Abstract
Raimond Gaita’s work in moral philosophy is unusual and important in focusing on the concept of sainthood. Drawing partly on the work of George Orwell, and partly on the life and work of Simone Weil, as well as on further material, I argue that Gaita’s use of this notion to help make sense of the concept of human preciousness is unconvincing, not least because he does not properly explore the figure and psychology of the saint in any detail. I relatedly argue that the notion of human preciousness in question is implausible and, in some ways, sentimental. I also explore Gaita’s concept of “speaking personally” in moral philosophy, and suggest that matters here are a great deal more complicated than he supposes.
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Notes
One influential and important exception is Wolf 1982.
I shall be drawing here principally on two of Gaita’s books: Good and Evil: an Absolute Conception (Gaita 2004) and A Common Humanity: Thinking About Love and Truth and Justice (Gaita 2000). I shall also refer to his The Philosopher’s Dog (Gaita 2003). References to these texts are given in what follows as GE, CH and PD respectively, followed by chapter or page number.
For a devastating critique of Mother Teresa see Hitchens 1995. The book is an unpleasant piece of muckraking, but, unfortunately, the muck is there to be raked. Gaita refers to this book in the preface to Good and Evil (GE: xiii), writing that many “may have been persuaded by Christopher Hitchens that she [Mother Teresa] was really no saint.” He goes on: “Hitchens is wrong, I believe, but I will not argue that here.”
Of course, it is true that Augustine did not think he could achieve this pure love without God’s grace; but that is obviously consistent with his seeking to be filled with the love in question to the extent that he could through his own disciplining of his mind and soul – even if, as may be the case, he thought that his capacity to go in for that kind of disciplining was itself a product of, or part of, God’s grace to him. Otherwise, we would be stuck with the thought that, in any ordinary sense, Augustine did nothing towards his own purification. But that is clearly not so. So, even if we speak of grace in this context, my point about Augustine in the main body of the text stands.
Wolf 1982 also argues, in a different way, that the saint is a life-denying figure.
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for Ethical Theory and Moral Practice for drawing my attention to the need to make the clarificatory points in this and the previous paragraph.
See on this James 1971, lectures XI–XV.
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this journal for making me see the need to answer this objection.
Cf. here my comments in Hamilton 2007.
Once again, I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this journal who suggested this thought to me.
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Acknowledgement
I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers for this journal for their comments on a earlier draft of this paper. I should also like to thank the audience at the University of Manchester where a version of this paper was given in 2006. I am especially grateful to Mark Wynn for his generous and helpful comments on that occasion.
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Hamilton, C. Raimond Gaita on Saints, Love and Human Preciousness. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 11, 181–195 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-007-9089-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-007-9089-z