Downton Abbey and Philosophy (5 page)

In addition to the staff, the television audience provides an excellent opportunity to view actions from Hume's general point of view. Television critics have referred to Thomas in a variety of ways, including “dashing but evil,” “ambitious and conniving,” “completely self-serving,” and “the perfect embodiment of characters you love to hate.”
20
In the words of one critic, “he's so slippery that even when he appears to be acting out of genuine kindness, as when he offered comfort to the handsome officer blinded in a gas attack, I can't help wondering if he's working an angle.”
21
This universal rejection of Thomas stems from the portrayal of a man unconcerned with the general good of society and motivated solely by his own interests. As Hume argued, such actions generate negative emotions in a viewer who can see them from the general point of view.

A Change in Position?

As we've seen, Hume's moral philosophy can help us to understand Thomas's character as well as the strong reactions to him on the part of the staff, the Crawleys, and the viewers. At the end of the second season, he has won (illicitly) the trust of Lord Grantham and the job of his valet. It will be interesting to see if this change in position helps Thomas appreciate the artificial virtues more or if he remains the same devious plotter we “love to hate.”

Notes

1
David Hume,
A Treatise of Human Nature
(1739–1740), 2.3.3., Gutenberg,
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4705
.

2
Gareth McLean, “The Draw of Downton,” BBC News, September 15, 2011,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14634362
.

3
Oswalt answered that with the depth that was added to these two characters in the second season, they were becoming somewhat less evil in his eyes (while the marriage-wrecking Lady Edith Grantham was beginning to show villainous promise!). Kate Spencer, “Patton Oswalt Picks His Favorite
Downton Abbey
Villain over a Sip of Scotch,” The Fab Life, January 13, 2012,
http://www.thefablife.com/2012-01-13/patton-oswalt-picks-his-favorite-downton-abbey-villain-over-a-sip-of-scotch/
.

4
See chapter 5 in this book for a discussion of O'Brien's misdeeds.

5
David Hume,
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
(1751), Gutenberg,
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4320
.

6
David Fate Norton, “Hume, David,” in
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
, ed. Robert Audi (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 344.

7
Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Richard McCarty, Fritz Allhoff, and Anand Jayprakash Vaidya (eds),
Late Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings with Commentary
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 267. For a related topic, moral realism, see chapter 5 in this book.

8
Hume,
A Treatise of Human Nature.

9
For the opposing view of reason's relationship to the passions, courtesy of German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), see chapter 1 in this book.

10
Rachel Cohon, “Hume's Moral Philosophy,”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
, Stanford University,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/
.

11
Ibid.

12
Season 1, episode 4. For more on Daisy and William, see chapter 2 in this book.

13
Julia Driver, “Pleasure as the Standard of Virtue in Hume's Moral Philosophy,”
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly
85 (2004): 181.

14
Alex Witchel, “Behind the Scenes with the Creator of ‘Downton Abbey',”
New York Times
, September 8, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/magazine/julian-fellowes-the-creator-of-downton-abbey.html?pagewanted=all
.

15
Season 1, episode 3.

16
Season 2, episode 1.

17
William Edward Morris, “David Hume,”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
, Stanford University,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/
.

18
Cohon, “Hume's Moral Philosophy.”

19
Season 2, episode 5.

20
Sasha McBayer, “‘Downton Abbey' Is Fun, British Soap Opera,” Coastal Courier, February 3, 2012,
http://beta.coastalcourier.com/archives/40200/
; Mary McNamara, “Aristocrats and Servants Face a Changing World in ‘Downton Abbey',”
Los Angeles Times
, January 8, 2011,
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/08/entertainment/la-et-downton-abbey-20110108
; Drew Taylor, “Meet the Villains of ‘Downton Abbey',”
Yahoo! Voices
, January 7, 2012,
http://voices.yahoo.com/meet-villains-downton-abbey-10805963.html
; and Matt Roush, “Ask Matt:
Downton Abbey
's Meanies, Remakes,
Touch, Grey's Anatomy
, and More!”
TV Guide
, January 30, 2012,
http://www.tvguide.com/News/Ask-Matt-Downton-1042541.aspx
.

21
June Thomas, “
Downton Abbey
, Season 2: The Ambitious, Slippery Thomas Stirs My Soul,”
Slate
, January 18, 2012,
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/tv_club/features/2012/downton_abbey_season_2/week_2/let_s_listen_to_lady_mary_and_lady_cora_s_jazz_album_.html
.

Chapter 5

Marriages, Miscarriages, and Morality at Downton

The Possibility of Moral Realism

Alex Nuttall

As viewers of
Downton Abbey
, we are tempted to think it was not morally wrong for Lord Grantham to treat his adult daughters as though they were children or for the Dowager Countess to look down on the servants. After all, the time and place depicted on the show had different standards of morality. We may even be tempted to conclude that there are no objective moral standards.

But consider what happens in the last episode of the first season: O'Brien, acting out of revenge, causes Lady Grantham to have a miscarriage by placing a bar of soap near the bathtub so she will slip when she gets out of the tub. It seems that actions like O'Brien's are always wrong and that it doesn't really matter where or when you come from. So which is it? Is morality an objective matter or not?

My Dear Lord Grantham, What Is Moral Realism?

Moral realism
is the view that moral principles are capable of being true or false—that is, they are objective, not just aspects of subjective attitudes, agreements, or perspectives. Moral realism claims that moral principles are a real and permanent part of the world rather than contingent aspects of a particular time or place. Moral principles are not empirically discoverable facts like “Mary is wearing a fancy dress” or “Robert is the Earl of Grantham.”
1
Instead, they are similar to logical or mathematical truths. Just as we do not need physical evidence to believe that two plus two equals four, so, too, we do not need evidence to believe that causing a miscarriage is wrong. Both are clear and obvious truths.

The version of moral realism that we'll use in this chapter comes from contemporary philosopher Russ Schafer-Landau's book
Moral Realism: A Defense
, in which he argues that moral principles “are moral truths that obtain independently of any preferred perspective.”
2
Moral realism provides reasons for believing that our deepest moral convictions aren't misguided or mistaken but rather are indicative of an objective moral reality. Moral realism would defend the intuition that O'Brien's act that caused Cora's miscarriage was immoral, regardless of any particular moral stance based on culture, upbringing, or class.

Even though moral realism claims the existence of real moral principles, it doesn't pick out which ones are valid, nor does it endorse an ultimate moral principle; rather, any principle could conceivably be overridden by another.
3
There is no Earl of Moral Principles (or king, for that matter), and it is not necessary for moral principles to be ordered in a hierarchy, none of which affects the reality or weight of moral principles. If a moral principle applies, it simply applies, and there doesn't have to be an ultimate moral principle to make other ones real. In any given circumstance there is information about the context that will affect which principle takes priority.

So even if we believe in moral realism, we still must sort through moral dilemmas; just because moral principles are true doesn't make the process of moral deliberation any easier. For instance, the kitchen maid Daisy marries the second footman William shortly before his death but claims to have never loved him.
4
Her dilemma is deciding whether to tell the truth to William, which would hurt him greatly just before his death, or to lie about her feelings and marry him to lift his spirits before passing away. Moral realism doesn't help Daisy decide what principles she should apply to the situation.

If it is indeed wrong for Daisy to have lied to William, then that would be a
moral fact
, based on the principle that one shouldn't lie in such situations. A moral fact is the rightness or wrongness of a specific action or event. Moral facts depend on natural facts. For instance, “O'Brien left the soap on the floor to make Cora slip” is a natural fact, and the moral fact that “it was wrong of O'Brien to have performed that act” depends on that natural fact. This moral fact exists if there is a principle that “it is morally wrong for a person to cause, intentionally, another person's miscarriage without good reason and out of spite, other considerations being equal.” In other words, when you apply a moral principle to a natural fact, you get a moral fact: it was wrong for O'Brien to cause Cora's miscarriage.

There's No Place for Skepticism at Downton

Moral realism must account for what moral principles are, how we come to know them, and how they determine moral facts. The proponents of moral realism also need to show why it succeeds in answering these questions better than competing theories do. This is a lot to ask, but in this chapter we'll aim only to show that moral realism is in the game as a legitimate moral theory—and any good game needs two well-matched opponents.

Just as Isobel needs her Violet and Thomas needs his Bates, moral realism needs
moral skepticism
, which maintains that morality is not real and not objective.
5
Instead, according to the skeptics, morality is reducible to attitudes, emotions, or mistaken beliefs. In order to defend moral objectivity against the skeptics, we need to examine three key aspects of our basic attitudes toward morality: moral nonequivalence, moral disagreement, and moral progress.

First,
moral nonequivalence
is our tendency to believe that competing moral propositions do not have the same moral value.
6
When we consider our attitudes toward O'Brien's constant scheming against other servants and the role she played in Cora's miscarriage, we don't think that those actions are at all comparable to Lady Sybil's selflessness in becoming a nurse, her generosity in helping to find a secretarial position for the housemaid Gwen, or her integrity in giving up the aristocracy to follow her heart and her political beliefs.

Yet the skeptics would argue, ultimately, that O'Brien's actions are morally equivalent to Sybil's. Under skepticism, there's no definite better or worse when it comes to morality. Morality is just an attitude or a mistake, so all moral opinions are equivalent to the skeptic, who would disagree with moral nonequivalence.

Moral disagreement
refers to our tendency to believe that differences in moral judgments are genuine: one of us could be right, or both of us could be wrong, but we cannot both be right. Skeptical theories don't allow for substantive moral disagreement. O'Brien approves of scheming against others out of spite, and Mr. Bates condemns such actions.

But to the moral skeptic, O'Brien and Mr. Bates aren't really in disagreement, because skeptics ultimately reduce morality to simple endorsement. People are seldom “mistaken” in what they endorse; instead, they simply have a difference of opinion, much like a disagreement over whether white wine is better than red wine. But we've all had moral disagreements, and we don't always think of them as simply a matter of determining what action someone endorses. We certainly don't think that O'Brien and Bates are simply expressing their opinions about right and wrong.

Finally, the tendency to believe that we can get morally better (or worse) is called
moral progress
(or
regress
); this too is denied by moral skepticism. When we consider Lady Edith's development from a spiteful and conniving middle sister to a concerned and caring adult, we would say she has progressed morally. We also see moral progress in O'Brien, albeit slight, near the end of the second season, when she shows some signs of remorse for meddling in Mr. Bates's dealings with his estranged wife.

All this goes to show that we believe moral progress does in fact occur. In order for there to be progress, however, there must be an objective way to track the advancement, some fixed basis of comparison. Skeptics, however, claim that there are no objective moral standards, just different endorsements of moral views. So they cannot believe in moral progress or regress.

There is no knock-down argument against skepticism, but moral nonequivalence, moral disagreement, and moral progress make a presumptive case against skepticism and in favor of our common opinions about the nature of morality. Moral realism could still be wrong, of course, but a fairly strong case would have to be made for its rejection. Indeed, the mark of a good moral theory is that it makes sense of our basic moral convictions, like our condemnation of O'Brien's actions, and rejects them only if there are strong reasons to do so.

Daisy May Not Have Book Smarts, but She Has Moral Knowledge

Daisy believes that it was wrong to lie to William about her feelings before he left for the war. If we assume that Daisy is correct, then she has reached a moral judgment—or arrived at a moral fact—that is made true based on a moral principle. But where did she get the knowledge required to make that judgment?

Since we are not born with moral principles in our heads, we can't say we know them innately. We can, however, draw many moral principles from statements that we treat as correct simply from understanding their terms, such as “It is wrong to torture people for fun, all else being equal.” These are called
self-evident propositions
, and to defend their validity, we recognize that “simple mathematical propositions or analytic truths may be justified even if one can say nothing on their behalf.”
7

Daisy found herself feeling very guilty because she was lying to William about her love for him. Daisy, being Daisy, couldn't say much about why lying was wrong, just that it
was
wrong. For Daisy, “one shouldn't lie” is a self-evident proposition, although of course she could be wrong about its truth. Furthermore, even if someone correctly understands a self-evident proposition, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will believe it. There are many contingent factors that can get in the way of someone adopting a self-evident proposition, such as upbringing, religious or familial commitments, and various psychological impediments.

Just because a moral principle is self-evident and true is not sufficient to determine that it's the correct moral principle to use in a particular context. It may be true that one should not lie about loving another, but in Daisy's situation there may be a principle that overrides it, such as “one should not cause undue emotional stress to a soldier before battle (or on his deathbed).” The information about context and circumstances in any particular case will have both relevant and irrelevant features, and self-evident moral principles offer no clear way to sort through them.

Even if we get some of the relevant contextual information correct, it does not necessarily follow that we can make a definite moral judgment from them.
8
The relevant features in Daisy and William's case are that William has a high chance of dying while at the front, that breaking his heart immediately before he leaves for the front would increase his chances of dying, and that Daisy can tell William the truth if he returns. Any of these features could end up being irrelevant, depending on which moral principle actually applies to the specific situation.
9

Daisy Can Cook, but Is She Reliable?

Reliabilism
argues that beliefs used to justify decisions must be produced by a reliable process of belief formation that has a history of using existing true beliefs to produce more new true beliefs than false ones. An example of a reliable process is Daisy's ability to cook: she follows a reliable process of cooking that starts with good ingredients and regularly produces more good food than bad. This process could consist of following her instincts, emulating Mrs. Patmore, or dreaming of Thomas; the nature of the process isn't as important as its results. As any cook knows, some dishes will just not work out, and the same is true for beliefs that are formed by reliable processes: sometimes they aren't correct.

But if you followed a reliable process to get a belief, then you are justified in believing it. Ultimately, the justification for such beliefs comes from the reliable process itself and not directly from other beliefs. Furthermore, if a belief is reliably formed, then it is justified, regardless of whether one knows that it was reliably formed, whether one knows how to justify it, or even whether one has countervailing evidence for the belief.

Daisy may be a reliable cook, but are her moral beliefs produced reliably as well? We can argue that Daisy is employing a reliable process to come to the belief that lying to William about loving him is wrong. We don't know where Daisy comes from or what her parents were like. So for the sake of argument, let's say that living at Downton and being near a moral exemplar such as Lord Grantham (despite his one slipup with the maid Jane) has taught her a reliable process of forming moral beliefs. In this way we can justify Daisy's moral judgments (which could, of course, still be mistaken).

Yet even though reliabilism offers a way to justify our moral judgments, it isn't a fully satisfying solution. It doesn't give us a concrete process we can point to and say, “That is the process that yields correct moral judgments.” Realism and reliabilism only claim that those processes are out there. Unfortunately, learning about morality isn't as simple as learning to cook!

Moral Life Goes on at Downton

Before reading this chapter, you may have thought that the reality of objective moral standards was as likely as a daughter of Lord Grantham marrying a chauffeur and abandoning her heritage. Perhaps you're not as convinced by moral realism as Lady Sybil was about marrying Branson. Its account of moral knowledge, with its self-evident principles and reliable processes, may be tough to pin down, but the fact that it is consistent with commonsense ideas about moral disagreement, moral nonequivalence, and moral progress counts in its favor. Ultimately, realism can help us to feel more comfortable in our moral judgments—even those concerning the family and staff of Downton Abbey.