sometimes conflict, with each other or with other sorts of value, and it can be hard to see how different values are relevant. But these uncertainties take place under a wide umbrella. For example, Kantians and Utilitarians disagreeing about trolley cases do not (usually) think their opponent is a moral monster, they take themselves to be disagreeing within a larger framework on which they basically agree. ²² Chang points out that we do not always need to compare two options in terms of a value they have in common. All that we need is a covering value, something that the two compared items contribute to. We can ask, which is better with respect to the covering value? (1997).
- 51. Grasping M does not entail grasping every facet of M, it is a matter of being in the game, of having the right general outlook. Compare an ability to play chess: having a grasp of the game of chess does not mean playing every move perfectly, or spotting every possible combination of moves that one’s opponent may make. It means grasping the basic shape of the game, the moves that may make sense, the plays that tend to work, and so on. One can make mistakes and yet still have played well. Or to take another example, think of the activity of ‘doing philosophy’. Phil- osophy is hard, getting it right in the broad sense does not mean getting it right in every respect. In these cases we think that someone can be working in the right framework, and yet still be in the grip of reasonable uncertainty within that framework. The same is true for Morality. We can have things roughly correct, and yet face reasonable uncertainty. Morality is a broad enough framework that it can accommodate reason- able disagreement and, further, can provide resources for resolving that disagreement. When we worry about the trolley problem, we are really asking, ‘which answer to the trolley problem is better with respect to Morality?’ Diverting the trolley and letting it go could both be subject- ively right on this account of subjective rightness. Grasping Morality in my sense does not necessarily involve grasping every facet of Morality. So there is vagueness at the boundaries, it is not always clear when someone is ‘in’ and when they are ‘out’ of our moral community. It is a bit like the question of the point at which someone counts as an expert on Aphra Behn. Must they know all her plays and poems by heart? Clearly not. They must be familiar with a sufficient proportion and have some related general theoretical and historical knowledge. There is a threshold, and above that threshold one is an expert. The same applies to knowledge of Morality: to be in our moral community is to meet the threshold. But there are two very important differences between the question of what counts as being an expert on Aphra Behn and what counts as having a good grasp on Morality. First, it is usually the case that the question of whether someone is an expert is not terribly important, and the answer may well be contextually variable. Whereas here it seems that I am looking for an answer that marks an important distinction: if you have moral knowledge you are in (the category of subjective obligation) and if you lack it you are out. So, it seems important that I have a good answer to the question of what counts as moral knowledge.
- 52. In fact, I think that vagueness at the boundaries of grasping Morality is just echoed in vagueness at the boundaries of whether you are in or out of subjective obligation, and that this sort of vagueness is familiar and expected, not something we should hope to eliminate. Take the case of Huckleberry Finn.²³ Nomy Arpaly’s view is that Huck is reasons-responsive and praiseworthy when he acts akratically. I agree that he is reasons responsive, and esteemworthy for his motivations, but he is not praiseworthy in the ordinary sense. My argument, which I develop in Chapter 4, is that his quality of will is very different to the quality of will of someone who does understand Morality, and he is not praiseworthy in the same way that someone who understands Morality is. Huck believes that it is morally permissible to enslave some people. That false belief is probably not one that we can think of as part of the reasonable uncertainty that is allowed within having a grasp of Morality. So it seems that Huck does not have a grasp of Morality. On the other hand, Huck’s actions betray a deeper level of moral reactivity in him, one that does align with Morality. Perhaps Huck does subconsciously recognize that slavery is impermissible. So is Huck in or out? I think it is unclear.²⁴ There are many unclear cases. Historical and transitional cases, such as Huck’s are one sort of case. A person, or a whole community, can transition from being outside of Morality to being in it. During the transitional phase they are neither out nor in, it is just unclear whether we can think of them as having subjective obligations, and whether we can praise or blame them in the ordinary way. Imagine a different version of the Huck story, in which Huck wrestles with his conscience in the way that Twain describes, and then, despite feeling a strong temptation to help Jim escape, turns him in. In such a case, we feel at least some pull to blaming Huck on the grounds that he did know that he should not turn Jim in. In other words, that he had enough of a grasp on Morality, and was failing to try to do well by Morality in this situation. Another sort of unclear case involves blind spots: cases where agents have a grasp on most of Morality, but not some local part. We may often ²³ Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck’s first appearance in philosophy might be Jonathan Bennett (1974), and the case is discussed by Nomy Arpaly (2003). ²⁴ Paulina Sliwa’s discussion of Huck Finn brings out the complexities of the case nicely. Sliwa is defending the idea that moral knowledge is essential to praiseworthiness (2016).
- 53. just have to admit that it is indeterminate whether such an agent counts as having a grasp on Morality. Did Woodrow Wilson have a grasp on Morality? What about Fidel Castro? Margaret Thatcher? These are agents with huge and problematic blind spots, and yet there are lots of things they get right. Again, I think there is vagueness at the boundaries here, but that reflects reality, it is not a problem from the view. The second very important difference between questions like the question of whether someone is an expert on Aphra Behn and whether someone has a good grasp of Morality, is that Morality is directive. It is possible for an agent to have a good grasp of Morality and yet not know what to do in a particular situation. Moving from a grasp of all the general principles that may apply to a good decision in a particular circumstance is not easy, and part of trying to do well by Morality is trying to figure out what to do. The agent must translate knowledge about good- and right-making features into action. If an agent can see that justice and kindness are at stake, and that they conflict, she must take the next step, which is to make the choice between them and act appropriately. There are both hard comparisons and hard choices. Even agents who meet the threshold for being in our moral community will sometimes be stumped.²⁵ This draws attention to another aspect of moral knowledge. For an agent to be in our moral community, it is not enough that she under- stands the substance of Morality, she must also understand that Moral standards apply to her. This is related to the debate in meta-ethics between motivational internalism and motivational externalism. Motiv- ational internalists claim that to sincerely make a particular moral judgment necessarily involves being motivated by it. I reject motivational internalism for reasons that I will not go into here.²⁶ But it is certainly the case that to understand Morality is to understand that it is reason giving. That doesn’t necessarily entail that the agent is actually motivated. ²⁵ See Ruth Chang’s recent work on hard choices, e.g. Chang (2012), for an account of the complexities involved in making comparisons between options. I think this bears on the debate about whether testimony can provide moral knowledge (see e.g. Hills, 2009; McGrath, 2009). Without a fair bit of a moral understanding, that is, understanding of the general good and right making features, and how they contribute to a final verdict, an agent will rarely be able to move to action, and on my view would not count as having a grasp of Morality. ²⁶ See Mason (2008). I come back to this in Chapter 7.
- 54. It is important to leave room for the possibility that someone understands the standards, but defies them, and is blameworthy. I shall return to this question in Chapter 7, where I contrast agents outside of Morality with Morality defiers. Given that being in the realm of subjective obligation requires only that the agent meet a threshold, it is possible that an agent could be non- culpably ignorant of some moral fact, without being outside our moral community. How likely this is depends on how coherent Morality is. If Morality is a set of independent principles, it would be very easy to non- culpably miss some. If it is a set of closely related directives, supported by an underlying rationale, then it is much less likely that an agent could non-culpably miss some moral fact. The more coherent Morality is, the less likely it is that an agent could meet the threshold and yet be non- culpably ignorant of some important part of it. For now, I conclude these remarks on moral knowledge without a firm or final account. My view is that threshold knowledge of Morality—a good grasp of Morality as a set of requirements—is needed for being in the realm of subjective obligation, and, I shall argue, for ordinary praise- worthiness and blameworthiness. I agree that it is not completely clear what counts as moral knowledge and I do not attempt to resolve all of the complexities here. The important point, which I will argue for in Chapter 4, is that, if we meet the threshold for moral knowledge, then even when we act without awareness of the badness of our act, there is a sense in which we should have known that our act was problematic. Subjective obligation is indexed to M, the umbrella value system. This means that the agents to whom subjective obligation applies, the ones who accept M, are ordinary agents. The agents who are outside of our moral community, the ones who do not grasp M, are few and far between. Moral monsters, psychopaths, the historically distant and utterly different, plausibly do not grasp Morality, and therefore are outside the realm of subjective rightness. I have argued that we should think of subjective obligation as relative to a particular value system, but, if we want it to be a useful notion, we should think of it as relative to a very broad and ordinary value system, not an abstruse theoretical one. This leaves room for non-radical nor- mative uncertainty: sometimes agents must act on their best assessment of the moral situation in the same way that they must act on their best assessment of the non-moral situation.
- 55. Another Random Scribd Document with Unrelated Content
- 56. THE VIRILE NATURE-POWER. This is the natural signification of Huitzilopochtli, which we have accepted as the basis of all other developments of the god, and for this universal reason, namely, that the most ancient heathen gods are nature- gods, mythologic rules being followed, and that the pagan religion is essentially a nature-worship as well as a polytheism. The special investigation and following up of the various virtues have led to the same result. But, as this view has not yet been generally accepted in regard to this god, a few words concerning the union of the anthropomorphic national aspect of Huitzilopochtli, with his natural one may be added. It has been thought necessary to make the martial phase of Huitzilopochtli the basis of the others, as with Mars. War is, from this point of view, a child of spring, because weapons are then resumed after the long winter armistice. This is not at all the case with Huitzilopochtli, because the rainy season, setting in in spring, when the arrival and birth of the god are celebrated, renders the soft roads of Mexico unsuitable for war expeditions. Wars were originally children of autumn, at which time the ripe fruits were objects of robbery. But the idea of a war and national god is easily connected with the basis of a fructifying god of heaven. This chief nature-god may either be god of heaven, as Huitzilopochtli, as the rain-giving Zeus is made the national god by Homer, to whom human sacrifices were brought in Arcadia down to a late period, or he may be a sun-god, like Baal, to whom prayers for rain were addressed in Phœnicia, to further the growth of the fruit, and who also received human sacrifices. The Celtic Hu is also an ethereal war god, properly sun-god, who received human sacrifices in honor of the victory of spring; none the less is Odin's connection with war, battle, and war horrors; he is a fire-god, like Moloch and Shiva, to whom human sacrifices were made for fear of famine and failure of crops. The apparent basis of such a god has not to be considered so much as the point that the people ascribed to him the chief government of the course of the year. In such a case, the chief ruler also becomes the national god, the life of the nation depending immediately on the yearly course of nature. Is the nation warlike, then, the national god naturally becomes a war god as well. As
- 57. SNAKE SYMBOLISM. anthropomorphism connects itself with the nature-god only at a later period, so does his worship as war god and national god. In the case of Mars, as well as of Picus and Faunus, the same succession is followed. Mars, for example, is called upon in a prayer which has been preserved by Cato, to protect shepherds and flocks, and to avert bad weather and misgrowth; Virgil refers to him as a god of plants. In the song of the Arvalian brothers, he is called upon as the protector of the flowers. Thus, in his case also, the nature side is the basis. The Chinese symbolism of the union of the two sides or phases, is expressed in such a manner as to make spears and weapons representations of the germs of plants. This union has already been illustrated among the Aztecs, in the humming-bird, the sunbeam which plays round the flowers, in whose little body the intensest war spirit burns. Among the Egyptians, the beetle was placed upon the ring of the warrior, with whom it signified world and production. It remains to speak of another attribute of Huitzilopochtli, the snake attribute. Huitzilopochtli is also a snake-god. We have already, when treating of the snake-worship of the Mayas, referred to the numerous snakes with which this god is connected by myth and image, and how this attribute was added to the original humming- bird attribute, in Coatepec, where the snake-goddess Coatlicue gave him birth. If the snake signifies, in one case, time, in another, world, and in another instance, water, or the yearly rejuvenation of germs and blossoms, the eternal circle of nature, domination, soothsaying —it is quite proper; for all these qualities are found united in the god. Still other qualities, not seemingly possessed by him, we pass over, such as a connection with the earth and with the healing power, to be found in other Mexican gods, or the evil principle, which is entirely wanting. Just as the snake changes its skin every year, and takes its winter sleep, so does Huitzilopochtli, whose mother, Flora, is, therefore, a snake-goddess. Even so the snake represents the seed-corn in the mysteries of Demeter. In the Sabazii it represents the fructifying Zeus and the blessing. It is also the
- 58. WINTER-SOLSTICE FESTIVAL. symbol of productive power and heat, or of life, attribute of the life- endowing Shiva; among the Egyptians it represents the yearly rejuvenation of germs and blossoms. The snake Agathodæmon appears with ears of grain and poppies, as the symbol of fertility. If the god exhibits this nature of his, in spring, in the rain, then the snake is a suitable attribute. In India, snakes are genii of seas, and the Punjab, whose fertility is assured by the yearly inundations, has the name of snake lands (Nagakhanda), and claims an ancient worship. The sustaining water-god, Vishnu, also received the snake attribute. Among the Chinese, the water could be represented by a snake. The Peruvians call the boa constrictor the mother of nature. The idea of the yearly renewal of nature is also connected with that of time forever young, and the Aztecs, therefore, encircle their cycle with a snake as the symbol of time. The more positive signification which the snake, placed by the side of the humming-bird, gives to Huitzilopochtli, is that of a soothsaying god, like the snake Python among the Greeks. The snake signified 'king' among the Egyptians, and this suits Huitzilopochtli also, who may properly enough be considered the real king of his people. If, as connected with Huitzilopochtli, the snake also represents the war god, on account of its spirited mode of attack, I cannot with certainty say, but the myth as well as the worship places it in this relation to the war goddess Athene. Although the idea of a national and a war god is not quite obscured in the snake attribute, yet the nature side is especially denoted by it, as in the southern countries, where snake worship prevailed; the reference to the southern nature of this god is quite evident in the snake attribute. In the north, moisture, represented by the snake, has never attained the cosmological import which it has in the hot countries of the south. There, the snake rather represents an anticosmogonic, or a bad principle.[VIII-15] Mr Tylor, without committing himself to any extent in details, yet agrees, as far as he goes, with Müller. He says: "The very name of Mexico seems derived from Mexitli, the national war-god, identical or identified with
- 59. the hideous gory Huitzilopochtli. Not to attempt a general solution of the enigmatic nature of this inextricable compound parthenogenetic deity, we may notice the association of his principal festival with the winter solstice, when his paste idol was shot through with an arrow, and being thus killed, was divided into morsels and eaten, wherefore the ceremony was called the teoqualo, or 'god-eating.' This, and other details, tend to show Huitzilopochtli as originally a nature- deity, whose life and death were connected with the year's, while his functions of war-god may be of later addition."[VIII-16] Of this festival of the winter solstice the date and further particulars are given by the Vatican Codex as follows:— The name Panquetzaliztli, of the Mexican month that began on the first of December, means, being interpreted, 'the elevation of banners.' For, on the first day of December every person raised over his house a small paper flag in honor of this god of battle; and the captains and soldiers sacrificed those that they had taken prisoners in war, who, before they were sacrificed, being set at liberty, and presented with arms equal to their adversaries, were allowed to defend themselves till they were either vanquished or killed, and thus sacrificed. The Mexicans celebrated in this month the festival of their first captain, Vichilopuchitl. They celebrated at this time the festival of the wafer or cake. They made a cake of the meal of bledos, which is called tzoalli, and having made it, they spoke over it in their manner, and broke it into pieces. These the high priest put into certain very clean vessels, and with a thorn of maguey, which resembles a thick needle, he took up with the utmost reverence single morsels, and put them into the mouth of each individual, in the manner of a communion—and I am willing to believe that these poor people have had the knowledge of our mode of communion or of the preaching of the gospel; or perhaps the devil, most envious of the honor of God, may have led them into this superstition in order that by this ceremony he might be adored and served as Christ our Lord. On the twenty-first of December they celebrated the festival of this god—through whose instrumentality, they say, the earth became
- 60. DECORATIONS OF TLALOC. again visible after it had been drowned with the waters of the deluge: they therefore kept his festival during the twenty following days, in which they offered sacrifices to him.[VIII-17] The deity Tlaloc, or Tlalocateuchtli, whom we have several times found mentioned as seated beside Huitzilopochtli in the great temple, was the god of water and rain, and the fertilizer of the earth. He was held to reside where the clouds gather, upon the highest mountain-tops, especially upon those of Tlaloc, Tlascala, and Toluca, and his attributes were the thunderbolt, the flash, and the thunder. It was also believed that in the high hills there resided other gods, subaltern to Tlaloc—all passing under the same name, and revered not only as gods of water but also as gods of mountains. The prominent colors of the image of Tlaloc were azure and green, thereby symbolizing the various shades of water. The decorations of this image varied a good deal according to locality and the several fancies of different worshipers: the description of Gama, founded on the inspection of original works of Mexican religious art, is the most authentic and complete. In the great temple of Mexico, in his own proper chapel, called epeoatl, adjoining that of Huitzilopochtli, this god of water stood upon his pedestal. In his left hand was a shield ornamented with feathers; in his right were certain thin, shining, wavy sheets of gold representing his thunderbolts, or sometimes a golden serpent representing either the thunderbolt or the moisture with which this deity was so intimately connected. On his feet were a kind of half- boots, with little bells of gold hanging therefrom. Round his neck was a band or collar set with gold and gems of price; while from his wrists depended strings of costly stones, even such as are the ornaments of kings. His vesture was an azure smock reaching to the middle of the thigh, cross-hatched all over with ribbons of silver forming squares; and in the middle of each square was a circle also of silver, while in the angles thereof were flowers, pearl-colored, with yellow leaves hanging down. And even as the decoration of the vesture so was that of the shield; the ground blue, covered with crossed ribbons of silver and circles of silver: and the feathers of
- 61. PRAYER TO TLALOC. PRAYER FOR RAIN. yellow and green and flesh-color and blue, each color forming a distinct band. The body was naked from mid-thigh down, and of a grey tint, as was also the face. This face had only one eye of a somewhat extraordinary character: there was an exterior circle of blue, the interior was white with a black line across it and a little semi-circle below the line. Either round the whole eye or round the mouth was a doubled band, or ribbon of blue; this, although unnoticed by Torquemada, is affirmed by Gama to have been never omitted from any figure of Tlaloc, to have been his most characteristic device, and that which distinguished him specially from the other gods. In his open mouth were to be seen only three grinders; his front teeth were painted red, as was also the pendant, with its button of gold, that hung from his ear. His head-adornment was an open crown, covered in its circumference with white and green feathers, and from behind it over the shoulder depended other plumes of red and white. Sometimes the insignium of the thunderbolt is omitted with this god, and Ixtlilxochitl represents him, in the picture of the month Etzalli, with a cane of maize in the one hand, and in the other a kind of instrument with which he was digging in the ground. In the ground thus dug were put maize leaves filled with a kind of food, like fritters, called etzalli; from this the month took its name.[VIII-18] A prayer to this god has been preserved by Sahagun, in which it will be noticed that the word Tlaloc is used sometimes in the singular and sometimes in the plural:— O our Lord, most clement, liberal giver and lord of verdure and coolness, lord of the terrestrial paradise, odorous and flowery, and lord of the incense of copal, woe are we that the gods of water, thy subjects, have hid themselves away in their retreat, who are wont to serve us with the things we need and who are themselves served with ulli and auchtli and copal. They have left concealed all the things that sustain our lives, and carried away with them their sister the goddess of the necessaries of life, and carried
- 62. away also the goddess of pepper. O our Lord, take pity on us that live; our food goes to destruction, is lost, is dried up; for lack of water, it is as if turned to dust and mixed with spiders' webs. Woe for the miserable laborers and for the common people; they are wasted with hunger, they go about unrecognizable and disfigured every one. They are blue under the eyes as with death; their mouths are dry as sedge; all the bones of their bodies may be counted as in a skeleton. The children are disfigured and yellow as earth; not only those that begin to walk, but even those in the cradle. There is no one to whom this torment of hunger does not come; the very animals and birds suffer hard want, by the drought that is. It is pitiful to see the birds, some dragging themselves along with drooping wings, others falling down utterly and unable to walk, and others still with their mouths open through this hunger and thirst. The animals, O our Lord, it is a grievous sight to see them stumbling and falling, licking the earth for hunger, and panting with open mouth and hanging tongue. The people lose their senses and die for thirst; they perish, none is like to remain. It is woeful, O our Lord, to see all the face of the earth dry, so that it cannot produce the herbs nor the trees, nor anything to sustain us—the earth that used to be as a father and mother to us, giving us milk and all nourishment, herbs and fruits that therein grew. Now is all dry, all lost; it is evident that the Tlaloc gods have carried all away with them, and hid in their retreat, which is the terrestrial paradise. The things, O Lord, that thou wert graciously wont to give us, upon which we lived and were joyful, which are the life and joy of all the world, and precious as emeralds or sapphires—all these things are departed from us. O our Lord, god of nourishment and giver thereof, most humane and most compassionate, what thing hast thou determined to do with us? Hast thou, peradventure altogether forsaken us? Thy wrath and indignation shall it not be appeased? Hast thou determined on the perdition of all thy servants and vassals, and that thy city and kingdom shall be left desolate and uninhabited? Peradventure, this has been determined, and settled in heaven and hades. O our Lord, concede at least this, that the innocent children, who cannot so much as walk, who are still in the cradle, may have
- 63. something to eat, so that they may live, and not die in this so great famine. What have they done that they should be tormented and should die of hunger? No iniquity have they committed, neither know they what thing it is to sin; they have neither offended the god of heaven nor the god of hell. We, if we have offended in many things, if our sins have reached heaven and hades, and the stink thereof gone out to the ends of the earth, just it is that we be destroyed and made an end of; we have nothing to say thereto, nor to excuse ourselves withal, nor to resist what is determined against us in heaven and in hades. Let it be done; destroy us all, and that swiftly, that we may not suffer from this long weariness which is worse than if we burned in fire. Certainly it is a horrible thing to suffer this hunger; it is like a snake lacking food, it gulps down its saliva, it hisses, it cries out for something to devour. It is a fearful thing to see the anguish of it demanding somewhat to eat; this hunger is intense as burning fire, flinging out sparks. Lord, let the thing happen that many years ago we have heard said by the old men and women that have passed away from us, let the heavens fall on us and the demons of the air come down, the Izitzimites, who are to come to destroy the earth with all that dwell on it; let darkness and obscurity cover the whole world, and the habitation of men be nowhere found therein. This thing was known to the ancients, and they divulged it, and from mouth to mouth it has come down to us, all this that has to happen when the world ends and the earth is weary of producing creatures. Our Lord, such present end would be now dear to us as riches or pleasures once were— miserable that we are! See good, O Lord, that there fall some pestilence to end us quickly. Such plague usually comes from the god of hades; and if it came there would peradventure be provided some allowance of food, so that the dead should not travel to hades without any provision for the way. O that this tribulation were of war, which is originated by the sun, and which breaks from sleep like a strong and valiant one—for then would the soldiers and the brave, the stout and warlike men, take pleasure therein. In it many die, and much blood is spilt, and the battle-field is filled with dead bodies and with the bones and skulls of the vanquished; strewn also is the face
- 64. of the earth with the hairs of the head of warriors that rot; but this they fear not, for they know that their souls go to the house of the sun. And there they honor the sun with joyful voices, and suck the various flowers with great delight; there all the stout and valiant ones that died in war are glorified and extolled; there also the little and tender children that die in war are presented to the Sun, very clean and well adorned and shining like precious stones. Thy sister, the goddess of food, provides for those that go thither, supplying them with provision for the way; and this provision of necessary things is the strength and the soul and the staff of all the people of the world, and without it there is no life. But this hunger with which we are afflicted, O our most humane Lord, is so sore and intolerable that the miserable common people are not able to suffer nor support it; being still alive they die many deaths; and not the people alone suffer but also all the animals. O our most compassionate Lord, lord of green things and gums, of herbs odorous and virtuous, I beseech thee to look with eyes of pity on the people of this thy city and kingdom; for the whole world down to the very beasts is in peril of destruction, and disappearance, and irremediable end. Since this is so, I entreat thee to see good to send back to us the food-giving gods, gods of the rain and storm, of the herbs and of the trees; so that they perform again their office here with us on the earth. Scatter the riches and the prosperity of thy treasures, let the timbrels of joy be shaken that are the staves of the gods of water, let them take their sandals of india-rubber that they may walk with swiftness. Give succor, O Lord, to our lord, the god of the earth, at least with one shower of water, for when he has water he creates and sustains us. See good, O Lord, to invigorate the corn, and the other foods, much wished for and much needed, now sown and planted; for the ridges of the earth suffer sore need and anguish from lack of water. See good, O Lord, that the people receive this favor and mercy at thine hand, let them see and enjoy of the verdure and coolness that are as precious stones; see good that the fruit and the substance of the Tlalocs be given, which are the clouds that these gods carry with them and that sow the rain about us. See good, O Lord, that the animals and herbs be made glad, and that
- 65. VENGEANCE OF TLALOC. the fowls and birds of precious feather, such as the quechotl and the caguan, fly and sing and suck the herbs and flowers. And let not this come about with thunderings and lightnings, symbols of thy wrath; for if our lords the Tlalocs come with thunder and lightning the whole people, being lean and very weak with hunger, would be terrified. If indeed some are already marked out to go to the earthly paradise by the stroke of the thunderbolt, let this death be restricted to them, and let no injury befall any of the other people in mountain or cabin; neither let hurt come near the magueys or the other trees and plants of the earth; for these things are necessary to the life and sustenance of the people, poor, forsaken, and cast-away, who can with difficulty get food enough to live, going about through hunger with the bowels empty and sticking to the ribs. O our Lord, most compassionate, most generous, giver of all nourishment, be pleased to bless the earth and all the things that live on the face thereof. With deep sighing and with anguish of heart I cry upon all those that are gods of water, that are in the four quarters of the world, east and west, north and south, and upon those that dwell in the hollow of the earth, or in the air, or in the high mountains, or in the deep caves, I beseech them to come and console this poor people and to water the earth; for the eyes of all that inhabit the earth, animals as well as men, are turned toward you, and their hope is set upon your persons. O our Lord, be pleased to come.[VIII- 19] This is a prayer to Tlaloc. But it was not with prayers alone that they deprecated his wrath and implored his assistance; here as elsewhere in the Mexican religion sacrifices played an important part. When the rain failed and the land was parched by drought, great processions were made in which a number of hairless dogs, common to the country, and good to eat, were carried on decorated litters to a place devoted to this use. There they were sacrificed to the god of water by cutting out their hearts. Afterwards the carcasses were eaten amid great festivities. All these things the Tlascaltec historian, Camargo, had
- 66. seen with his own eyes thirty years before writing his book. The sacrifices of men, which were added to these in the days of greatness of the old religion, he describes as he was informed by priests who had officiated thereat. Two festivals in the year were celebrated to Tlaloc, the greater feast and the less. Each of these was terminated by human sacrifices. The side of the victim was opened with a sharp knife; the high priest tore out the heart, and turning toward the east offered it with lifted hands to the sun, crushing it at the same time with all his strength. He repeated this, turning in succession towards the remaining three cardinal points; the other tlamacaxques, or priests, not ceasing the while to darken with clouds of incense the faces of the idols. The heart was lastly burned and the body flung down the steps of the temple. A priest, who had afterwards been converted to Christianity, told Camargo that when he tore out the heart of a victim and flung it down, it used to palpitate with such force as to clear itself of the ground several times till it grew cold. Tlaloc was held in exceeding respect and the priests alone had the right to enter his temple. Whoever dared to blaspheme against him was supposed to die suddenly or to be stricken of thunder; the thunderbolt, instrument of his vengeance, flashed from the sky even at the moment it was clearest. The sacrifices offered to him in times of drought were never without answer and result; for, as Camargo craftily insinuates, the priests took good care never to undertake them till they saw indications of coming rain; besides, he adds—introducing, in defiance of nec deus intersit, a surely unneeded personage, if we suppose his last statement true—the devil, to confirm these people in their errors, was always sure to send rain.[VIII-20] Children were also sacrificed to Tlaloc. Says Motolinia, when four years came together in which there was no rain, and there remained as a consequence hardly any green thing in the fields, the people waited till the maize grew as high as the knee, and then made a general subscription with which four slave children, of five or six years of age, were purchased. These they sacrificed in a cruel
- 67. SACRIFICES OF CHILDREN. manner by closing them up in a cave, which was never opened except on these occasions.[VIII-21] According to Mendieta, again, children were sometimes offered to this god by drowning. The children were put into a canoe which was carried to a certain part of the lake of Mexico where was a whirlpool, which is no longer visible. Here the boat was sunk with its living cargo. These gods had, according to the same author, altars in the neighborhood of pools especially near springs; which altars were furnished with some kind of roof, and at the principal fountains were four in number set over against each other in the shape of a cross— the cross of the rain god.[VIII-22] The Vatican Codex says that in April a boy was sacrificed to Tlaloc and his dead body put into the maize granaries or maize fields—it is not clearly apparent which—to preserve the food of the people from spoiling.[VIII-23] It is to Sahagun, however, that we must turn for the most complete and authentic account of the festivals of Tlaloc with their attendant sacrifices. In the first days of the first month of the year, which month is called in some parts of Mexico, Quavitleloa, but generally Atlcaoalo, and begins on the second of our February, a great feast was made in honor of the Tlalocs, gods of rain and water. For this occasion many children at the breast were purchased from their mothers; those being chosen that had two whirls (remolinos) in their hair, and that had been born under a good sign; it being said that such were the most agreeable sacrifice to the storm gods, and most likely to induce them to send rain in due season. Some of these infants were butchered for this divine holiday on certain mountains, and some were drowned in the lake of Mexico. With the beginning of the festival, in every house, from the hut to the palace, certain poles were set up and to these were attached strips of the paper of the country, daubed over with india-rubber gum, said strips being called amateteuitl; this was considered an honor to the water-gods. And the first place where
- 68. children were killed was Quauhtepetl, a high mountain in the neighborhood of Tlatelulco; all infants, boys or girls, sacrificed there were called by the name of the place, Quauhtepetl, and were decorated with strips of paper dyed red. The second place where children were killed was Yoaltecatl, a high mountain near Guadalupe. The victims were decorated with pieces of black paper, with red lines on it, and were named after the place, Yoaltecatl. The third death- halt was made at Tepetzingo, a well-known hillock that rose up from the waters of the lake opposite Tlatelulco; there they killed a little girl, decking her with blue paper, and calling her Quetzalxoch, for so was this hillock called by another name. Poiauhtla, on the boundary of Tlascala, was the fourth hill of sacrifice. Here they killed children, named as usual after the locality, and decorated with paper on which were lines of india-rubber oil. The fifth place of sacrifice was the no longer visible whirlpool or sink of the lake of Mexico, Pantitlan. Those drowned here were called Epcoatl, and their adornment epuepaniuhqui. The sixth hill of death was Cocotl,[VIII-24] near Chalcoatenco; the infant victims were named after it and decorated with strips of paper of which half the number were red and half a tawny color. The mount Yiauhqueme, near Atlacuioaia, was the seventh station; the victims being named after the place and adorned with paper of a tawny color. All these miserable babes before being carried to their death were bedecked with precious stones and rich feathers and with raiment and sandals wrought curiously; they put upon them paper wings (as if they were angels); they stained their faces with oil of india-rubber, and on the middle of each tiny cheek they painted a round spot of white. Not able yet to walk, the victims were carried in litters shining with jewels and awave with plumes; flutes and trumpets bellowed and shrilled round the little bedizened heads, all so unfortunate in their two whirls of hair, as they passed along; and everywhere as the litters were borne by, all the people wept. When the procession reached the temple near Tepetzinco, on the east, called Tozocan, the priests rested there all night, watching and singing songs, so that the little ones could not sleep. In the morning the march was again
- 69. SPOLIATION OF CÆSAR FOR THE CHURCH. resumed; if the children wept copiously those around them were very glad, saying it was a sign that much rain would fall; while if they met any dropsical person on the road it was taken for a bad omen and something that would hinder the rain. If any of the temple ministers, or of the others called quaquavitli, or of the old men, broke off from the procession or turned back to their houses before they came to the place where the sacrifice was done, they were held for infamous and unworthy of any public office; thenceforward they were called mocauhque, that is to say, 'deserters.'[VIII-25] More ludicrous than diabolical are the ceremonies of the next feast of Tlaloc. In the sixth Aztec month, the month Etzalqualixtli, there was held a festival in honor of the gods of water and rain. Before the commencement of this festival the idol priests fasted four days, and before beginning to fast they made a procession to a certain piece of water, near Citlaltepec, to gather tules; for at that place these rushes grew very tall and thick and what part of them was under water was very white. There they pulled them up, rolled them in bundles wrapped about with their blankets, and so carried them back on their shoulders. Both on going out for these rushes and on coming back with them, it was the custom to rob anyone that was met on the road; and as every one knew of this custom the roads were generally pretty clear of stragglers about this time. No one, not even a king's officer returning to his master with tribute, could hope to escape on such an occasion, nor to obtain from any court or magistrate any indemnification for loss or injury so sustained in goods or person; and if he made any resistance to his clerical spoilers they beat and kicked and dragged him over the ground. When they reached the temple with their rushes they spread them out on the ground and plaited them, white with green, into as it were painted mats, sewing them firm with threads of maguey-root; of these mats they made stools, and chairs with backs. The first day of the fast arrived, all the idol ministers and priests retired to their apartments in the temple buildings. There retired all those called tlamacaztequioagues, that is to say, 'priests
- 70. BATHING IN THE FESTIVAL OF TLALOC. that have done feats in war, that have captured three or four prisoners;' these although they did not reside continually in the temple, resorted thither at set times to fulfil their offices. There retired also those called tlamacazcayiaque, that is, 'priests that have taken one prisoner in war;' these also, although not regular inmates of the cues, resorted thither, when called by their duties. There retired also those that are called tlamacazquecuicanime, 'priest singers,' who resided permanently in the temple building because they had as yet captured no one in war. Last of all those also retired that were called tlamacaztezcahoan, which means 'inferior ministers,' and those boys, like little sacristans, who were called tlamacatoton, 'little ministers.' Next, all the rush mats that had been made which were called aztapilpetlatl, 'jaspered mats of rushes, or mats of white and green' were spread round about the hearths (hogares) of the temple, and the priests proceeded to invest themselves for their offices. They put on a kind of jacket that they had, called xicolli, of painted cloth; on the left arm they put a kind of scarf, macataxtli; in the left hand they took a bag of copal, and in the right a censer, temaitl, which is a kind of sauce-pan or frying-pan of baked clay. Then they entered into the court-yard of the temple, took up their station in the middle of it, put live coals into their censers, added copal, and offered incense toward the four quarters of the world, east, north, west, and south. This done they emptied the coals from their incense-pans into the great brasiers that were always burning at night in the court, brasiers somewhat less in height than the height of a man, and so thick that two men could with difficulty clasp them. This over, the priests returned to the temple buildings, calmecac, and put off their ornaments. Then they offered before the hearth little balls of dough, called veutelolotli; each priest offering four, arranging them on the aforementioned rush mats, and putting them down with great care, so that they should not roll nor move; and if the balls of any one stirred, it was the duty of his fellows to call
- 71. attention to the matter and have him punished therefor. Some offered instead of dough four little pies or four pods of green pepper. A careful scrutiny was also observed to see if any one had any dirt on his blanket, or any bit of thread or hair or feather, and that no one should trip or fall; for in such a case he had to be punished; and as a consequence every man took good heed to all his steps and ways during these four days. At the end of each day's offerings, certain old men, called quaquacuiltin came, their faces dyed black, and their heads shaved, save only the crown of the head, where the hair was allowed to grow long, the reverse of the custom of the Christian priests. These old men daily collected the offerings that had been made, dividing them among themselves. It was further the custom with all the priests and in all the temples, while fasting these four days, to be wakened at midnight by the blast of horns and shells and other instruments; when all rose up and, utterly naked, went to where were certain thorns of maguey, cut for the purpose the day before, and with little lancets of stone they hacked their ears, staining the prepared thorns of maguey and besmearing their faces with the blood that flowed; each man staining maguey-thorns with his blood in number proportioned to his devotion, some five, others more, others less. This done all the priests went to bathe themselves, how cold soever it might be, attended by the music of marine shells and shrill whistles of baked clay. Every one had a little bag strapped to his shoulders, ornamented with tassels or strips of painted paper; in these bags was carried a sort of herb ground fine and made up with a kind of black dye into little longish pellets.[VIII- 26] The general body of the priests marched along, each one carrying a leaf of maguey in which the thorns were stuck, as in a pincushion, which he had to use. Before these went a priest with his censer full of live coals and a bag of copal; and in advance of all these walked one carrying a board on his shoulder of about a span broad and two yards long, hollowed apparently in some way, and filled with little rollers of wood that rattled and sounded as the bearer went along shaking them.[VIII-27] All the priests took part in this procession, only four remaining behind to take care of the
- 72. RELIGIOUS DISCIPLINE. temple-building, or calmecac, which was their monastery. These four during the absence of the others remained seated in the calmecac and occupied themselves in devotion to the gods, in singing and in rattling with a hollow board of the sort mentioned above. At the piece of water where the priests were to bathe there were four houses, called axaucalli, 'fog houses,' set each toward one of the four quarters of the compass; in the ablutions of the first night one of these houses was occupied, on the second night another, and so on through all the four nights and four houses of the fog. Here also were four tall poles standing up out of the water. And the unfortunate bathers, naked from the outset as we remember, reached this place trembling and their teeth chattering with cold. One of their number mumbled a few words, which being translated mean: this is the place of snakes, the place of mosquitos, the place of ducks, and the place of rushes. This said, all flung themselves into the water and began to splash with their hands and feet, making a great noise and imitating the cries of various aquatic birds.[VIII-28] When the bathing was over, the naked priests took their way back accompanied by the music of pipes and shells. Half dead with cold and weariness they reached the temple, where drawing their mantles over them they flung themselves down in a confused heap on the rush mats, so often mentioned, and slept as best they could. We are told that some talked in their sleep, and some walked about in it, and some snored, and some sighed in a painful manner. There they lay in a tangled weary heap not rising till noon of the next day. The first thing to be done on waking was to array themselves in their canonicals, take their censers, and to follow an old priest called Quaquacuilti to all the chapels and altars of the idols, incensing them. After this they were at liberty to eat; they squatted down in groups, and to each one was given such food as had been sent to him from his own house; and if any one took any of the portion of another, or even exchanged his for that of another, he was punished for it. Punishment also attended the dropping of any morsel while eating, if the fault were not atoned for by a fine. After this meal, they all went
- 73. to cut down branches of a certain kind called acxoiatl, or, where these were not to be found, green canes instead, and to bring them to the temple in sheaves. There they sat down, every man with his sheaf, and waited for an arranged signal. The signal given, every one sprang up to some appointed part of the temple to decorate it with his boughs; and if any one went to a place not his, or wandered from his companions, or lagged behind them, they punished him—a punishment only to be remitted by paying to his accuser, within the four days of which we are now speaking, either a hen or a blanket or a breech-clout, or, if very poor, a ball of dough in a cup. These four days over, the festival was come, and every man began it by eating etzalli, a kind of maize porridge, in his own house. For those that wished it there was general dancing and rejoicing. Many decked themselves out like merry-andrews and went about in parties carrying pots, going from house to house, demanding etzalli. They sang and danced before the door, and said, "If you do not give me some porridge, I will knock a hole in your house;" whereupon the etzalli was given. These revels began at midnight and ceased at dawn. Then indeed did the priests array themselves in all their glory: underneath was a jacket, over that a thin transparent mantle called aiauhquemitl, decorated with parrot-feathers set cross-wise. Between the shoulders they fastened a great round paper flower, like a shield. To the nape of the neck they attached other flowers of crumpled paper of a semi-circular shape; these hung down on both sides of the head like ears. The forehead was painted blue and over the paint was dusted powder of marcasite. In the right hand was carried a bag made of tiger-skin, and embroidered with little white shells which clattered as one walked. The bag seems to have been three-cornered; from one angle hung down the tiger's tail, from another his two fore feet, from another his two hind feet. It contained incense made from a certain herb called yiauhtli.[VIII-29] There went one priest bearing a hollow board filled with wooden rattles, as before described. In advance of this personage there marched a number of others, carrying in their arms images of the gods made of that gum that is black and leaps, called ulli (india-
- 74. THE FOUR BALLS. rubber), these images were called ulteteu, that is to say 'gods of ulli.' Other ministers there were carrying in their arms lumps of copal, shaped like sugar loaves; each pyramid having a rich feather, called quetzal, stuck in the peak of it like a plume. In this manner went the procession with the usual horns and shells, and the purpose of it was to lead to punishment those that had transgressed in any of the points we have already discussed. The culprits were marched along, some held by the hair at the nape of the neck, others by the breech-clout; the boy offenders were held by the hand, or, if very small, were carried. All these were brought to a place called Totecco, where water was. Here certain ceremonies were performed, paper was burned in sacrifice, as were also the pyramids of copal and images of ulli, incense being thrown into the fire and other incense scattered over the rush mats with which the place was adorned. While this was going on those in charge of the culprits had not been idle, but were flinging them into the water. Great was the noise, it is said, made by the splash of one tossed in, and the water leaped high with the shock. As any one came to the surface or tried to scramble out he was pushed in or pushed down again—well was it then for him who could swim, and by long far diving keep out of the reach of his tormentors. For the others they were so roughly handled that they were often left for dead on the water's edge, where their relatives would come and hang them up by the feet to let the water they had swallowed run out of them; a method of cure surely as bad as the malady. The shrill music struck up again and the procession returned by the way it had come; the friends of the punished ones carrying them. The monastery or calmecac reached, there began another four days' fast, called netlacacaoaliztli; but in this the sharp religious etiquette of the first four days' fast was not observed, or at least one was not liable to be informed upon or punished for a breach of such etiquette. The conclusion of this fast was celebrated by feasting. Again the priests decorated themselves in festal array. All the head was painted blue, the face was covered with honey (miel) mixed with a black dye. Over
- 75. the shoulders were carried the incense-bags embroidered with little white shells—bags made of tiger-skins, as before described, for the chief priests, and of paper painted to imitate tiger-skin in the case of the inferior priests. Some of these satchels were fashioned to resemble the bird called atzitzicuilotl, others to resemble ducks. The priests marched in procession to the temple, and before all marched the priest of Tlaloc. He had on his head a crown of basketwork, fitting close to the temples below and spreading out above, with many plumes issuing from the middle of it. His face was anointed with melted india-rubber gum, black as ink, and concealed by an ugly mask with a great nose, and a wig attached which fell as low as the waist. All went along mumbling to themselves as if they prayed, till they came to the cu of Tlaloc. There they stopped and spread tule mats on the ground, and dusted them over with powdered tule- leaves mixed with yiauhtli incense. Upon this the acting priest placed four round chalchiuites, like little balls; then he took a small hook painted blue, and touched each ball with it; and as he touched each he made a movement as if drawing back his hand, and turned himself completely round. He scattered more incense on the mats, then he took the board with the rattles inside and sounded with it— perhaps a kind of religious stage thunder in imitation of the thunder of his god. Upon this every one retired to his house or to his monastery and put off his ornaments; and the unfortunates who had been ducked were carried at last to their own dwellings for the rest and recovery that they so sorely needed. That night the festivities burst out with a new glory, the musical instruments of the cu itself were sounded, the great drums and the shrill shells. Well watched that night were the prisoners who were doomed to death on the morrow. When it came they were adorned with the trappings of the Tlaloc gods—for it was said they were the images of these gods— and those that were killed first were said to be the foundation of the others, which seemed to be symbolized by those who had to die last being made to seat themselves on those who had been first killed. [VIII-30]
- 76. The slaughter over, the hearts of the victims were put into a pot that was painted blue and stained with ulli in four places. Together with this pot offerings were taken of paper and feathers and precious stones and chalchiuites, and a party set out with the whole for that part of the lake where the whirlpool is, called Pantitlan. All who assisted at this offering and sacrifice were provided with a supply of the herb called iztauhiatl, which is something like the incense used in Spain, and they puffed it with their mouths over each other's faces and over the faces of their children. This they did to hinder maggots getting into the eyes, and also to protect against a certain disease of the eyes called exocuillo-o-alixtli; some also put this herb into their ears, and others for a certain superstition they had held a handful of it clutched in the hand. The party entered a great canoe belonging to the king, furnished with green oars, or paddles, spotted with ulli, and rowed swiftly to the place Pantitlan, where the whirlpool was. This whirlpool was surrounded by logs driven into the bottom of the lake like piles—probably to keep canoes from being drawn into the sink. These logs being reached, the priests, standing in the bows of the royal vessel, began to play on their horns and shells. Conspicuous among them stood their chief holding the pot containing the hearts; he flung them far into the whirling hollow of water, and it is said that when the hearts plunged in, the waters were strangely moved and stirred into waves and foam. The precious stones were also thrown in, and the papers of the offering were fastened to the stakes with a number of the chalchiuites and other stones. A priest took a censer and put four papers called telhuitl into it, and burned them, offering them toward the whirlpool; then he threw them, censer and all, still burning into the sink. That done, the canoe was put about and rowed to the landing of Tetamacolco, and every one bathed there. All this took place between midnight and morning, and when the light began to break the whole body of the priests went to bathe in the usual place. They washed the blue paint off their heads, save only on the forehead; and if there were any offences of any priest to be punished he was here ducked and half drowned as described
- 77. IMAGES OF THE MOUNTAINS. above. Lastly all returned to their monasteries, and the green rush mats spread there were thrown out behind each house.[VIII-31] We have given the description of two great festivals of the Tlalocs— two being all that are mentioned by many authorities—there still remain, however, two other notable occasions on which they were propitiated and honored. In the thirteenth month, which was called Tepeilhuitl, and which began, according to Clavigero, on the 24th of October, it was the custom to cut certain sticks into the shape of snakes. Certain images as of children were also cut out of wood, and these dolls, called hecatotonti, together with the wooden snakes, were used as a foundation or centre round which to build up little effigies of the mountains; wherein the Tlalocs were honored as gods of the mountains, and wherein memorial was had of those that had been drowned, or killed by thunderbolts, or whose bodies had been buried without cremation—the dolls perhaps representing the bodies of these, and the snakes the thunderbolts. Having then these wooden dolls and snakes as a basis, they were covered with dough mixed from the seeds of the wild amaranth; over each doll certain papers were put; round one snake and one doll, set back to back, there appears next to have been bound a wisp of hay, (which wisp was kept from year to year and washed on the vigil of every feast), till the proper shape of a mountain was arrived at; over the whole was then daubed a layer of dough, of the kind already mentioned. We have now our image of the mountain with two heads looking opposite ways, sticking out from its summit. Round this summit there seem to have been stuck rolls of dough representing the clouds usually formed about the crests of high mountains. The face of the human image that looked out over these dough clouds was daubed with melted ulli; and to both cheeks of it were stuck little tortillas, or cakes of the everywhere-present dough of wild amaranth seeds. On the head of this same image was put a crown with feathers issuing from it.[VIII-32] These images were made at night,
- 78. SACRIFICES TO TLALOC. and in the morning they were carried to their 'oratories,' and laid down on beds of rushes or reeds; then food was offered to them, small pies or tarts, a porridge of maize-flour and sugar, and the stewed flesh of fowls or of dogs. Incense was burned before them, being thrown into a censer shaped like a hand, as it were a great spoon full of burning coals. Those who could afford it sang and drank pulque in honor of their dead ones and of these gods. In this feast four women and a man were killed in honor of the Tlalocs and of the mountains. The four women were named respectively, Tepoxch, Matlalquac, Xochetecatl, and Mayavel—this last was decorated to appear as the image of the magueyes. The man was called Milnaoatl; he stood for an image of 'the snakes.' These victims, adorned with crowns of paper stained with ulli, were borne to their doom in litters. Being carried to the summit of the cu, they were thrown one by one on the sacrificial stone, their hearts taken out with the flint and offered to Tlaloc, and their bodies allowed to slide slowly down the temple-steps to the earth—a too rapid descent being hindered by the priests. The corpses were carried to a place where the heads were cut off and preserved, spitted on poles thrust through the temples of each skull. The bodies were lastly carried to the wards from which they had set out alive, and there cut in pieces and eaten. At the same time the images of the mountains, which we have attempted to describe, were broken up, the dough with which they were covered was set out to dry in the sun, and was eaten, every day a piece. The papers with which the said images had been adorned were then spread over the wisps of hay, above mentioned, and the whole was fastened up in the rafters of the oratory that every one had in his house; there to remain till required for the next year's feast of the same kind; on which occasion, and as a preliminary to the other ceremonies which we have already described in the first part of this feast, the people took down the paper and the wisp from their private oratories, and carried them to the public oratory called the acaucalli, left the paper there, and
- 79. KILLING IMAGES OF THE MOUNTAINS. returned with the wisp to make of it anew the image of a mountain. [VIII-33] The fourth and last festival of Tlaloc which we have to describe, fell in our December and in the sixteenth Aztec month, called the month Atemuztli. About this time it began to thunder round the mountain-tops, and the first rains to fall there; the common people said, "Now come the Tlalocs," and for love of the water they made vows to make images of the mountains—not, however, as it would appear, such images as have been described as appertaining to the preceding festival. The priests were very devout at this season and very earnest in prayer, expecting the rain. They took each man his incense-pan or censer, made like a great spoon with a long round hollow handle filled with rattles and terminating in a snake's head, and offered incense to all the idols. Five days before the beginning of the feast the common people bought paper and ulli and flint knives and a kind of coarse cloth called nequen, and devoutly prepared themselves with fasting and penance to make their images of the mountains and to cover them with paper. In this holy season, although every one bathed, he washed no higher than the neck, the head was left unwashed; the men, moreover, abstained from their wives. The night preceding the great feast-day was spent wholly, flint knife in hand, cutting out paper into various shapes. These papers called tetevitl, were stained with ulli; and every householder got a long pole, covered it with pieces of this paper, and set it up in his court-yard, where it remained all the day of the festival. Those that had vowed to make images of the mountains invited priests to their houses to do it for them. The priests came, bearing their drums and rattles and instruments of music of tortoise-shell. They made the images—apparently like human figures—out of the dough of wild amaranth seed, and covered them with paper. In some houses there were made five of such images, in others ten, in others fifteen; they were figures that stood for such mountains as the clouds gather round, such as the volcano of the Sierra Nevada or that of the Sierra of Tlascala. These
- 80. images being constructed, they were set in order in the oratory of the house, and before each one was set food—very small pies, on small platters, proportionate to the little image, small boxes holding a little sweet porridge of maize, little calabashes of cacao, and other small green calabashes containing pulque. In one night they presented the figures with food in this manner four times. All the night too they sang before them, and played upon flutes; the regular flutists not being employed on this occasion, but certain small boys who were paid for their trouble with something to eat. When the morning came, the ministers of the idols asked the master of the house for his tzotzopaztli, a kind of broad wooden knife used in weaving,[VIII-34] and thrust it into the breasts of the images of the mountains, as if they were living men, and cut their throats and drew out the hearts, which they put in a green cup and gave to the owner of the house. This done, they took all the paper with which these images had been adorned, together with certain green mats that had been used for the same purpose, and the utensils in which the offering of food had been put, and burned all in the court-yard of the house. The ashes and the mutilated images seem then to have been carried to a public oratory called Aiauhcalco, on the shore of the lake. Then all who assisted at these ceremonies joined themselves to eat and drink in honor of the mutilated images, which were called tepieme. Women were allowed to join in this banquet provided they brought fifteen or twenty heads of maize with them; they received every one his or her share of food and pulque. The pulque was kept in black jars and lifted out to be drunk with black cups. This banquet over, the paper streamers were taken down from the poles set up in the court-yards of the houses and carried to certain places in the water that were marked out by piles driven in— we may remember that our whirlpool of Pantitlan, in the lake of Mexico, was one place so marked—and to the tops of the mountains, and left there as it would appear.[VIII-35] In taking leave here of Tlaloc I may draw attention to the prominence in his cult of the number four, the cross, and the snake;
- 81. and add that as lord of one of the three Aztec divisions of the future world, lord of the terrestrial paradise, we shall meet with him again in our examination of the Mexican ideas of a future life.
- 82. CHAPTER IX. GODS, SUPERNATURAL BEINGS, AND WORSHIP. The Mother or all-nourishing Goddess under various names and in various aspects—Her Feast in the Eleventh Aztec month Ochpaniztli—Festivals of the Eighth month, Hueytecuilhuitl, and of the Fourth, Hueytozoztli—The deification of women that died in child-birth—The Goddess of Water under various names and in various aspects— Ceremonies of the Baptism or lustration of children—The Goddess of Love, her various names and aspects—Rites of confession and absolution—The God of fire and his various names—His festivals in the tenth month Xocotlveti and in the eighteenth month Yzcali; also his quadriennial festival in the latter month—The great festival of every fifty-two years; lighting the new fire—The God of hades, and Teoyaomique, collector of the souls of the fallen brave—Deification of dead rulers and heroes— Mixcoatl, God of hunting and his feast in the fourteenth month, Quecholli—Various other Mexican deities—Festival in the second month, Tlacaxipehualiztli, with notice of the gladiatorial sacrifices—Complete synopsis of the festivals of the Mexican Calendar, fixed and movable—Temples and Priests. Centeotl is a goddess, or according to some good authorities a god, who held, under many names and in many characters, a most important place in the divine world of the Aztecs, and of other Mexican and Central American peoples. She was goddess of maize, and consequently, from the importance in America of this grain, of agriculture, and of the producing earth generally. Many of her
- 83. THE MOTHER- NOURISHER. various names seem dependent on the varying aspects of the maize at different stages of its growth; others seem to have originated in the mother-like nourishing qualities of the grain of which she was the deity. Müller lays much stress on this aspect of her character: "The force which sustains life must also have created it. Centeotl was therefore considered as bringing children to light, and is represented with an infant in her arms. Nebel gives us such a representation, and in our Mexican museum at Basel there are many images in this form, made of burnt clay. Where agriculture rules, there more children are brought to mature age than among the hunting nations, and the land revels in a large population. No part of the world is so well adapted to exhibit this difference as America. Centeotl is consequently the great producer, not of children merely, she is the great goddess, the most ancient goddess."[IX-1] Centeotl was known, according to Clavigero, by the titles Tonacajohua, 'she who sustains us;' Tzinteotl, 'original goddess;' and by the further names Xilonen, Iztacacenteotl, and Tlatlauhquicenteotl. She was further, according to the same author, identical with Tonantzin, 'our mother,' and, according to Müller and many Spanish authorities, either identical or closely connected with the various deities known as Teteionan, 'the mother of the gods,'[IX-2] Cihuatcoatl, 'the snake- woman,' Tazi or Toci or Tocitzin, 'our grandmother,' and Earth, the universal material mother. Squier says of Tiazolteotl, that "she is Cinteotl the goddess of maize, under another aspect."[IX-3] She was particularly honored by the Totonacs, with whom she was the chief divinity. They greatly loved her, believing that she did not demand human victims, but was content with flowers and fruits, the fat banana and the yellow maize, and small animals, such as doves, quails, and rabbits. More, they hoped that she would in the end utterly deliver them from the cruel necessity of such sacrifices, even to the other gods.
- 84. MEDICINE- GODDESS. With very different feelings, as we shall soon see, did the Mexicans proper approach this deity, making her temples horrid with the tortured forms of human sacrifices. It shows how deep the stain of the blood was in the Mexican religious heart, how poisonous far the odor of it had crept through all the senses of the Aztec soul, when it could be believed that the great sustainer, the yellow waving maize, the very mother of all, must be fed upon the flesh of her own children.[IX-4] To make comprehensible various allusions it seems well here to sum up rapidly the characters given of certain goddesses identical with or resembling in various points this Centeotl. Chicomecoatl[IX-5] was, according to Sahagun, the Ceres of Mexico, and the goddess of provisions, as well of what is drunk as of what is eaten. She was represented with a crown on her head, a vase in her right hand, and on her left arm a shield with a great flower painted thereon; her garments and her sandals were red. The first of the Mexican goddesses was, following the same authority, Cioacoatl, or Civacoatl, the goddess of adverse things, such as poverty, downheartedness, and toil. She appeared often in the guise of a great lady, wearing such apparel as was used in the palace; she was also heard at night in the air shouting and even roaring. Besides her name Cioacoatl, which means 'snake-woman,' she was known as Tonantzin, that is to say, 'our mother.' She was arrayed in white robes, and her hair was arranged in front, over her forehead, in little curls that crossed each other. It was a custom with her to carry a cradle on her shoulders, as one that carries a child in it, and after setting it down in the market-place beside the other women, to disappear. When this cradle was examined, there was found a stone knife in it, and with this the priests slew their sacrificial victims. The goddess of Sahagun's description most resembling the Toci of other writers, is the one that he calls 'the mother of the gods, the heart of
- 85. the earth, and our ancestor or grandmother (abuela).' She is described as the goddess of medicine and of medicinal herbs, as worshiped by doctors, surgeons, blood-letters, of those that gave herbs to produce abortions, and also of the diviners that pronounced upon the fortune of children according to their birth. They worshiped her also that cast lots with grains of maize, those that augured by looking into water in a bowl, those that cast lots with bits of cord tied together, those that drew little worms or maggots from the mouth or eyes, those that extracted little stones from other parts of the body, and those that had sweat-baths, temazcallis, in their houses. These last always set the image of this goddess in the baths, calling her Temazcalteci, that is to say, 'the grandmother of the baths.' Her adorers made this goddess a feast every year, buying a woman for a sacrifice, decorating this victim with the ornaments proper to the goddess. Every evening they danced with this unfortunate, and regaled her delicately, praying her to eat as they would a great lady, and amusing her in every way that she might not weep nor be sad at the prospect of death. When the dreadful hour did come, having slain her, together with two others that accompanied her to death, they flayed her; then a man clothed himself in her skin, and went about all the city playing many pranks —by all of which her identity with Tozi seems sufficiently clear. This goddess was represented with the mouth and chin stained with ulli, and a round patch of the same on her face; on her head she had a kind of turban made of cloth rolled round and knotted behind. In this knot were stuck plumes which issued from it like flames, and the ends of the cloth fell behind over the shoulders. She wore sandals, a shirt with a kind of broad serrated lower border, and white petticoats. In her left hand she held a shield with a round plate of gold in the centre thereof; in her right hand she held a broom.[IX-6] The festival in which divers of the various manifestations of the mother-goddess were honored, was held in the beginning of the eleventh Aztec month, beginning on the 14th of September; Centeotl, or Cinteotl, or Centeutl, or Tzinteutl, is however represented therein as a male and not a female.
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