#1 - Aspirational self images

Understanding Fleabag's Priest

I wanted these first few posts to be in a certain order. But I am posting this one out of order, mostly as a writing sample. This was first drafted around the beginning of April.

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“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” - Romans 3:23

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While the series is shown through Fleabag’s perspective, the Priest also has an equally rich and colorful internal world. We don’t have nearly as intimate a view into the Priest’s thoughts, but we certainly can see enough through what he says and does to paint a picture of his motivations. The story of the Priest is a story of giving into temptation, of failing to live up to the standards he is meant to embody. How is it that he continues being a priest?

Moral judgments do not inherently motivate¹

But before we can get started, some boring but necessary metaethics.

There is an ongoing debate surrounding the following claim, a seemingly obvious and necessary constraint on adequate theories of morality:

If an agent judges that it is right for them to φ, then they are motivated to φ.

People who believe this claim stands on its own and does not need further justification are known as internalists. For internalists, there is a conceptually necessary connection between the judgment that some action is right, and the motivation to carry out the action. Stronger versions of the argument claim that the moral judgment by itself is what motivates. Externalists (who maybe are better referred to as non-internalists) dispute this claim.

It is actually quite easy to think of counterexamples of agents who do not meet the internalist constraint on moral motivation: imagine a person who has thought extensively about their moral beliefs, has carefully constructed a detailed value system, and judges that it is right for them  to φ, but is also lazy, weak-willed, tired, or depressed; so, they are not motivated to φ. We might even imagine a moral cynic or evil person who is motivated to φ precisely because it is wrong to φ.

Externalists must come up with accounts of moral motivation in light of the shortcomings of the internalist constraint. What other mental state(s) must go along with moral judgments so that they are indeed motivating?

One simple account of externalist moral motivation is that a moral agent desires to do what is right. This account has a de re (“about the thing”) interpretation, and a de dicto (“about what is said”) interpretation:

de re: Construct a list of all statements that are right. For each item on that list, the agent desires to do that thing.

de dicto: The agent has a desire, the content of which is: “to do whatever is right”.

Both interpretations fall into a trap. 

If read de re (to desire whatever is on the List of Right Actions), a change in an agent’s moral judgments is not reflected in their motivations: the List of Right Actions does not update based on a change in the agent’s internal moral beliefs. If a good moral agent was a Democrat and is now a Republican, the agent should also now vote for the Republicans after previously voting for the Democrats. But the List of Right Actions might contain the statement “Vote for the Democrats”, and so the agent will continue to vote for the Democrats despite the fact that they now identify as a Republican. The List of Right Statements does not depend on the internal state of the agent, and so in the de re reading, their moral motivations do not track their moral beliefs. The de re reading fails to give an adequate account of moral motivation.

If read de dicto (to desire to do whatever is right), the agent falls into irrational moral obsession²: they are motivated to donate to a food bank “not by the thought that in doing so [they] will benefit the starving and the needy, but by the thought that in so doing [they] will do what [they are] morally required to do…focusing on an aspect of the action removed from the aspect that motivates good moral agents.” Dreier uses a different analogy, contrasting the good moral against against the moral obsessive: “A good moral agent wants to relieve the suffering of others, not because relieving suffering is right, not because it is in the extension of ‘right’, not because it is on the List of Right Actions, but because [they] cares directly for those who suffer.”³

Internalists use this supposed failure to adequately account for moral motivations to defend their position and discount those who argue that it is not so simple. But there are always solutions to logical problems like these.

In an attempt to resolve this contradiction, Dreier proposes a model of a moral agent with a second order desire “to value for their own sake those things that are (or that one believes to be) morally right.” This moral agent meets the tracking condition: when the agent comes to believe that voting for the Republicans is right, their “second order desire will kick in and [they] will actually desire to vote for [Republicans].” This second order desire is “maieutic”: an end achieved through the process of coming to have other ends. In this case, these other ends are moral ends. A moral agent like this isn’t a moral obsessive either, because their “end of having moral ends is maieutic, and the ends to which it gives rise are, once arisen, free standing, final ends rather than instrumental ones.” This moral agent is also persuadable, and would be motivated to investigate their moral beliefs when faced with moral uncertainty: if the agent thought that their moral frameworks might need to be adjusted (possibly fundamentally), then their second order desire would motivate them to investigate.

With this background out of the way, we can finally start to develop an understanding of Fleabag’s Priest, reading his words and actions through his devotion to God.

The need to appear moral and the concept of God

As we begin building an understanding of the Priest, here are some questions to keep in mind: 

• What is his conception of God, and what is contained within it?

• What does God tell him to do and not to do? Why does he follow what God tells him to do?

• What aspect of God is morally motivating to him? How is this aspect of God motivating?

The Priest is from a broken family, the son of emotionally distant alcoholic lawyers, and has lived a life of perceived immorality, having “been there many times. Before [he] found this.” He has found peace in priesthood, a good life. Even still, he is constantly chased by temptation (foxes), and is terrified to his core of it. The Priest, as a result of his past experiences, is unable to conceive of himself as an inherently good person.

The story of a broken man desperately searching for meaning who finds the cloth is a common one. But notice how terrified he is of foxes, of breaking his promises to God, how desperately he clings to his beliefs. His desire to be a good person is what drives him to the Church. He wants to be a good person, by his own definition of “good”, filtered through his particularly pious understanding of a specifically Christian God. The same desire to be moral discussed by the Externalists motivates everything the Priest does.

Notice that the Priest’s beliefs fail the tracking condition: what is “Right” is determined by God, and does not depend on the Priest’s internal beliefs. Notice that the Priest is also an irrational moral obsessive: he chooses celibacy solely because it is what God requires, because it is the right thing to do.

Notice too, that his desire to be moral existed prior to and independent of his desire to be religious or to be Christian or to be a priest. In this sense, the desire to be moral is instead existential for the priest: he always had a desire to be moral, despite his previous inability to act morally and fulfill that desire by himself. His turn towards the church is a last ditch attempt to fulfill an existential need, and create the morally satisfactory self image he wants to be able to authentically claim. 

Maintaining this image is an equally existential issue: who is he without the moral code he finds through the Church? By himself, he is unable to restrain himself to the principles which he has come to believe constitute a good and moral life. Only by a constant appeal towards the image of God is he able to act in a way he believes is moral, and thereby sustain his self image as a good and moral person.⁴

So for the morally motivated person, it is more a “need to appear moral” rather than a “desire to be moral”. It is less about actually being moral, but it is about being moral enough so that they can credibly justify the claim “I am a good and moral person” to the skeptical questioner. When the skeptical questioner is themselves, this amounts to the morally motivated person telling themselves “I am a good and moral person” and being able to genuinely believe it. The meanings of these words, and the internal standards by which the claim is measured, vary considerably.

The need to appear moral, then, rests very deeply in the psyches of many people. It is less of a desire or want, and more of a true emotional need.⁵ The concept of God, properly utilized, can simultaneously create and fulfill this need, potentially independently of religious institutions. It, by definition, is a concept which engenders a desire to be moral in people. Through their teachings, God acts as a de re shortcut for most people to appear moral to others, and a de dicto bootstrap for the particularly morally motivated person into the process of coming to appear moral to oneself. 

It’s worth repeating: For the morally motivated person, the concept of God acts as a de dicto bootstrap for moral motivation, creating (if needed) the desire to be moral. The concept of God, used as an unreachable destination to strive towards, fulfills the desire to be moral through the discovery and refinement of a morally idealized self image. And the process of striving towards the concept of God fulfills the fundamental emotional need and desire to be perceived as good and moral by the individual themselves. 

And so we arrive at a tentative definition for (the concept of) God:

The bundle of related concepts which helps inspire morally motivated people to create an idealized image of themselves, and encourages morally motivated people to aspire to those idealized images.⁶ 

To pray is to partially internalize God

What does the Priest say about prayer and the Bible?:

• On prayer: “[It’s] just more about connecting with yourself at the end of the day”

• On the Bible: “[It isn’t] fact…it’s poetry. It’s a moral code. It’s for interpretation. To help us work out God’s plan for us”

This understanding of prayer and of the Bible is unusual. It centers the individual, their agency, and subjective moral interpretation. It explicitly rejects metaphysical claims about the world, of heaven and hell, of an omniscient and omnipresent being which is the ultimate judge of moral truth; it does not center miracles, it does not focus on telling grand stories of creation, of floods, or of eternal salvation.

Taken together and fully articulated, it goes something like: “To pray is to connect with yourself. Prayer is for meditating on the teachings within the Bible, to come up with your own understanding and interpretation of the moral teachings contained within it, and to work out ‘God’s plan’ for you.”

God takes only a passive role in the individual’s quest towards working out “God’s plan”. It is up to the morally motivated person, their internal language and concepts, to come to understand God and “God’s plan”; whatever understanding they come to is an extension of their own psychology. The image of God is self-constructed, a projection of the individual. Through this internalized concept, the morally motivated person creates another internalized concept: an idealized version of themselves, to the extent they are able and willing to imagine. This is exactly equivalent to the Priest’s understanding of “work[ing] out God’s plan”.

For the Priest to work out God’s plan is just to create his own plan, guided by and in light of the moral principles and statements he believes are motivating. Put differently, when the Priest meditates on God’s plan, he imagines the best version of himself (a destination), guided by the moral principles which he ascribes to God, and chooses actions (a path) in an act of becoming the best version of himself that he is able to imagine. Ultimately, the concept which is morally motivating is not God itself, but the imaginary, morally idealized version of himself which abides by the values that his God prescribes. To aspire towards his idealized self-image is to hold himself accountable against the values that he comes to believe and hold.⁷ The concept of God motivates him only to the extent that it inspires him to “work out God’s plan” for himself. Instead of being a simple “first order desire” moral agents who are irrational moral obsessives or do not actually hold values which track their motivation, the Priest is one of Dreier’s “second order desire” moral agents: prayer acts as the mechanism for his maieutic end of coming to create new moral judgments and actionable ends which aim towards his moral judgments, and being motivated as a result. 

Morally motivated people and the desire to appear moral exist and can be fulfilled independent of religious organizations and their specific cultural trappings, lore, and mythology. But the morally motivated person cannot fulfill their desire to be moral without a conception of God, as defined above. It is impossible to create an idealized self image without first coming to believe the truth of various moral propositions⁸: “it is wrong to steal”, “it is right to respect your parents”, “it is right to donate to the needy”. To pray, in the typical sense, is to articulate moral judgments and actions, acknowledging moral imperfection in the light of an external God. But prayer is not the only way to access the concept of God, and Gods themselves do not need to be external.

What is it to fully internalize God?

The counselor tells Fleabag exactly what it is:

FLEABAG 
Can you just tell me what to do?

COUNSELOR
You know.
(beat)
You already know what you’re going to do. Everybody does.

FLEABAG
What?

COUNSELOR
You’ve already decided what you’re going to do.

FLEABAG
So what’s the point in you?

And later in the season the Priest repeats it:

PRIEST
(noticing her talk to us)
FOR FUCK’S SAKE STOP THAT. I don’t think you want to be told what to do at all. I think you know exactly what to do. If you really wanted someone to tell you what to do, you’d be wearing one of these.

FLEABAG
Women aren’t actually allowed—

PRIEST
Oh, fuck off, I know.

He looks at her.

Pause.

Without an external God, individuals become the morally responsible party: the ultimate judge of right and wrong. This is what it is to fully internalize God. And with this responsibility comes many benefits: when we fully internalize the concept of God, we become a God unto ourselves and to others. Fleabag, in this sense, becomes the most pious and moral character in the show. 

To fully internalize God requires irrational moral courage. It amounts to believing and asserting the right-ness of the values she chooses to hold, accepting that there is nothing which grounds the assertions except the fact that she asserts them, and holding herself to those values anyways. There is a difference between being morally motivated by the threat of eternal damnation, and being morally motivated through sheer willpower alone.

To fully internalize God is freeing. The Priest’s actions are bound by what he is told to do. Fleabag is not bound in the same way. When a morally motivated person such as Fleabag is freed from the restraints imposed upon her by socially constructed Gods, she is free to choose the extent to which her morality constrains her actions. In many cases, this choice is unconscious and instinctive, and the post-hoc moral reasoning is instinctive as well: this is the sense in which Fleabag already knows what she is going to do, and the sense in which she knows exactly what to do. Only external Gods require sacrifices to maintain credibility in the light of perfection.

To fully internalize God is selfish. It is to assert herself and her happiness as an end in itself. It is to make demands of others, in light of what she demands of herself. It is to accept inherent imperfection, not under the image of a specifically Christian God, but under an idealized image of herself. It is to accept the imperfection of her idealized image, and act with that image of herself as a final end anyways.

To fully internalize God is an act of commitment. It is for Fleabag to recognize this possibility in everyone else, and to act in light of it. It is to continually embark on an endless journey of evaluation, improvement, and adjustment to the ideals contained within God.

Falling short of the glory of God

What do you do when the path of life brings you to a moment where you feel as if have no choice but to violate your own principles and fall short of your internalized God? Imagine the pacifist shooting at the enemy, the Environmental Science major working at Exxon, the future whistleblower at some anonymous monolithic organization, the Priest meeting Fleabag.

The Priest’s last words to Fleabag are an admission of imperfection. He is unable to keep his promises to God, and still he continues with being a priest! What rationalization is needed inside his head for this to be possible? The key is in Romans 3:23: it is the act of striving, not reaching, which saves. 

If read with an externalized God, it is a story of original sin, a fall from grace. Inherent and intractable imperfection which can only be saved by God himself. 

If read with an internalized God, it is a story of self improvement, of radical self acceptance and forgiveness. Through this reading of God, the ideas of “trying your best” and “forgiving yourself” come into sharp relief. 

To ask God for forgiveness is to ask yourself for forgiveness. To be forgiven by God is to forgive yourself.

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To the extent that they help cultivate a morally integrated self-image, therapists are replacing the Church: undergraduate ethics lectures will replace Sunday sermons, #therapytiktok will replace the Bible.

1. This section is basically a reproduction of arguments from “Moral Cognitivism and Motivation” by Sigrún Svavarsdóttir (boring title, cool name) and “Dispositions and Fetishes: Externalist Models of Moral Motivation” by James Dreier (spicier title, not as cool name)

2. A phrase containing the word in Dreier’s title is a term of art in the field, but is better left unrepeated

3. Here’s another good Dreier quote to help understand the irrational moral obsession charge: “An agent is a [moral obsessive], in our sense, just in case what appeals to the agent about the moral actions that [they want] to perform, is that [the actions] are moral actions. The good moral agent, by contrast, finds attractive the properties that ground the rightness, the right-making properties, or what she takes to be the right making properties.”

4. For anyone who has built a value system from first principles, and has constructed an identity with this system at its foundation, feeling compelled to act in violation of one’s moral integrity is to be shaken to your core.

5. The need to appear moral, should it exist in an individual, exists at a deeper level than, say, the need to dress nicely, the need for authentic friendship, the need for relaxing hobbies, or the need for meaningful work. Because who can you claim to be, to yourself and to others, if not the values you choose to assert in the world?

6. The bundle of related concepts is often socially determined through religious institutions. Note, though, that this intentionally vague definition works nicely with the concept of “false gods”: money, power, status, etc. It can also be recast in secular language: life goals, personal boundaries, role models.

7. Recall that the reason why this aspirational image is motivating is an existential emotional need, for individuals who lack but desire moral motivation, as well as for individuals who want to retain an image of being a morally motivated person.

8. Quite often, the construction of this set of moral propositions is mediated even through social (not necessarily religious) relations: parents, talking heads, teachers, priests, advertisements, Instagram, presidential candidates, close friendships. The morally motivated person can also define their aspirational self image in opposition to these moral teachings or the set of moral propositions they construct: recall the moral cynic.