Ethical Disruptions, Part 1: The Issue at Hand

There tend to be two elements of the common sense idea of ethics and morality. The first boils down to "what must I do, and what do I deserve to expect from other people?" In other words, the question of morality is about choosing between possibilities. Doing X is good, while doing Y is bad.

The second element is that of justification. There is a persistent search for some way to justify moral judgments and acts. Probably the most common justification has been the afterlife; be "good" or you'll suffer punishment after death. Other common justifications involve human solidarity, or God's holiness and authority.

So the standard moral discourse asks, what should we do, and why should we do it?

Between the 19th and 20th centuries, these questions ceased to be serious philosophical themes. The first question is dismissed as instrumental thought - ie, the insistence on making pure thought "practical" and "useful," as if thinking were nothing other than a factory for producing goods and services. The second question - why should we act in such and such a way? - is dismissed as slavish and repetitive. Acting because of another being's power is the very definition of passivity.

The old categories of ethics and morality have fallen into disrepute. Yet, the 20th century demanded a response from those that lived it, and the 21st century demands a response from us. Viciousness and exploitation were, and are, rampant. If the shining beacon of morality is discarded, than do all conceptions of justice, courage, wisdom and truth follow closely behind?

We must hope not. Alain Badiou, writing decades after the "death" of philosophy was declared, has said that the world (not God, not philosophers - the world) is telling philosophy to get up and walk. We must say the same to ethics.

And yet, we cannot pretend that Nietzsche did not write. We can't go back to the old way of doing things. New concepts must be created. I think the thinkers of the 20th century - and now those of the 21st - have had a common ethical project, and I think this project can be summed up in terms of the disruption of the totality. The disruption - and remaking - of the world. From Heidegger's call of conscience, to Levinas's encounter with the Other, to Lacan's traumatic encounter with the real, to Badiou's fidelity to the event - the common thread is the traumatic disruption of everyday life.

Ethics is coming back, and it will have no truck with humanism (reach your inner potential!) or liberalism (choose what you like, just don't hurt anyone else!) or theology (bow!).

A Failure to Think Abortion

I find myself increasingly frustrating with my own opinion on abortion. I just can't seem to develop a robust, directly stated opinion on the matter. The only way I can think about the subject is basically an equivocation; both/and. I consider that a pretty major failing.

First, I guess, the pro-choice side of my both/and problem. It has become an increasingly common pro-choice argument that pro-lifers are not so much concerned with the issue of homicide and the life of the fetus as they are with controlling sexuality, specifically women's sexuality.

I find this to be a fairly compelling argument. Pro-lifers will insist they believe that the fetus is a person, and that abortion is murder. The problem is, pro-lifers simply don't act as if they live under a regime with a higher civilian body count then Stalinist Russia. Stalin was responsible for 40 million dead Russians; the U.S. alone has had 48 million abortions over a slightly longer time period. There should be constant horror and outrage; how can daily life continue as usual for someone that believes they live in the bloodiest society in history?

But there isn't. The outrage over abortion is no greater than the usual moral outrage over, say, homosexuality.

The other piece of the argument is all the empirical data that feminist blogs collect concerning the activities of pro-life groups; persistent interference with contraception, persistent moral condemnations of (usually female) sexual activity, etc. Or the constant insistence on "responsibility," which is just an extension of the double standard and whore/madonna split women have always had to deal with. If you'd like to see these discussions, visit Pandagon - there's a link on the side of the page.

So anyways, I'm convinced that concern over women's sexuality is the excessive real of the pro-life movement. By excessive real, I mean the ideas and concepts that show through the cracks in the surface (in a previous post, when I say that "hate the sin..." is really "just following orders," I'm pointing out another example of the excessive real).

Because of this, I think pro-choicers are correct when they say the pro-lifers don't so much care about the life of the fetus, but when and for whom a woman opens her legs. And so I consider the pro-life groups to be basically insidious. The forces of domination, as it were.

It needs to be stressed that that this excessive real, this obscene, disavowed underside, is built into the pro-life position. It can't be chased away by logical syllogisms and a body of correct facts. The explicit pro-life position, that of the rejection of murdering babies, is sustained by and dependant upon this underside. It is this underside that allows pro-lifers to go about their day without being overwhelmed by the horror of living in a Stalinist regime; the underside is what provides the distance from horror so one's life can function.

Of course, that isn't the end of the issue. Just because the pro-life position carries with it an obscene underside, doesn't mean pro-choicers are let off the hook when it comes to thinking the homicide issue. Just because your opponent is incapable of being completely forthright doesn't mean you can ignore his explicit position.

In our culture, in our particular place and time, any claim that abortion is murder will carry with it the obscene underside of the domination of women. I know this won't seem like a satisfying statement, but I think it is true. All the valid logic and correct facts in the world won't change it. But for the sake of completeness...

Empirical data will never be able to settle the issue of the fetus' legal status. There is no scientific test for personhood. No body of data can tell you when the fetus becomes a person, and so is entitled to protection under the law.

Any time chosen, from conception to the third trimester to birth, is going to be arbitrary. Sure, empirical data can be interpreted to support some of these positions over others, but empirical data will always leave room for dissent among reasonable people.

The cautious position, which I favor but can't argue forcefully for, would be that conception confers legal personhood. The problem is, "cautious" is not a serious endorsement of a political or ethical position. And "cautious" does not mean "less arbitrary."

None of that erases the importance of grappling with the question, "is abortion murder?" It is the great failing of the pro-choice side that they refuse to do so. They've found out the obscene underside of the pro-life movement, and they think this makes their argument for them. It doesn't.

In the end, my pro-life sympathies are based on something I find compelling, but intellectually weak. I think there could come a day in which a pro-life position can be directly articulated, without the obscene underside. If that day comes, then the primary pro-choice arguments will dissolve (not proven illogical or incorrect, but will simply dissolve into the winds of history) and the abortion issue will be settled. On that day, we'll all wake up, and our hands will be covered in blood, and that blood will never wash off.

The problem is, I refuse to submit the present to the judgment of history. The preceding paragraph, while compelling, is simply unacceptable by any rigid intellectual standard. We live and move and have our being in the present; some pseudo-messianic future cannot help us in the present.

So this is my problem. I have both pro-choice and pro-life sympathies. That isn't acceptable; sitting on the fence is a cop out. I just have no idea how to resolve this. Sometimes I think that learning to do a proper dialectical analysis would solve this problem for me, but dialectics is a game for the big boys. It is hard to do without just being facile, or just making a more sophisticated equivocation.

House, MD and Risk

My favourite show on network tv is House. It’s a popular enough show that I assume anyone reading this already knows the premise: Greg House is the head of a medical team that deals with the cases that baffle everyone else. He’s a medical Sherlock Holmes – almost literally; references to the Sherlock Holmes stories abound in the series.

The series is remarkable in a particular way – it illustrates one of the big debates in social theory today. The first side of this debate is represented by the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas. His position is basically in support of the standard liberal democratic attitude: 2 opposing sides in an argument sit down and have a rational discussion. Person A presents his case, and person B presents his. Either A or B is expected to present a more rational, fact based case, and so their position is selected to act upon.

The other side of this social theory debate is represented by folks like Zizek and Alain Badiou. In a nut shell, their position is that rational, fact based thought does not always lead to a clear course of action. Whether through insufficient data or through some constitutive limitation of the situation, there must come a point at which the rational discussion ends and a decision is made. A risk must be taken, perhaps in defiance of the standard democratic expectation of majority rule or individual choice.

House consistently finds himself between these two positions. In every episode, he and his team write down a list of the patient’s symptoms. Often, the team is split as to what the diagnosis should be. The doctors on his team are obviously intelligent, and at least one of them is every bit as excellent a doctor as House himself is. That’d be Foreman, for those who watch the show. The other two members of the team are Cameron (who just happens to be played by the hottest woman on tv) and Chase.

The patient is always, of course, in imminent peril. They’ll die in 24 hours if House’s team doesn’t come up with the answer. Often the symptoms conflict with one another; symptoms 1 & 2 suggest diagnoses X, but symptom 3 seems to rule out X and suggests diagnoses Y.

House stands by and occasionally interjects while Foreman, Cameron and Chase debate the possibilities. Foreman insists the diagnosis is X, while Cameron and Chase insist on Y. Eventually House stops the discussion and orders them to treat the patient for a wholly other diagnosis, Z. What follows is a replay of a famous anecdote from one of GWF Hegel’s lectures: Foreman (standing in for one of Hegel’s students) says the facts don’t fit Z, and House basically says “So much the worse for the facts.”

So they treat for Z. Sometimes House is right, and the patient is cured. Sometimes House is wrong, and the patient develops a whole new problem.

Sometimes the doctors find themselves in a situation where diagnosis X seems correct, but the lab test to confirm it will take 48 hours, whereas the patient only has 24 hours to live. If X is the wrong diagnosis, the treatment will kill the patient almost immediately. I think part of the reason House is such an admired character (despite his abrasive personality) is that he is capable of making a firm decision to treat. He says to forget the test and just administer the treatment; how many of the rest of us would hem and haw and fritter away the patient’s life trying to discover new and more reassuring facts?

So my suggestion is that decisions always come down to something like this. Take any ethical dilemma you please; you’ll often find yourself in a situation in which the facts don’t produce a clear answer. It is the same with politics; the situation rarely tells you what must be done. Sooner or later, an authoritative decision must be made. The rational, democratic discussion must end, and action must take place.

Implicit Demands

Or, "Another Criticism of a Christian stance on Sin."

In Slavoj Zizek's narcissistic adventure of a documentary Zizek!, there is a clip of him on the American talkshow Nightline. He's plugging his new book, and offers a glimpse into the spirit of the book.

He brings up two versions of the standard situation of a father telling his son that since it is Sunday, they are going to visit grandmother, a ritual the son finds painfully boring. In the first story, the father is a Stalinist. He is direct and insistent; "you are coming to visit your grandmother; you have no choice." In the second story, the father is more "loving" and "permissive." He says, "Listen, you don't have to visit your grandmother. But she loves you very much, and I know you love her."

So what's the difference? The first father is telling his son what he has to do. The second father is also telling the son what he has to do, but he is tacking on an implicit demand: "you have to enjoy doing this." Surely that is the far more insidious demand; the first father demands an action, the second father demands submission.

I'd wonder if something similar is going on with well meaning Christians and homosexuals. When a Christian tells a homosexual that they may first recieve God's love, and alter their behavior "when the time comes," it's basically saying "change, and enjoy changing."

There's an idea that I think is fairly common in our society: that one's own individual conscience is where one finds their freedom. That in order to be free, you must be able to follow your conscience and do what you believe is right. External rule systems are crushing and totalitarian. I think this maps onto a common articulation of grace and law; grace opens up room for all those things that are "permissible, but not necessarily beneficial" while the law brings impossible demands and so death.

But what if it is the other way around? What if it is individual conscience, and that common articulation of grace, that is in fact the most crushing and totalitarian?

(As an aside, I wouldn't say the type of grace I'm speaking of is the only kind)

What if the infinite demand for perfection does not come from the external law, but is something we internalize, basically saying that we must enjoy trying to fulfill that infinite demand? "God's grace will forgive you. . . (you're a jerk for taking advantage of it, though)" The seemingly gentle and loving offer of permanant support and forgiveness is a sneaky attempt to get someone to enjoy being under the law, or in other words, to get them to internalize the law that brings death.

So when one says to a sinner "recieve God's love and grace, and change when the time is right," doesn't the sentence continue silently, ". . . but if you love God, the change will come quickly"? This a far cry from "Go now, and sin no more" which silently continues ". . . because if you do, I'll kick your ass."

Irony

Part of my thesis research has come around to the concept of irony, or cynicism. Irony is something that I've flirted with or outright wallowed in for a few years now, but I've come to see it as something of a hypocritical or empty pursuit.

So what is irony in a nutshell? It is a stance one takes towards themselves, their beliefs, and the world. Rather than allowing one's self to be encompassed by a particular description or particular roles, one insists on setting up a distance between themselves and these roles. It could be in the name of some persistent inner core, as in "The real Mike isn't a student or an atheist; the real Mike is a hard kernel of individualistic subjectivity that stands against the world." Or, one could say "the real Mike is a persistent flux, a framework of constant change. Being a student is just a suit to wear or shed at will."

There was a time when I was attracted to both of these kinds of irony. However, I've become convinced that such a stance is always supported by a totally non-ironic element.

Let's make that more clear. Take a liberal Christian, and for my specific example I'll say Paul Tillich. He'll argue that religion is about one's ultimate concern, but that exactly what that ultimate concern is is just a placeholder. While he'll say that Christianity provides the best articulation of God as the ultimate concern, over and above other religions, he'll still say that others hold true religion, and that's fine for them. He is unwilling to say to a Muslim "what you believe is false, and we are at odds with one another."

So I'd argue that Tillich takes up an ironic distance from orthodox Christianity. Why is this shallow or hypocritical? Because (as Slavoj Zizek as convinced me) this distance in fact depends on the existence of an other who really believes. Tillich cannot maintain his stance without a secret reference to the Muslim, a Muslim that is entirely interpolated into Islam and that has no distance from it.

Other forms of irony or cynicism have the same issue. Take your standard pragmatic hardboiled liberal individualist. They'll say that there are no more standards, only pragmatic exigencies. They'll say that they have no problem taking advantage of the system or of other people. "Do what thou wilt, with due regard for the policeman around the corner." They may in fact behave this way - but their statements actually concern the fact that they really do believe. When you're speaking to someone that claims only to make pragmatic calculations, then you're actually speaking to someone that, deep down, really does care. They just can't admit it to themselves or others.

The reason this has become an issue for me is the the writer I study, Martin Heidegger, is very easily interpreted as an ironist. To put it briefly, human existence is always embedded within a particular horizon of meaning. There is no particular human nature; rather, what humans do is project themselves into particular projects. We do things in order to be things, based on a prior pre-ontological understanding of existence.

All the projects and possibilities we take up come not from ourselves, because that would require a human nature; rather, our possibilities come from the world around us. We find them in our culture, in the objects we use, in the people we meet.

Most of our lives are spent just taking up the possibilities that the "they" of "they say" we should take up. We wander through our lives fulfilling all the obligations and expectations that the world places upon us, never catching a glimpse of anything that is proper to me, something that has nothing to do with you or any sort of we.

Heidegger will say there is only one possibility proper to you as you - your death. Death is the one single possibility that we do not take from the world. It is our ownmost possibility; it is the possibility that sets us apart from the "they" and individuates us.

The resolute anticipation of death is what allows one to take up projects in the world as if these projects were, like death, proper to one's self.

It's that "as if" that is the problem. You see how it sounds exactly like the irony described above, right? I behave "as if" I were a student, but I'm really not, I'm a being-for-death.

The student example is a bit facile. I guess you can already see how this would play out in other cases; "I'm not really a political activist," "I'm not really a husband and a father," "I'm not really a Christian."

Part of my thesis will involve trying to argue that one does not need to read anticipatory resoluteness as ironic. Explaining how I intend to do that is probably best left for another post.

Hating the (Gay) Sin, Loving the (Gay) Sinner

The Christian opposition to homosexuality is one of the primary elements of the "culture war," yes? Christians are often accused of being hateful and bigoted, and the Christian response is to say "We can hate the sin of homosexuality, but love the sinner."

A lot of gays and gay allies refuse to take this statement at face value. They'll insist that this is an obfuscation or an excuse, that all it does is conceal a deep seated prejudice.

I disagree with them. I am perfectly happy to accept that many Christians do not hate gays. My problem is that the reason Christians offer is undergirded by something much more sinister that garden variety political incorrectness.

I would argue that when a Christian says "I hate the sin, but love the sinner," there is an unspoken supplement. I think that what this statement conceals, or perhaps really means, is the statement "I am just following orders."

I think the common Christian position on homosexuality is, in fact, "I don't hate gays. God says the act is evil, and I have to agree with him. I am just following orders." What the Christian does is push off responsibility for a moral judgment to another.

There are no other sins for which Christians constantly use that statement. It may occasionally appear when a family member is an alcoholic, for example. "I love my dad, but I hate his sin." I believe this statement is different in kind, however.

The Christian recourse to the Nuremberg defense has appeared because the place of homosexuality has changed in our culture, and this change has affected Christians as well. Christians recognize that a direct and outright condemnation of homosexuality is no longer possible -- even for Christians -- so they have to punt the condemnation to God. Christians don't make the same deferral in the case of child molesters, because it is socially possible to condemn child molesters in one's own name.

(I know Christians will read that last sentence and insist that they can only condemn child molesters in the name of God's law; such an argument is tangential to my own. It is simply not the social reality that Christians explicitly defer to God in the case of pedophilia, while they do make such an explicit deferral in the case of homosexuality.)

I think there are two consequences here. First, it says something about the nature of morality. Moral statements are constricted by social conditions. If this were not true, than Christians would not speak about homosexuality the way they do. Secondly, this shows that the gay culture's suspicion of church culture is justified, to an extent. No one likes to be on the receiving end of actions justified by the Nuremberg defense.

The Inverted World

2 posts down, you'll see that the internets have declared my blog to be all but unreadable. This is fine. Still, I've decided to express an opinion on jargon.

The continental tradition has built up a reputation for impossible jargon and vulgar relativism. They're the postmodernists, and if you write something like they do, your blog's reading level will be College (Postgrad). Incomprehensible and completely impractical, it seems. Nothing about it accords with common sense. Another pretty common accusation is that the jargon is used just so that the author can fool the readers into thinking the author is smarter than he really is.

There are a few things here. First, the tyranny of common sense. The insistence that philosophical jargon is bizarre and counter-intuitive amounts to the insistence that all thinking be common thinking. In any other area, however, the common is the mediocre. Pennies are common. Michael Crichton novels are common. On the other side, the excellent is the uncommon. Common sense is always mediocre, while uncommon sense at least as the opportunity to become excellent, or path-breaking, or truly creative.

The second thing is the insistence that thinking be practical. That we must study reality in order to know how to interact with it in the best way - morality, knowledge, politics, etc. However, this subordinates all thinking to a factory-like process. Thought becomes a product that enters the market place, and is consumed like a bottle of coke. The problem is that the commodification or instrumentalization of any human effort - like thinking - immediately forces thinking to become a popular product. Any sort of individuality is stripped away from it. To insist that thinking be practical is to miss the basic nature of thinking, which, at its best, actually lies prior to the theory/praxis distinction. It's not a product, it's a way of being in the world. In the jargon, its an ethos, a particular way of "dwelling."

So thinking should neither be common nor "practical." I think this is partly why Hegel called philosophy "the inverted world" - everything appears upside down. And this, to me, is the great merit of the entire project - to be able to turn one's world on its head.

To turn one's world on its head, to create concepts or find distinctions, to think in an uncommon way, one needs tools adequate for the job. The tools are the words, and sometimes the words are difficult. It is entirely worth the effort, though. It's a strangely exhilarating experience to reflect on the temporal structure of the moment of decision, but such reflection can only take place when one has a particular vocabulary and is willing to leave behind common sense.

One should always be able to step back into the "real world," of course, and discuss matters with friends and family that have no particular interest in the jargon. At this point, if one wishes to avoid the inane repetition of common sense, all one can do is fall back on the ethos one has developed through thinking. It's a bit like having a new common sense, a new default way of looking at things. This can be expressed without the jargon, and hopefully some communication can take place.

Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics

Hey, look. I've finally gotten around to doing what I said I'd do all the way back in this post. All of these posts on ethical works are one part introduction and two parts subjective (but not arbitrary) reflection and interpretation.

Obviously, Aristotle's stuff is insanely rich. It has to be, or it wouldn't be some of the guiding source material for western civilization. So what I'm saying here isn't even the tip of an iceberg; it's a tiny chip from a tiny corner of the iceberg that is Aristotle. It's just what I was thinking about when I decided I needed to get cracking on an ethics series. This theme will re-appear when I write about other ethical works.

There's a common story floating around the philosophy orientated bits of the internet about the history of western philosophy. It's a standard view that Plato began a rational tradition, focussed on describing the world in terms of concepts and ideal forms. Aristotle, on the other hand, began an empirical tradition. As the story goes, he was focussed on observing the world and then commenting upon it. This story will also claim that Plato was a "collectivist," and Aristotle was an "individualist." Plato thought the person was subordinated to the state in all things, and Aristotle the opposite.

I'm not sure that I buy this story, partly for the same reason I don't buy the rationalist/empiricist distinction that supposedly ran through the modern period. This kind of reductionism, that lumps multiple thinkers together, is kind of lazy. It reduces all things to the same. If you ever do read Aristotle or Plato, or anyone else, try not to read them through someone elses' eyes. This being said, I do think Aristotle is worth reading in terms of a particular binary pair, but it isn't individualism vs. collectivism or rationalism vs. empiricism, but immanance vs. transcendance.

In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle is concerned with ends and goods. Final Ends and supreme Goods, to be more exact. Immanance and transcendance are possible locations for these Ends and Goods: either they exist within human life (immanance), or human life must go beyond itself to find these things (transcendance). Aristotle seems to be very much concerned with immanance.

Every activity aims at a good; an ideal end is the good. Everything man does is an attempt to reach this end, this good. As such, our lives are determined by our activities. Our lives are a series of activities dedicated to ends, ends that are more or less related to finding happiness.

The supreme good, then, is happiness. As Aristotle defines it, happiness is the virtuous activity of the soul. Happiness is not simply a state of mind, but rather continuous activity - what I'd want to call a way of being. It is attained through effort, through training. Happiness is not something that falls into your lap - it is a result of activities and being a certain way.

As such, and this is my own take on it, happiness for Aristotle has nothing to do with conforming to an external image. It has nothing to do with following Natural Law or paying attention to a list of rules. What the Ethics does is describe a life that is happy; it says "if you want to be happy, you will be this kind of person." It does not say, "if you want to be moral, you will follow these rules." For myself, I'd take that as the basic distinction between an ethics and a morality.

Aristotle does speak of moral rules, of course. But it is never morality in a legal sense, which is what morality commonly is. Moral virtues are not inscribed by or against nature; they are more guides to a certain way of being, or a permanant disposition. Again, right conduct - which for Aristotle is avoiding both excess and deficiency - is how one becomes good and therefore happy. Right conduct is not something handed over by a rule giver or an outside source - it is something immanant to the human as such.

It is that avoidance of excess and deficiency - aka the golden mean - that one is to strive for. The idea is to feel fear, confidence, and all other feelings at the right time and in the right way. Because this is not a list of transcendant laws or rules, what the right times and ways are will differ for every individual. This isn't math, as Aristotle insists on at least twice. Expecting exact rules from ethics or politics is like expecting "mere plausibility" from math.

For example, the mean of fear and rashness is courage. Not taking unnecessary risks and not avoiding risks that are necessary is courage. Know when you have to risk your life, and know when you retreat. One of the oddities of the mean is that it often seems closer to one extreme - a brave man will appear rash next to a brave one. This means that the mean is not the "middle" - courage really is closer to rashness than to cowardice. It is one of Aristotle's practical rules that one should, when aiming for the mean, keep further from the extreme that seems further from the mean. In other words, it is better to be closer to rashness than to cowardice.

In Book IV, there is a passage that exemplifies what the Ethics is in my reading. It is a section called "A Portrait of the Magnanimous Man," and it is a description of a man that knows exactly what his own worth is, and acts accordingly. It is a description of what a person will be like if they have a certain disposition, a disposition that can be attained by anyone through the practice of ethics.

This is a portion of that passage:

He does not run into trifling dangers, nor is he fond of danger, because he honours few things; but he will face great dangers, and when he is in danger he is unsparing of his life, knowing that there are conditions on which life is not worth having. And he is the sort of man to confer benefits, but he is ashamed of receiving them; for the one is the mark of a superior, the other of an inferior. And he is apt to confer greater benefits in return; for thus the original benefactor besides being paid will incur a debt to him, and will be the gainer by the transaction. They seem also to remember any service they have done, but not those they have received (for he who receives a service is inferior to him who has done it, but the proud man wishes to be superior), and to hear of the former with pleasure, of the latter with displeasure; this, it seems, is why Thetis did not mention to Zeus the services she had done him, and why the Spartans did not recount their services to the Athenians, but those they had received. It is a mark of the proud man also to ask for nothing or scarcely anything, but to give help readily, and to be dignified towards people who enjoy high position and good fortune, but unassuming towards those of the middle class; for it is a difficult and lofty thing to be superior to the former, but easy to be so to the latter, and a lofty bearing over the former is no mark of ill-breeding, but among humble people it is as vulgar as a display of strength against the weak.

Again, it is characteristic of the proud man not to aim at the things commonly held in honour, or the things in which others excel; to be sluggish and to hold back except where great honour or a great work is at stake, and to be a man of few deeds, but of great and notable ones. He must also be open in his hate and in his love (for to conceal one's feelings, i.e. to care less for truth than for what people will think, is a coward's part), and must speak and act openly; for he is free of speech because he is contemptuous, and he is given to telling the truth, except when he speaks in irony to the vulgar.

He must be unable to make his life revolve round another, unless it be a friend; for this is slavish, and for this reason all flatterers are servile and people lacking in self-respect are flatterers. Nor is he given to admiration; for nothing to him is great. Nor is he mindful of wrongs; for it is not the part of a proud man to have a long memory, especially for wrongs, but rather to overlook them. Nor is he a gossip; for he will speak neither about himself nor about another, since he cares not to be praised nor for others to be blamed; nor again is he given to praise; and for the same reason he is not an evil-speaker, even about his enemies, except from haughtiness. With regard to necessary or small matters he is least of all me given to lamentation or the asking of favours; for it is the part of one who takes such matters seriously to behave so with respect to them. He is one who will possess beautiful and profitless things rather than profitable and useful ones; for this is more proper to a character that suffices to itself.

The translation I have is more readable, but this is the best one I could find to copy from the 'net.

I don't have much to add to that passage. I was also going to copy in my other favourite passege, from Book VIII "The Kinds of Friendship," but the translations I can find on the internet are so dissappointing as to not make it worth it. Find the most modern translation you can if you care to read this great book.

Fidelity and the Word

This is a response to a post on Jamie's blog, yonder. I wanted to offer a more detailed, and possibly more useful, response than the two brief comments I've already left.

I think the best way to frame these topics is in terms of a brief discussion of faith. In a spirit of gross simplification, I'm going to suggest that there are two basic ways of viewing faith.

• The first involves a path to knowledge; it is an intellectual acceptance of a certain category of data, i.e. revelation. Or prophecy. One knows something to be true because they have faith. Belief in this piece of information brings salvation. To be wordy, this kind of faith is a question of epistemology. To be critical, it is a shortcut. This is the faith that fruitlessly opposes skepticism. This is the Josh McDowell vs. Richard Dawkins kind of faith.
  

• The second involves holding a certain perspective. It is not the same thing as a simple acceptance of particular propositions. This second kind of faith is an evaluation -- certain propositions are not only held to be true, but they are held to be valuable. This form of faith has more to do with a way of being; it is a human possibility. Incidently, this faith is the true object of study for theology.
  

I do not intend to suggest that the second form of faith - the evaluative - includes the first, and adds something else. The first form is an epistemological shortcut; the second form has only a secondary concern with epistemology. The evaluative form of faith does not first accept the truth of a proposition, than add a value to it; it's not really the other way around either. It's something rooted in lived experience - which is not empiricism, by the way.

How is this related to Jamie's post, you might be asking?

20th/21st Century North American Evangelical Christians place a great deal of stock in the idea that God speaks to them (and make no mistake, this is a contemporary North American oddity). They believe God offers direction and gives commands, in any myriad of ways. I am not interested in passing judgement on the truth of all this; I just want to comment on this belief in light of the above discussion of faith.

There are two ways to problematize the idea that God has spoken to you.

• One is to question the truth of it - to study the possibility of revelation as an object, the way an astronomer studies a star. To pass judgement on the truth of this possibility - did God speak or not? There are two problems that a Christian thinking this way has to deal with.
  • The first is that of finding a criteria for judging the authenticity of a possible prophecy. Whatever criteria you wish to use - however strict or exact - it is still a question of finding a yardstick. Some kind of systematic way of judging. There are a myriad of problems with this problem of finding criteria, not the least of which is that this epistemological approach always leaves open the possibility that you are wrong.
  • The second is a question of diffusion of responsibility. If you believe that God said something, commanded something, and your response is basically "I was given this piece of data, and now I must act on it," you are walking into "I was only following orders" territory.

So to take some information - revelation, prophecy, whatever - and approach it as a question of correct or incorrect knowledge is to invite a disaster. You're gambling on a possibility (as opposed to a Pascalian wager) and you're letting yourself be led around like a donkey.

• The second way of problematizing the idea of God speaking to you is, obviously, rooted in the second kind of faith. It takes God's word and holds it for true. The epistemological question of whether or not God actually spoke is not ignored, it is simply a secondary matter. Yes, this involves an act on the part of a subject. The subject of faith holds the word of God as true, and is formed by this word.

This second way dodges both of the problems of the first way. It ceases to take the word of God as an object to be studied and judged. The question of whether or not you are wrong ceases to have the same sort of import, because it is the wrong question. The responsibility also entirely falls upon your own shoulders, because you are choosing to accept the word of God and you are the one holding it as true. None of this "God made me do it!" stuff, which is really no better than the devil making you do it.

If one chooses to be a subject of faith in this sort of way, they aquire a particular perspective. Because they are engaged in a particular way of being - a particular comportment to the world - the immediate circumstances surrounding them in the world do not have the same power over them.

God's word acts as a disruption in the status quo of their life, and they conform their perspective to these disruption. Their life revolves around living out the consequences of holding God's word to be true - not around taking care of the myriad possibilities that may befall them. Calculating possible harms and possible goods becomes a tertiary issue.

I do not say any of this to denegrate someone's faith, even if it comes down to being that epistemological version. I am trying to illustrate a perspective that does not revolve around harms and goods, a perspective that an orthodox Christian can accept. If the best part of one's self is given over to God's word, then harms and goods are distractions.

A disclaimer is almost certainly required. I absolutely insist that I am not suggesting that a Christian believe they exist in the best of all possible worlds. I am absolutely not saying "chin up! Jesus loves you!" or "things will get better!" I have already said this, but God is just as likely to kill your entire family as he is anything else. You are just as likely to end up homeless or an inmate in Auschwitz as you are rich or comfortable or secure. But remember, these things are goods and harms. They can be calculated out in a utilitarian way: "five units of possible good versus six units of possible harm... better not take that route!" If that is the route you want to take, gambling and calculating possibilities, than what do you do when your calculations fail and the "truths" you have had faith in turn out to be childish fairytales?

Ethics: Seriously, Who Cares?

To the left you see (a link to) Alain Badiou's Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. I'm not ready to discuss that book just yet - I've only read about half of it - but between this and some other Badiou material I've read, I'm wondering if he's not going to become my philosophical nemesis. Even if I ultimately want to distance myself from his ideas, the general thrust of his book is quite thought provoking. He's setting up a view of ethics that is essentially creative - creating or maintaining a new kind of situation. His complaint about other views of ethics is that they are dedicated to simply protecting the status quo; making sure everyone is nice to one another; in a kind of waking ethical sleep. I'm fine with that, especially because of the parallels with Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals.

For several years now, it's been one of my mantras that moral laws don't exist. It's always been something quite difficult to explain; often I'm accused of being one of those generic, yet mythical relativists that thinks morality is arbitrary.

After an extended and frustrated merry-go-round flame war on the blog Vox Popoli, I thought it was time to actually start writing about ethics rather than just bashing them. But it's hard, it is. So I've decided on a method. First, I'm going to put forward some themes, then spend a few posts speaking of other ethics. For example, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. Kant's Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals. Foucault's care of the self. Spinoza's Ethics. And yes, Badiou's Ethics. After that, I'll write a post or two with some positive thoughts. Good, yes? Yes.

The first idea that I want to critique is the idea of moral laws. In a nutshell, this is the idea that there is a metaphysical legal system. That particular actions have particular metaphysical moral qualities. I think this is the basic idea that a substantial majority of ethical thinking is reducible to; by whatever means and on whatever basis, either revelation or by reason, that we can grasp this metaphysical legal system.

I would say this is neither possible nor desirable. It isn't possible because actions are physical; to give them metaphysical importance is necassarily the work of a mind. If it is the work of a mind, it is necassarily perspectival and finite. Yes, even if a God declares the rules. To speak of a perspectival, finite metaphysical law is oxy-moronic; it can never be anything more than a redundant ratification of desire or power (redundant because desire and power ratify themselves).

It isn't desirable, either, since these laws would also necassarily be impersonal. They would never be anything other than excuses - making necessity out of contingency. For example, claiming that your lack of sexual activity has a moral justification, rather than your own simply inability to get some. Or, claiming that fighting an enemy has a similiar kind of moral justification, rather than an amoral exercise of desire or power.

The second important theme is the quesiton of whether or not there are circumstances under which human life is best lived. Is the good life based on external circumstances, or an internal disposition towards the world? Or a mix of the two? This theme I'll develop in later posts.

So, next time I'll write about the Nichomachean Ethics.

Free Will Debate

I really was serious when I said the hiatus was over!

Some time ago, I said I was going to start writing about ethics. I even wrote what amounted to a preface, here. This post should be seen as part 2 of that preface.

Part and parcel of any discussion of ethics is the free will / determination debate. Are we simply incredibly complicated robots, or do we have freedom? In my readings this semester I've come across a handful of answers to that question. There's Spinoza, who believes our only freedom is the ability to assent to what is. There's Kant, who says that while all reality is chained to cause and effect, our choices can be thought of as atemporal and therefore outside that chain.

My own approach is to begin with a very practical reality. The answer to this question of free will has no practical value. This may seem counterintuitive; is it not a popular belief that "free will" is necassary for any sort of responsibility, and therefore morality? No morality, no law, no society: chaos would reign.

Here's the problem with that belief. A belief in determinism is no more a guide to behaviour than a belief in free will. Consider the legal system. If criminals begin making the philosophical claim that they have no free will (as opposed to psychiatric claims of insanity) and therefore cannot be held responsible for their crimes, judges can throw the claim right back at them. A judge is just as bound to toss them in jail.

A belief in determination doesn't remove the consequences from our actions; all it can do is facilitate a series of excuses for one's behaviour. However, the need for these excuses, and the creation and deploment of them, must both come from different places in a person's mind. The need for excuses for one's behaviour is a question of psychological insecurity; the creation of the excuses is a matter of philosophy. In order to deploy the excuses, one must already be willing to admit insecurity and weakness. That admition, however, would itself require a certain overcoming of that weakness and insecurity. Attempting to use the idea of determination as an excuse or justification for behaviour is a self-defeating and forced position; it can only be used coldly and cynically, and is therefore not legally or ethically important.

The free will debate, then, is an abstract, academic matter. However, a discussion of it remains bound to the discussion of ethics; in order that our behaviour not be arbitrary or futile, we need a knowledge of what we are capable and incapable of. We require a critique of will.

Cutting to the chase, I think the answer to the debate lies in its very undecidability.

Whenever someone claims a certain form of knowledge is limited, there are two possible meanings for this. First, it could simply refer to a lack of information. We lack the required quantity of data to form a conclusion. Only more research and thought is required. Perhaps the quantity of information required is so great that it is practically impossible to attain; it is still, in principle, a possibility for knowing. The second way knowledge can be limited is in quality. There may be information or beings that we are simply unequipped to explore or analyze. I would argue that there is an aspect of humans that is inadmissable to analysis or full knowing.

When I say it cannot be analyzed, I mean it is something we cannot directly access. It is not something that can be pointed to and described; it can only be posited as an explanatory device.

When people argue over free will, they are either claiming a certain creative spontaneity for humans, or for a rigid determination. I would argue this is an impossible question; it cannot be answered. When we ask what this spontaneity may be; a particular aspect of human nature is named. Spirit, reason, will, whatever. This aspect is then explained to be somehow independant of all immanant causes; nothing has shaped this one aspect. Family life, no matter how fine or horrible, has molded this aspect. Absolutely no combination of socio-economic-historical factors has affected this aspect, because if this aspect was capable of being affected, than it would be one more link in the cause and effect chain and therefore determined.

This aspect - will, spirit, reason - therefore only has a one way relationship with everything else. All else that might reside in a human subject and its environment can only be affected by this aspect; they themselves can only be altered; they can do no altering themselves.

The determination folks believe every last aspect of reality rests within a cause and effect structure. Nothing happens without an immediate cause; every human action has a cause, which itself has a caused, all the way down to the bottom turtle. The aspect the free willers believe in is itself determinted by something else. There is a two way relationship between the spirit/will/reason and the environment - they affect each other.

Now, why do I think this debate is unresolvable? Because neither position can truly support itself. Free will can never be proven, because it is a simple matter to posit that one is determined to believe in free will. However, determination cannot be proven either. The moment one posits a free will/spirit, an aspect of the self that stands unaffected by the environment, no philosophy of determination can track down and kill this aspect. If there is such a free aspect, it would be impossible to conclude exactly which environmental factors might affect this aspect. Every determination posited - ie, bad family life, can only explain a single piece of behaviour. Those who believe in free will can simply relocate the will to a position unaffected by the posited determination; this process can go on indefinately.

The claims of free will and determination cancel each other out. They negate each other. In negating each other, they create an unknowable aspect of human nature. A nothingness. Our knowledge of ourselves is essentially finite, and no quantity of information or observation can ever change that.

This nothingness itself is, in practice, identical to the posited free will. Because we can never know if or how anything determines it, it appears to us to be a responsible, spontaneous, creative, force. What it is on its own account is unknowable; all we can deal with is the appearance and the appearance is undetermined.