Ebenezer Scrooge – Man of Principle

‘Bah! Humbug!’ It’s the most famous line in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but is it the most important? Surely not, for this Christmas classic is not centrally about Christmas, but about a man, the holiday being the convenient setting for his transformation. What kind of transformation? Why a moral transformation of course, because the man, Ebenezer Scrooge, through multiple encounters with the spirit world, becomes a good man by the end of the story. But where does this story begin, what are we to think of Scrooge at the outset and how is his transformation accomplished? These are the questions I take up here, for while Scrooge is tightfisted, covetous and hard-hearted, he is still a man of principle. Judged by the standards of some views on ethics, Scrooge isn’t actually all that bad. How can that be? Let’s start with a quick overview of two centuries of ethical theory. Since the Enlightenment, ethical theorists have focused on figuring out what our duties and obligations are to one another. So, rather than being concerned with deciding what characteristics make one a good person (which Scrooge is not), ethicists have turned to devising principles from which we determine which is the correct action to perform (which even Scrooge does). The current debate in ethics is dominated by two views which have been on the scene for several centuries – utilitarianism, championed by important historical figures such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, and Kantianism, as developed by its namesake, the 18 century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Both of these theories follow the pattern of identifying a fundamental value expressed through a foundational principle and then using that principle as a guide to action.