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In his landmark paper, 'The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories', Michael Stocker introduces an affliction that is, according to his diagnosis, endemic to all modern ethical theories.1 This is the famous moral schizophrenia that is created when ethical theories require agents to adopt a divided moral psychology in order to achieve special goods like friendship. Stocker claims that this condition is profoundly unhealthy: he describes it as a 'malady of the spirit' and considers it to be a reductio of any ethical theory that makes it necessary for its representative agents to integrate two distinct types of thinking within an aggregate moral psychology.
Stocker's paper is well known and often cited, yet moral schizophrenia remains an obscure diagnosis. This is partly due to the fact that 'Schizophrenia' led to a stalemate between defenders of modern ethical theories and their critics. On one hand, defenders of modern ethical theories tend to respond to Stocker's challenge by emphasizing the merits of acting on the prescriptions of duty and, in some cases, by noting that acting in ways prescribed by duty need not preclude the achievement of goods like friendship.2 In doing so, however, most sidestep the psychological challenge of moral schizophrenia by either ignoring the fact that acting for the sake of duty requires a divided psychology or by denying that a divided psychology is burdensome.3 The result is an unwarranted level of complacency with respect to the psychological mechanisms required to implement ethical theories in a realistic human context. On the other hand, supporters of Stocker tend to rely on the moral schizophrenia diagnosis as if it provides a decisive blow to the credibility of any theory that requires a divided moral psychology. This is a conclusion in need of further argument, and critics of modern ethical theory display their own type of complacency by assuming that moral schizophrenia is intolerably burdensome compared to the alternative moral psychologies available to human agents.
My aim in this article is to argue that moral schizophrenia, properly understood, is not as disruptive as Stocker and his supporters suggest. Thus, my aim is to argue that the type of psychology associated with moral schizophrenia is not exceptionally pathological when compared to...