Integrity and the Value of an Integrated Self

In the remainder of this essay I will provide an account of the moral value of an integrated self. To start I will present two examples from literature: one of someone who gains an integrated self and one whose self becomes increasingly less integrated.

What do these two stories have to tell us about the moral value of an integrated self? The cases of Sassal and Lydgate are interesting for our purposes as both begin as people with a degree of inner conflict. For Sassal his aspiration to be a strong, courageous and unsympathetic hero in the mould of Conrad’s master mariners was in conflict with his aim to help his patients. Lydgate’s conflict comes from the combination of his aspirations to be a successful practicing doctor and to push forward medical science together with his expectations for his place in society.

After these initial starting points, however, the stories of Sassal and Lydgate take quite different paths. Sassal, through his period of self-examination, was able to forge a new ideal of the universal man. Aspiring to live up to this ideal allowed him to better fulfil his aim of helping his patients. Sassall achieved this by finding a way to reshape his goals, ambitions and desires so that they formed a coherent whole. The resolution of this conflict not only enabled him to become a better doctor but also to lead a more satisfying life. By resolving this conflict, then, Sassall acquired a more integrated self.

Lydgate’s tale, on the other hand, is not a happy one. His aspirations to be both a successful practicing doctor and a medical pioneer would not have been problematic by themselves. If Lydgate had been willing to accept that fulfilling these aspirations would mean having to lower his expectations for his social status, then these aspirations need not have led to conflict. Combined as they were though with Lydgate’s expectations of his place in society and his inability to subject this part of himself to critical scrutiny they led to his betrayal of his medical values and to a life that he viewed as a failure. The source of Lydgate’s failure was his inability to appreciate that in the circumstances he was facing, these aspirations were in conflict with each other. Had he, like Sassal, engaged in a process of critical self-examination, then he may have realized the need to refashion his aspirations into a coherent whole.

These contrasting stories tell us something important about integrity. By managing to form an integrated self Sassal put himself in a situation where by working towards his ideal of the universal man he was also furthering his goal to assist his patients. If instead Sassall’s revelation about the appropriate attitude for a doctor in his position was not accompanied by a shift in the ideals he based his life upon then we can see why problems would quickly start to emerge. If this had been the case then Sassall would have been incapable of a wholehearted commitment to the pursuit of the betterment of his patients, as this goal would have been in frequent conflict with his aspiration to the Conradian ideal. In this situation working towards one of these goals would have undermined his pursuit of the other. From a self-interested point of view then forming an integrated self was beneficial to Sassal, as it enabled him to wholeheartedly pursue his self-interested goals without thereby thwarting his other goals. This integration would also lessen the damaging conflicts that seems likely to arise in someone who knows that by pursuing one of her goals she will be undermining another.

We can see this point more clearly by contrasting Sassal with Lydgate. Unlike Sassal, Lydgate was unable to integrate his various goals, ambitions, values and desires into a coherent whole. This, combined with an unfortunate set of circumstances, led to conflict. His expectation of his place in society undermined his ambitions to be a successful doctor and medical innovator. His ambition to be a medical innovator led him to give up much of his time to work unpaid at his hospital. This meant that he did not have the financial resources to fund the lifestyle he expected for himself. This in turn led him into a situation in which he felt pressured to act in a way that violated his medical principles. His public failure as a doctor, destroyed (at least temporarily) both his ambition to be a medical innovator and his expectation to occupy an elevated place in society. By pursuing these three incompatible goals then, Lydgate failed to achieve any of them.

The value of an integrated self from a self-interested point of view then is that when our various projects, goals and desires fit together in some way then the pursuit of one will not undermine (and often will promote) the interests of the others. However, those who question the value of integrity are unlikely to be fully satisfied with this response. After all, integrity is generally thought to be a morally valuable character trait. An adequate account of the value of integrity then will explain why integrity is morally valuable.

Prichard’s claim is likely to ring true for many people. It is a familiar part of moral experience that sometimes we feel our moral views pulling us to perform an act that will require some form of sacrifice on our part. For most people then, their moral goals are, to some extent, in conflict with their self-interested goals.

This conflict between self-interested and moral goals is one we can find in the lives of both Sassal and Lydgate. For Sassal this occurred in the realization that his aspiration to live up to the ideal of Conrad’s master mariners was in conflict with his moral aim to help his patients. For Lydgate this occurs when his moral aims to be a good doctor and to push forward medical science conflict with his self-interested desire to occupy an elevated place in society. Their subsequent responses to this conflict tells us a great deal about the moral value of integrity.

By integrating the conflicting aspects of his self, Sassall was able to reduce the gap between his moral and non-moral goals. This made him someone more likely to act in line with his moral judgements. The reason for this is that compared to most people who face a conflict between pursuing their moral goals and pursuing their self-interested goals, the difference between Sassal’s moral goals and self-interested goals is harder to distinguish. It is for this reason that Berger says of Sassall that, “being ‘a good doctor’ answers some of his own needs.”³⁷ While a typical doctor might want to find out about his patients or about the latest developments in medical research her self-interested desires may well lead her to spend her time in other ways. For Sassal, both his self-interested goals and his moral goals will be pushing him to act in this way. With Sassall, then, there is no need to worry about how the internal conflict between moral and non-moral goals will be resolved. The lack of such a conflict makes such concern unnecessary. For Lydgate, on the other hand, his failure to reconcile his various ambitions, desires and values mean that this conflict does not disappear. In fact, Lydgate’s failure to reconcile the various aspects of himself leads to an ever widening divide between his moral and non-moral goals; the pursuit of one having ever worsening implications for the pursuit of the other.

This is why an integrated self is morally valuable. Those who manage to reconcile the various aspects of their self will have reduced the risk of the all too common conflict between doing what is morally best and doing what is best from the point of view of self-interest.³⁸ For those who, like Sassal, manage to achieve an integrated self there is likely to be little or no conflict between promoting their moral goals and promoting their self-interested goals. Such people will not feel the temptation to pursue their self-interested goals at the expense of their moral goals because there will be no conflict between the two. Those with an integrated self, then, will be more strongly disposed to perform the right act, as the pursuit of one will not undermine the pursuit of the other. Of course, the fact that someone is tempted to act against her moral judgement does not guarantee that she will do so. A strong-willed person may be able to resist such temptation. Nevertheless it seems reasonable to think that the presence of such temptation and a desire to act against her moral judgement increases the likelihood that the agent will act contrary to her moral judgement.

Up to now we have been talking in idealized terms. It seems fair to say that a complete reconciliation of one’s moral goals and one’s self-interested goals is unlikely. The point though can be made just as well in terms of degrees. Someone who has a more integrated self, whose various aims, goals and desires fit together more coherently, will experience less conflict between their moral and self-interested goals than someone with a less integrated self. As a result, they will be less likely to be tempted to pursue their self-interested goals at the expense of their moral goals. They will then be more likely to perform actions that are in line with their moral views.

Similarly, Abram De Swaan, describes claims that the perpetrators of genocide, “compartmentalized their murderous self from their civil self.”⁴⁴ What this tells us is that a process of disintegration, where different parts of the self are radically divided, appears to have played an important role in enabling these doctors to perform these horrendous acts. The moral views of the Nazi doctors were so radically at odds with what they viewed as being in their self-interest that only by radically detaching their ordinary moral selves could they manage to carry out their work. This gives us further reason to accept the claim that an integrated self is morally valuable. Not only do moral exemplars tend to possess an integrated self, where their moral and non-moral goals, aims and desires fit together into a coherent whole, but a disintegration of the self appears to be one way in which morally vicious people become capable of performing evil acts. Moreover the lack of integration appears to be playing a crucial role in enabling some morally vicious people to perform morally abhorrent acts. The division of the murderous self from the civil self prevents the murderous self from facing the usual self-sanctioning moral reactions such as guilt and self-blame. This makes it easier to continue to engage in such appalling behavior.

In this section I have argued that the stories of Sassal and Lydgate have an important lesson to teach us about the value of integrity. I have argued that possessing an integrated self not only promotes an agent’s self-interest but is also morally valuable, as it makes the agent more reliable at acting in line with her moral judgements.

However, we can avoid this objection by making an important distinction between an integrated self and a unified self. In the literature on The Integrated Self so far it has widely been assumed that an integrated self means a unified self. Calhoun for example, criticizes this view by claiming it, “reduces integrity to volitional unity.”⁴⁹ To a certain extent this makes sense. A unified self seems like a paradigm instance of an integrated self. Nevertheless, there is an important distinction to be drawn between an integrated self and a unified self. A unified self is one in which all the various aspects of the self are combined into one. In the case of Maria Lugones that was discussed in Section 3, this would involve either uniting her Latina identity and her lesbian identity into that of the Latina Lesbian or abandoning one or the other of these identities. Clearly then a unified self would be an integrated self, as all the various parts of the self have been joined together to form a coherent whole. That does not mean, though, that an integrated self must be a united self.

Take for example the case of an integrated society. One way in which a society could count as integrated is if every member of the society shares the same goals and are united to one common cause. However, it is also possible for an integrated society to include a variety of competing conceptions of the good, where different groups are not united behind a shared vision of how society should operate. What is required for this society to be integrated is that these different groups are involved in the decision making process, that each is willing to coexist peacefully with each other and that no group faces social exclusion. Of course much more can be said on this topic but for my purposes it is enough to note that integration need not imply unity.

Applying this thought to the case of Lugones, it is worth noting, as Victoria Davion does, that though Lugones’ two selves are not, “integrated in the sense of being unitary, these two selves are connected.”⁵⁰ Moreover, as Lugones herself points out, “Because the selves can connect, each can critique the other and avoid the demoralization of self-betrayal.”⁵¹ This is important as, according to Davion this shows us how a multiplicitous being can have integrity. In Davion’s words, “The multiplicitous being has integrity if she can somehow keep a connection between her two selves alive, as long as one can critique the other.”⁵² What is important for integrity then is not that the agent reduces her multiplicitious being into one unified self but rather that she connects these two conflicting selves and reflects critically on the relationship between the two. Lugones can count as having integrity on this view as she claims that, “Each one of these two selves understands the other.” However, Lugones also points out that this process will not be an easy one and, “requires significant work in the ‘borderlands’.”⁵³ Of course there will be cases where two incompatible identities are too much at odds with each other to be integrated. Someone with two competing identities that seek to undermine the fundamental goals of the other could not be described as possessing an integrated self. However, someone possessing competing ideals that are brought into dialogue with each other can count as possessing an integrated self. The value I have been claiming for an integrated self is compatible then with the claim that there can be value in conceiving oneself as a mulitplicitous being.

Moreover, this process of bringing competing ideals into contact with each other may be a crucial first step to moving towards a united self. The example of Sassall highlights this point well. His period of self-examination was one in which he reexamined his ideal of the master mariner in the light of his desire to be a good doctor and his developing thoughts about what this would involve in his particular context. Examining this ideal in the light of his other ideals led to Sassall deciding that it was not an appropriate one for a doctor in his position. This led him to find a new ideal, one that did not conflict with his role of the appropriate behavior for a doctor in his position. That is not to say that this kind of reconciliation will be possible in all cases. However, the process of bringing one’s conflicting desires and ideals into contact with one another may an important first step to bring about such a reconciliation. The value of bringing one’s competing desires and ideals into contact with one another is further highlighted by the case of Lydgate. Lydgate fails to subject his individual desires to be a good doctor, make scientific discoveries and to occupy an elevated place in society to scrutiny in light of the others. If he had done he may have realized that the particular circumstances he faced meant that the last two goals where undermining his attempt to be a good doctor. The point is also well highlighted by the case of the Nazi Doctors and perpetrators of genocide. Through a process of compartmentalization they have brought about a state of affairs where there actions in certain part of there lives are segregated from their ordinary moral reactions. This is a crucial part of what enabled many to continue to be involved in such horrendous acts. We can see from all these examples that bringing the various parts of one’s self into contact with each other and questioning each in the light of the other can play an important role in making people act more reliably in line with their moral judgements. There is no need then to equate integration with unity in order for my claim about the value of an integrated self to be accepted.

The next objection that might be raised against my account of the moral value of integrity is that it makes integrity turn out to be a ‘morally dangerous’ character trait. This is an objection that Greg Sherkoske raises against several different accounts of integrity. While Scherkoske does not consider a view of exactly the kind I am defending, his objection to ‘coherence’ accounts of integrity could also be raised against my view.⁵⁴ Scherkoske argues that these views are compatible with the agent having repugnant moral views. This is equally true of my account. An agent who has successfully integrated her moral and non-moral goals, aims and desires may have repugnant moral views. There does not, after all, appear to be anything incoherent about the possibility of a sincere, committed Nazi with an integrated self. Such a person would see no clash between her self-interest and her moral views. However, her moral views endorse ethnic cleansing, Aryan supremacy and enforced eugenics. The first problem this example raises is that it is not clear why an integrated self would be morally valuable here. The bigger problem, though, is that it seems reasonable to think that an integrated self would be morally bad in this case. If an integrated self is a characteristic that makes someone act more reliably on their moral views then the committed Nazi will more reliably act in ways to promote Aryan supremacy. This is a problem for the account of the value of an integrated self outlined in the previous section, as it is shown to be entirely contingent on the moral views of the self in question.

It is true that there will be some people for whom acting in line with their moral judgements would lead to them becoming morally worse. However, for most people with imperfect but reasonable moral views, possessing an integrated self is likely to make them morally better people. For people with reasonable moral views, like Sassal and Lydgate, the reconciliation of their moral goals, aims and desires with their self-interested ones is likely to lead to moral improvement. It may well make the difference between being a moral good person and being a morally bad person. Alternatively, it may make the difference between being a morally decent person and being a moral exemplar. That is where the value in an integrated self lies. The claim that an integrated self may make someone with unreasonable moral views morally worse does not show my attempt to pinpoint the value of an integrated self to be mistaken; it simply highlights the modesty of the claim I am making.

However, a related problem remains. We might worry that it would be possible to resolve a conflict between one’s moral goals and one’s self-interested goals by seeking to subordinate our moral goals to our non-moral goals. This would lead to a self that is free from conflict between morality and self-interest but clearly would not count as morally valuable. This, we might think, shows that there is nothing inherently valuable about an integrated self.

Again though, this worry becomes less pressing if we take the value of an integrated self is to be found in helping morally decent people become more virtuous. The morally decent person will not contemplate achieving an integrated self through eradicating moral concern from their character. She may, though, consider reconciling her moral and self-interested goals more closely. If she does so, then, if we accept what I have claimed in this paper, she is likely to become a morally better person. For morally decent people, then, an integrated self will be likely to lead to moral improvement. This is a less exciting than the claim that an integrated self is always valuable. Nevertheless, this claim is able to tell us why we should value an integrated self.