RULES, ROLES AND RELATIONS by Dorothy Emmet.

Macmillan,
1966. x+zzo pp. 36s.

Professor Emmet here continues what she began in Function, Purpose and
Powers. The book under review surveys the border country between moral
philosophy and the philosophy of sociology and tries to show how the
work of the moral philosopher and of the sociologist can be reciprocally
illuminating. The common point of reference of both is the individual
person involved in a ‘situation’, which has to be understood in terms of
both factual and evaluative notions. It is not just that the moral philosopher
and sociologist have the same starting point, however: they confront ‘a
tangled undergrowth of facts and values through which both have to cut
their way, and their paths may sometimes cross’ (p. 6 ) .
Much of the early part of the discussion is devoted to the distinction
between fact and value. Professor Emmet emphasises the limits to the
idea that the sociologist’s work can be entirely ‘value-free’. I n so far as a
sociologist is interested in practical social problems, such as the incidence
of juvenile delinquency, moral values will already be manifested in
precisely what he takes to be the ‘problem’ and will set limits to what he
can regard as an acceptable ‘solution’ to it. Moral issues may arise in the
relations between the sociological observer and those whose behaviour he
is observing. The use of ‘functional’ methods of analysis-with their
emphasis on what contributes to the maintenance of a given social order-
show that some degree of approval of social stability is ‘grounded’ in the
sociologist’s approach. The moral philosopher can help the sociologist to
see where his work implies moral commitments and to think more clearly
about the moral issues he confronts.
I n her discussion of the ‘autonomy of ethics’, Professor Emmet tries to
distinguish the ‘non-reducibility’ of value judgements to statements of fact
from their ‘non-deducibility’ from statements of fact. She inclines to accept
the former and reject the latter on the grounds that while any argument
which concludes with a value judgement will somewhere tacitly presuppose
something like the commitment to a norm, nevertheless, ‘if we choose to
.
ignore what is being presupposed as background . . entailments (sc. of
value judgements by factual statements) can be found’ (p. 45). Here I think
Miss Emmet’s case would have been made stronger if she had discussed
ways in which a ‘background’, which cannot be read as forming premisses
of the argument, is presupposed by any deduction whatever; and if she had
then directed her attention to the peculiarities in the relation of ‘evaluative’
backgrounds to the special type of argument she is considering.
There is quite an extended discussion of ‘universalizability’ in con-
nection with moral judgements, largely concerned with the relation between
the purely formal requirement of consistency in the application of rules and
the more substantive moral notion of impartiality OT fairness. The conclu-
sion reached is that ‘consistency in the application of moral rules takes on
the substantive moral character of fairness’ (p. 79), by way of the distinction
between relevant and irrelevant considerations in the application of moral
rules. But Professor Emmet’s conclusion here seems to me too strong. She
makes it sound as though a man’s unfairness (perhaps in appealing to what

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we regard as morally irrelevant considcrations) really is a species of
inconsistency: which it is surely not, even though of course we can only
judge whether or not a man is applying a principle consistently in the light
of what we know about the kind of consideration he regards as rclcvant
to its application.
There is a quite interesting treatment of moral relativism. Hart’s notion
of the ‘natural necessities’ in social life is deployed to form a basis for
certain non-relativistic criticisins of differing ways of living. This discussion
leads into a consideration of the role of the individual reformer in the moral
development of a socicty, which, in turn, raises the question of how the
individual man is to be understood in relation to his various social ‘roles’
and the extent to which the possibility of sociological explanations is corn-
patible with notions of individual responsibility. This is the central and,
so it secms to mc, the best part of the book. Professor Emmet sees the
main type of sociological explanations as bcing neither causal, nor purcly
functional, but ‘structural-functional’. The ‘social pressures’ in which the
sociologist is interested arc not, pace Durkheim, analogous to physical
forces; their operation involves individual psychological factors. T o point
to a functional relationship between social institutions is not in itself
to explain why those institutions are as they are: ‘the “function” becomes
causally efficacious through reinforcing motives’ (p. 129) and this comes
about because of certain structural relationships betwccn and within insti-
tutions. ‘This is not to say that pcoplc’s characteristics arc simply a product
of thc social systcm; rather, the sociological interest may lie in seeing how,
e.g., a competitive system encourages acquisitiveness and the fact that
people are acquisitive accentuates the competitiveness of thc systcm. We
need neither take the high moral line that people get the iiistitutions they
deserve, nor need we say they are only what their institutions make them’
(P. 136).
Professor Emmet considcrs how iar the notion of a ‘role’, as used in
sociology, is useful in the analysis of moral relationships between people.
The appearance of determinism sometimes created by sociologists’ attempts
to treat individuals as a sum of structurally dctcrmincd roles comcs from a
failure to distinguish the theorctical determinism involved in the highly
abstract structural model and the conditions under which this model can
be applied to actual individuals in historical situations. Individuals cnter
into a structural analysis ‘either through themselves being trcatcd as role
types of a low dcgrce of generality; or through their being used as case
studies illustrating the application of a role type of higher gcncrality’ (p.
151).
The notion of a role is analysed in terms of a scale in the degree of
formal structuring in human relationships which is involved. At onc end arc
very explicit codes-such as legal systems and codes of professional ethics;
at the other end relatively inchoate ‘personal rclationships’ like friendship,
where the notion of a role ‘is still operative, even if recessive’ (p. 168).
The question whether a relationship like friendship is or is not a role
relation is not just verbal: it involves substantive moral issues about
whether even a highly personal relationship should involvc an impersonal
e1emer.t (like the ‘justice’ which Aristotle held to be peculiar to friendship).

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 As will be seen even from this highly selective account of the book, it
covers much ground. I think it will be widely used in combined studies
courses involving philosophy and the social sciences. In such a context it
should be valuable in drawing attention to the very various connections
which exist between issues arising out of seemingly diverse contexts. I think
it ought not to replace direct study of the source material on which the
author draws ; for though by and large her treatment of this material is
fair (her summary dismissal of Kant and Melden on the relation between
purposive and non-purposive accounts of human action being a lamcn-
table exception), the briskness and sturdy common sense with which she
moves to her conclusions does tend to obscure the deeper aspects of the
philosophical issues which have made these subjects contentious. But this
is perhaps an inevitable consequence of the wideness of her focus and this
is something which has counter-balancing advantages.
PETER WINCH

T H E PROBLEM OF FREE WILL by Tamis Foldesi. Budapest:

Akademiai Kia’d6, 1966. 228 pp. $6.00.

This is the tenth volume in the Studia Philosophica series of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences. Except for the first, a study in Russian of Aristotle’s
Logic, all the volumes are either, like this, in English or in French or
German. The whole enterprise can therefore be construed as earnesting
a desire to join in a discussion transcending ideological and national
frontiers. As such it must be, and is, welcome.
The Publishers in a brief Foreword correctly state : “After presenting
an historico-philosophical survey of free will the author attzmpts to solve the
problem by dialectical materialism, and to fully prove the total determi-
nateness of the will” (p. 7). This proposed solution in the event consists
in a defence of the Compatibility Thesis, but a defence with Marxist
trimmings and Marxist inhibitions. Thus “the classical question of free
will must be answered in two ways: human will is fully determinate and
has no freedom of any sort from the determining factors”. Nevertheless
“Human will and human consciousness are relatively free among the
objective circumstances. In other woTds man to a certain extent may choose
from among the known circumstances and his choice is not fully determined
by the objective surroundings” (p. 197; italics unchanged). This very
abstract and constipated manifesto is almost immediately relieved by a
curiously familiar illustration : “The expression free will used in an every-
day sense (and employed by idealists and materialists alike) means the
relative freedom of will. In everyday life we say that someone acts by free
will if he acts not by external force but by intrinsic conviction. Thus, for
instance, in one of the novels of I<. MikszAth, a Hungarian writer, the
hero is forced to marry at gunpoint, thus implying that the marriage is not
by free will” (p. 197: italics supplied).
Marxism enters Dr. Foldesi’s conclusions in two ways. First, whereas
all materialism [Epicurus?] rejects the idealist notion that men have a

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