week three discussion forum

320

Chapter Seven

Personhood, Rights, and Justice

T o Kant, any being who is capable of rational thinking qualifi es as a person, and (according to Kant’s Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals ) creatures incapable of rational thinking are classifi ed as things. Today, the debate about what constitutes a person is still with us because the question has lost none of its urgency. At the time when Kant lived, human beings were often treated as things, tools, stepping-stones for the needs or convenience of others. That idea was a legitimate part of public policy in many places throughout the world, and the moral statement that a rational being should never be reduced to a mere tool for another’s purpose became part of the worldwide quest for human rights—rights that still have not been universally implemented. That statement is historically important and should not be forgotten, even though many social thinkers today believe that Kant’s fi ght for the recognition that all persons deserve respect must be expanded and that Kant himself didn’t have a concept of universal human rights in mind. In this chapter we discuss issues that refl ect several of the theories already stud- ied and that illustrate how such theories can be applied on a social scale in creating policies regarding the rights and duties of citizens. It is thus important that you have studied Chapters 5 and 6 in particular before you proceed.

What Is a Human Being?

If we focus on the rights of human animals, we have to address the question, What does it mean to be human? Are the criteria physical? Does a being have to look human to be human? How detailed must we get? A traditional answer is “a feather- less biped”—in other words, a creature that walks upright on two legs but is not a bird—but those are hardly suffi cient criteria. Nowadays, if we want to use physical criteria, we include not only physical appearance but also genetic information. But with that type of explanation we’re faced with two problems: (1) Genetically, there are creatures that are 98 percent identical to the human but are obviously not human: chimpanzees; (2) there are individuals born of human parents who may not have all the human physical characteristics—for instance, persons with multiple physical disabilities (not to mention mental disabilities). So is a being born of humans who happens to have some physical aberration—from missing limbs to minor abnormali- ties such as extra toes and fi ngers—human? For most people today, the answer is obviously yes, but this was not always so. A worldwide tradition in pretechnological societies has been to dispose of newborns with physical “handicaps” ranging from missing limbs to unwanted birthmarks, and not all of those disposals can be ex- plained by saying that a tribe isn’t able to feed those who can’t feed themselves. Our

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culture doesn’t follow that practice, but some of us do screen the fetus for severe dis- abilities and perform abortions if we believe that those disabilities will condemn the child to a less than dignifi ed life. This is not a discussion of the pros and cons of abor- tion, any more than it is a discussion of infanticide, but it does point out that a good deal of policymaking in other cultures as well as our own depends on how we defi ne “human being,” including what a human being, and a human life, should be like —a normative concept. In Chapter 13 you’ll fi nd a discussion of the issue of abortion.

The Expansion of the Concept “Human”

There was a time when people distinguished between friend and foe by calling friends humans and foes beasts, devils, or such. At the tribal level of human history, it has always been common to view the tribe across the river as not quite human, even if members of your tribe marry their sons or daughters. (In fact, the usual word that tribes use to designate themselves is their word for “human,” “the people,” or “us.”) In any geographic area there are people who remain dubious about those from the “other side” because their habits are so different that it seems there must be some- thing “strange” about their general humanity. From the time of the ancient Greeks until quite recently, a common assumption has been that men are more “normal” than women. Interestingly enough, that idea has been held not only by many men but also by many women, who took the men’s word for it. (Some still do.) At the nationalistic level, it still is common practice to view foreigners as less than human, not in a physical sense, but, rather, politically and morally in a normative rather than a descriptive sense. And the humanity of a people’s wartime enemies almost always is denied, usually because it becomes easier to kill an enemy, either soldier or civilian, if you believe he or she really is not quite as human as you are. Thus the term human sometimes evolves into an honorary term reserved for those with whom we prefer to share our culture.

Personhood: The Key to Rights

Many social thinkers prefer the term person to human being as a philosophical and political concept, partly to avoid the association with the human physical appear- ance. A person is someone who is capable of psychological and social interaction with others, capable of deciding on a course of action and being held responsible for that action. In other words, a person is considered a moral agent. Being a person implies certain duties and privileges—in other words, it is a normative concept: what a person ought to be and do to be called a person. Personhood implies that one has certain social privileges and duties and that under extreme circumstances these can be revoked. What was a person to the Greeks? to the Romans? to medieval Europeans? To those groups a person was usually a male adult landowner or tribe member. Different societies have excluded some or all of the following people from their concept of a person: slaves, women, children, foreigners, prisoners of war, and criminals. (See Box 7.1 for a discussion of the personhood of people on the fringes of society, such as prostitutes and drug addicts.) Usually the list of exclusion was

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Within two years eleven women disappeared in Cleveland, Ohio, but hardly anyone knew, out- side of their families. In November 2009 a local man, Anthony Sowell, was arrested for their mur- ders; he had served fi fteen years for attempted rape, and had been released in 2005. The wom- en’s bodies were hidden in his attic or buried in shallow graves in his backyard, and the neighbors hadn’t even reported the smells that wafted from his two-story house. It wasn’t the best of neigh- borhoods, and the women themselves lived what some would call marginal lives: they were drug

addicts, and some of them were prostitutes—the preferred type of victim for a serial killer, because they are “invisible” to society, even sometimes to their own families. Many of the women had a long history of disappearing for a while, so some families never even reported them missing, and those reports that were taken were not consid- ered high priority by law enforcement. This is not unusual in itself for a serial killer case, but to that picture should be added the fact that all the women were black (as was their killer). In 2011 Sowell, now dubbed the “Cleveland Strangler,”

Box 7.1 I N V I S I B L E P E O P L E ?

Copyright Spokesman-Review, Spokane

Years into the investigation of the serial murder of prostitutes in Spokane, WA, the Spokane sheriff ’s department appealed to the community for help, putting murder victims’ faces on a billboard reading “Help Us Find Our Killer.” The personalization of each woman may have inspired a change in attitude in the community toward the victims, from expendable outcasts to individuals with a right to live.

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PERSONHOOD: THE KEY TO RIGHTS 323

extended to animals, plants, and inanimate objects, but other beings might well have been granted personhood, such as gods and goddesses, totems (ancestor animals), and dead ancestors. Today we in the Western world assume that all humans are persons with inalienable rights (and we also grant personhood to some unlikely entities such as corporations). This is not a recognized truth all over the world, however. “Human traffi cking,” buying and selling human beings (especially young girls) internation- ally in the sex trade, is big business. Serfdom still exists in parts of the world, such as Pakistan. In many nations to this day, women are considered the property of their husbands or fathers. Crimes against children are often not punished as severely as crimes against adults, if at all. And even in this country, the equal rights provisions that we take pride in don’t always work: The sweatshops that are known to provide us with cheap products from elsewhere in the world are sometimes found to operate on American soil. News stories surface from time to time about undocumented immigrants kept in economic bondage by the people who imported them. Any time we hear a news story of people being abused or taken advantage of, resulting in the loss of their well-being or their lives, we are hearing about people whose personhood has been violated—or as Kant would say, they have been treated merely as a means to an end—and in general, our court system is capable of dealing with such offenses. But the lack of respect for other human beings as persons sometimes goes be- yond what the law can address. When discrimination reaches the level of depriving someone of his or her rights, the law can step in, but when it is merely an attitude, we

was convicted on eleven counts of murder and is on Death Row at the time of this writing. Similar scenarios have played out around the country, and even the world: serial killers preying on women and sometimes children who are overlooked by society. Seattle’s “Green River Killer” Gary Ridgway was one of the most prolifi c of them all with at least forty-eight mur- ders on his conscience (for which he revealed, in lengthy interviews, to have very little remorse; he said he didn’t consider his victims as any different from trash). He pled guilty to avoid the death penalty. The “Grim Sleeper” terror- ized and killed black women in Los Angeles over a period of twenty years, and in 2010 a suspect was arrested, Lonnie David Franklin, Jr. And in Spokane, Washington, Robert Yates

pled guilty to nine murders to avoid the death penalty but failed to realize that the deal did not cover the additional two murders he was suspected of having committed in Tacoma. He had to stand trial after all, and he, too, is now on Death Row. Yates’s victims were also “invis- ible” to society—mostly prostitutes and drug addicts—but years before he was captured a radio show in Spokane began speaking up for the women, asking questions such as, “Are these women not human beings with the same rights as the rest of us? Don’t they have fami- lies who mourn them? Don’t they feel pain and anguish in their last moments at the mercy of a murderer? It may be illegal to be a prostitute and to use drugs, but it doesn’t carry a death penalty.”

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324 CHAPTER 7 PERSONHOOD, R IGHTS , AND JUSTICE

encounter an interesting problem: Should we outlaw discrimination as an attitude, or is it part of living in a free country that people may choose their viewpoints with- out being told by the state what to think? There is a fi ne line here. Most of us would like to see an end to racism and sexism, but we may also be reluctant to send people who have expressed racist or sexist views to a retraining facility where their minds will be altered, because we believe not only in freedom of speech but also in freedom of thought. Perhaps this is where Kant’s lesson of treating people as ends in themselves has its most profound application in our modern society: With the recognition of every human being as a person with intrinsic value, much disrespect will—at least in theory—fall by the wayside. And racism and sexism are, of course, not the only forms of discrimination that a person can encounter. Bigotry takes many forms, such as discrimination against the young for their youth as well as the elderly for their age (“ageism”), against the mentally ill or mentally disabled, or the physically disabled (“ableism”), against people of a sexual orientation that differs from one’s own, or who are of a different religion or nationality; discrimination of the educated against the less-educated, of the less-educated against the highly educated, of the wealthy against the indigent, and of the less well-to-do against the wealthy. And even of conservatives against liberals, and of liberals against conservatives. Suspicion and resentment are part of the fabric of human society, and in each case, the emphasis on personhood should remind us all that despite our differences, we ought to recognize the personhood in one another. (From Chapter 4 you’ll remember the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who has a special version of this emphasis, and in Chapter 10 you’ll see this theory in detail.) But what about cases where a person has chosen to disregard the personhood of others, to the point of violating their health, their liberty, their property, or their life? Have such people now opened themselves up to being deprived of their own status of personhood? In other words, is a criminal a person?

Who Is a Person?

For many people, the more callous the crime, the less human the criminal. Some- times we even call murderers “animals,” although few nonhuman animals have been known to display the methodical, deliberate preying on one’s own species typical of human career criminals, serial rapists, and serial killers. In our attitudes toward such criminals, much of our view of what counts as human is revealed: We’re not trying to describe their genetic makeup; we’re expressing a moral condemnation of their actions and choices. Calling a criminal an animal is a normative statement, not a descriptive one: He (or she) has not lived up to our expectations of what a person ought to be and do, and so we view him as less than human. But genetically as well as legally, serial killers such as Anthony Sowell and Robert Yates (see Box 7.1) are still persons, and the very fact that we choose to hold them accountable in court is proof of that. However, criminals, even convicted ones, don’t lose all their rights: Their personhood status is not revoked, at least not in our culture. They still have the right not to be tortured, for example, although they may have lost their right to liberty. Below we take a closer look at the concept of rights.

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PERSONHOOD: THE KEY TO RIGHTS 325

Children as a group have not until recently been considered “real people.” Until re- cently, child abuse was not considered a felony. In previous times—in fact, as recently as the nineteenth century and, in some places, the twentieth century—the father of the household had the supreme right to treat his family (including his wife) any way he pleased. That might very well include physically punishing all the family members, even unto death. That right, patria potestas, is still in effect in certain societies in the world. The thought of protecting children against abuse, even abuse from their own parents, is actually quite a new idea in Western cultures; even in the recent past, child abuse cases were sometimes covered up or never reported. Current reports reveal that even if we think children are protected in today’s society, the reality is quite different: There are stories of children being removed from foster homes and given back to abu- sive parents who then kill them through abuse or neglect; of parents torturing children to death for wetting their beds or for crying; of children starving to death because their parents or foster parents couldn’t be bothered to feed them; of parents or foster parents who are in need of help themselves for severe drug dependency. The heartbreaking numbers tell us that, for whatever reason, authorities charged with the well-being of these children are not picking up on danger signals. Analysts suspect that the idea that children ought to be with their parents and not in foster care is applied too rigidly, regardless of what is in the child’s best interest, and also that because of the notion, left over from a bygone age, that toddlers are somehow not quite “persons” yet, their misery at the hands of their caregivers doesn’t merit a criminal investigation. What has been more publicized, with more visible results, is the now world-wide scandal involving child abuse by Catholic priests, as well as the 2011 revelations of alleged extensive child abuse by an assistant football coach at Penn State. In the ter- minology of Kant, the children have been used merely as a means to an end. Today the law recognizes not only that children should be protected from abuse but also that children have interests and wishes that they are capable of expressing and that should be heard, such as which parent they wish to stay with after a divorce. We are now at the point where the conscious interests of children (including everything from having enough food, shelter, love, and education to refusing to go to school in order to play video games or watch TV) must be balanced against what conscientious adults deem to be in the children’s best interests, best in spite of them- selves. In other words, we must remember that what children want is not necessarily good for them. The idea that children are minors who have neither the legal rights nor the legal responsibilities of adults is not about to disappear, even when their in- terests are taken into consideration. We tend to forget that when a group is excluded from having rights, it is usually also excluded from having responsibilities. In other words, such a group must be given legal protection so that its members, who are incapable of taking on civil responsibilities, will not be treated unjustly.

Persons and Responsibility

Historically, the idea of children having responsibilities has shifted back and forth. It was only in the twentieth century that we in the Western world agreed not to hold minors responsible for criminal acts. The legendary German fi gure Till Eulenspiegel

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326 CHAPTER 7 PERSONHOOD, R IGHTS , AND JUSTICE

was a mischievous kid who played one too many tricks on decent citizens, and the decent citizens hanged him. The title character of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd faced the same fate. Billy, a young sailor, was falsely accused of wrongdoing by a vicious offi cer. Because Billy had a problem articulating and could not speak up to defend himself, he acted out his frustration by striking the offi cer. Unfortunately, that re- sulted in the offi cer’s death, and the captain, although aware of Billy’s problem, had to follow the law of the sea: mandatory death for anyone who kills an offi cer. In the end, Billy had to submit to the traditional execution method by climbing up the rigging and slipping a noose around his own neck. Today a crime committed by a person under the age of eighteen must reveal an extraordinary amount of callousness and “evil intent” for the court to try the minor as an adult. That is because childhood is considered to be a state of mind and body that doesn’t allow for the logical con- sistency we assume is available, most of the time, to adults; therefore children aren’t held accountable for their actions to the degree that adults are. The United States, however, has seen a shift lately in the attitude toward chil- dren who commit crimes. Although most child psychologists still agree that children below the age of seven or eight don’t know enough about the difference between right and wrong to be held accountable, public demand is now growing for trying older child offenders as adults. What should the court do with a child who kills another child for his sneakers or his jacket? or who takes a gun to school and kills a number of his classmates and teachers before being stopped? In some states, such as Arkansas, children cannot be tried as adults. In other states, it is the severity of the crime that determines whether the youth will be tried as an adult; we have lately seen teenagers being given hefty prison sentences (although the Supreme Court decided in 2005 that a child under eighteen can’t be given the death penalty). In the past, the rights of women have followed a course similar to those of children. Women had very few rights until the late nineteenth century—no right to hold property, no right to vote, no right over their own person. That went hand in hand with the common assumption that women were not capable of moral consis- tency and thus were not responsible. (Mention of women and children in the same breath was no coincidence.) That view often coincided with a male reverence for women and their supposedly higher moral standards, but such reverence was often combined with an assumption that women were idealists with no conception of the sordid dealings and practical demands of the real world. When it applied to women, the practice of holding only those with rights legally responsible was not strictly adhered to. Many, many women were put on criminal trial. Even so, the general idea was that withholding rights from women protected them from the harsh world of reality, whose demands they weren’t capable of answer- ing. (In Chapter 12 you’ll fi nd a more thorough analysis of the history of women’s rights, as well as a discussion of whether there is a specifi c female form of ethic.) A similar kind of argument kept slaves from having rights throughout most slavehold- ing societies—rights were denied to provide “protection” for these people because they were “incapable.” That did not preclude punishing slaves, of course, as anyone who has read Huckleberry Finn knows. In On Liberty (see Chapter 5), John Stuart Mill argues that the right to self-determination should extend universally, provided that

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the individuals in question have been educated properly, in the British sense, so that they know what to do with the self-determination. Until then, they are incapable of making responsible decisions and should be protected—children by their guardians and colonial inhabitants by the British. (Today, an animal rights activist might argue that we see the same pattern repeated with animals: We don’t believe them to be fully developed moral agents, and so we protect them—by withholding rights from them.) An interesting concept evolves from these arguments; namely, that it is pos- sible for someone to be considered a person, but a person with limited rights, duties, and privileges whose rights are assigned to a guardian. We will return to this idea in Chapter 13.

Science and Moral Responsibility: Genetic Engineering, Stem Cell Research, and Cloning

As it stands now, we must agree that our culture has come a long way in recogniz- ing all postnatal humans as persons, at least in principle, although that principle sometimes seems to be overpowered by controversy. But what about the future? Ge- netically engineered children already walk among us, and there will be many more. Your children—and perhaps even you yourself—may be able to look forward to a longer, healthier life span because of genetic engineering. By the time you’re reading this, there may be viable human clones among us too, legally or otherwise. Will these new members of our human family be considered persons, or will they encounter some new form of discrimination? In the Narratives section you’ll fi nd two stories that explore either end of this spectrum of possibilities: The fi lm The Island envi- sions a near future when humans are cloned for spare parts, without regard to their humanity. The fi lm Gattaca suggests a world, right around the corner, where genetic engineering has become mainstream, and it is those who have not been genetically “improved” at the embryo stage who will form the new underclass. Who will really be up, and who will be down, in such a “brave new world”? We can ask ourselves two questions here: Given that a future involving a variety of options for genetic engineering and cloning is already upon us, (1) how should we deal with the scientifi c possibilities opening up for humanity? Should we be phobic about scientifi c developments and encourage bans and limits to scientifi c research? Or, should we encourage all such research under the assumption that somehow it may benefi t us and that science has a right to seek knowledge for the sake of knowl- edge no matter the consequences? Or should we, perhaps, take some position in be- tween? (2) Should scientists themselves exercise some form of moral responsibility, taking into consideration that their results will be used in the future, perhaps to the detriment of humans and animals living in that future? In the next section we take a look at one of the most burning issues today: the question of science and moral responsibility.

Science Is Not Value-Free

In 1968 a book came out in Germany that challenged the traditional scientifi c view that science is value-free, or morally neutral: Knowledge and Interest by the philosopher

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Jürgen Habermas. Scientists had claimed—some still do—that scientifi c research is done for the sake of knowledge itself, not for the social consequences it might bring. As such, scientists’ professional integrity hinges on impeccable research; they have no responsibility to the community for what problems—or even benefi ts—their re- search might lead to in the future. Habermas claimed that science might attempt to be objective but that an element of vested interest is always present. Society will fund only those projects it deems “valuable” for either further scientifi c progress, prestige, or profi t. Political concerns, social biases, and fads within the scientifi c community often infl uence the funding of scientifi c research projects. Researchers often choose projects for similar reasons. Furthermore, the data selection (choosing research ma- terials according to what the researcher fi nds relevant to the project) is infl uenced by the interests of the researcher—whether we like it or not. Habermas’s point is that we may think science is conducted in a value-neutral way, but it is not. In addition, having seen what harm irresponsible scientists can cause to a society, wouldn’t it be appropriate for scientists to conduct their research with a sense of obligation to the future? and for the community to monitor scientifi c research? Habermas himself has taken the issue further in a book from 2003, The Future of Human Nature, and we take a look at his argument at the end of this section. Medical doctors of the past had their own share of moral problems: An army surgeon would have to decide which of the wounded soldiers he should operate on and which ones should be left to die. A nineteenth-century family doctor might have to choose between saving a young mother dying in childbirth and saving the infant being born. But today, technology allows medical procedures that would have been unimaginable a few generations ago. Life can be prolonged artifi cially; pregnancies can be terminated with comparative safety for the woman; genetic engineering can save babies from a life of illness while they are still in the womb; women can give birth after menopause; stem cell research promises to cure diseases; and the Human Genome Project, completed in 2000, has put us on the threshold of a future in which we will have mapped human DNA to the point of understanding and preventing a vast array of medical problems. In addition, the old science fi ction dream (or night- mare) of creating children completely outside the womb of the mother now looks as if it might become a reality, with recent experiments at Cornell University involving an artifi cial womb. With the increased knowledge, however, comes an increase in moral problems. In this new era of medical possibilities, there are few established rules to guide those making the decisions. For that reason, the medical profession has a vested in- terest in supporting the creation of a viable set of ethical procedures to follow in the gray areas of decision making. If healthy babies can one day be created in an artifi cial womb environment, what will that mean for the concept of viability, a concept that is essential to the abortion debate? Viability means that a fetus could, with medical assistance, survive outside the mother’s body; at present, viability is set at the third trimester (so abortion becomes problematic at this time because the fetus will at that point be considered a person). But if viability can be extended backward into the second and even fi rst trimester, does that mean that an early fetus thus becomes a person, not just in a religious sense, but in a legal sense as well? And what will that

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mean for the abortion debate? Further questions abound when we turn to DNA- related issues: When we fi nally have the complete ability to interfere purposefully with the human DNA code, how much is too much interference? Should we interfere strictly to prevent terminal diseases, or is it acceptable to interfere with nature to de- termine the shape of the baby’s nose, for example? And given the limited resources of medicine, who should benefi t from organ transplants—fi rst come, fi rst served? The young, the wealthy, the famous? Those who have waited the longest? In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the early years of modern science, the moral sensitivity that accompanied research seems to have differed from that which prevails today. The main concern of scientists then was how to proceed with research without violating the values believed to be expressed in the Bible. In mod- ern times, scientists have occasionally diverged from the path of ethical behavior. In Nazi Germany the ultimate value was success for the Party and the realization of that abstract concept, “the Fatherland.” Scientists in Nazi Germany engaged in painful, humiliating, and eventually fatal experiments on human subjects, primarily women and children. Even now, we occasionally learn that, since World War II, scientists have subjected people to experimental medical procedures or have withheld treat- ment from them—without their knowledge or consent. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is one of the best known of these experiments. Less well known is the forced steril- ization of about 7,500 people in Virginia from 1924 to 1979 based on the ideology of eugenics, the presumed improvement of the human race. California was also active in the eugenics project, sterilizing over 20,000 people. Most scientists and laypeople today would agree that knowledge can come at a price in suffering that is too high; yet we have a credo that says science is value-free: Scientifi c research is supposed to be objective, and scientists are not to be swayed by personal ambitions and preference. But does that mean they are not supposed to be swayed by ethical values either?

Genetic Engineering

Medical and general scientifi c researchers now have capabilities that could only be dreamed of in previous generations. We are only slowly developing a set of ethical rules by which to judge those capabilities, however. Genetic manipulation makes possible a future such as the one Aldous Huxley fantasized about in his Brave New World, one with a human race designed for special purposes. (See Box 7.2.) Agricul- ture has for several years been making use of genetic engineering to create disease- resistant crops. Milk and meat are being irradiated before they hit the stores. And perhaps the most controversial issue: Transgenic animals are being patented, such as pigs that have had human genes placed in them to facilitate organ transplants, cats that glow in the dark, and goats that have been genetically manipulated to contain spider silk proteins in their milk to be extracted and combined to produce materials of unprecedented strength. Although it may be to humankind’s ultimate advantage to have access to these wonders, failure to contain such laboratory-generated genetic material, or failure to foresee the overall consequences of such genetic tinkering, could have disastrous results if no sense of ethics or social responsibility is instilled

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to guide the decision of researchers. After all, the infamous killer bees (which have now settled comfortably in the southwestern United States) are the result of a lab experiment gone out of control. In Europe there is now a general mistrust of the entire idea of genetically engi- neered food products, from grain to farm animals. But what about genetically engi- neered humans? In 2000 a little boy was born specifi cally in order to try to save the life of his older sister. Six-year-old Molly Nash had a congenital blood disease that would, in all probability, take her life before the age of ten. Doctors used “preimplantation ge- netic diagnosis” (PGD) to select an embryo in vitro that was both free of the disease and a good match as a blood cell donor. A month after the baby, Adam, was born, stem cells from his umbilical cord blood were transplanted into his sister. Molly was given the transplant while she held her little brother in her arms. Three months later she was allowed to return home from the hospital to her parents and her new brother, with her chances of survival improved to 85 percent. Out of the public eye until 2010 when she turned fi fteen, she is now a healthy active girl with a normal family life, including a nine-year-old brother who knows he helped his sister. Such are the possibilities opening up to us with genetic engineering. Then why are some people worried about the social consequences of this miracle cure? Because we, as a society, have not decided where we’d draw the line: Do we endeavor to cre- ate healthy babies, or should we go further, such as customizing babies according to

Aldous Huxley’s science fi ction novel Brave New World from 1931 is famous for predicting that cloning of humans may be a future option, but even more timely is Huxley’s prediction that humans in the future will be so oriented toward an easy life that they will, in essence, be unable to handle any form of emotional stress without medication. The drug of choice, Soma, is available to everyone, and it is consid- ered a breach of decorum to handle one’s own problems without being drugged into oblivion. The prediction rings true in several ways: For example, many people in this country now seek help from prescription drugs rather than working their way through certain emotional stresses—the quest for the quick fi x. Helped along by a powerful medical industry and per- vasive advertising campaigns, some doctors

are all too willing to prescribe medication that will dull the pain of life in their patients. De- pressed? Take a pill. Can’t sleep? Take a pill. Too tense? Take a pill. Too relaxed? Take a pill. Some people are, of course, in genuine need of medication for severe mental stresses as well as physical pain; but our twenty-fi rst-century cul- ture seems to have lost its view toward long- term solutions. Ethicists bemoan the tendency: If we can’t get instant gratifi cation or solve a problem in short order, we lose our focus and our resolve. What’s more, we lose touch with what is a normal state of affairs : life with some pain, some grief, some problems—which you then work through and incorporate into your life story or put behind you. In Chapter 13 we take a look at the philosophy of telling one’s life story.

Box 7.2 A C U L T U R E O F Q U I C K F I X E S ?

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their parents’ specifi cations—or even to society’s needs? Will babies be genetically engineered for sex, height, eye color, and skin color? And will those babies who have been genetically engineered be the new society’s favorites, leaving the natural-born children behind as a new underclass? Molly and Adam Nash’s doctor was quick to emphasize that the parents’ use of PGD was acceptable because “they were not select- ing in a eugenic sense,” just looking for a donor baby. The doctors also outlined what they would consider unacceptable uses of the PGD technology, such as aborting selected implanted embryos just to collect tissue or putting the baby up for adoption after using its cord blood—in other words, using such babies merely as a means to an end, as Kant would say.

Stem Cell Research

Although still controversial to many, stem cell research holds great promise as a means of repairing and replacing damaged organs. Stem cells are general cells, not yet specialized, and they apparently have the capacity to become any organ in the body, with the intervention of medical science; these cells can then be used to re- pair or replace sick organs in a person. The controversy arises from the practice of harvesting and cloning stem cells from embryos, which involves taking the life of the embryo. If one is against abortion at any time during pregnancy because one consid- ers the embryo a person from conception, one will also be against any form of stem cell research involving human embryos. However, contrary to what some people think, stem cells can’t be harvested from aborted fetuses (yet) because they are too old; the stem cells have to be harvested within the fi rst two weeks of fetal develop- ment at the zygote stage. Those who view early abortion as a reasonable option for women generally take little moral issue with the notion of zygotes being harvested

BIZARRO © 2007 Dan Piraro. King Features Syndicate

Cartoonists have a knack for misrepresenting political opponents—a “straw man fallacy,” in other words. It is doubtful than any elderly Republican would fear that Democrats would come to steal her stem cells. However, the stem cell debate has indeed spawned a number of misconceptions among the public, such as that stem cells are extracted from aborted fetuses—an impossibility, since the cells at that stage are too far developed to be of any use to stem cell research.

Bizarro by Dan Piraro

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and used for research; but for many who fi nd the notion of taking the lives of fetuses objectionable, the stem cell question is particularly challenging—because even if one views the life of a fetus as intrinsically valuable, one also has to consider the impor- tance of born humans who have lives, and people who love them, and who could be saved from a premature death with stem cell research. In 2004, California voted to fund a state-sponsored stem cell research program, and after being challenged in court for three years, the program went ahead in 2007. Research had already been funded through substantial state and private loans and donations, and California scientists are expected to be a leading force in the fi eld. While restricted under the Bush administration, stem cell research was released from the federal restrictions by the Obama administration in 2009. The research is beginning to yield results; the fi rst experiments attempting to cure spinal cord injuries were commenced in 2010 based on successful experiments on rats, and tentative results in 2011 seemed posi- tive. Researchers also hope to be able to cure some forms of blindness through stem cell research, and by early 2012 experiments were reported to show signs of success. In addition, stem cells appear to be obtainable from sources other than embryos such as skin tissue, bypassing the controversy of taking the life of an embryo. While stem cell research is moving ahead in the United States, the European Union decided, in the fall of 2011, to ban research resulting in the death of the em- bryo. The impact of this on European research has yet to be seen, including a partic- ularly controversial type of research conducted in the United Kingdom: In 2008 the last legal obstacles to a new kind of research were removed: Human–animal hybrid stem cells would be created for the purpose of studying genetic diseases and eventu- ally growing new tissue in the lab; the embryos would be destroyed after two weeks, and would not be implanted in a surrogate womb. British medical teams have ex- pressed excitement about this development, but others, including religious groups, have found the development ethically repugnant and scientifi cally unnecessary. The ultimate goal of stem cell research is not knowledge for the sake of knowl- edge; it is curing illness and prolonging life. This process involves what is known as therapeutic cloning, our next topic.

Therapeutic and Reproductive Cloning

The three areas of genetic engineering, stem cell research, and cloning are often con- fused, and there are in fact overlapping areas between the three, but the primary goals of these methods are different. Genetic engineering consists in altering/manipulating a person’s DNA, either during his or her lifetime or before birth, to avoid certain congenital problems or to enhance a certain biological trait. As we have seen, stem cell research allows for stem cells to be used in organ repair. Cloning involves creating more individuals, identical to the fi rst one. The overlapping comes into the picture with the stem cells: To create more stem cells, the cells have to be cloned. That means that they are chemically manipulated so that they create duplicates of themselves—in other words, twins. The question is, what are these duplicates used for? That depends on whether we’re talking about therapeutic or reproductive cloning. Therapeutic clon- ing involves duplicating stem cells to insert them into an organ, or regrow the organ,

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to improve a person’s health or to save his or her life. It is a form of medical therapy, in other words. The California stem cell research program is oriented exclusively toward therapeutic cloning, a means to the end of fi nding cures for human illnesses. The phenomenon of reproductive cloning is far more controversial, because it involves a duplication of an entire individual, not just cells. The excitement and concerns over reproductive cloning began in 1994, with the announcement that re- searchers had successfully split a fertilized (but nonviable) human ovum into twins (which is what happens naturally to produce identical twins). But since then the cloning issue has taken off with a speed not predicted even by science fi ction au- thors: In rapid succession, labs around the world have succeeded in cloning sheep, calves, goats, mice, dogs, cats, and wolves, using a variety of techniques, including creating a copy of an adult individual using a cell from that individual with a tech- nique pioneered by the creators of Dolly the sheep—raising the specter of genderless reproduction. (See Box 7.3.) In 2004 we had the fi rst report of a successful cloning of a cat for commercial purposes: Not the fi rst cat to be cloned, this little kitty was the fi rst made-to-order clone. A woman had lost her seventeen-year-old cat and had had the cat cloned, to the tune of $50,000. The lab the woman used has since closed, but another lab began offering commercial cloning of family dogs in 2008. The world of horse rac- ing expects that cloning of particular race horses will become big business in the future. But we shouldn’t forget that the animal/pet-cloning venture has another side to it: We may be able to get our pets or race horse champions back in the fl esh, so to speak, but we can’t replicate their spirit or personality, because that would take duplication of the formative experiences of the original animal—meaning, we would

This little bundle of joy, “Little Nicky,” cost his owner, Julie, $50,000. He was cloned from “Nicky,” who had passed away. Does it matter what the price tag is, if we feel that we get a be- loved pet back? And does it matter if the clone does not have exactly the same personality as the original?

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As you’ll remember from Chapter 2 and Box 7.2, science fi ction has experimented with the notion of an artifi cially designed humanity since Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1931). Huxley specu- lated that humans would be able to clone other humans within six hundred years, but the abil- ity was on the horizon already before the end of Huxley’s own century. But what is it that we fear so much from the idea of humans creating a new twist to humanity in the lab? The fears are many and varied. One type of anguish arises from a re- ligious foundation: Only God is supposed to create life, and types of life, and the fear is that if we play God and create human variations deliber- ately, we have somehow transgressed and will be punished, as Dr. Frankenstein was punished for creating his monster. Another is that we may be unleashing powers that we will lose control over, also in the manner of Frankenstein’s monster: New human variations may let loose diseases and deformities that we haven’t foreseen (cloned mice became obese, and cloned sheep were born with premature aging), or the new breed may outcom- pete the garden-variety human being. But a third worry is extremely concrete and down-to-earth: that a designer variation of humans will lead to discrimination. This could take the form of dis- crimination against the new breed, which could end up being treated like a slave population (as in the fi lm classic Blade Runner ), or of discrimina- tion against the part of the population who has not been genetically altered (as in the fi lm Gat- taca, in the Narrative section). A discriminatory side effect of doing DNA profi ling was, in fact, anticipated in the 1990s by federal legislation and in 2008 Congress passed a bill prohibiting insur- ance companies and workplaces from using ge- netic tests to discriminate against persons based on the risks inherent in their DNA profi le. An in- creased risk of cancer or heart disease should not hurt a person’s chances of obtaining employment or insurance—but it isn’t hard to imagine a future where such rules could be sidestepped.

But now new worlds of possibilities are on the horizon: First, cognitive enhancement. We are already used to drinking a cup of coffee or some stronger caffeine drink to stay awake and alert. A variety of drugs exist to make people feel hyper, mellow, aggressive, visionary, and so forth, and when taken for non-medical purposes they are mostly illegal. But what if our very intelligence could be enhanced through drugs or genetic ma- nipulation? Brain-boosting drugs may seem like the thing to consider before taking a fi nal exam, but should we be cautious because of the possible side effects, or social consequences (utilitarian con- cerns), or because it wouldn’t be right (a  Kantian concern)? And add to that the possibility of what is now called moral enhancement: new research into drugs that can manipulate people’s behavior morally, increasing the feeling of belonging to a group, reducing aggression toward other groups, and feeling more generous and selfl ess. The pos- sibilities of using such drugs in the criminal jus- tice system as part of a criminal’s rehabilitation program are being explored. But, ask the ethicists, what use is it if these feelings are drug-induced and not genuine? Do they have any moral value if they come in a little pill and are perhaps even court-mandated as a form of punishment or pre- emptive treatment of violent criminals? Would we feel grateful for someone who is helpful because he or she receives brain-altering therapy? Would we want to marry someone who feels he or she loves us because they’ve taken a pill that makes them feel in love? In other words, don’t we want to respond to other people’s feelings because we assume (1) those feelings are genuine , and (2) that people are willing to take responsibility for actions they have chosen to undertake of their own free will ? Proponents of such enhancement programs respond with a simple question: But wouldn’t you rather live in a world where people are friend- lier and less violent? You can evaluate such ap- proaches on your own in terms of whether they are predominantly utilitarian or Kantian.

Box 7.3 B R A V E N E W W O R L D : T H E S P E C T E R O F D E S I G N E R H U M A N S

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need to replicate their childhood. Living beings don’t just consist of their DNA but also are the sum of their experiences—and that goes for humans too. There are les- sons to be learned about the entire notion of cloning: To get the “same” individual as its DNA donor, we would have to create a completely identical environment for the individual to grow up in— nature plus nurture. And even if that were accomplished, we would have to factor in what we might call situation awareness, what some would call free will (see Chapter 4), at least for humans: When a cloned child fi nds out he or she has been cloned, will he or she decide to be as similar as, or as different from, the original as possible? I would assume the latter, but you never know. This means that very little can, in fact, be predicted about how a clone might develop as an adult. There is widespread reluctance to envision human reproductive cloning, and it is condemned in most countries, although a successful human cloning has yet to be announced and verifi ed. The general assumption has been that scientists who attempt to clone humans for reproductive purposes are playing God and that there is no acceptable reason why anyone would want himself or herself cloned. Some have questioned the entire idea of human cloning from a religious point of view and have asked whether cloned children will have souls. One might even trace the fear of cloning all the way back in time to the fear of the artifi cial human being which you read about in Chapter 2, from the ancient Jewish concept of the Golem through the medieval fears of magically created tiny people or “homunculi” all the way to Frankenstein’s monster and a myriad of sci-fi stories of robots rebelling against their makers. The assumption here has generally been that such beings have no souls, but they are creatures of fi ction. What about real-life clones created by nature— identical twins, triplets, and quadruplets? Scientists have responded that if twins have individual souls (which is, of course, a matter of faith, not of science), then surely clones will have their own individual souls too. Other arguments against cloning include these:

• Overpopulation threatens the planet as it is, so why add more people artifi cially?

• Why create people who, as copies of someone else, will have to struggle to fi nd their identity?

• Clones might be considered expendable people, a new slave population—or perhaps so valuable that they would become a preferred population group. In other words, cloning might lead to a new form of discrimination.

• Animal cloning has led to the birth of individuals with abnormal physical traits. Aren’t we risking the same thing making human clones?

Those are good questions, but before we become too “scientophobic,” we should reconsider the issue. What does reproductive cloning entail? Some imagine that a cloned embryo can be frozen and later “activated” for spare parts. Others focus on human cloning as the answer to being childless. But why would anyone want to have himself or herself cloned? Why not opt for adopting an already existing child who needs a home? Well, for some people the whole point is to have a child who is related to them, and cloning would provide that. And for a clone to be the offspring of two parents instead of just one of them, then research will allow for that, too. The reasons

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people want babies are complex: Some people want children so they can love them and raise them to be good citizens; others want an additional hand on the farm, an heir to their name, a tax write-off, or a status symbol to parade in front of their friends. We have yet to set up legal rules to determine what are good reasons to have children (although we already have an idea of which reasons count as morally good reasons). Excluding some prospective parents from parenthood because they’d like a kid who looks like themselves will exclude many more people than those lined up to be cloned. Some say, If it can be done, it will be done, so why make an issue of it? Supply and demand will rule! An alternative approach probably lies somewhere in the middle: The day will indeed come when we have human clones, from occasional individuals created to carry on the family name or be the bearer of the cherished face of a departed loved one to the nightmare scenario of mass-produced “worker ants.” We need to think carefully about the implications of this technology for society and about the need for legislation. We have to consider the difference between a cloned child who would be loved and cared for by its parents and one who might be used or enslaved for society’s purposes. Perhaps the bottom line, as with any planning in- volving a child, is whether that child can reasonably expect a stable, loving home— not the circumstances of the child’s conception. There is a wide variety of issues for legislators and ethicists to consider in the twenty-fi rst century. Finally, a word from the original author of the idea that science can’t be value- free, Jürgen Habermas. He contributed to the debate about genetic manipulation in a lecture from 2000 which was then expanded into a publication in Germany, and translated into English in 2003 with added material as The Future of Human Nature . The German attitude toward such subjects refl ects the collective memories of the Holocaust and its reduction of human beings to “merely a means to an end,” and Germany now has a tradition of strict legislation against any form of genetic manipulation. Habermas has himself been a powerful voice against such research for years, but in his 2003 book he reveals a somewhat modifi ed attitude. He warns against creating designer human beings if there is the slightest risk of such a person’s autonomy and right to self-determination being imperiled; applying Kant’s theory of ends-in-themselves, he distinguishes between therapeutic genetic interventions and ge- netic enhancements . Genetic interventions could help individuals overcome physical/ health obstacles, and be of the kind that a person would opt for if you could ask them, so with caution, Habermas could allow for such research if it benefi ts the person whose genes are being interfered with. Genetic enhancements, on the other hand, would determine a person’s future life without their consent and lock them into a life where, essentially, they would be used as a part of other people’s agenda, and their very humanity might be altered, which means that their whole engagement in the world as a moral person might be terminated, so Habermas warns against such research. As a reviewer of his book, Mary V. Rorty, has remarked, such caution seems extreme to an American reader these days, and may in fact blind us to the possibility that one can be something other than a human being and still have ethics as well as morals—such as some of the science fi ction characters of Star Trek . Furthermore, on a more down-to-earth level, Habermas’s view precludes any research whatsoever on embryos, because they will then be treated as a means to an end, and that would put

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an end to embryonic stem cell research and not only reproductive, but also any kind of therapeutic cloning, as well as selecting for/genetically engineering specifi c traits in human fetuses. If Habermas’s moral vision of permissible research had been in effect in the nineteen nineties, Molly Nash would probably not have been able to celebrate her fi fteenth birthday. In the Narratives section the two fi lms, The Island and Gattaca , both deal with the subject of embryonic enhancement, and in the Primary Readings section you’ll fi nd an excerpt from Habermas’s The Future of Human Nature .

Questions of Rights and Equality

We have already referred to the concept of rights several times; now we are going to take a closer look at what it entails. In Western culture today, it is generally assumed that all people have rights; the nature and extension of those rights is continually being disputed, however. In the seventeenth century some European thinkers began to advocate the idea of natural rights, and that idea became very important in the eighteenth century with its many social revolutions. A natural right was defi ned as a right one was born with as a human being (or as a male human being, as it was most often argued). Sometimes the concept of natural rights is intended as descriptive (as in, “We are actually born with rights”), and sometimes its intention is normative (“We ought to have such rights because we are human”). A powerful theory of natu- ral rights comes from Thomas Hobbes, whom you met in Chapter 4. For Hobbes (1588–1679), as you may remember, laws and moral rules have no place prior to a social contract, in the “State of Nature,” but even before the contract there is the natural right and the natural law: The natural right is the right for anyone to do what it takes to stay alive, and the natural law is a built-in prohibition against doing harm to ourselves. Once we have entered into a social contract, the natural right becomes modifi ed, because social and moral laws now kick in for mutual self-protection; but in Hobbes’s political philosophy, we never give up our right to defend ourselves and we never have to consent to actions that will harm us, even under the reign of an ab- solute monarch. A generation later the British philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) introduced his version of the natural rights concept: Anyone, even in the State of Na- ture, has three inalienable rights of nature, based on our very nature as rational be- ings: the rights to life, liberty, and property. Later in this chapter we return to Locke’s theory of natural rights. But at the end of the 1700s, the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham had his doubts about the concept of natural rights. His response to the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) of the French Revolution—and implicitly also to the American Declaration of Independence (1776)—was that all men are obviously not born free, and they are not born or do not remain equal in rights. (Nor should they— someone has to give the orders, he says. We can’t have associations between equal members, such as equality in marriage—Bentham believed that would never work out!) People are not born with rights, because the concept of rights is a human in- vention and does not occur in nature. One might wish it did, he says, but it doesn’t. So for Bentham, the concept of natural rights is “nonsense upon stilts.” That doesn’t mean we can’t operate with the concept of rights though; we must just recognize it as a legal principle (not a natural one) and identify its goal as being the creation of

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as happy a society as possible—in other words, maximizing happiness for the maxi- mum number of people (the basic utilitarian principle). You may remember John Stuart Mill’s insistence that there ought to be such a thing as a personal right to be left alone if you are not harming anybody else (the “harm principle”). As in so many other areas, Mill is here redefi ning utilitarianism from within, but he still remains a utilitarian; his ultimate reason for setting limits on government involvement in people’s private affairs is the overall happiness of the population. There is no such thing as a concept of “rights” or “justice” for its own sake in utilitarianism, even in Mill’s version: The ultimate goal is still the general happiness, not an abstract principle of justice. We have to go to another theory to fi nd a defense of the concept of rights for their own sake, not for what good social consequences may come of enforcing them: to Kant’s deontology. As you have read in Chapter 6, he insists that human beings are ends in themselves and may not be treated merely as a means to an end. That means that even if treating a person as a means to an end might be useful for the majority in a society, it is still not permissible to do so. Good overall consequences for a majority do not provide a suffi cient reason to do away with the rule that every person deserves respect. The question of whether decisions affecting many people in a society should be made on the basis of social utility or individual rights is still very much part of the contemporary debate, as we shall see.

What Is Equality?

When we try to defi ne equality, we sometimes feel as much confusion as Saint Augustine did in trying to defi ne time: “When you don’t ask me, I know what it is; when you ask me, I don’t know.” We tend to think equality has something to do with treating everybody the same way—but since all people are not the same, or even similar, how can that be fair? And we know that equality and fairness are supposed to be linked. There are actually several defi nitions of equality:

1. Fundamental equality is the concept we know from the American Declara- tion of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The American Declaration reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with cer- tain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Hap- piness.” The French Declaration begins, “All men are by nature free and equal in respect of their rights.” However, these declarations do not say that people are factu- ally equal—such as equally tall, strong, pretty, or smart—just that people should be treated as equals by their government and their legal system: no special privileges, just an entitlement to respect and consideration as human beings.

2. Social equality refers to the idea of people being equal within a social set- ting, such as politics or the economy. Today, most Western political theories are in tune with the idea of fundamental equality, but what exactly social equality (and indeed “people”) can mean is variable: The French Revolution did not see women as socially or politically equal with men, and neither did the American Declaration of Independence, although Thomas Jefferson himself has been quoted as being op- posed to viewing women as second-class citizens or as property. People of color

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QUESTIONS OF RIGHTS AND EQUALITY 339

were generally not considered included in the social equality of the Declaration of Independence either, although Jefferson seemed to have had some second thoughts about that too. Social equality today is generally obtained through such formal rights as the right to vote and to stand for public offi ce; however, that doesn’t mean that everyone’s social status or income is supposed to be equal.

3. Equal treatment for equals is an ancient idea, in glaring contradiction to the fundamental equality principle; we fi nd it in Aristotle’s Politics. Justice means treating people of the same, usually social, group in the same way. But since we don’t know from the defi nition what it would take to be considered an “equal,” it is generally assumed to be an elitist principle with no underlying intent to recognize equality as a fundamental human right.

4. Sometimes an alternative defi nition is proposed, redefi ning the Fundamental Equality Principle: Treat equals equally and unequals unequally. At fi rst sight that looks like principle (3), equal treatment for equals, but there is a potential difference. It may look like a principle of elitism and bigotry, but who are “equals”? And who are “unequals”? Instead of pointing to a social or political group or saying that “equals” means “everybody,” let’s say that “equals” in this defi nition are people who are in a similar situation under similar circumstances. Imagine the freeway at rush hour: We are all out there in our cars, either moving at high speeds or simply stuck. We don’t know one another, but we all deserve respect and decent treatment from one another, no more and no less. Now imagine a person trying to change lanes so he can reach the next exit, because he has some kind of emergency—a fl at tire, a sick passenger perhaps. He signals, and you let him go in front of you. Because of his situation he is in fact an “unequal,” in special need of assistance. Now imagine that someone else up ahead is impatient and wants to get off the freeway, so she cuts in front of someone else and causes him to brake hard, resulting in a couple of fender benders that in- clude your car. Now that person has also become an “unequal” and deserves special, “unequal” treatment that others don’t get unless they have transgressed: punishment. So the principle states that under ordinary circumstances we are just “equals” and deserve the usual decent treatment and respect. When someone has special needs, he or she becomes an “unequal” who needs assistance to reach the level of those who are “equals.” And when someone breaks the rules, he or she also becomes an unequal and deserves special punishment. (See the later section on criminal justice.) Accord- ing to some scholars, the principle of treating equals equally and unequals unequally is in harmony with the fundamental equality principle, but it is more elaborate be- cause it recognizes that we sometimes have special needs or sometimes transgress and so sometimes deserve special treatment. The principle supports affi rmative action, if people who have experienced the effects of discrimination are considered to be “unequals” in the sense that the “playing fi eld” is not yet level and that some “players” need special assistance before everyone on the fi eld will actually have equal opportu- nities. However, the risk is that there is no clear defi nition of an “unequal,” and critics have pointed out that anyone deemed to be somehow infringing on other people’s “equality” may be classifi ed, temporarily or permanently, as an “unequal” whose ser- vices, or assets, might be enlisted or even confi scated in the cause of the common good. For some critics, the concept of redistribution of wealth is a good example of the principle of “treating unequals unequally” for the sake of overall equality.

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One thing the principle of equality in any version usually does not imply is sameness. What would it be like if we were required to treat others and to be treated in exactly the same way, even if we are physically different? Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron” (1970) is a scathing parody of a future society in which it is politically incorrect (years before the term became popular) to be smarter, stron- ger, or more beautiful than anyone else. In Bergeron’s future the smart people wear caps with buzzers that prevent them from thinking a thought through; the beauti- ful people wear bags over their heads so the less-than-pretty people won’t feel bad. Dancers are weighed down with lead so ungraceful people won’t feel left out, and strong people wear many bags of lead so they won’t have an advantage over the weaker ones. Vonnegut doesn’t write about how the truly disabled might feel about such artifi cial disabling or about what constitutes “normal” sameness, but the story does effectively question the identifi cation of sameness and equality.

Dworkin: Rights Can’t Be Traded for Benefi ts

A contemporary thinker who uses Kant’s approach to the issue of rights is the Ameri- can philosopher Ronald Dworkin, professor at the New York University School of Law and the University College of London (the place where Bentham sits in his mahogany closet, by the way). For more than three decades, Dworkin has contrib- uted to the debate about social rights and equality; some of his most famous works include Taking Rights Seriously (1977) and Freedom’s Law (1996), and he weighs in on current issues in The New York Review of Books. For Dworkin, the importance of rights becomes apparent precisely at the moment when social considerations might justify the violation of those rights; we may think that our rights are protected by the Constitution, but there is such a thing as a constitutional amendment. Could we imagine a situation so serious that horrible social consequences will ensue if certain rights are not set aside for the common good? In other words, when push comes to shove, should we adopt a utilitarian view that social benefi ts outweigh the rights of the individual, or should we, along with Kant, hold the rights of the individual higher than social benefi ts? Dworkin asks us to consider an example: the right to free speech. Suppose someone, angered by some personal or collective experience, gets up and speaks in public, in an emotional manner, advocating violence as a way to secure political equality. Suppose the emotional speech starts a riot, and sup- pose people get hurt or even killed. Many would say that if such a situation can be prevented by making such a type of speech illegal, then that is the course we have to take. Dworkin would not. He argues that we can use one of two models for our political thinking about rights:

1. The fi rst model says we have to fi nd a balance between the rights of the in- dividual and the demands of society. If the government infringes on a right, it does the individual wrong; but if it infl ates a right, it does the community wrong (by de- priving it of some benefi t, such as safe streets). So we should steer a middle course and take each situation on a case-by-case basis. Well-behaved discussion groups can have more freedom of speech than unruly demonstrators because there is more social risk involved in the demonstration. This model of balancing the public interest

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QUESTIONS OF RIGHTS AND EQUALITY 341

against personal claims sounds reasonable, but it is not, says Dworkin. If we adopt the model, he asserts, we will have given up on two very important ideas: One is the idea of human dignity (Kant would say, Don’t treat people merely as means), and the other is the idea of political equality (if one person has a certain freedom, then all persons should have that freedom, regardless of the effect on the general good). In Dworkin’s words (from his book Taking Rights Seriously ):

So if rights make sense at all, then the invasion of a relatively important right must be a very serious matter. It means treating a man as less than a man, or as less worthy of con- cern than other men . . . then it must be wrong to say that infl ating rights is as serious as invading them.

So we can’t balance individual rights against social goods; what we can do is balance individual rights against each other when the claims collide, because then each indi- vidual still retains his or her dignity. But the best proof that the fi rst model doesn’t work, says Dworkin, is that it is not applied in actual cases in which the stakes for the individual are the highest: in criminal processes. Social benefi ts don’t determine the outcome of a trial. The adage says, It is better that many guilty people go free than that one innocent person be punished, and this is Dworkin’s choice for his second model.

2. The second model says that invading a right is far worse than infl ating it. If people are prevented from expressing themselves freely and in any way they like, then that is an assault on human autonomy, and all the more so if the subject of a speech is morally important to the speaker. The government might actually be allowed to step in only if the consequences of such a speech would very certainly be grave. But when is anyone that certain? According to Dworkin, the risk involved is speculative; someone’s right to free speech should not be abridged just because someone else might harm others as a result of that speech. This is the only way to protect the rights of individuals and in particular the rights of the few against the many. For a discussion of Dworkin’s model and the second amendment, see Box 7.4. Dworkin seems to imply that freedom of speech (which might lead to violence) is typically used to defend the idea of human dignity; in other words, most decent people might agree with the content of the speech, if not with its emotional charac- ter. That may not always be the case. You might want to consider Dworkin’s second model in the scenario of an infl ammatory racist hate speech being delivered on your campus or on TV. Would you say that the right of the speaker to express a personal opinion is more important than the harmful effects on the group being targeted for hatred or even the harmful effects on the audience being stirred up? The demonstra- tions Dworkin refers to in his 1977 book were, in particular, the demonstrations (with subsequent riots) against the Vietnam War in the late sixties and early seven- ties, but if a principle is a principle, it should hold up under any kind of scenario. And freedom of speech is, of course, not just a matter of the actual physical presence of a speaker in front of a group of people—the greater audience in front of the TV as well as today’s interactive online audience need to be included also. (In Chapter 13 we address the issue of free speech and the media, with an eye to recent controversies.)

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342 CHAPTER 7 PERSONHOOD, R IGHTS , AND JUSTICE

According to Dworkin’s principle, the free speech of the second model should extend to speakers and demonstrators in general. Demonstrations should be allowed to take place because the rights of demonstrators should not be invaded. (The First Amendment allows not only freedom of speech but also freedom of assembly. ) But the Constitution grants no right to create a public disturbance. So critics of Dworkin’s sec- ond model suggest a middle course: Certainly we have freedom of speech and freedom of assembly—but that doesn’t entail an automatic police permit to march in a demon- stration. So let those who want to exercise their freedom of speech assemble someplace, in a hall or on a street corner, but limit the possibility of harm to the public if the issue is volatile. The tendency in our society is increasingly to move toward protection of the public rather than protection of the individual’s right to freedom of speech, assembly, or movement. Some years ago judges were generally reluctant to issue restraining orders against domestic abusers because of their right to freedom of movement; today such re- straining orders are much more common. You might want to argue about rights within this scenario from the viewpoints of Dworkin and John Stuart Mill. Box 7.5 further explores the concept of civil rights versus the security of citizens.

Dworkin’s discussion involving his two models is directed specifi cally toward the First Amend- ment, which includes the right to free speech. His fi rst model says we have to fi nd a balance be- tween the right of the individual and the needs of the community, and his second model (which he favors) says that invading or restricting a right for the sake of the needs of the community is wrong and should be done only in very rare cases. In the chapter text you fi nd an analysis of the second model and freedom of speech— but how might Dworkin’s model work if we apply it to the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms? The Second Amendment says that “a well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” This amendment has been considered contro- versial for decades; for many liberals the right to bear arms is (1) outdated, (2)  dangerous, and (3) a misinterpretation of the Bill of Rights, which, according to some interpreters, says only that militia members should have the right to be armed. For many moderates and conservatives, there is no doubt, however, that the amendment

addresses individuals (“the people”) and their right to bear arms, not just militia members. This interpretation is, supposedly, the classical one before the twentieth century and was up- held by the Supreme Court in the Heller De- cision of 2008. Furthermore, many supporters of the Second Amendment quote Aristotle: “Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.” Re- gardless of what Dworkin might say about the right to gun ownership per se, how would his principle apply to the Second Amendment? If we apply the fi rst model, balancing the right to own guns with the need of the community for security, Dworkin would have to conclude that individual rights shouldn’t be balanced against social goods— individual rights can be balanced only against other individual rights. His second model would state it in even stronger terms: Someone’s right to bear arms should not be abridged just because someone else might choose to harm others because of that right. Would this example of Dworkin’s principle used on another amendment make you agree with his principle all the more, or less?

Box 7.4 D W O R K I N ’ S M O D E L A N D T H E S E C O N D A M E N D M E N T

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QUESTIONS OF RIGHTS AND EQUALITY 343

In the fall of 2001, as a step in the war against terrorism, Congress passed the U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001, directed at preventing future terrorism through increased powers of wiretapping, in- cluding “roving wiretaps” that zero in on a person rather than a telephone number, and intercept- ing e-mails, faxes, and so on. The purpose was to fi nd and arrest any terrorist, foreign or domestic, who might threaten the security of U.S. citizens at home and abroad. In the wake of September 11 such measures seemed welcome and reasonable to many, but there were also voices who warned that they might undermine our civil liberties. Interestingly, those voices have come from both the Left and the Right within American politics: Liberals saw these measures as a threat to political dissidents in an era of conservative government. Conservatives saw them as a dan- ger to individual freedom—especially under some possible future liberal administration. And both pointed out that it in effect undermined the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the search-and-seizure amendment, which says of- fi cers have to demonstrate probable cause (that a crime has been/is being committed) before en- tering and searching the premises of a citizen without that citizen’s permission. The Patriot Act was intended to be in effect for four years, until 2005. In March 2006 a reauthorization bill was signed into law by President Bush, and in 2011 President Obama extended three sections of the Act by another four years: roving wire- taps, library records, and surveillance of pos- sible terrorist loners. In addition, September 11 inspired sweep- ing measures to try foreign terrorists in military tribunals, so as to keep the proceedings—and especially the evidence—secret and thus out of reach of other terrorists. How far are we willing to go in giving up our civil liberties, and even our constitutional rights,

to obtain security? What are we willing to do? In the days following September 11, many Ameri- cans would have said, “Anything, just so we’re safe,” but others have reminded us that having an open, free society carries with it some inher- ent risks. If we put up too many safeguards to protect our society, we may lose our freedoms in the process. Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Those who would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” It is not unusual, however, for a country to enact strict legal measures in wartime that then will be lifted when the war is over. What puts this into perspective is that before September 11 there was already a tendency in American politics (supported by eight years of a Democratic presidency) to “trade rights for benefi ts,” as Ronald Dworkin would put it. In 1994 a seven-year-old New Jersey girl named Megan Kanka was killed, and her murderer was suspected to be a known child molester. In the aftermath, the question was asked, Could her death have been prevented if the whereabouts of the released child molester had been made public beforehand? In that case the community would have known to keep their children away from him. The law requiring such notifi cation, known as Megan’s Law, was passed by Congress in 1997, although individual states had earlier passed similar laws. In January 1999 it took effect across the United States. The addresses of sex offenders who are released from prison will be on fi le at the local police stations for the community to inquire into and make public. In some communities, the names and addresses of sex offenders are regularly released by commu- nity leaders or radio stations and posted on the Internet. In other communities, citizens have a more diffi cult time getting access to the in- formation. And lately a “Jessica’s Law” (named for a murdered nine-year-old Florida girl,

Box 7.5 C I V I L L I B E R T I E S V E R S U S S E C U R I T Y

(continued)

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344 CHAPTER 7 PERSONHOOD, R IGHTS , AND JUSTICE

Negative Rights

Some social thinkers believe that although we do and should have rights, those rights should be only of a certain kind: negative rights, so called because they specify what ought not to be done to you (they are rights of noninterference). Earlier in this chapter you read that John Locke introduced a concept of three natural rights that everyone has as a birthright of a rational human being: the rights to life, liberty, and property. (It is no coincidence that this sounds so similar to Thomas Jefferson’s famous emphasis on our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Jefferson was deeply infl uenced by John Locke’s political philosophy.) For Locke, a social contract thinker, these rights are rights people have against the government and one another: Nobody’s life should be interfered with for no good reason, nor should anyone’s liberty or property be interfered with. The only limit to each right is the

Jessica Lundsford), making sexual abuse of a child a one-strike offense and opening up the possibility of indefi nite incarceration of the sex offender, has been spreading across the country. In 2010 “Chelsea’s Law,” named for a murdered young woman, was signed by then-Governor Schwarzenegger in California: Anyone con- victed of certain sex crimes against a child will face life without the possibility of parole. From the point of view of the community, this is tremendous progress in protecting the lives and well-being of our children; from the point of view of the sex offender, though, this is hardly good news. So what? we might say— who cares what sex offenders think of our at- tempts to foil their future exploits? The trouble is that our conception of civil liberties doesn’t quite correspond to this idea of protection of the community. The sex offenders have served their time, paid their debt to society, and in most other cases that means they can start over again—with a criminal record but with the past behind them. They may have lost some rights (such as the right to vote and to own weapons), but presumably they retain the right not to be assumed guilty before they have committed any crime. Jessica’s Law and Megan’s Law cast that

freedom into doubt: The past crimes of sex of- fenders will never be put behind them, and, as such, the punishment never seems to come to an end, especially if the perpetrator has to prove that he or she is fi t for release into society. To some philosophers of law, this is terribly unfair, but others point out that the crimes such of- fenders have committed never come to an end either—the victims of sexual molestation (if they survive it) will have to live with the mem- ory always. Even so, this is not an argument in favor of the new laws, because punishment is not intended to match the pain intensity caused by the crime—how would that be possible? To the legal complaint that having one’s name posted in the community prolongs the punish- ment, the court replied that the surveillance and posting of names is the community exer- cising its right to self-protection—it is not part of the punishment. A similar argument applies to the indefi nite incarceration even after time served: It is not additional punishment, but a protection of the public. In the chapter text you’ll see a discussion about criminal justice and utilitarian vs. Kantian concepts of punish- ment, and “protection of the public” is a clear utilitarian concept.

Box 7.5 C I V I L L I B E R T I E S V E R S U S S E C U R I T Y (continued)

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QUESTIONS OF RIGHTS AND EQUALITY 345

right held by other people to their own life, liberty, and property. But even outside a social contract, these rights are in effect, says Locke, because we are rational beings and these rights are rational rights, but they are easier to enforce within a society with democratic laws. In his Second Treatise on Government (1690) Locke specifi es that “the State of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges everyone, and Reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty, health or possessions.” So even before a society is formed with all its rules and laws, says Locke, there is a law of nature guiding our rational thinking toward realizing that everyone is equal by birth, and everyone should be able to live his or her life in lib- erty without the interference of anyone else. In many ways Locke’s philosophy was an inspiration to the founders (traditionally known as the “Founding Fathers”) of the United States. Ayn Rand (see Chapter 4) expressed the conviction that the United States was the fi rst moral society in history because it set limits on the power of the state and respected the concept of the rights of the individual. In an essay, “Man’s Rights,” from The Virtue of Selfi shness (1965), she says, “All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrifi cial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself. The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary coexistence of individuals.” So what are these individual rights? There is only one fundamental right, says Rand: the right to your own life and to act free of coercion. In that sense it is a posi- tive right. But as for your neighbors, they have negative rights against you: the right not to have their right to life and liberty violated. How do we maintain our life? By our own effort, Rand says; that means you have the right to make money or own property without having it taken away. So the right to property is also a negative right. Are these rights absolute? Do you always have a right to your life, liberty, and property? Not if you have violated someone else’s right to life, liberty, or property. In such a case your rights have been forfeited; so the limit of your own liberty is the liberty of the other person. But does that mean you have a right to be kept alive if you can’t provide for yourself? Do you have a right to be given property and to be provided with the means to enjoy your liberty? No, says Rand. If you can’t fend for yourself, then society has no obligation to help you (but others may want to, because they are caring people). For this philosophical approach, there is no such thing as a right to a job, a home, or fair wages—nor a right to be made happy, only the right not to be interfered with if you don’t bother others in your own pursuit of happiness. The American philosopher John Hospers expresses the same sentiments in defending the political viewpoint of libertarianism in his book The Libertarian Alternative (1974):

Each man has the right to life: any attempt by others to take it away from him, or even to injure him, violates this right, through the use of coercion against him. Each man has a right to liberty: to conduct his life in accordance with the alternatives open to him without coercive action by others. And every man has the right to property: to work to sustain his life (and the lives of whichever others he chooses to sustain, such as his family) and to retain the fruits of his labor.

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346 CHAPTER 7 PERSONHOOD, R IGHTS , AND JUSTICE

Both Rand and Hospers emphasize the right to life; does that mean they are part of the right-to-life movement? If we identify the right to life as an anti-abortion view- point, then it is not the same as the libertarian negative right, because libertarians are generally concerned with the right of people who are already born not to have their lives taken away. The Libertarian Party platform of 1994 specifi ed a pro-choice stand, as a logical consequence of its view that the right to liberty includes the right for women to choose for themselves; however, the platform also specifi ed that lib- ertarians are against public funding of abortion clinics because forcing others to pay for abortions violates the right to property. (Box 7.6 explores the right to privacy.) Accordingly, the right to life is simply a right not to have your life interfered with. What if you are not capable of working to sustain your life? Then you have a problem, because Rand and Hospers do not believe you have a right to receive other people’s property without their consent. In practical terms, that means you should have saved up or taken out insurance while you were able to work; for those who never have been and never will be able to work, libertarianism advocates private charity, not government interference, because the only role for the government, say both Hospers and Rand, is to protect the negative rights of the citizens against vio- lation. Anything else is, in the colorful language that Hospers echoes from Rand, “moral cannibalism.” You may remember the excerpt in Chapter 4 from Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in which she speaks of the right of the capable person not to have to sup- port the lives of “whining rotters”—those she elsewhere calls “moochers and leeches” and “moral cannibals.” Critics of that philosophy—and there are many—sometimes invoke the Golden Rule and ask of the libertarian, Is this the way you would want to be treated if stricken with a personal catastrophe that you could not have prepared for? Should the goods of this world be reserved for those who are strong, healthy, and capable of securing them for themselves, or should weaker individuals who lack such abilities also have a right to share in the goods in a civilized society? In the up- coming section on distributive justice, we meet an American philosopher who argues in favor of a fair distribution: John Rawls.

Positive Rights

Views in opposition to libertarianism can be found in several areas of modern social thinking. The most extreme alternative would be provided by Marxism, which holds, on the basis of the ideal of social equality, that everyone in society has the right to have his or her life sustained, “to receive according to need, and to give according to ability.” That makes the right to live and have your life sustained a positive right (a right to receive something from somebody, usually the government). As has often been pointed out, the politics of communism exclude the negative rights just described: It rarely recognizes any right as not to be interfered with by the government. Socialist viewpoints (which are generally not as radical as communist views about government control) also support positive rights (entitlements) such as the right to work, to have shelter, and possibly also to have health care, education, clothing, and food. According to the German political philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883), the communist state will take care of the needs of the individual: The individual has a

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QUESTIONS OF RIGHTS AND EQUALITY 347

positive right to have his or her needs met. But needs is an amorphous term. What does it mean to have your needs met? Marx had in mind the basics: food, shel- ter, clothing, meaningful work, education, and health care. The needs of your fam- ily, however, might stretch the defi nition of basic needs. Wanting and needing are, after all, not the same. What about braces for your daughter’s teeth? What about a Kindle (TM) for every student? You may argue that young people really need those things to secure their future, but who is to judge? And who is to pay for them? Those who have the ability to work. In Marx’s vision of the communist state—the fi nal stage of political development after feudalism and capitalism—the world will have changed. The capitalist concept of profi t will have disappeared because profi t is the “surplus value” that the factory owner adds to the product on top of the wages paid to the factory worker—in Marx’s view, value stolen from the worker and created on the worker’s time and through the worker’s effort. In the world of communism, people no longer go to work to make wages or make a profi t—they go to work because they have certain abilities that they put into the service of the state. And since they are allowed (ideally!) to work with whatever their talents dictate, they are not bored: The compensation for hard work is the joy of having meaningful work in itself. So society can require a person to work for the good of the community to the extent that he or she is able to do it (willingness is simply assumed). In compensation, the workers will be paid in goods according to their needs. In the early stages of the new world, Marx envisioned a

In the United States of America we generally as- sume that we have a right to privacy, based on the Fourth Amendment (see Box 7.5). And our Bill of Rights certainly provides us with protec- tion from undue interference from the govern- ment without probable cause, but as you know from the previous box, the probable cause may be defi ned differently for different urgent situations such as terrorism. Even so, the as- sumption that we ought to be in control over our own space (home, car) and everything in it, including our personal information, is very deep-seated in most of us, and the assumption extends to wherever our personal informa- tion is stored, such as in our doctor’s offi ce. Of course there are legal protections in place, so anyone violating our space and privacy il- legally can be brought to court, but what about our privacy rights in the age of the Internet and

the “social media”? In the recent past there has been an erosion of what is considered “private”; medical records have turned out not to be so secure, once they are stored electronically; bank records and other fi nancial information are not only sometimes hacked into, but even traded, legally as well as illegally; and in the social media such as Facebook the personal information you choose to share with “friends” may, despite your efforts, end up being public. But Facebook and the other social media are private organizations, like clubs, and are not subject to the Fourth Amendment. You agree to their terms if you want to join—otherwise you’re out. And the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has been quoted as saying that he thinks privacy is an outdated concept. In Chap- ter 13 we take a closer look at the social media and ethics.

Box 7.6 A R I G H T T O P R I V A C Y ?

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348 CHAPTER 7 PERSONHOOD, R IGHTS , AND JUSTICE

monetary system, but within the completed communist system, money would be abolished. In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand (who fl ed the Soviet Union for the United States) creates a wicked parody of the fate of a factory run on communist principles. The workers with needs soon outnumbered those who were able to put in long hours of work. Those workers with bright ideas and abilities were put on overtime without compensation, so that very soon they were out of ideas and discovered that they were able to put in only a feeble amount of work. But everybody was quick to think up new needs. . . . Marxists have responded that Rand misunderstood the Marxist philosophy: it is only within Capitalism that people are greedy and selfi sh, because each economic system (the substructure) creates its own culture (the super- structure). According to Marx the Communist substructure will alter human nature and generate goodwill and empathy rather than greed and selfi shness. Many a critic has been known to be skeptical about that claim. The concept of positive rights need not take on such extreme proportions. Most liberal philosophies, such as that of John Rawls (see the next section), include the view that negative rights are not of much use if one’s health or the country’s economy prevent one from making a living. What good is the right to vote, to express yourself freely, and to hold offi ce if you are so sick or destitute that you can’t feed your kids or give them a safe place to grow up? To enjoy negative rights, one must be assured of having basic needs met. The fi rst Primary Reading at the end of the chapter is the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights. You may want to study it specifi cally for its emphasis on negative as well as positive rights—rights of noninterference as well as entitlements.

Distributive Justice: From Rawls to Affi rmative Action

In modern social philosophy we talk about two kinds of justice. One is the kind that is upheld by the law; it is generally referred to as criminal justice, and we will return to it at the end of this chapter. The other kind is distributive justice, theories of how to distribute the goods of society fairly. This distinction dates all the way back to Aristotle, who says in his Nicomachean Ethics that “a just thing . . . will be (1) that which is in accordance with the law, (2) that which is fair; and the unjust thing will be (1) that which is contrary to law, (2) that which is unfair.” For some social thinkers in the past, distributive justice depended on who could grab how much and hold on to it, but in modern times a clear understanding has emerged among social philosophers that for society to be a functioning system, it must offer both some recognition of needs and some way to meet those needs.

Rawls: Justice as Fairness

One of the most infl uential arguments against exclusively negative rights and in favor of positive rights—an argument that is also directed against a utilitarian view of rights as merely a means to happiness for the majority ( social utility )—comes from the American philosopher John Rawls (1921–2002). This is usually identifi ed as a liberal argument, not in the sense of Mill’s classical liberalism (which comes close to today’s libertarianism), but in the sense of the modern egalitarian liberalism, which

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D ISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE: FROM RAWLS TO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION 349

believes that everyone should have equal access to social goods, in some way or other. A liberal generally believes in some positive rights as well as some negative rights: You need the right to life and liberty (such as freedom of speech), but without positive rights you may not be able to enjoy those negative rights, so you also have a basic right to be taken care of by society if you can’t take care of yourself. To envision a society that is as fair toward everyone as possible, Rawls suggests a thought experiment: Imagine, he says, that we are about to make rules for a brand- new society and that we are all in on it. (This is one of the most modern versions of the old social contract theory that you’ll remember from Chapter 4.) Then, he says, imagine that you don’t know who or what you’ll be when the rules take effect; you may be rich, you may be poor, young or old, male or female, of another race. You pretend you are ignorant of your position in the future; you have now lowered a veil of ignorance over your mind’s eye. This Rawls calls the original position, because it is from this position that we should imagine making rules for all of society. Rawls was deeply inspired by Kant’s idea that all of humanity should be treated as ends in themselves, never merely as means to an end. If you don’t know who or what you will be, you will want to make certain that whatever rules you help make about fair distribution of the goods of society (such as jobs, food, shelter, child care, health care) don’t place you at the bottom of the pile. If you end up being poor and ill, your new rules should be as fair to you as to anyone else; if you end up being rich, you would want fairness too. This is, of course, a form of rational self-interest—but in the bigger picture it transforms itself into an understanding of other people’s needs. In Rawls’s own words, from his infl uential work A Theory of Justice (1971),

Thus we are to imagine that those who engage in social cooperation choose together, in one joint act, the principles which are to assign basic rights and duties and to determine the di- vision of social benefi ts. . . . This original position is not, of course, thought of as an actual historical state of affairs, much less as a primitive condition of culture. It is understood as a purely hypothetical situation characterized so as to lead to a certain conception of justice. Among the essential features of this situation is that no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. . . . The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. This ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or the contin- gency of social circumstances.

An example may help illustrate this (it is not an image that Rawls uses, but one that he might use): Think of a birthday party for a little girl. There is a big birthday cake, and she would like to cut a big piece for herself before any of the guests get some of it. But her parents tell her, “You may cut the cake, but you get to choose last!” She is a smart girl; what will this force her to do? Cut pieces as evenly as pos- sible, because a tiny piece is likely to be rejected by her guests and thus be the last one remaining for her. In a sense she is in the original position, creating a system of fair distribution for the future. That analogy works well for the original position, but real life is different. The needs (or wants) of the party guests were for a piece of cake, but in real life some may

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need more food, shelter, and health care than others, and some have talents that oth- ers don’t have. So a completely fair distribution of goods would be one in which, as a result, no one is in need of the bare essentials. Justice, then, consists in equal liberty (having the same rights and duties as everyone else) for persons within a society. That doesn’t mean that everyone should be treated the same way. As a matter of fact, some inequality is permissible, says Rawls, provided that the end result is everyone in society benefi ts from that inequality (and not just some majority, as in utilitarian- ism). In the Primary Readings you’ll fi nd an excerpt from John Rawls’s infl uential essay “Justice as Fairness.” Two American philosophers who are often quoted as criticizing Rawls are the communitarian and pluralist Michael Walzer (born 1935) and the libertarian Robert Nozick (1938–2002). We will meet Robert Nozick’s theory of property in the Busi- ness Ethics section in Chapter 13. Walzer’s philosophy is closer to Rawls’s liberal social philosophy than that of Nozick, but there are substantial differences between Walzer’s and Rawls’s ideas of distributive justice. For Rawls we are, essentially, so- cial atoms, theoretically without affi liations, and that means we can imagine a veil of ignorance hiding our knowledge of who we are to ensure a fair distribution. For Walzer, on the other hand, we live in “spheres of justice” (the title of one of his books from 1983) where we are essentially connected to our communities and what we consider “social goods” depend on what our community values, which means we can’t be reduced to social atoms. Walzer identifi es himself primarily as a pluralist; to him our affi liations take on special meanings according to our community, and these separate spheres of meaning can’t be reduced to a common denominator. In the next section we look at two other, less often quoted American philosophers arguing against Rawls: Elizabeth Wolgast and Marilyn Friedman.

Wolgast and Friedman: Reactions to Abstract Individualism

Rawls’s viewpoint has helped immensely in identifying goals within liberal poli- tics; as you can imagine, he has critics among nonliberals, but he also has them even among thinkers who are generally in favor of social equality involving fair dis- tribution of goods. Here we look at viewpoints from two American philosophers, Elizabeth Wolgast and Marilyn Friedman; each in her own way has pointed to a lack in Rawls’s approach: the understanding that humans are not just “social atoms,” separate individuals who might imagine themselves to be someone else entirely, but persons already existing in a web of interrelationships. The idea of individualism has a long and important history, says Elizabeth Wolgast, and it has helped make this country what we perceive it to be: a place for individual achievement as a result of competition. It began with René Descartes daring to assert that humans all have the capacity to reason and are equal in their intelligence. Since everyone has this capacity, there is no need for any religious or political authority: We can fi gure things out for ourselves. This is the beginning of the egalitarianism, as well as the anti-authoritarianism, of Western individualism, says Wolgast, the source of a “do-it-yourself science and theology” that lets everyone play a part. Other thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, emphasized

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the right of the individual as a “self-motivated unit” to decide his or her own social destiny, at least in extreme circumstances. One of the modern thinkers who has the most infl uence in supporting this idea of the individual as a separate unit is John Rawls. If we imagine a society in which everyone is an equal atom, then those atoms are interchangeable, and so ideally each person should be treated the same. But since we are not the same, a policy of justice should take that into consideration, and this is what Rawls’s original position policy is all about. It is ingenious as an abstract ideal, but what about real life? asks Wolgast. This model of thinking, beginning with Descartes and culminating with Rawls, presupposes that all human relationships are entered into by separate “atomic” individuals as if they are entering into a contract, as if they weren’t in any binding relationships already. According to Wolgast in The Grammar of Justice (1987):

The atomistic model has important virtues. It founds the values of the community on pri- vate values; it encourages criticism of government and requires any government to answer to its original justifi cation; it limits government’s powers, as they may threaten to interfere with the needs of atomistic units. . . . But it leaves a great deal out. . . . In it one cannot picture human connections or responsibilities. We cannot locate friendliness or sympathy in it any more than we can imagine one molecule or atom moving aside for or assisting another; to do so would make a joke of the model. . . . we need to loosen the hold that the atomistic picture has on our thinking, and recognize the importance that theory has on our judgments and our moral condition.

What is Wolgast saying? She is siding with the much older political theory of communitarianism, which stems from the ancient Greek tradition (see Chapter 4). For the Greek thinkers, and Aristotle in particular, an individual does not understand himself or herself as a separate entity but as a social being. We understand ourselves, and others understand us, through the connections we have to our community. A society is not just a collection of individuals but also part of the very purpose of the life of an individual. We are all someone’s daughter or son; we have parents and children and siblings; we have friendships and trade relations and other community ties; and stripped of those we are nobody (which is why, to many Greeks, banish- ment from the community was a horrible threat, as we shall see in the next chapter). As Wolgast says, “the whole makes the part comprehensible.” This is the view that was popularized with the title of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s book It Takes a Village (to raise a child, an African proverb). So Rawls’s thought experiment is bound to have limits in this real world because we are not simply atomic units, individuals alone in the universe. We have responsibilities to our community, and a good theory of justice must take such community ties into account. Marilyn Friedman agrees with much of Wolgast’s criticism of the “abstract indi- vidualism” of Western modern philosophy and social thinking. She points out that many women thinkers in particular are now critical of this approach because they don’t see themselves or people who depend on them and on whom they depend as utterly separate individuals but, rather, as a network or a group of individuals relying on one another. And the solution of communitarianism is tempting and reasonable, says Friedman in a paper from 1989, “Feminism and Modern Friendship: Dislocating

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the Community”—but we should be careful, because it may take us places we don’t want to go. What do we mean by “community”? Very often what is meant is the fam- ily, the neighborhood, and the nation; communitarianism teaches that the traditions and demands of our community are highly important and should be a defi ning fac- tor in each person’s sense of self. But if we look at such communities in a historical sense, we fi nd that most often they have been very oppressive toward women; so if we choose communitarianism over Rawls’s idea of people as social atoms, aren’t we risking going backward and accepting traditions dictating, for instance, that women are the property of their husbands, that children have no rights, or that men have no place in the kitchen or the nursery? Traditions may be a wonderful legacy for a community, but not all traditions are necessarily so. And suppose some of the old traditions were to blame for divisions and resentment among people today; ought we not be morally obligated to overcome those traditions? We can’t just celebrate our community attachments uncritically, as some modern communitarians suggest, says Friedman. And how can we get to a point at which we can allow ourselves to be critical? By not throwing out the concept of the modern self without affi liations (what Wolgast called a “social atom”), a self who has learned to be critical of society’s claims that we have social and moral obligations. Furthermore, communitarians seem to believe that we are always a part of a community from the beginning; we have not chosen it, and yet we have responsi- bilities as members. But, says Friedman, that is true only when we are young; an adult person can generally choose many of his or her community affi liations. Does she want to belong to a union? Does he want to move to this or that neighborhood? Does she want to emigrate? Does he want to join a new church? We choose affi lia- tions based on our personal needs, wishes, and critical sense, and they don’t even have to be live-in communities. Today it’s possible to belong to communities that don’t really have a location, such as Facebook. (When Friedman wrote her paper, the Internet was still in the future.) So Friedman concludes (in “Feminism and Modern Friendship”) that looking to community ties to expand traditional abstract individu- alism is a good idea, but it should not be done uncritically: We must develop com- munitarian thought beyond its complacent regard for the communities in which we once found ourselves toward (and beyond) an awareness of the crucial importance of “dislocated” communities, communities of choice. Box 7.7 introduces an additional critique of Rawls’s atomistic impartiality concept, Carol Gilligan’s ethic of care.

Forward- and Backward-Looking Justice and Affi rmative Action

In the debate about the nature and goals of justice, it may seem confusing that legal experts sometimes talk about improving things in the future and sometimes talk about making up for mistakes and evils of the past, as if the two approaches might exclude each other. And to some legal minds they effectively do, because the issue of justice can be defi ned in two ways: as forward-looking and as backward-looking. One concept focuses on future consequences; the other is a rights-based concept centered on responding to conditions in the past. Here it is essential that you have studied Chapters 5 and 6, because this section relies heavily on your understanding of the

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goals of utilitarianism and other consequentialist theories, as opposed to the ideals of a Kantian viewpoint. A forward-looking view of justice sees the purpose of justice as creating a fair system of distribution of social goods in the future. (Social thinkers use “social goods” to mean access to opportunities such as jobs as well as material things avail- able to citizens in a community.) Regardless of what in the past has brought us to where we are today, our focus must be on creating consequences as good as possible for as many as we can—for everyone, if possible—in the future. A utilitarian would concentrate on creating a functional society of equality and access to opportunities for the majority, under the assumption that that’s the best we can do. Of course, a utilitarian might also consider instituting social inequalities, provided that the overall outcome is considered benefi cial for the many. A backward-looking view of justice requires us to look to conditions in the past and ask, What has brought us to where we are today in terms of inequality and unfair distribution of social goods, and how can we make amends? In the backward- looking view it is essential that we identify both the root causes of today’s inequalities and the people in the past who have been affected by them, as well as their descen- dants and those still living today. Whether compensation for past wrongs done to those people will actually accomplish a system of fair distribution of goods in the future is not relevant—the main concern is to rectify the past wrongs. An interesting hybrid form is John Rawls’s theory of the original position. The Rawlsian focus would be on creating a fair system for everyone, using the original position to create rules of distribution of social goods so that no one falls through the cracks. As you’ll remember, the original position is a thought experiment requiring that we forget about who we are and have been in the past, in order to imagine a fair and just society of the future where everyone is equal and no one will be sacrifi ced

John Rawls is considered perhaps the greatest American social philosopher of the twentieth century, and his contributions to the philoso- phy of justice are considered by many some of the most meaningful in human intellectual history. You have read in the chapter that not everyone agrees that justice should be an im- partial ideal; sometimes we can’t separate a case from its context, and impartiality seems a ludicrous demand: Why should it be immate- rial if a person is a friend of ours, a relative, or a total stranger? Some of us feel that we have greater duties toward those who are near and

dear to us than to strangers halfway around the world. Feminist and psychologist Carol Gilligan introduced a concept in the 1980s as an alterna- tive to Rawls’s and other (male) thinkers’ eth- ics of justice: an ethic of care , of networking and concern for those in one’s immediate social sphere, as a particularly feminine form of ethics. You can read more about Gilligan and her ethic of care in Chapter 12. The concept of an ethic of care has inspired some contemporary American philosophers to focus on a moral philosophy of care with political overtones, and you can read more about that in Chapter 10.

Box 7.7 A N A L T E R N A T I V E T O J U S T I C E E T H I C S

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for the convenience of anyone else. As such it is future-oriented, forward-looking. But Rawls himself is not a consequentialist; rather, he is a follower of Kant’s philoso- phy that nobody should be used as merely a means to other people’s ends, even if it might create good consequences. So Rawls’s theory of justice in effect looks forward, but drawing on a concept of rights and fairness, not on good social consequences as such. Later we look at Rawls’s own theory of combining forward-looking and backward-looking theories of punishment. In the fi eld of affi rmative action, the views of forward- and backward-looking jus- tice have determined the way many issues have been raised and solved. Although the entire concept of affi rmative action—a term coined by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s in connection with the Civil Rights Act—is now undergoing scrutiny by politicians, the media, and citizens for its overall results and possibly negative impact on public jobs and education, the goal of affi rmative action (“preferential treatment,” as it is referred to by critics) was to level the playing fi eld for disadvantaged citizens. But exactly who the disadvantaged citizens are and how the playing fi eld is to be lev- eled depend on whether one adopts a forward-looking or a backward-looking view. A forward-looking approach identifi es those in society who, at this point, seem disenfranchised, and those who in the near future may be in danger of being caught up in a socially disadvantaged situation, and will focus on making access to public jobs and education easier for that group, regardless of why the situation has arisen or whether the benefi ciaries or their ancestors were discriminated against in the past. Thus it is the present needs of disenfranchised individuals and groups that would de- termine the measure of help required, not their experience with discrimination in the past. A forward-looking view has to determine how far into the future such programs will have to exist to level the playing fi eld—forever, or a few generations—because there will always be needy individuals. A backward-looking view will focus on the history of disenfranchised groups and seek some form of compensation or restitution to those groups—living members or their descendants—based on the past experiences of group members regardless of whether everyone in that group today has in fact experienced discrimination in his or her lifetime. A backward-looking view will also have to determine how far into the past one must go to rectify old wrongs—should it be limited to living memory, meaning about a hundred years at the most, or should it go back several more gen- erations? Regarding the question of compensation to African Americans for past in- justices caused by slavery, the issue is extremely relevant: Assuming that one fi nds the idea of reparations at all reasonable (which many don’t), a living memory crite- rion would include compensation not for slavery itself but for the consequences of slavery. And a broader criterion would have to seek compensation not just from de- scendants of American slave owners but also from descendants of Arab slave traders, and so on. At the end of the chapter, you’ll fi nd an excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on the concept of just and unjust laws. Next, you’ll see two op-ed pieces by American philosopher John Berteaux in which he evaluates the status of race and gender equality in contemporary life. And in the Narratives section, you’ll read about the fi lm Mississippi Burning, based on the true story of the murders of three young civil rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi,

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on June 21, 1964. In 2005 a separatist Baptist minister and Ku Klux Klan member, seventy-nine-year-old Ray Killen, was arrested and charged with engineering those murders, one of the most infamous events of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He was convicted on all three counts and sentenced to sixty years in prison. Consider how the criminal charges against Ray Killen, forty-one years after the murders, are an example of a backward-looking view. The very different approaches of forward- and backward-looking justice can be found not only within the realm of what we call distributive justice, the distribution of social goods, but also as an important part of what we refer to as criminal justice.

Criminal Justice: Restorative Versus Retributive Justice

As a society, we believe that law-abiding persons should be treated equally, ceteris paribus. The Latin expression means “everything else being equal,” so if you just go about your business, you deserve the same decent treatment by the government that anyone else deserves, no more and no less. But sometimes everything else is not equal: You may come from a historically deprived group, and legislation may state that such persons deserve special benefi ts (such as affi rmative action). Or you may have experienced personal hardship that couldn’t be anticipated and may need spe- cial help, perhaps in the form of welfare (all depending on which government sys- tem is in effect and what kind of rights its legislators may believe in: negative rights, positive rights, both, or none). Or you may have actually benefi ted society in some way, so the government believes you should be rewarded. (Some governments will pay families bonuses or give them tax breaks for having children, for example.) But suppose you have broken the law. Then, according to criminal justice, the govern- ment is entitled to treat you differently from the rest of the population—by depriving you of benefi ts and sometimes also of certain rights, by punishing you for the crime committed. You may recognize a version of the principle of treating equals equally and unequals unequally. The concept of punishment is as old as human history, but only in the past two hundred years has it acquired the face we see today. In past eras around the world, punishment often involved banishment (temporary or permanent), fi nancial restitu- tion to the victims or their families, or loss of body parts—or execution. The prin- ciple of “an eye for an eye,” today referred to as the law of retaliation, or lex talionis, has been in effect for the past four thousand years, since the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi. Incarceration as a form of punishment is a fairly modern idea; in cen- turies past imprisonment was considered a form of keeping dangerous individuals under control, but not necessarily proportional to what they had done—it was just a way of dealing with a problem, not a matter of justice. Although most people today think punishment (in some form) is an appropriate response to crime, the viewpoint has been advanced, particularly in the latter half of the twentieth century, that punishment is a demeaning and inhumane approach. The question was raised, Who are we, law-abiding citizens, to pass judgment on people who have perhaps been deprived of the chances in life that have resulted in our being law-abiding? And who is to say that punishment will actually deter them

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from further criminal activity? Rather than punish people for what they have done, we ought to educate them and supply them with the chance they may never have had before to become good citizens. In other words, the purpose of incarcerating criminals or subjecting them to other restraints has been viewed not as punishment but as therapeutic rehabilitation. This fundamental philosophical difference between viewing punishment as something deserved and viewing it as something superim- posed by a power structure that, somehow, has helped create the problem has led to the distinction between retributive and restorative justice. In defense of restorative justice, Pat Nolan of the Justice Fellowship says,

If all we do is focus on the broken law, then all you can do is enforce the power of the government, the fi st of government, and lock people up, to punish them. If, on the other hand, you look at crime as “victim harming,” the solution should bring repair to the harm done to the victim. And when you repair the harm done to the victim through restitution and reparation, generally the victim becomes very forward looking and doesn’t want to harm and further punish the offender, but says, “I don’t want you to do this again.” “What can we do to make you not do this again?” “How can we change your life?” Transformation becomes important.

Nolan served fi fteen years in the California State Assembly—and twenty-fi ve months in a federal prison on racketeering charges. So perhaps he has an insider’s under- standing of the issue. He believes the solution lies in religion and in teaching morals. Those who focus on restorative justice emphasize that the balance in society is not restored by locking perpetrators up or executing them. The balance can only be re- stored if their criminal propensities can be transformed. Proponents of restorative justice such as Howard Zehr, professor of sociology, often point out the differences between their view and retributive justice: Retributive justice sees a crime as a violation of rules and relationships, whereas restorative jus- tice sees it as harm caused to people; retributive justice sees the state as the victim, whereas restorative justice sees people as victims. Retributive justice focuses on the past, whereas restorative justice focuses on the future. The courtroom is a battle situ- ation for retributive justice, but for restorative justice the model is a dialogue. And for retributive justice, the debt is paid through punishment; for restorative justice, the debt is paid by “making it right.” The most infl uential, and perhaps also the most comprehensive defense of re- tributive justice to this day may have been supplied by Immanuel Kant. For Kant, justice must focus on the past, because that is how we identify the criminal and the severity of the crime; it must be seen as a violation of rules because it is by the rationality of rules that we justify our moral system—but Kant would not conclude that only rules and not people are victims. On the contrary, respecting the inherent dignity of another human being—victim as well as criminal—is the foundation of his retributive justice. Among contemporary supporters are the philosopher Igor Primoratz and the author Robert James Bidinotto. In the section on retribution we look at Kant’s argument in favor of retributivism. So even though most social thinkers believe there should be an institution of pun- ishment within society, there is widespread disagreement on not only what kind of

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punishment people should reasonably be subjected to but also why they should be pun- ished. It should not be hard for you to guess at some of the major disagreements.

Five Common Approaches to Punishment

Among all the different reasons people might give for punishment to be an option for society, fi ve appear most often. Four of them are classics in the law books; the fi fth one, although popular, is not considered legitimate by most legal experts.

Deterrence It is often argued that punishment, provided it is swift and strict, is a good deterrent against crime. It may make the criminal change his or her mind about breaking the law again (specifi c deterrence), and it may make others think twice before turning to crime (general deterrence). Statistics indicate that in places where severe forms of punishment are the norm, such as Singapore, where disturb- ing the peace is punished by caning and political dissidence can lead to the death penalty, streets are noticeably safer than in free, Western-style societies. We must, of course, ask ourselves what price we are willing to pay for safe streets—a question we explored in Box. 7.5. It appears that here in the United States, crimes against property may be deterred by the knowledge of likely punishment. Who knows how many people refrain from stealing cars only because they know they’ll face prison time if they’re caught? It has been reported that some juvenile criminals deliberately scale down their criminal activity when they reach the age of eighteen because they know their punishment will be harsher—meaning that the concept of punishment can have a deterrent effect. But violent crimes seem not to be deterred much by the threat of punishment. California’s controversial three-strikes law, which sends felons to jail for twenty-fi ve years to life when they’re convicted of a third serious crime, may serve as a deterrent in cases where two strikes are already on a person’s record— but other factors may be at work too, such as shifts in the economy.

Rehabilitation Some social thinkers see the purpose of punishment as making a better person out of the criminal (see the previous section); having undergone some form of appropriate punishment (generally incarceration), the criminal will have learned not to turn to crime again. This viewpoint generally presupposes prison programs that offer the inmate alternatives to a life of crime.

Incapacitation If punishment keeps the criminal off the streets, the public is safe and a social good has been achieved. But the proponents of the incapacitation, or protecting the public, approach don’t specify how a wrongdoer should be incapaci- tated. Locking someone up is usually considered suffi cient for protecting the public, but in the case of an individual who is a fl ight risk, conditions may have to be tight- ened, such as placing him or her in a high-security prison. A convicted rapist may be required to submit to chemical castration (although that does not address the prob- lem of violence and aggression underlying the rape), so he is incapacitated in terms of his offense but may still be released into society. The ultimate incapacitation is of course executing the criminal, which eliminates the chance that he or she will prey on innocent people again. We return to this issue in Chapter 13.

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These three approaches to punishment have one important thing in common: They all focus on the future social consequences of punishment; in other words, they are forward-looking. If there are no future benefi ts to be had from punishing some- one, then a forward-looking theory will not recommend punishment. Because the primary forward-looking social theory today is utilitarianism, these three approaches are often labeled utilitarian. By now you may wonder why these viewpoints don’t address what for many is the best reason for punishing someone: the fact that he or she is guilty of a crime. But that is, in effect, a separate reason for punishment; because utilitarianism ap- proves of punishment only if there is social good involved, it is theoretically possible that the overall benefi ts of punishing some guilty person are minimal, whereas the benefi ts of punishing someone who is not guilty may be considerable—instantly punishing a scapegoat may have a deterrent effect that far outweighs that of catching and convicting the real perpetrator some time in the future (and it may even deter the perpetrator from doing it again). In addition, setting an example by punishing someone with disproportionate harshness is a utilitarian possibility. If, however, we think that it ought to be of some importance whether a person is actually guilty and that we should take the magnitude of the crime into consideration, we must look to the fourth theory.

Retribution A person should be punished because he or she has committed a crime, and the punishment should be in proportion to that crime. Social utility does not enter into the picture. The most infl uential thinker advocating retribution as the only proper reason for punishment is Kant. The principle he applies is lex talionis, the law of retaliation. Kant would not approve of the three forward-looking approaches because they allow us to use a person merely as a means to achieve social utility. When we use a person to set an example, others may be deterred from committing a crime; the goal of incapacitation is to keep the public safe; rehabilitation does indeed make a better person out of the criminal, but who decides how the criminal ought to be? We, society. So even here Kant implies that society is using people for its own purpose, which to him is demeaning, because it means that people are reduced to being means to an end only. The only acceptable reason for punishment is to show the criminal the respect any person deserves: It is to assume that he or she decided freely to commit the crime. With freedom comes responsibility, so if we want the freedom of never being treated merely as means to an end, we must also accept the responsibility that goes with it. If we transgress, we should be punished for our transgressions. As I mentioned earlier, these four reasons might be found in a legal text on re- tributive justice. But if you ask a person without any legal training why a criminal should be punished, she or he might answer in the following way: “Well, it just makes us feel better to see the murderer (or rapist, or burglar) get punished.” In Chapter 13 we return to the issue of vengeance and justice in the sections on the concept of just war and on the death penalty. For now it will suffi ce to outline the fundamental difference between a vengeance approach and a justice approach, as some scholars see it.

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Vengeance Vengeance and retribution have something in common: They are both backward-looking theories, looking to the past (asking, “Who did this?”) in order to punish the guilty. Like retribution, the approach based on vengeance seeks to pun- ish the criminal because of the crime committed, but according to most retributivists there are three major differences between retribution and vengeance:

1. Retribution is based on logic, whereas vengeance is an emotional response: It is possible for people bent on vengeance to take their anger out on individuals other than the guilty person.

2. Retribution is a public act, done with the authority of the government, whereas vengeance is a private enterprise, undertaken by private citizens (vigilantes).

3. Retribution wants punishment to be proportionate to the crime, but vengeance may go beyond that and exceed the damage done by the criminal.

Generally, people who are in favor of the death penalty but who are critical of utilitarianism emphasize that there is a big philosophical difference between revenge and retribution, since they see retribution as legally and morally acceptable, but ven- geance as unacceptable. A small minority of scholars who are in favor of the death penalty claim that revenge is indeed the overriding emotion behind the support for capital punishment and that it is also an appropriate reason. However, a growing number of scholars and other critics of the death penalty voice the opinion that as much as we think we can fi nd reasons why revenge and retribution are different, it comes down to the same thing: a wish to get back at the criminal, to even the score. In Chapter 13 we take a closer look at the death penalty debate. We have now considered three forward-looking and two backward-looking arguments for punishment, although the last one (vengeance) is rarely consid- ered legitimate by philosophers of law. But are forward- and backward-looking theories always destined to be opposite? We know that utilitarians and Kantians don’t agree on the basic moral motivations, but in real life most of us believe that sometimes people ought to be punished because it will deter others from doing the same thing; sometimes we want the wrongdoer incapacitated; and sometimes we think a fi rst-time offender can be saved from a life of crime and rehabilitated with the proper form of punishment. And sometimes we think a criminal should be punished by the book simply because the crime warrants it and for no other reason. If we as individuals can hold such different views, does it mean we are just inconsistent, or does it mean we have some deeper, if inarticulated, understanding of the issue? John Rawls has a suggestion that may shed some light on this phenomenon. In his paper “Two Concepts of Rules” (1955), he says utilitarians and retributiv- ists are both right—but in different ways. In individual court cases we appeal to retributivism: A burglar goes to prison because he has committed a crime, and the crime determines the length of the sentence. But why do we send people to prison in general? To make society a better place—which is the point utilitarian- ism makes. So the judge’s reason for sending a person to prison is retributivist, but the legislator’s reason for making laws is utilitarian. The danger, as Rawls

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sees it, is that this defi nition might allow the utilitarian to make laws that might sacrifi ce the innocent for the sake of social benefi ts for the many—the problem of “sheer numbers” which you encountered in Chapter 5. Thus the application of utilitarianism must be very careful; in other words, a system of checks and bal- ances is needed.

Is Anger Ever Appropriate?

A utilitarian, forward-looking penologist (someone interested in theory of punish- ment) usually sees no difference between retribution and vengeance: Retributivism is just a fancy word for the emotional demand for revenge. A retributivist will argue that the difference between vengeance and retribution is that vengeance is based on an emotion, anger, whereas retributivism is based on a wish for a proportional, logical response. That would imply that if we feel anger toward a perpetrator, whether as victims or as other members of society, we are merely being emotional and should set aside those emotions for the sake of logic. But is that desirable, or even possible? In For Capital Punishment: Crime and the Morality of the Death Penalty (1979), Walter Berns argues that anger has a deep connection with justice that modern penology hasn’t understood. Berns says,

If men are not saddened when someone else suffers, or angry when someone else suffers unjustly, the implication is that they do not care for anyone other than themselves or that they lack some quality that befi ts a man.  .  .  . Punishment arises out of the demand for justice, and justice is demanded by angry, morally indignant men; its purpose is to sat- isfy that moral indignation and thereby promote the law-abidingness that, it is assumed, accompanies it.

(In 1979 gender-neutral language hadn’t yet become the norm in academic publica- tions, but I assume Berns is talking about morally indignant men and women.) If we are not angry, says Berns, it is because we are selfi sh utilitarians who are concerned only with compensations, but you can’t compensate victims for the loss of their physi- cal integrity resulting from rape or for the loss of their life. Not all crimes can be balanced by compensation, but without righteous moral indignation we won’t have an understanding of that. The British philosopher P. F. Strawson argues, in his paper “Freedom and Re- sentment” (1982), that it is normal and appropriate to react emotionally to other people’s actions toward us. We feel resentment if we are directly harmed, and we feel moral indignation if our involvement is indirect. To that the philosopher of law Diane Whiteley adds in her paper “The Victim and the Justifi cation of Punishment” from 1998 that we must also take human empathy into account, because it is “by virtue of human beings possessing the three natural capacities of moral understanding, self-evaluation, and empathy that they have the capability to be moral agents.” That means the demand for justice and punishment becomes society’s communication of the victim’s resentment and the community’s moral indignation. In this way, the community stands up for the victim and shows the person respect. If there is no

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CRIMINAL JUSTICE: RESTORATIVE VERSUS RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE 361

(or too lenient) punishment, the community sends out two messages: that it feels no “retributive sentiment” (or, as Berns would say, anger) toward the criminal and no respect for the victim. And a victim who feels no resentment and doesn’t insist on punishment has too little self-esteem. A battered spouse who doesn’t want her (or his) spouse punished may have internalized the spouse’s claim that she has deserved being beaten. And the community that feels no moral indignation over a crime being committed against one of its members fails to stand up for that member and fails to show the respect for the victim that she deserves. But, says Whiteley, that is not merely a blindly emotional response. (You’ll re- member Martha Nussbaum in Chapter 1 arguing that emotions can have their own inherent logic and can be rational responses to situations.) Provided that the victim’s resentment is directed toward the right person, and for the right reason, it is an appropriate sentiment, and the community’s moral indignation is an endorsement of the victim’s resentment as well as a condemnation of the criminal act that has attempted to deprive the victim of moral value (because if you value someone you don’t commit a crime against him or her—committing a crime against someone is reducing her or him to merely a means to an end of instrumental value only). Resent- ment and indignation are proper elements in the process of justice and punishment if they lead not to pure revenge but to retribution based on a natural fellow feeling within a community. Berns’s, Strawson’s, and Whiteley’s arguments have been considerably strength- ened by the recent fi ndings in brain research. As you’ll remember from previous chapters, Antonio Damasio and other neuroscientists have found that humans have a natural capacity for empathy, within an area in the brain that, if undamaged, will make them feel reluctant to harm other people, in particular when the harm requires a physical, immediate contact. The twentieth-century favorite analogy to brain function, the computer model —utterly rational and unemotional—is slowly being abandoned in favor of a deeper understanding of how our mind works, and scientists across the fi eld are coming to similar conclusions: The human cognition isn’t just rational but also deeply emotional, and proper thinking requires a healthy emotional brain. However, there is a big difference between regarding an emotion such as anger as relevant and allowing emotions to decide for us. As you know, Nussbaum ar- gues in favor of viewing emotions as morally relevant but not morally all-important: Reason has to play the main part in our moral decisions. Some social commenta- tors have pointed out that in recent years, emotions seem to have become more legitimate as a deciding factor in public situations, whereas previously reason would have the fi nal word, increasing the danger that we may lose the calming infl uence of rationality—the infl uence that Plato and Kant so staunchly defended (as indeed most philosophers always have). Case in point: the trial of Scott Peterson in Modesto, California, accused and found guilty of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci Peterson, on Christmas Eve 2002 and dumping her in the San Francisco Bay, where her body and that of her unborn baby, Conner, fl oated ashore months later. This case gripped the nation for two years. Whereas the guilt phase of a trial is supposed to lay out the facts, the penalty phase allows family members and others to make emotional “vic- tim impact statements” for the jury to consider. During the penalty phase, emotions

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362 CHAPTER 7 PERSONHOOD, R IGHTS , AND JUSTICE

ran high, as is customary, when Laci’s mother talked on the witness stand about her grief and anger at her daughter’s murderer. After the jury came back with a death penalty recommendation in December 2004—a surprise to most pundits because Peterson did not have a prior criminal record—individual jurors explained that Scott Peterson’s lack of emotion during the trial was the primary reason for their recommen- dation. Some commentators asked, Is this allowing emotions to go too far within the legal system? I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Study Questions

1. What are Dworkin’s two models? Explain, and apply his second model to the issue of protecting a country against terrorism.

2. What does it mean that science is supposed to be value-free? Do you agree? Why or why not? Apply the theory of value-free science to contemporary issues such as cloning and genetic engineering.

3. Explain the four principles of equality. Which one do you fi nd most reason- able? Why?

4. Explain the concepts of negative and positive rights, and identify supporters of each theory.

5. What is the “original position”? Explain the pros and cons of Rawls’s theory.

6. Explain forward-looking and backward-looking justice and apply both to the issue of affi rmative action.

7. Explain forward-looking and backward-looking theories of punishment. Which approach seems the most reasonable to you? Why?

8. Can anger ever be justifi ed as a reason for punishment? Explain, referring to Berns and Whiteley.

Primary Readings and Narratives

The Primary Readings are the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights; an excerpt from Jürgen Habermas’s The Future of Human Nature; an ex- cerpt from John Rawls’s “Justice as Fairness”; an excerpt from Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”; and two newspaper op-ed pieces by John Berteaux, “Defi ning Racism in the 21st Century,” and “Unheard, Unseen, Unchosen.” The fi rst Narrative is a summary of the fi lm The Island, a science fi ction story about ex- ploitation of human beings cloned for spare parts; the second is a summary of the fi lm Gattaca, about genetic engineering creating a human super-race as well as an underclass. The third Narrative is a summary of the 1988 fi lm Mississippi Burning, about the murders of three civil rights activists in 1964. The fourth is a summary of the fi lm Hotel Rwanda, the true story of the confl ict between Hutus and Tutsis, and the heroic efforts of local hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina to rescue as many civilians as possible.

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PRIMARY READING: THE UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS 363

Primary Reading

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

1948.

Now, Therefore, The General Assembly proclaims

This universal declaration of human rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in the Declaration without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdic- tional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4: No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treat- ment or punishment.

Article 6: Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimina- tion in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8: Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribu- nals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10: Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an inde- pendent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11: 1. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until

proved guilty according to law in the public trial at which he has had all the guaran- tees necessary for his defense.

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364 CHAPTER 7 PERSONHOOD, R IGHTS , AND JUSTICE

2. No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13: 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of

each state. 2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his

country.

Article 14: 1. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from

persecution. 2. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-

political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15: 1. Everyone has the right to a nationality. 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change

his nationality.

Article 16: 1. Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion,

have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

2. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intended spouses.

3. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17: 1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20: 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. 2. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

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Article 21: 1. Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or

through freely chosen representatives. 2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country. 3. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will

shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22: Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international cooperation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, so- cial and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23: 1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable

conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. 2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. 3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for

himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24: Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25: 1. Everyone has the right to a standard living adequate for the health and well-being of

himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and neces- sary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26: 1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary

and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall pro- mote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

PRIMARY READING: THE UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS 365

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366 CHAPTER 7 PERSONHOOD, R IGHTS , AND JUSTICE

Article 27: 1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to

enjoy the arts and to share in scientifi c advancement and its benefi ts. 2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting

from any scientifi c, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28: Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29: 1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development

of his personality is possible. 2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limi-

tations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

3. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30: Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Study Questions

1. Find examples of negative and positive rights, and explain the difference.

2. Evaluate these articles from a libertarian approach and from Rawls’s approach.

3. In your opinion, are there any rights that should be on the list but aren’t included? Are there any rights you disagree with? Explain.

Primary Reading

The Future of Human Nature

J Ü R G E N H A B E R M A S

Excerpt, 2003.

In this excerpt, written in January 2002 specifi cally for the American bioethics debate as a postscript to the original German edition of 2001, Habermas argues that some forms of eugenics should be allowed, while others should be prohibited, based on Kant’s principle of never treating a rational human being merely as a means to an end. Since Habermas has already introduced certain concepts in the text, you need to be aware of their meaning: Liberal eugenics: genetic manipulation decided by the parent of the child. Reviewer Mary Rorty suggests that a better translation would have been “libertarian eugenics,” indicating that the parents have the full freedom to decide for their child.

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PRIMARY READING: T H E F U T U R E O F H U M A N N A T U R E 367

Negative eugenics: genetic manipulation that removes predispositions toward illness or disabilities for the child to enjoy a life with more options. Also referred to as “thera- peutic genetic intervention.” Positive eugenics: genetic manipulation that adds features to a child’s DNA in order to alter its future. Also referred to as “eugenic enhancement.”

Can we know what is potentially good for another? This may be so in particular cases. But even then our knowledge remains fallible, and may be applied only in the form of clini- cal suggestions for somebody whom the advisor already knows as an individuated being. Irrevocable decisions over the genetic design of an unborn person are always presumptu- ous. A person who potentially stands to benefi t from such a decision must always preserve the ability to say no. Since we can have no objective knowledge of values beyond moral insight, and since a fi rst person perspective is inscribed in all of our ethical knowledge, we overtax the fi nite constitution of the human spirit by expecting that we can determine which sort of genetic inheritance will be “the best” for the lives of our children.

As citizens in a democratic community, which must legally regulate practices of eu- genic intervention, we surely will not be able to disburden ourselves from the task of an- ticipating the possible agreement or refusal of those affected by eugenic practices—not, in any event, if we want to permit therapeutic genetic interventions (or even selections) in cases of serious genetic disorders in the interests of the handicapped themselves. The pragmatic objections to the entire project of separating positive from negative eugenics which insist on the fl uid boundary between both are based upon plausible examples. And it is as plausible to predict an effect of cumulative familiarization that will push the limits of tolerance for genetic interventions already regarded as “normal” ever further toward more and more demanding norms of health. However, there is a regulative idea that establishes a standard for determining a boundary, one which is surely in need of continuous interpretation, but which is not basically contestable: All therapeutic genetic interventions, including prenatal ones, must remain dependent on consent that is at least counterfactually attributed to those possibly affected by them.

Public discussions among citizens on the permissibility of such negative eugenic mea- sures will be touched off anew each time lawmakers propose another entry on the list of indicated genetic disorders. Each new authorization of a prenatal therapeutic genetic inter- vention constitutes a tremendous burden for those parents who have principled reasons for not wanting to make use of the license. Whoever deviates from a permitted or even a famil- iarized eugenic practice, and takes the risk of an avoidable birth defect into the bargain, has to fear accusations of neglect, and possibly the resentment of their own child.

In anticipating these consequences, requirements for justifi cation (which confront the lawmaker at each step in this path) are fortunately quite high. Though the terms of the debates remain different, the general opinion- and will-formation will be just as deeply polarized as it was in the abortion debate.

The dangers of constraining the ethical freedom of a genetically modifi ed person can never be ruled out a priori as long as the intervention is performed one-sidedly, that is, no longer with the clinical attitude toward another person whose consent has always to be secured. Attributing such consent can only be justifi ed in cases where there is a certain prognosis of extreme suffering. We can only expect a consensus among otherwise highly divergent value orientations in the face of the challenge to prevent extreme evils rejected by everybody. I have, in the preceding text, described the problematic case of a

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368 CHAPTER 7 PERSONHOOD, R IGHTS , AND JUSTICE

young person who retrospectively learns of a genetic programming carried out before her own birth, and who cannot identify with the genetically fi xed intentions of her parents. The danger for such a person is that she is no longer capable of understanding herself as the undivided author of her own life, and thus feels bound by the chains of the previous generation’s genetic decisions.

Certainly decisions of this kind, reaching straight through a person’s socialization as a whole, affect the ethical freedom in an indirect manner. They risk disqualifying the harmed person for an unconditioned participation in the language game of moral life, without immediately interfering with the relations among participants themselves. We can only take part in the moral language game under the idealizing presupposition that each of us carries the sole responsibility for giving ethical shape to his or her own life, and enjoys equal treatment with complete reciprocity of rights and duties. But if eugenic manipulation changes the rules of the language game itself, this act can no longer be criticized according to those rules. Therefore, liberal eugenics provokes the question of how to value morality as a whole.

Study Questions

1. How does Habermas suggest that we try to imagine what is good for another person?

2. What is the “regulative idea” mentioned by Habermas, and why is it important?

3. Habermas assumes, earlier in the text, that we engage in moral discussions as a “lan- guage game” which we qualify for because we are human beings. What does he mean that the language game might change if humans are genetically manipulated? Is he right? Why or why not?

4. Habermas sets up strict criteria for what kind of eugenics we should allow. Why does he allow only for negative eugenics, and not positive eugenics? Do you agree? Why or why not?

5. As you read in the chapter text, Habermas would not allow for any genetic manipula- tion of embryos. What would be the consequences of such a decision? Would you agree that this is a morally sound policy, or would you disagree? Explain.

Primary Reading

Justice as Fairness

J O H N R A W L S

Essay, 1958. Excerpt.

John Rawls is generally considered the most infl uential American social thinker in the twentieth century. Infl uenced by Kant’s philosophy of never using another person simply as a means to an end, Rawls outlines a theory of justice based on the ideas that utilitari- anism is unacceptable, and that it is possible to agree on basic principles of justice if we agree to see one another as equals. In this excerpt from his famous paper written years

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PRIMARY READING: J U S T I C E A S F A I R N E S S 369

before his even more famous book, A Theory of Justice (1971), Rawls outlines the condi- tions under which inequality might be acceptable in a society of equals.

The conception of justice which I want to develop may be stated in the form of two principles as follows: fi rst, each person participating in a practice, or affected by it, has an equal right to the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all; and second, inequalities are arbitrary unless it is reasonable to expect that they will work out for everyone’s advantage, and provided the positions and offi ces to which they attach, or from which they may be gained, are open to all. These principles express justice as a complex of three ideas: liberty, equality, and reward for services contributing to the common good.

The term “person” is to be construed variously depending on the circumstances. On some occasions it will mean human individuals, but on others it may refer to na- tions, provinces, business fi rms, churches, teams, and so on. The principles of justice apply in all these instances, although there is a certain logical priority to the case of human individuals. As I shall use the term “person,” it will be ambiguous in the manner indicated.

The fi rst principle holds, of course, only if other things are equal: that is, while there must always be a justifi cation for departing from the initial position of equal liberty (which is defi ned by the pattern of rights and duties, powers and liabilities, established by a practice), and the burden of proof is placed on him who would depart from it, nevertheless, there can be, and often there is, a justifi cation for doing so. Now, that similar particular cases, as defi ned by a practice, should be treated similarly as they arise, is part of the very concept of a practice; it is involved in the notion of an activity in accordance with rules. The fi rst principle expresses an analogous conception, but as applied to the structure of practices themselves. It holds, for example, that there is a presumption against the distinctions and classifi cations made by legal systems and other practices to the extent that they infringe on the original and equal liberty of the persons participating in them. The second principle defi nes how this presumption may be rebutted.

It might be argued at this point that justice requires only an equal liberty. If, how- ever, a greater liberty were possible for all without loss or confl ict, then it would be ir- rational to settle on a lesser liberty. There is no reason for circumscribing rights unless their exercise would be incompatible, or would render the practice defi ning them less effective. Therefore no serious distortion of the concept of justice is likely to follow them including within it the concept of the greatest equal liberty.

The second principle defi nes what sorts of inequalities are permissible; it specifi es how the presumption laid down by the fi rst principle may be put aside. Now by inequali- ties it is best to understand not any differences between offi ces and positions, but differ- ences in the benefi ts and burdens attached to them either directly or indirectly, such as prestige and wealth, or liability to taxation and compulsory services. Players in a game do not protest against there being different positions, such as batter, pitcher, catcher, and the like, nor to there being various privileges and powers as specifi ed by the rules; nor do the citizens of a country object to there being the different offi ces of government such as president, senator, governor, judge, and so on, each with their special rights and duties. It is not differences of this kind that are normally thought of as inequalities, but differences in the resulting distribution established by a practice, or made possible by it,

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of the things men strive to attain or avoid. Thus they may complain about the pattern of honors and rewards set up by a practice ( e.g. the privileges and salaries of government offi cials) or they may object to the distribution of power and wealth which results from the various ways in which men avail themselves of the opportunities allowed by it ( e.g. the concentration of wealth which may develop in a free price system allowing large entrepreneurial or speculative gains).

It should be noted that the second principle holds that an inequality is allowed only if there is reason to believe that the practice with the inequality, or resulting in it, will work for the advantage of every party engaging in it. Here it is important to stress that every party must gain from the inequality. Since the principle applies to practices, it implies that the representative man in every offi ce or position defi ned by a practice, when he views it as a going concern, must fi nd it reasonable to prefer his condition and prospects with the inequality to what they would be under the practice without it. The principle excludes, therefore, the justifi cation of inequalities on the grounds that the dis- advantages of those in one position are outweighed by the greater advantages of those in another position. This rather simple restriction is the main modifi cation I wish to make in the utilitarian principle as usually understood. When coupled with the notion of a practice, it is a restriction of consequence, and one which some utilitarians, for example Hume and Mill, have used in their discussions of justice without realizing apparently its signifi cance, or at least without calling attention to it. Why it is a signifi cant modifi cation of principle, changing one’s conception of justice entirely, the whole of my argument will show.

Further, it is also necessary that the various offi ces to which special benefi ts or burdens attach are open to all. It may be, for example, to the common advantage, as just defi ned, to attach special benefi ts to certain offi ces. Perhaps by doing so the req- uisite talent can be attracted to them and encouraged to give its best efforts. But any offi ces having special benefi ts must be worn in a fair competition in which contestants are judged on their merits. If some offi ces were not open, those excluded would nor- mally be justifi ed in feeling unjustly treated, even if they benefi ted from the greater efforts of those who were allowed to compete for them. Now if one can assume that offi ces are open, it is necessary only to consider the design of practices themselves and how they jointly, as a system, work together. It will be a mistake to focus attention on the varying relative positions of particular persons, who may be known to us by their proper names, and to require that each such change, as a once for all transaction viewed in isolation, must be in itself just. It is the system of practices which is to be judged, and judged from a general point of view: unless one is prepared to criticize it from the standpoint of a representative man holding some particular offi ce, one has no complaint against it.

Study Questions

1. Describe Rawls’s two principles in your own words.

2. Can you think of a policy involving inequality that Rawls might approve of?

3. Judging from this excerpt, what would you think Rawls’s position on affi rmative action might be? Explain.

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PRIMARY READING: A L E T T E R F R O M B I R M I N G H A M J A I L 371

Martin Luther King, Jr., baptist minister and civil rights leader. He promoted a nonviolent political approach, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. In 1968 he was assassinated.

Primary Reading

A Letter from Birmingham Jail

M A R T I N L U T H E R K I N G , J R .

Essay, April 16, 1963. Excerpt.

This open letter was written by the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929– 1968), in response to a published statement from eight clergymen from Alabama who had criticized King’s activities as “unwise and untimely.” As president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King had taken part in a nonviolent protest against racial segregation in Birmingham, and he and others had subsequently been jailed for “parading without a permit.” King notes in the published version of his letter that he began writing his response to the clergymen in the margin of the newspaper where the statement had appeared and continued on scraps of paper because that was all he had available in his jail cell.

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at fi rst glance it may seem

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rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the fi rst to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I-it” relation- ship for an “I-thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is infl icted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state’s segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democrati- cally structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

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PRIMARY READING: D E F I N I N G R A C I S M I N T H E 2 1 S T C E N T U R Y 373

Study Questions

1. How does King justify advocating breaking some laws and obeying others? Would you agree with him? Why or why not?

2. What, according to King, is unsound about segregation? Explain. Would that also apply to a group of people who would voluntarily segregate themselves from other groups?

3. How does King reconcile the breaking of an unjust law with respect for the law? Do you agree? Why or why not?

4. Is King’s ideal of nonviolent resistance to unjust laws a concept that has mainly historical interest, or might it have something to say to people of the twenty-fi rst century? Explain.

Primary Reading

Two Texts on Discrimination

John Berteaux is an American philosopher who specializes in social ethics and philosophy of race. In addition to teaching and lecturing, he pens a column in the Monterey County Herald. For Berteaux, racism in the United States is no longer a blatant, in-your-face of- fense; it is more subtle, and in some cases even unconscious, based on the phenomenon of “privileged race.” Most white people don’t question their race or its privileges; they simply take them for granted—not necessarily in a haughty sense but because they have never lost or had to question the privileges of whiteness. In the fi rst text, Berteaux, in a nonhostile manner, makes a point of raising white America’s awareness of this subtle everyday form of discrimination. In the second text, he asks himself if he may not be perpetuating another kind of discrimination, against women, in his job as philosophy professor.

Defi ning Racism in the 21st Century

J O H N B E R T E A U X

Op-ed essay from the Monterey County Herald, January 17, 2005.

With Martin Luther King’s birthday approaching, some things occurred recently that got me thinking about what racism means in the twenty-fi rst century. For instance, typically, Sundays, my wife Susie and I set out to the Monterey Sports Center to swim laps. Three weeks ago I stood at the end of the pool twiddling my thumbs waiting for a lane to become available. Someone left one of the lanes to my right. As I prepared to get into the water a white lady strolled past me, jumped into the pool, and started to swim laps. Was she ill-mannered? Maybe she didn’t see me? Should I say something or forget it?

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A couple of months ago, I was waiting to be seated at a restaurant. I had been there for a couple of minutes. As a result, a line started to form behind me. Looking up from my newspaper I saw the hostess walking my way. She smiled at me—I thought. I replied with a smile. She strode past me and began talking to the fellow behind me in line. After chatting for a second she asked him “are you here for breakfast?” She led him to a seat. Am I invisible? I guess being at the front of the line doesn’t mean you can count on being seated fi rst.

I stopped in at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula to see Joanne Sherrill-Drummer. Joanne works at the hospital, was born in Seaside and has lived on the Peninsula most of her life. During our conversation she spoke of things she has learned not to count on. She does not count on being able to open the newspaper and see people of her own race positively represented. If a traffi c cop pulls her over she doesn’t count on it not being because of her race. She does not count on her skin color not affect- ing her in fi nancial situations. Joanne did not list these points with resentment. Rather, she said she was not intimidated by these differences and, in fact, they have helped her develop a sense of self.

John Berteaux, American philosopher, professor at California State University Monterey Bay, and columnist for the Monterey County Herald.

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PRIMARY READING: U N S E E N , U N H E A R D , U N C H O S E N 375

I drove over to Mel Mason’s offi ce to solicit his thoughts about these events. Is any of this racism I asked. Mel responded, “If you were a white man would the woman at the pool have failed to see you? If the hostess were a black woman and you were in front of the line would she have seated you fi rst?” While it isn’t cross burning or lynching and no one yelled a racial epithet, it sure speaks to a sense of privilege.

Interestingly, after that woman seized the lane I was about to swim in, I marched to the other end of the pool. I reached an empty lane at about the same time as an- other fellow—a white man. He said, “You take it. You’ve been waiting a while.” And that hostess reappeared a couple of minutes later, guided me to a table, and asked if I wanted coffee.

Unseen, Unheard, Unchosen

J O H N B E R T E A U X

Op-ed essay from the Monterey County Herald, March 6, 2006.

Usually I am ambling along across campus when out of the blue I am overtaken by a niggling uncertainty. In the distance I see Bridgett, Shannon, Vanessa, Rachel or one of the many coeds taking one of my classes. I stop and call out. I call out because I recall that they tried to ask a question or comment on something during the class period and I fear I overlooked them—didn’t see their hands—thought I would get back to them and didn’t. “Sorry I missed you in class today,” I confess. The standard response is, “You answered all my questions.” The problem is: that particular response doesn’t help.

About four or fi ve years ago, in a class at San Diego State University, I brought up the problem of the invisibility of women in the classroom. I was surprised at the number of women in the room who had developed techniques for dealing with just this issue.

Sadly, most of the techniques were like that of Danusia. Danusia was a returning student, with two young daughters. She was a hard worker, bright, and I would guess in her early thirties—a budding philosopher. During the discussion she said that generally she gave a professor a couple of chances. The second or third time that she was ignored in the classroom she simply stopped raising her hand. Of course, within the period of a half an hour after the discussion, she raised her hand. I said, “Give me a second let me fi nish this thought.” As I fi nished the thought I promptly called on a young man whose hand was up. He was sitting right behind Danusia. Realizing what I had done I stopped the young man in mid-sentence and allowed Danusia to ask her question.

As I remember, everyone in the class, including Danusia and me, laughed. Certainly the laughter and my apology changed little. Women suffer because of the unconscious assumptions and actions of well meaning people in everyday interactions—assumptions and actions that are invisible to us.

“Was your hand up,” I ask? “No,” she replies. I go on talking and then three, four, fi ve hands go up at once. As I speak, I mull over, “Whose hand went up fi rst?” I am not sure.

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Study Questions

1. Would you agree with Berteaux that the two incidents of being “invisible” in the fi rst text refl ect a subtle form of modern racism? If yes, what can be done about it? If no, do you think Berteaux misread the situation? Explain. What signifi cance do the last two incidents in the fi rst text have?

2. Defi ne racism, as opposed to bigotry. In your view, is racism always directed from white people toward people of color, or can racism go in other directions?

3. Do you fi nd that it is harder for women to get their point across in the classroom? If yes, is that due to the same kind of unconscious discrimination that Berteaux points out in the fi rst text? Is Berteaux discriminating against the women in his classroom? Why or why not?

Narrative

The Island

M I C H A E L B A Y ( D I R E C T O R )

C A S P I A N T R E D W E L L - O W E N A N D A L E X K U R T Z M A N ( S C R E E N P L A Y )

Film, 2005. Summary.

A young man awakens from a nightmare about falling overboard from a boat and drown- ing. He is in a sterile, all-white room: a hospital room? a dorm room? Dressed in a fresh, white jumpsuit, he leaves the room and moves with other men in white jumpsuits along hallways and stairs in some enormous, cold, impersonal underground facility. The time is the future, the last decades of the twenty-fi rst century. Together with other men and women in white jumpsuits, overseen by black-clad guards, the young man watches the daily installment of the Lottery on the big wall screens: A lucky winner is chosen to go to the Island! A happy face comes on the screen: A jubilant man who never thought his time would come now gets to go to the Island and breathe real air and swim in the ocean. We see shots of the Island, a tropical paradise with blue waters. Everybody wants to go to the Island, and everyone is told, “Someday your turn will come; be patient!” All the residents follow a carefully watched diet and a workout program so they will be in their best shape when they get to leave for the Island. That is all anyone knows, but questions are beginning to be asked. At breakfast, the young man meets with a young woman whom he obviously knows. She teaches him how to get bacon added to his bland breakfast by fl attering the woman working the food line. Next, he goes to an appointment with someone very important, Dr. Merrick. His doctor? His boss? We hear that Merrick is worried about him, and we fi nd out that his name is Lincoln 6 Echo. We also fi nd out that he is being chastised for seeing too much of the young woman, Jordan 2 Delta. Friendships are okay, but any kind of physical and mental closeness is forbidden. But what really worries Dr. Merrick is that

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Lincoln is beginning to ask questions: Why is everything white? Why the diet rules? Why is everybody just hanging out, waiting to go to the Island? Merrick reminds Lincoln how lucky he is to have survived the “contamination,” an apocalyptic disaster that made the air above unbreathable and life on the planet unlivable—except for the Island. Survivors are found on the outside, rescued, and brought to the facility. They are the ones dressed in white jumpsuits. At least, that is the story everyone is told—nobody has any memo- ries of actually being rescued. But they do have memories of having had lives before the contamination, normal childhoods and so on. While he and Merrick have been talking, Lincoln has drawn a picture of the boat in his dreams, a very sleek design, with the name Renovatio painted on the side. Lincoln doesn’t know what it means, and Merrick is disturbed at the drawing. Where does this image come from? The doctor straps Lincoln down and subjects him to a painful brain scan with nano-robots, and lets him go. Later in the day, Lincoln sneaks out to the unoffi cial part of the facility, to a plant section where he talks to one of the workers, McCord. McCord gives him hints of what life is like for those who aren’t “special,” like Lincoln, and makes him swear he will tell nobody. Lincoln sees McCord’s collection of pinups, and we realize that Lincoln just sees

In the fi lm The Island (DreamWorks, 2005) life can be prolonged with parts from clones, if you’re wealthy enough. Once an organ is harvested, the clone dies. According to the manufacturers of the “products,” these clones are not conscious, but the manufacturers are lying to their clients: Without consciousness, the clones die. In order to keep the clones pacifi ed, they are told that they will go to “the Island,” a tropical paradise. When called to “the Island,” the clones are taken into surgery to be harvested. Here clones Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson) are running for their lives, trying to save themselves and the other clones.

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pretty girls with clothes that are too small for them—he has no idea what “sexy” means. Lincoln is like a bright child before puberty, just like Jordan. He has no idea about poli- tics or religion, but he is not stupid. On his way out he captures a large moth trapped in the air vent—a moth that shouldn’t be alive if the world is contaminated. And he asks more questions. Meanwhile, a young white-clad pregnant woman starts having contractions and is ecstatic: It means she and her baby will be going to the Island! We follow her upstairs, where we see what is really happening: She isn’t sent off to any Island; she gives birth, and as she looks at her baby with love in her eyes, she is given a lethal injection by the nurse. Her job on this earth is done. The nurse takes the baby and hands it to a young waiting couple, and we see that the woman looks identical to the young mother who was killed. The young woman was a clone, a “product,” an expendable commodity, created to give birth for the “real” person who was unable to. We watch another kind of birth, taking place in another part of the facility—the birth of a fully grown person from a nutrient bubble—and we realize that the white-clad, healthy, idle people waiting to go to the Island are clones, who will be killed so their organs can be harvested and used to save the lives of their “sponsors,” the “real” persons. Each clone is branded on the wrist and supplied with a nonremovable identity bracelet that works as a GPS tracking device. As “luck” will have it, Jordan 2 Delta is the next Lottery winner, and she happily prepares for her departure for the Island the next morning. That same night Lincoln has his usual nightmare of drowning and gets up to liberate the bug he captured. But on his way up to the air vent, he fi nds himself on the upper fl oor, the surgery section, and wit- nesses the death of the woman who just gave birth, as well as a desperate escape attempt: The man from the day before who was so happy about going to the Island is now run- ning for his life, moments away from having his heart removed. He is hunted down as Lincoln watches, and now Lincoln is the one who runs for his life. He wakes up Jordan and tries to explain the situation to her—that there is no Island. So now they are both on the run, looking for an exit. They make their way out, pursued by security, and fi nd themselves on a desert mesa—no civilization, but the air is breathable, and there is a road leading somewhere. Down that road is a diner with the same logo as one on a matchbook McCord has given Lincoln, so they go in and inquire about McCord. It becomes obvi- ous that they may be smart but have no savvy at all. Jordan doesn’t know the power of alcohol, and Lincoln has no idea how to interpret the cryptic message from the bartender that McCord is “in the can.” Lincoln confronts McCord in the men’s room, and the plant worker takes the two clones to his home, where he tells them the truth about their origin, and about their intended fate: to be harvested by their originals, who need their organs to stay alive. And what of the memories they have of their childhoods? Mere imprints, twelve stories with variations. And how long have they been alive? Three or four years. They are simply spare parts for rich people who want to live forever, but the clients are told that the clones are not conscious—a deliberate lie. Meanwhile, there is a tour for prospective clients at the facility. The clients are told that the clones have no minds and that it takes twelve months to grow a clone ready to have its organs harvested. According to a law passed in 2050, only clones in a persistent vegetative state can be produced, so the moral issue of creating life to take it does not

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NARRATIVE: T H E I S L A N D 379

apply. But Merrick has a separate meeting with an African man, Deleuran, a merce- nary with the best military special units training available; he is being hired to go after Lincoln and Jordan. Merrick explains to him why the clones are not in the vegetative state prescribed by law: The experiment failed; without consciousness, the organs failed, so consciousness is a necessity, and with every clone produced Merrick’s clone factory is breaking the law—but the profi ts are immense. And, he says, the clones are just tools, they have no souls—and using them as tools, he will be able to cure all kinds of diseases. His purpose is, in his eyes, a noble one. Lincoln and Jordan decide to seek out their “sponsors,” the originals, to plead with them to expose the scam, and the abuse and murder of self-aware human beings. Joined by McCord, they head for Los Angeles to fi nd Lincoln’s sponsor, Tom Lincoln, but as they board the train to L.A., the special forces move in and kill McCord. Lincoln and Jordan arrive in Los Angeles, and after a series of dangerous stunts and mishaps (in Los Angeles traffi c of the late twenty-fi rst century, with hovercars and levitated metro trains), they make it to Tom Lincoln’s place. At fi rst, Tom Lincoln is appalled that they show up—why is his “life insurance policy” walking around on the outside? We see Tom Lincoln’s condo; we see that he is a designer, and we see a model of the boat Lincoln has been dreaming about every night, and drawing in Merrick’s offi ce, with the name Renovatio painted on the side. How did Lincoln know? We hear Merrick talking to his aide, revealing that Lincoln’s brain scan shows a rapidly evolving brain with more memories than he has ever experienced—the memories of his “sponsor.” What now worries Merrick is that the entire series of clones may have devel- oped not only consciousness but also human curiosity and the capacity to remember their originals’ lives, and he decides to terminate the entire series and start from scratch. Which means that all the people Lincoln and Jordan know and care about will be killed. Tom Lincoln seems to be warming up to the two clones; he helps them get rid of their bracelets and fl irts a bit with Jordan. But when he promises to help them get on the news to tell their story, Jordan smells a rat. And indeed, when Tom is alone he makes a call to the cloning institute, complaining that his “insurance policy” (which he will need in two years, because of a degenerative sexually transmitted disease) is in his living room. Jordan opts to stay in the apartment while the two Lincolns go to the TV station, but on the way they are hunted down by the mercenaries, who expect Tom to help them catch the clone. Lincoln, however, manages to turn the tables on Tom—as they fi ght, Lincoln manages to slip his bracelet on Tom’s wrist, and since the mercenaries now think they have their clone, Tom is killed. Lincoln 6 Echo takes his place, pretending to be the original. He goes back and is reunited with Jordan, and together they explore what it is humans call “sex.” Now Lincoln could slip away with Jordan on Tom’s boat, go south and live like “real people,” but he still has a job to do: He chooses to go back to the facil- ity. Jordan is captured by Deleuran and delivered to the facility—was it on purpose? De- leuran is a mercenary, but he also has a family history: His father was a rebel, and when he was captured, his sons were branded so everyone would recognize that they were less than human. Deleuran understands rebellions for the sake of human dignity. What will happen next? Will Lincoln live up to his name and “free the slaves,” and expose Merrick as a liar and a murderer? Will Deleuran hand Jordan over to be carved up for parts, or will he side with the rebels? Watch the fi lm and fi nd out!

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Study Questions

1. What is the fi lm’s statement about personhood and human rights? Explain in detail.

2. How would an act utilitarian view this fi lm? A rule utilitarian? A Kantian?

3. Explain the fi lm’s indirect use of the concepts of intrinsic and instrumental value.

4. If scientists succeed in creating human adult clones, should clones be regarded as “having souls”? Is that important? Why or why not?

Narrative

Gattaca

A N D R E W N I C C O L ( S C R E E N W R I T E R A N D D I R E C T O R )

Film, 1997. Summary.

Gattaca is also a science fi ction fi lm, but contrary to The Island there are very few special effects or futuristic inventions. The science fi ction element is almost exclusively one of a thought experiment, a mind game: What if . . .? What if babies could be designed in the lab, eradicating birth defects, nearsightedness, high cancer risk, and so forth? Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Perhaps not. Exploring the possible human future of genetic engineer- ing (reminiscent of Huxley’s Brave New World ), Gattaca tells the story of a near- future society in which each child is the dream child of its parents, the best combination of their genes—if the child is legitimately conceived in the lab, that is. Children conceived the natural way are considered fl awed and will never rise above being manual laborers. Vincent Freeman is such a child, the fi rstborn son of young parents. He is born with myopia and a high probability of heart failure before the age of thirty; even so, as a young adult he outpaces his younger brother, a more socially acceptable individual conceived in a petri dish with all the good genes. At the beginning of the fi lm, we witness Vincent’s parents’ visit to the clinic where they and the doctor discuss the future genetic character- istics of Vincent’s brother-to-be, as yet an embryo. We see how reluctant the parents are at fi rst, being resigned to following custom and merely having the embryo screened for diseases, but the doctor persuades them that life is hard enough as it is, so why not give him all the advantages that are possible? “He will still be you—only the best of you.” But growing up, the one with the ambitious goals is not the perfect boy conceived in the lab, Anton, but his imperfect older brother. Vincent dreams of becoming an astronaut and leaving for the outer solar system, but as a natural-born individual he has no chance— legally. So he embarks on acquiring an illegal identity, not just a new name and history but new DNA, an entirely new genetic profi le. An identity broker sets him up with a genetically perfect individual, Jerome Eugene (“good genes”), who has no use for perfec- tion. Jerome is disabled after a suicide attempt that was never registered, so Vincent pays him “rental” on his identity and moves in with him. The transformation involves surgery

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NARRATIVE: G A T T A C A 381

to add height to Vincent’s legs, but otherwise the two young men are fairly similar. Vincent, now “Jerome,” acquires a dream job at the Gattaca complex, where future space programs are planned and astronauts trained, by submitting urine and blood samples from Eugene. Every morning Eugene prepares samples of more blood, urine, hair and

Gattaca (Columbia Pictures, 1997) posits a future world where respectable persons are conceived and genetically designed in vitro; only slobs and destitute people have children the natural way. Here Vincent/Jerome (Ethan Hawke) and Irene (Uma Thurman) are hiding from the police, and his false identity is in danger of being revealed.

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skin cells, and so forth for Vincent to use for the ongoing tests so that no trace will reveal the identity of the impostor. In the process, Vincent and Eugene become close friends. Everything is working smoothly, and Vincent/Jerome is valued at work for his high intelligence, his physical stamina, and his fl awless genetic code. He meets a young fe- male coworker, Irene, who also longs for the stars but has a heart disease probability that restricts her future as an astronaut. Vincent tries to make her realize that such preset probabilities are nothing but that, probabilities. They are not set in stone. He himself is overdue for his heart attack. He has apparently overcome all social obstacles handed to him by his low birth, but an unforeseen event happens: A Gattaca executive hostile to the current space program is found murdered. Although there is no evidence linking him to the murder, one of Vincent’s eyelashes is found near the scene of the crime. The police run a genetic analysis on it and come up with Vincent’s original identity; but since he as “Jerome” has a different genetic profi le, nobody makes the connection. Even so, he fears he will be found out on the threshold of his dream: He has been slated for the next launch to Titan. As the police detectives move closer to his personal life and his girlfriend herself is beginning to suspect that “Jerome” is not what he seems to be, his audacious attempt at breaking out of the social hierarchy seems to be failing and his true identity seems about to be revealed. Will Vincent go to prison for the murder, or will he go to Titan after all? Will his heart hold out? Will Irene guess his identity? What happens to Eugene? Who killed the executive? And where is Vincent’s brother? The ending of this interesting fi lm offers many surprises.

Study Questions

1. What elements in the Gattaca plot do you think might become a reality in the future? Should we welcome them or fi ght them? Is there a third alternative? Explain your position.

2. The fi lm addresses fi rst and foremost the discrimination against Vincent and others who are being excluded from having a happy, productive life because of their genes. But there is also an underlying angle: a criticism of the predictable future society in which there are no surprises because they have been bred out of the population. What is your opinion? Does society need genetic “surprises,” unforeseeable genius, and generosity as one side of the coin and unpredictable criminal pathology as the other? Or are we better off with the vast majority of the population falling into a predictable norm?

3. Do the characters’ names add something to the story? Explain.

4. When the fi lm came out, very few people caught on to the signifi cance of the title. Now that the Human Genome Project has been completed, it may not seem so mys- terious to us. GATC are the initials of materials in the DNA code: guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine. What do you think the moviemakers wanted to say by calling the fi lm, and Vincent’s workplace, Gattaca?

5. The Gattaca DVD has outtakes (missing scenes), some of which add interesting ele- ments to the story. The scene with Vincent’s parents in the lab, discussing the future

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characteristics of Anton, is longer and gives us an understanding of their switch from skepticism to enthusiasm when they hear that they can determine the boy’s height and even a musical talent! But the addition of the talent turns out to be too expensive, so they settle for having a strong, smart, healthy, tall kid. This is the only time we hear that acquiring good genes is also a matter of money. In a future where genetic engi- neering is the order of the day, do you think the scenario of Gattaca is realistic? Does the outtake make a difference to the story? Should it have been left in?

Narrative

Mississippi Burning

C H R I S G E R O L M O ( S C R E E N W R I T E R )

A L A N P A R K E R ( D I R E C T O R )

Film, 1988. Summary.

On June 21, 1964, three young civil rights activists were murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi, an event that has haunted and divided the community to this day. Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman—one black and two white men—had come to the small Mississippi community to register black voters. They were reported as missing and later were found murdered. The Ku Klux Klan was implicated. Some Klan members were brought to trial and found guilty, and others were acquitted. This fi lm is a fi ctionalized story based on the actual events, and at the end of the summary you can read about an additional feature added to the story in 2005.

It is the early 1960s, in Jessup County, Mississippi, a time of racial segregation— made clear in the opening shot: one modern water cooler for whites and another, older model for blacks. Into this community come three young activists to ensure that black Americans will be able to exercise their right to vote, but in the dead of night their car is chased and overtaken by men in three vehicles, one of them a police car. They force the young men out of the car and shoot them. When the news spreads in the following days that the young men are missing, riots break out, and two FBI agents arrive in town: Rupert Anderson, himself a former sheriff from a small town in Mississippi, and Allan Ward, a go-by-the-book FBI man. Right away we sense that the two men are very differ- ent, with clashing personalities and outlooks. When paying a visit to the offi ce of Sheriff Stuckey, Anderson treats the hostile offi cers like good ol’ boys up to a point—and then we realize that he can get very confrontational. Ward, on the other hand, goes by Bureau regulations. The sheriff’s story is that the three young men were arrested for speeding, released, and drove off. The difference between Ward and Anderson is accentuated when they try to have lunch in the local restaurant: The hostess tells them there are no tables available, but Ward sees empty seats in the section for “Coloreds only.” He heads straight for a seat next

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to a young black man and starts questioning him about what he may have heard regard- ing the activists. The young man is frightened and doesn’t respond to Ward. Everyone is shocked, blacks and whites alike; and Anderson appears to be embarrassed that Ward is not only causing a scene but also approaching the issue in the wrong way. Later we see the indirect consequences of Ward’s approach: The young black man is thrown from a car onto Main Street, beaten up as a warning. In the meantime, we learn more about the antagonism between Anderson and Ward. Anderson says he believes the activists are being used politically, by cynical peo- ple, but for Ward it is a matter of doing what you believe in and sometimes risking death to do the right thing. When Ward speculates about where all this hatred comes from, Anderson tells him a story: When he was a kid in the South, his father was a poor man, but their black neighbor Monroe was a little better off because he got himself a mule. Shortly thereafter, somebody poisoned the mule, and Anderson’s father later admitted to being the poisoner. For Anderson the culprit is poverty, not race. He wants to handle the situation his way, but Ward wants a whole investigative FBI team to become involved, and so they take over the movie theater for their operations. Anderson, though, follows his own nose, and goes to the barber shop, where he fi nds the sheriff and the mayor. Still acting like a small-town southern sheriff, he engages the mayor in a conversation about the situation. The mayor tells him the blacks in the community (“the nigras”) were happy until the civil rights activists showed up. He believes that there are two cultures in the South, a black culture and a white culture, and that any effort of the federal government to effect change is an intrusion. Next, Anderson heads to the beauty salon, to get the women’s point of view. The salon is managed by Deputy Pell’s wife, Mary. She is uneasy about the situation, and we sense that she knows a good deal more than she’s saying, about the Klan as well as the disappearances. The missing activists’ car is found in the river on the Choctaw Indian Reservation, but there are no bodies. However, it now seems certain that the boys are dead, so Ward arranges for a full-scale dredging operation, to no avail. But the Klan responds with burn- ings of churches and homes in the black community. Ward and Anderson know that Sheriff Stuckey has an alibi, but they fi nd Deputy Pell’s alibi questionable, so they pay him a visit. While Ward confronts Pell with the allegation that he holds a high position in the Klan, Anderson seeks out Mary in the kitchen; and on several subsequent occasions, he makes a point of chatting her up, bringing her fl owers, and just exchanging small talk, gaining her trust. And Mary is very different from her husband—we see her having a genuinely good time talking with a local black woman and her baby, people her husband has nothing but scorn for. In the meantime, the national news media have descended on Jessup County, inter- viewing white locals. Most of the people interviewed think the whole thing is the fault of the civil rights activists, that Martin Luther King is a communist, and that the three young activists were asking for whatever they got. Some are convinced it’s a hoax—a publicity stunt. A Klansmember, Clayton Townley, makes no bones about it: A white supremacist, he doesn’t accept Jews, Catholics, or communists, and he wants “to protect Anglo-Saxon democracy and the American way.” At the same time a KKK leader rallies the white community against racially mixed relationships, the “mongrelization” of America. Things

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NARRATIVE: M I S S I S S I P P I B U R N I N G 385

are escalating, and Anderson now shows his true colors: As much as he comes across as a “redneck,” his loyalties are to the FBI, and he single-handedly confronts Pell and his henchman Frank when they claim that no blacks will be allowed to vote. Moreover, he is discovering a new ally in Mary, who lets him know about an upcoming Klan meeting. Ward and Anderson stake out the “meeting,” which turns out to be a manhunt: A young black man is released from prison, then hunted down by the sheriff’s men and driven away. The two FBI agents try to follow but lose sight of the sheriff’s cars; later that night, they fi nd the young man lying in the woods, alive but castrated. They failed to stop the sheriff’s men, but now they suspect that the civil rights activists met their end the same way: released and then hunted down by the Klan. When the farm belonging to the family of the young man who was Ward’s fi rst un- witting contact is torched, things come to a breaking point. The young man, Eric, rescues his mother and siblings, then witnesses their cows burn to death. His father is captured when he tries to defend his home and then lynched. Eric manages to release the rope before his father chokes to death, and the next day Ward and Anderson help them leave the county for Detroit, where they have family. This development disturbs Mary immensely, and during a quiet moment with Anderson while Pell is at one of his “meetings,” she tells him how things are: Hatred, she says, isn’t something you’re born with—it is taught, every day, by your surroundings. And she wants it to stop—so she tells Anderson what she knows: Her husband shot the civil rights activists, and she knows where they are buried. Now that the bodies are retrieved, Anderson and Ward have a heated argument about methods—Anderson’s questioning of Mary has resulted in Pell’s beating her to within an inch of her life. In a surprising change of attitude, Ward decides to back Anderson: They have the authority, and they’ll do it his way. They need someone to talk—and they fi nd somebody who will talk to protect himself. It is the mayor. In a stun- ning reversal of events, the mayor is kidnapped, by a hooded man. Gagged and bound, the mayor is offered a choice by his captor, who turns out to be a black man—an FBI agent with special talents: Either he talks, or he will be castrated, the same way KKK members have castrated black men. And the mayor talks. Now Ward and Anderson know who was involved, but since the mayor’s story was extracted under duress, they can’t use it in court. Instead, they manipulate Pell and his men, making them think each one has been talking to the FBI, and one of them gives up the others. A series of arrests and trials follow, but we also have a feeling that some of the culprits are never going to be held accountable. Anderson pays a visit to Mary, whose house has been ransacked, and apologizes for having essentially ruined her life. But she explains that she’ll stay on, because there are enough people in town who see things her way. Finally, at the burned-out church, black and white citizens gather together for a service.

The fi lm was met with mixed reviews: Some reviewers found that it was a fi ne, well- crafted, moving story, but others thought it was a manipulative misrepresentation: Blacks were reduced to one-dimensional victims; Klan members were portrayed as degenerates; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was portrayed as a civil rights supporter, whereas he, in fact, kept extensive fi les on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; and FBI agents were depicted as

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386 CHAPTER 7 PERSONHOOD, R IGHTS , AND JUSTICE

people with questionable ethics. Yet other movie critics pointed out that fi lms are not supposed to be historically accurate social documentaries, but well-told narratives with their own message and their own reality. This fi lm is, of course, not a documentary—it is fi ctionalized, with invented characters. But history wrote another chapter to the story: In January 2005, a 79-year-old man was arrested after a county grand jury indictment for being the mastermind behind the deaths of Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman: Edgar Ray Killen, an alleged Ku Klux Klan leader and a Baptist preacher. Killen was tried on federal charges in 1967 but released after one juror refused to convict him (others were convicted, and some were acquitted); he is a known separatist and has been quoted as saying that God didn’t create blacks and whites equal. A jury found Killen guilty on three counts of manslaughter in June 2005, and the judge sentenced him to sixty years in prison.

Study Questions

1. Do you agree with Anderson’s approach? with Ward’s? or perhaps with another view- point expressed in the fi lm? Explain.

2. Is this fi lm an example of forward-looking or backward-looking justice? Explain.

3. Is this fi lm a fair representation of the FBI? of the civil rights movement? of the locals in the small Mississippi county? Some reviewers called the fi lm itself unethical. Can you imagine why?

4. What is the message of this fi lm? Explain. Could there be several messages? Discuss.

5. Go back to the Reading by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in this chapter, and the Narra- tive in Chapter 3, Do the Right Thing, and assess the current situation in the area of the United States that you know best: What are race relations like today, as far as you can discern? Is there general goodwill and understanding, are there underlying animosi- ties and hidden racism, or is there an open racial confl ict? What would you consider progress in race relations in this country?

Narrative

Hotel Rwanda

T E R R Y G E O R G E ( D I R E C T O R )

T E R R Y G E O R G E A N D K E I R P E A R S O N ( S C R E E N W R I T E R S )

P A U L R U S E S A B A G I N A ( C O N S U L T A N T )

Film, 2004. Summary.

The moral values of this fi lm could be classifi ed under several headings. We could place it in Chapter 6 as an example of doing the right thing as a matter of principle despite inclinations to look after oneself fi rst. And we could place it in Chapter 10 as a story of

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virtue—of the virtues of courage and compassion. But here we focus on its relevance as an example of how the past haunts the present and calls for backward-looking measures of fairness and equality, and how some people in some contexts count less as “persons” than others. Hotel Rwanda is based on the true story of the rescue of 1,268 refugees during the confl ict in Rwanda between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Hotel offi cial Paul Rusesabagina managed, through his resourceful thinking and physical as well as moral courage, to save not hotel guests but neighbors, orphans, and other refugees from being massacred by the military and militia run by the Hutus. Himself a Hutu, he put partisanship aside to save innocent Tutsi civilians targeted by the majority regime as “traitors.” Paul Rusesabagina himself was a consultant on the fi lm, and I am thus not giving anything away when I tell you that he survives the ordeal. I will, however, try not to give away the entire plot or the ending of the fi lm—who lives, and who dies. In the beginning of the fi lm, we get to know Paul as a smooth hotel offi cial. He knows whom to tip, whom to bribe, and what to bribe them with to ensure that Hotel Milles Collines, a four-star Sabina hotel run by a Belgian corporation, is as good as it can be. He sees himself as a Westerner, on a par with any Western tourist visiting the hotel in the city of Kigali, and his unwavering loyalty is to the hotel. He shakes hands with foreign offi cials, offers the local General Bizimungo fi ne Cuban cigars and Scotch whisky, and

The fi lm Hotel Rwanda (Kigali Releasing Limited, 2004) features Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) as the manager of a luxury hotel when the confl ict between the Tutsis and the Hutus erupts. Being a family man without any political ties, proud of doing a good job of taking care of his hotel guests’ needs through persuasion and bribes, Paul all of a sudden comes face to face with having to make choices, for his wife Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo) and their two children as well as several hundred local people caught up in the confl ict. Because of Rusesabagina’s courage and selfl ess actions, 1,268 refugees’ lives are saved.

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lives in a nice house in a nice neighborhood with his middle-class family. He explains to his friend and coworker Dube that it’s all about style. We are introduced to the cast of characters who will, within weeks, either become victims or be victimized: General Bizimungo, a fi ve-star general, thinks of nothing but the good life, his whisky, and his comfort. George Rutaganda is a seemingly friendly sup- plier of goods for the hotel but is also involved with the militia and anti-Tutsi activities; on one of Paul’s visits to George’s warehouse, he sees thousands of machetes spilling out of a box—ten cents a piece from China, George explains proudly. Later in the fi lm we see the machetes put to use against Tutsi civilians, men, women, and children. Paul, his wife Tatiana, a Tutsi, and their three children are visited by Tatiana’s brother Thomas and his wife, Fedens, and their two little girls (a Tutsi family), and during their visit anti- Tutsi riots start in town. A few days later Thomas tells Paul that a Hutu friend of his has revealed that a plot is under way to kill all Tutsis, and the code word is “The Tall Trees.” He and Fedens urge Paul to send Tatiana and the kids with them to safety, but Paul is incredulous: Nothing like that will happen—the UN will protect them. And indeed the UN has now made the hotel their headquarters. American and British journalists hang out with Rwandan journalists at the hotel bar and hit on the local women. The journalists ask for an explanation of the Hutu-Tutsi confl ict, and we hear the (supposedly true) story: The Belgians (Rwanda used to be part of the Belgian Congo) had instigated the entire rift by grooming the most light-skinned, small-nosed Africans to be a new upper class, called Tutsis, who would collaborate with the Belgian colonial forces; the Hutus were simply the rest of the population—the darker, rejected Africans. And now the Hutus are set on revenge against a population that no longer has any special protected status. Paul’s hopes of a peaceful solution to the animosities are devastated when Rwanda’s president is murdered after having signed a peace treaty. Riots are starting in the streets, and Paul’s Tutsi neighbors come to him for protection, so with great diffi culty he bribes the general to let him take everyone to the hotel, where he installs them in vacant rooms. At this time the “Tall Trees” message goes out over the local radio station, and Paul real- izes his brother-in-law was telling the truth—but a Red Cross volunteer who shows up with a van full of orphaned children informs him that the part of town where Thomas and Fedens live is now cut off from the rest. Paul begs her to go back and look for the family. Having the general’s protection doesn’t shield Paul and his refugees from militia threats or even from threats from other Hutu military captains, and Paul has to be on the alert with new ideas for bribes, lies, and favors to distract the Hutu commanders. To make matters worse, Paul has acquired a personal enemy in one of the Hutu hotel work- ers, Gregoire, who has been chastised by both Paul and the general. When the Belgian hotel manager leaves, Paul takes over and persuades the hotel staff to go about their work as usual. When Western journalists manage to get footage of a massacre of Tutsi civilians just down the street from the hotel, and it is broadcast internationally, Paul believes that now the international community will come to their aid—but journalist Jack Daglish lays out reality for him: People may be horrifi ed when they watch the news, but then they’ll go back to their dinner and forget about it. It just isn’t something the world cares about.

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And in harsh language, the UN Colonel Oliver corroborates what Daglish has said: Paul and his refugees are “just” black Africans; the American television audiences and the politicians aren’t going to insist that help is needed. As a result of the broadcast, action is indeed taken—but it is an evacuation of all whites/Europeans from the hotel, including the journalists. And Paul, his illusions stripped away, tells Tatiana, “I’m a fool. They told me I was one of them, and I . . . wine, chocolate, cigars . . . I swallowed it! And they handed me their shit—I have no history—I have no memory. . . .” And Tatiana answers, “You are no fool—I know who you are.” The next day the disaster unfolds: When rival military factions threaten to kill all the refugees as “cockroaches,” Paul calls the Belgian owners of the hotel. He has been in touch with them before, and always as the manager of their interests and for the good of the hotel. Now the illusions are gone; he frankly says that the eight hundred people at the hotel are not guests but refugees, and he needs help. The Belgian director rises to the occasion and starts calling European government offi cials. Meanwhile, Paul urges the refugees to make their own calls to anyone of infl uence they might know in other countries. A horrible realization is in store for Paul after seeing George, the supplier, who frankly claims that an all-out Tutsi genocide is well under way. On the way back (along a road suggested by George), Paul sees the results of a massacre: Thousands of Tutsis are slaughtered. Seeing that a horrible end may come soon for his family, Paul tells Tatiana that as a last resort, if he is no longer there, she and the children must jump off the roof to their deaths rather than be killed by the machetes. But the Belgian director’s effort and the phone calls have paid off: Travel visas come through to select families, including Paul’s own, and they prepare to leave, even without knowing the fate of Tatiana’s family. As the trucks with the lucky ones are taking off, Paul sees those who have been left behind, and realizes he can’t leave them to face certain death, so he jumps off the truck that is taking his family to safety. Ironically, as he goes back to try to help the refugees left at the hotel, the convoy with fl eeing refugees is ambushed by the militia, betrayed by the hotel worker Gregoire, and only through the intervention of the general are the refugees and the UN convoy brought back to the hotel—to square one and a squalid siege with no fresh water and no supplies. Paul attempts one last valiant bribe of the general with a secret stash of Scotch from another hotel, but by then the general has no more interest in helping the refugees; however, he is willing to take Paul along, for old times’ sake. Paul makes him understand that he is now considered a war criminal, responsible for every atrocity the militia and the other military factions have committed, and that Paul will be able to vouch for him when the time of reckoning comes; the general fi nally realizes that to save his own hide he must help save the refugees. So off they go to the hotel, just in time to stop the militia from massacring the refugees. Paul is looking for his wife and kids—they are nowhere to be found. Have they jumped from the roof as he told them to, as a last desperate move? The fi nal sequences of the fi lm answer some questions but not all, and I choose not to give the ending away. Will Tatiana and the children be found alive and well? You already know that Paul made it out, and you know that 1,268 refugees were saved because of him—but how it happens I’ll let you watch for yourself, and you will then know more about the fate of Tatiana and the children, and about Thomas, Fedens, and their two little girls.

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390 CHAPTER 7 PERSONHOOD, R IGHTS , AND JUSTICE

Study Questions

1. How does this fi lm illustrate the concepts of “forward-looking” and “backward- looking” justice?

2. How is the problem of personhood discussed in this fi lm?

3. What does Paul mean by saying “I have no history—I have no memory?” Explain. You may want to consult the fi nal section of Chapter 13, “The Ethics of Self-Improvement: Narrative Identity” for a deeper analysis of this question.

4. As I was writing this summary, a human disaster—some use the term genocide —was occurring in another African province, Darfur, very similar to the Rwanda tragedy. Promises of treaties were made, and the international community was reluctant to step in, fearing that similar tribal confl icts will spread to other African nations. My fi rst question to you here is, Do you stay informed about such overseas events? If yes, do you see similarities and differences between the Rwanda and Darfur events? Should the international community care about such events? If no, why not? If yes, what should be done?

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391

Chapter Eight

Virtue Ethics from Tribal Philosophy to Socrates and Plato

T hroughout most of Western civilization and most of the history of ethics, schol- ars have tried to answer the question, What should I do? In Chapters 3 to 7 we have explored that quest. Theories that consider what proper human conduct is are often referred to as ethics of conduct . There is a more ancient approach to ethics, and in the past few decades this older approach has experienced a revival. This form of ethics asks the fundamental question, How should I be? It focuses on the development of certain personal qualities, of a certain behavior pattern—in other words, on the development of what we call character . Because its foundation is in ancient Greek theories involving the question of how to be a virtuous person, this approach usually is referred to as virtue ethics . However, virtue ethics as a phenomenon is far older than the Greek tradition and is encountered in many other cultures. On pages 392–395, you’ll see some examples of non-Western virtue ethics.

What Is Virtue? What Is Character?

The concept of virtue (Greek: arete- ) is complex. For one thing, it carries certain as- sociations, which it has acquired over the centuries; thus, in English, we may think of virtue as a basically positive concept—a virtuous person is someone you can trust. We also may experience, however, a certain negative reaction to it; sometimes, a virtuous person is thought of as being rather dull and perhaps even sanctimonious. (Being called a “Goody Two-Shoes” is not a compliment.) In everyday language, “vir- tue” often refers to sexual abstinence, and that can, of course, be a positive concept as well as a negative one, depending on one’s viewpoint. A book titled Raising Maidens of Virtue was published in 2004, advocating raising teenage girls according to biblical principles of purity, modesty, cleanliness, and other traditional virtues. However, the ancient Greek concept of arete- differs considerably from what we today associate with “virtue.” For one thing, it has its origin in the name of the Greek god Ares, the god of war, and must originally have meant having warrior-like quali- ties. (Here we can add that the term virtue itself comes from Latin, and its origin is vir, or “male”!) But regardless of origins in deep antiquity, the word arete- would have had no negative connotations for a Greek-speaking person at the time of Socrates and Plato, because it signifi es a different kind of person altogether: not a person of untainted thoughts and behavior, but a person who does what he or she does best

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392 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

and does it excellently, on a regular basis. We still have a trace of the ancient mean- ing of arete- in the word virtuosity . Originally, a virtuous person was a virtuoso at everything he or she did, because of proper choices and good habits but, above all, because such a person had succeeded in developing a good character.

Is Character Innate?

Today we often take a deterministic view of the concept of character. It is something we are born with, something we can’t help. If we try to go against our character, it will surface in the end. That viewpoint may or may not be correct, but in any event it is shaped by modern schools of thought in philosophy and psychology. Not ev- eryone shares that view; it often is pointed out that we may be born with a certain character but our character can be molded to a certain extent when we are young, and it certainly can be tested throughout our lives. This point of view comes closer to the prevailing attitude toward virtue among Greek philosophers: Character is indeed something we are born with, but it is also something that can and must be shaped. We are not the victims of our character, and if we let ourselves be victimized by our own unruly temperaments, then we are to blame.

Non-Western Virtue Ethics: Africa and Indigenous America

As I mentioned in Chapter 1, Socrates gets credit for introducing the topic of ethics as a philosophical discipline in the Western intellectual tradition, meaning that he engaged in, and encouraged his students to engage in, theoretical discussions about values, good character, and good behavior. But, of course, that doesn’t mean that Socrates invented morals, values, or even ethics. It is inconceivable that a culture can exist, and persist, without having some system of values, some moral rules identifying good and bad social behavior, so as far back as we can trace Homo sapiens cultures— according to current scientifi c views some 200,000 years or more—there must have been moral codes. (Even earlier forms of hominids may well have had basic rules of coexistence, such as “Be generous and don’t hoard food,” “Show respect toward the Old Leaders,” and “Be loyal to your tribe.”) And it is also almost certain that these an- cient groups (as you read in Chapter 2) had stories—myths and legends—that would explain how everything came into being and why humans ought to behave in this way and not in that way. So if we identify ethics as explaining or questioning the moral rules (see Chapter 1), then ethics, too, has been part of the human social fabric for a very long time indeed. Some of those stories are part of the human memory banks to this day in the form of folklore, as well as ancient surviving religions or the surviving written works of dead religions. What is interesting in this context is that in some cultures (such as China; see Chapter 11), the moral value systems have emphasized conduct —doing the right thing—but the overwhelming number of ancient stories that we have, as well as examples of tribal cultures around the world, seem to have favored the virtue ethics approach: focusing on developing a good character. Even if the main topic of this chapter is the philosophy of Plato and his teacher Socrates, we’ll take a brief look at the phenomenon of tribal virtue ethics from two non-Western traditions: African and indigenous American tribal cultures.

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African Virtue Theory

For the Akan people in West Africa (in the Ghana region), morality consists of hav- ing a good character. Although one probably cannot classify the Akan people of today as “tribal” in the classic sense, their cultural origin is that of a tribal community where religion, moral values, and folklore all help determine the common outlook on life. In his book An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme, the scholar Kwame Gyekye, himself an Akan, emphasizes that Akan ethics is not perceived as something commanded by Onyame (God); the Akan people regard their ethics as having a humanistic origin. Gyekye says that insofar as religion is in- volved at all, the Akan people have a natural law approach to morality: If something makes sense morally, then that is its reason for being a moral law, not its connection to a supernatural being. Gyekye describes the Akan ethics as focused on virtue and character; whenever a person commits an act of wrongdoing it is said not that “he∕she did something wrong” but that “he∕she is a bad person.” How does one become a good person? As in every theory of virtue, that is a diffi cult question, because “character” tends to be something we are born with. However, the Akan ethics assumes, like the Aristotelian theory of the Golden Mean (see Chapter 9), that we can work toward acquiring a good character through good habits. And the best way to teach those good habits is through storytell- ing . Contrary to most traditional Western ethicists, the Akan thinkers have not forgot- ten that it is through stories that children get their fi rst and perhaps their best exposure to the concepts of right and wrong. Those stories and proverbs habituate the children to moral virtues. Gyekye points out that people still have a choice of behavior and can be held accountable for that behavior because if they act in a morally wrong way, it means that they have not built up their own character the way they should have. This forms a link between an ethics of conduct and an ethics of virtue, says Gyekye: It is because of what you do that you become a good person; you don’t start out doing good things because of who you are. Originally, a human being is born morally neutral, according to Akan moral philosophies. What kinds of virtues are favored by the Akans? Kindness, faithfulness, compas- sion, and hospitality are among the key virtues. Akan values are utilitarian in the sense that anything that promotes social well-being is a good thing. Even if God ap- proves of virtue, the bottom line is that it is good for the people. The most important thing in Akan moral thought is the well-being of the community. The community thrives when the people cultivate social virtues. In An Essay on African Philosophical Thought, Gyekye says:

Akan thought . . . sees humans as originally born into a human society ( onipa kurom ), and therefore as social beings from the outset. In this conception it would be impossible for people to live in isolation. For not only is the person not born to live a solitary life, but the individual’s capacities are not suffi cient to meet basic human requirements. For the person . . . is not a palm tree that he or she should be complete or self-suffi cient.

The Akan view of storytelling as a path to moral understanding comes close to the premise of this book: that we, as socialized humans, can explore our ethical sys- tems by listening to and making up stories. In every culture the fi rst moral lessons

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seem to be taught through stories (see Chapter 2), and in the moral universe of the Akan people myths and legends guide the young toward becoming responsible members of the community. Similarly, you’ll remember how the character of Tata Ndu ( The Poisonwood Bible, Chapter 3) emphasized the importance of the commu- nity. This communitarian philosophy, with close ties to storytelling, can be found in the virtue ethics of ancient Greece as well.

Native American Values

The value system of North American Indian tribes has itself acquired a mythological status in America and indeed around the world. The values of the Native American have come to stand for ecological virtue, because it commonly is believed that these tribal people lived in harmony with nature, without abusing their own resources. One reason for this perceived harmony is the American Indian idea of what consti- tutes a moral community; for the traditional Native American, this community con- sists of the tribe, but also of their immediate nonhuman neighbors: the animals, and the spirits of the rocks, the trees, the winds, and the waters. In their compilation of Indian myths and legends, Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz include the White River Sioux account of the old days before Columbus when “we were even closer to the animals than we are now; many people could understand the animal languages; they could talk to a bird, gossip with a butterfl y. Animals could change themselves into people, and people into animals.” The ecologist J. Baird Callicott says in his paper “Traditional American Indian and Western European Attitudes Toward Nature: An Overview” that although there is no such things as the American Indian belief system, there is still a predominant view shared by tribal Indians toward nature. According to Callicott:

The Ojibwa, the Sioux, and if we may safely generalize, most American Indians, lived in a world which was peopled not only by human persons, but by persons and personalities associated with all natural phenomena. In one’s practical dealings in such a world it is necessary to one’s well-being and that of one’s family to maintain good social relations not only with proximate human persons, one’s immediate tribal neighbors, but also with the nonhuman persons abounding in the immediate environment. For example . . . among the Ojibwa “when bears were sought out in their dens in the spring they were addressed, asked to come out so that they could be killed, and an apology was offered to them.”

It does appear that most Native American tribes had a quite different relation- ship with their environment than did the settlers from Europe or even from Asia. The hunter would evoke the spirit of the animal before the hunt, asking its permission to kill it and promising it some kind of sacrifi ce in return; the hunter would not kill in excess; the hunter would not let anything of his prey go to waste; the women of the tribe would utilize every bit of material from the kill; the women would supply a large percentage of food for the tribe by gathering tubers, berries, and so on; and because theirs was a nomadic existence, the people would not stay in one place long enough to deplete its resources. There is evidence of a close spiritual relationship be- tween the tribal people and their environment, of an understanding of the seasons, of animal movements, and of interrelationships between animal and human spirits—an

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understanding that humans have only a small part to play in the general order of things and are by no means all-important. There is evidence of a reverence for the mother of all (the earth) in the rejection of plowing by nineteenth-century Indians on the grounds that you don’t plow furrows in your mother’s breast. A Navajo chant praises the beauty of this world, “beauty before me, beauty behind me,” not just empty land ripe for development. Those values may seem very attractive to a modern, Western, nature-loving person in a world where there is little appreciation of the environment as an au- tonomous whole and where the word development seems to indicate that before the housing area there was “nothing,” or at least “nothing of value.” However, it may be another matter for a modern person to adopt Native American values. Callicott himself stresses that the American Indian attitude toward nature is not conservation- ist in the true sense, because it is not scientifi c but an integrated part of a moral and social order. We can’t go to the American Indians and copy their way of life, because it involves social concerns that aren’t ours anymore (such as taboos and hunting practices), but we can see it as an ideal, available as an option. So what is this option? In Callicott’s words:

The American Indian, on the whole, viewed the natural world as enspirited. Natural be- ings therefore felt, perceived, deliberated, and responded voluntarily as persons. Persons are members of a social order (i.e., part of the operational concept of a person is the capac- ity for social interaction). Social interaction is limited by (culturally variable) behavioral restraints, rules of conduct, which we call, in sum, good manners, morals, and ethics.

Does that mean that all American Indians have had a sense of a social order in their natural neighborhood? We can’t assume that. It now seems clear that the reason the Anasazi culture of Arizona and New Mexico abandoned their cliff cities after several hundred years was partly because of a drought but also because they had exhausted the environment: There was no more wood, no more topsoil, and so they had to move. It also is a fact that although the Plains Indians did not hunt more animals than they could process (and the animal population did not suffer as a consequence), part of their suc- cess was due to the fact that the hunters were not very numerous. Had they been able to process large numbers of prey, we might have seen a decline in the animal population back then. It is now speculated that the woolly mammoth disappeared from the face of the earth in part because of very well-organized human hunting in North America as well as in Eurasia. Humans, regardless of their tribe, have the potential for great care and great greed; we should be careful not to label whole populations “saints” and others “sin- ners.” But if we look to the Native American tribes today, in the southwestern United States and elsewhere, we do fi nd an attitude toward life and the role of humans in nature that indeed is based on a system of values that looks to the balance of things: Humans can be physically and mentally fi t only if they are in harmony with their surroundings, and nature has to be in similar harmony for humans to stay healthy. The idea of internal and external harmony, which at one time seemed to be disappearing with the decline of American Indian culture, is on the rise again, along with an interest and pride in cultural traditions. In Chapter 13 we return to the idea of respect for nature as a virtue and take a look at the ethics involved in the debate about climate change.

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Virtue Ethics in the West

What happened to virtue ethics in ancient times in the West, and why has it been re- vived by scholars of ethics recently? By and large, what happened was Christianity— with its emphasis on following God’s rules and conducting oneself according to the will of God. The ancient world had taught for many centuries that virtue is a matter of shaping one’s character, the implication being that once one has succeeded, one can justifi ably be proud of what one has become—one can take a legitimate pride in being a self-made virtuous person. (We shall see how that is an important part of Aristotle’s virtue theory in the next chapter.) But in Christian thinking, one can ac- complish nothing without the help and grace of God—meaning that one just can’t take credit for having become a good person, for the credit or glory goes exclusively to God, Soli Deo Gloria . A chasm appeared between the teachings of the classical tradition and the moral and philosophical viewpoints of the rising religion. Disagree- ments exceeded verbal argumentation and turned violent for the fi rst time in Chris- tian history (but unfortunately not for the last time). See Box 8.1 for some examples of that violence. One result, nonviolent but with important symbolic consequences, was the closure of both Plato’s and Aristotle’s schools in Athens by the Roman em- peror Justinian in 529 C.E., after those schools had been in existence for over eight hundred years. (In comparison, the oldest European university was founded in Bologna, Italy, in 1088. The University of Paris opened in 1160, and Oxford Univer- sity in 1190. Harvard University was founded in 1636, and Columbia University in 1754.) Later in this chapter and in the next chapter, we return to the signifi cance of the closing of Plato’s and Aristotle’s old schools. To do the right thing became the main imperative of Christian ethics; however, the concepts of virtue and vice became main elements. Within the Christian tradition and within every aspect of our Western outlook on life that has been shaped by this tradition, the idea of virtue is central, but scholars of ethics point out that it is not so much the question of shaping your own character that is important in this tradition as it is recognizing the frailty of human character in general and believing that with the help of God one may be able to choose the right thing to do. From the time of the Renaissance to well into the twentieth century, questions of ethics were less a matter of doing the right thing to please God and more a matter of doing the right thing because it led to general happiness—because it was prudent or because it was logical. However, present-day scholars interested in virtue ethics have put forth the following argument: You may choose to do the “right thing” to please God or to escape unpleasant consequences or to make some majority happy or to satisfy your inner need for logic—but you may still be a less than admirable person. You may give to charity, pay your taxes on time, remember your nieces’ and neph- ews’ birthdays, hold the door for physically challenged people, and still be a morose and mean person. As we saw in the chapter on psychological egoism, you may be doing all the “correct” things just to get a passport to heaven or to be praised by oth- ers or to make sure they owe you a favor. So “doing the right thing” doesn’t guarantee that you are a good person with a good character . However, if you strive to develop a good character—to be courageous or protective or tolerant or compassionate—then, on the basis of this character trait, you will automatically make the right decisions

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V IRTUE ETHICS IN THE WEST 397

about what to do, what course of action to take. In other words, virtue ethics is con- sidered to be more fundamental than ethics of conduct, yielding better results. In today’s discussions on ethics, opinions are divided as to the merits of virtue versus conduct; however, no virtue theory is complete without recognition of the importance of conduct. We can have a marvelous “character,” but if it never trans- lates into action or conduct, it is not of much use—and how do we develop a good character in the fi rst place if not through doing something right? Also, one of the most conduct-oriented ethical theories, Kant’s deontology, has the question of character embedded in it. For Kant, a good character in the form of a good will, a fundamental

Since 2001 we have heard much about funda- mentalist Muslim terrorism and fanaticism, and devastating results of that fanaticism have been felt around the world, from 9∕11 in the United States, to the bombings in Bali and elsewhere, to the beheadings of foreign civilians in Iraq and Pakistan. As most people are aware, that does not mean that all Muslims are violent fanatics. What most people don’t know is that in the early days of Christianity, small groups of Christian fanatics set out to strike terror in the hearts of non- Christians, because those groups refused to accept the values of the traditional pagan Greco- Roman world. Two such examples of what could be called fundamentalist Christian terrorism took place in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. In the year 415 C.E. a mob of fanatical Chris- tian monks, possibly inspired by the Bishop of Alexandria, attacked and murdered one of the fi rst women philosophers on record, Hypatia, leader of the Neoplatonic Institute in Alexandria. As far as we know, Hypatia lectured on Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras, and thus the Chris- tians associated her with paganism. As she was riding through town in her chariot during one of the many religious riots, the mob dragged her out of her cart, tore off her clothes, and fl ayed her alive with clamshells. Hypatia had done her research in the great library at Alexandria (or what was left of it), which was founded by one of Alexander the Great’s generals, Ptolemy I, who became the founder of an Egyptian dynasty

(fourth century B.C.E.). The library was expanded over the centuries and probably contained most of the works of Greek philosophy, literature, and science, either in the original or copied by hand. During the reign of Queen Cleopatra, one of Ptolemy’s descendants (around 30 B.C.E.), a part of the library was burned down by the Roman army, possibly by mistake. When another section of the library went up in fl ames in 391 C.E. (along with a pagan temple), there was no doubt that the destruction was caused by Christian extrem- ists. It is, of course, important to note that those small groups of fanatics were an exception. Most Christians in the Roman Empire were not extrem- ist, nor did they advocate terror, any more than they do today. In 380 Emperor Theodosius had made Christianity the offi cial religion of Rome; Emperor Constantine had converted already in 312 C.E., and at the Church Council in Nicea in 325 the Christian bishops had established what were to count as offi cial Christian sacred writings of the Old and the New Testaments. One last word about the library in Alexandria: Its ultimate destruction came at the hands of Is- lamic fundamentalist invaders in 646 C.E. Schol- ars estimate that science suffered a setback of perhaps a millennium from the loss of the library; humanity’s loss in works of art— philosophy, lit- erature, drama, and artifacts—cannot be mea- sured. And there is a further lesson, that religious fanaticism is not the monopoly or invention of one religion, past or present.

Box 8.1 V I C T I M S O F R E L I G I O U S F A N A T I C I S M

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respect for other people, and respect for the nature of the moral law itself is essen- tial to the moral decision process. Indeed, one-half of the book he wrote late in life, The Metaphysics of Morals, focuses on a doctrine of virtue (in Chapter 6 you read the section concerning lying ), and what he used to call the good will is here renamed a virtuous disposition . The question of whether we should choose ethics of conduct or virtue ethics is a bifurcation fallacy or a false dilemma (see Chapter 1); we can cer- tainly decide that there is room for both approaches. In the rest of this chapter and in the next chapter, we look at the classical virtue theories of Plato and Aristotle. We then move on to some examples of modern virtue theory.

The Good Teacher: Socrates’ Legacy, Plato’s Works

The saying goes that a good teacher is one who makes herself or himself superfl u- ous. In other words, a good teacher lets you become your own authority; she or he does not keep you at the psychological level of a student forever. As a matter of fact, great personalities who have had considerable infl uence on their followers often have failed in this respect. For a teacher it is hard to let go and consider the job done (whether one is a professor or a parent), and for a student it is often tempting to ab- sorb the authority of the teacher, because life is hard enough as it is without having

Hypatia (370–415 C.E.), the leader of the Neoplatonic Institute in Alexandria and one of the fi rst female philosophers that we know of, was driving through the streets of town in her chariot when she was intercepted, tortured, and killed by Christian extremists.

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to make your own decisions about everything all the time. This is what the good teacher or parent prepares the student for, however—autonomy, not dependence. The teacher-student relationship between Socrates and Plato would probably not have become so famous if Plato had remained merely a student, a shadow of the master. Indeed, we have Socrates’ own words (at least through the pen of Plato) that the good teacher does not impose his ideas on the student but, rather, serves as a midwife for the student’s own dormant intellect. In many ways Socrates has become a philosophical ideal. As we shall see, he stood by his own ideals in the face of ad- versity and danger; he believed in the intellectual capacities of everyone; he strove to awaken people’s sense of critical thinking rather than give them a set of rules to live by, and, above all, he believed that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Socrates, Man of Athens

What do we know of Socrates? There is no doubt that he lived—he is not a fi gment of Plato’s imagination, as much as Plato may have made use of poetic license in his writings. Aristophanes, the author of comedies in Athens, refers to Socrates in his play The Clouds (albeit in a rather unfl attering way). The fact is that we don’t have any writings by Socrates himself, for his form of communication was the discussion, the live conversation—what has become known as the dialogue . From this word is derived the term for Socrates’ special way of teaching, the dialectic method (sometimes also called the Socratic method ). A method of teaching that uses conversation only, no written texts, is not exactly designed to affect posterity, but posterity has nevertheless been immensely affected by our indirect access to Socrates through the writings— the Dialogues —of Plato. What we know of Socrates is that he lived in Athens from approximately 470 to 399 B.C.E. The son of a sculptor and a midwife, he was married to Xantippe and had children. He was one of several teachers of philosophy, science, and rhetoric in Ath- ens at a time when internal politics were volatile (aristocrats versus democrats) and when Greece, which had experienced a golden age of cultural achievements in the wake of the Persian wars, was actually on the verge of decline. The most important political element of the time was the city-state, the polis (the origin of the word poli- tics ). With the peculiar features of the Greek countryside—the inland features of tall mountains and the seaside features of islands—the stage had been set for centuries for a specifi c power structure: small, independent, powerful realms warring and∕or trading with one another. Two of the main areas were Athens and Sparta. Each area, a state in itself, considered itself to be geographically Greek but politically specifi c to its particular polis . Thus it meant more to an Athenian to be a citizen of Athens than it meant to be Greek. Being a free citizen of a particular polis carried with it an inor- dinate pride. Today some might condemn such a pride as being overly nationalistic; for a Greek of the time it was a reasonable feeling. When Socrates was younger, he had been a soldier in the Athenian infantry and had distinguished himself as a coura- geous man. The loyalty to Athens that was expected of him then was something he lived up to his entire life; indeed, when he returned from the war, he stayed put in his hometown.

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In one of Plato’s dialogues, Phaedrus, Socrates and a friend, Phaedrus, have ven- tured outside the city walls, and Socrates carries on about the beauty of nature, the trees and the fl owers, to such a degree that Phaedrus remarks that Socrates acts like a tourist. Socrates agrees, because he never ventures outside Athens, not even to go to the Olympic Games. The city of Athens is everything to him. It is the life among people, the communication, the discussions, the company of friends that are important to him, not nature, beautiful as it may be: “My appetite is for learning. Trees and countryside have no desire to teach me anything; it’s only the men in the city that do.” It is not unusual to hear a big-city person say the same thing today—that New York or Paris or Rio has everything they could ever want. Most of us think such people are missing out on a few things, but Socrates’ attitude becomes crucial to our understanding of his conduct toward the end of his life.

The Death of Socrates and the Works of Plato

Many cultures take the position that someone’s life cannot be judged until it is over, that the ending helps defi ne—sometimes even determine—how we think of the life spent. That may seem terribly unfair, for few of us are in full control of our lives, and we would prefer not to have our accomplishments judged primarily by circum- stances beyond our control. In the case of Socrates, though, it seems fi tting that his life is judged in the light of his death, for in the face of adversity, in the ultimate “situ- ation beyond his control,” he seems to have remained in full control of himself . This is another reason that Socrates has become not just the philosopher’s ideal but also a human role model—because he did not lose his head but instead faced injustice with courage and rationality. After what in antiquity passed for a long life (he was nearing age seventy), Socrates found himself in a diffi cult political situation, brought about by several factors. First, Socrates had great infl uence among the young men of Athens—those young men who might be of political infl uence in the future—and many were the sons of noble- men. Second, Socrates conducted his classes in public (this was customary at the time in Athens, before the formalization of classes, schools, and academy life), and his method was well known to his students, as well as to any city council member who might cross the agora (the public square) while Socrates was teaching. Socrates used a certain method of irony to get his point across, and it often involved engaging politicians in a discussion under the pretext of ignorance to trick the speaker into revealing his own ignorance or prejudice. His students adored him for it, because it was the ultimate “questioning of authority.” The fact that Socrates himself may have been serious in a roundabout way about claiming his ignorance was something his listeners may not have realized. Socrates did not adhere to any one conception of reality unless it could be tested by reason; in other words, he would not profess to “know” anything for certain before investigating it and discussing it. That attitude, which was essentially one of humility rather than arrogance, seems to have been lost on his enemies, and over the years he acquired a considerable number of such enemies. Third, the most elusive factor but perhaps also the most important one: Athens was changing; what had been a place of comparatively free exchange of ideas,

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THE GOOD TEACHER: SOCRATES ’ LEGACY, PLATO’S WORKS 401

the undisputed center of the intellectual Western world, was becoming a place in which people expressed themselves more cautiously. Old laws against impiety were now more thoroughly enforced, and people were being banished for offenses against the state. The reason was complete exhaustion after thirty-seven years of war with Sparta, political upheavals, and an ensuing suspicion of dissidents. Most important, in Socrates’ case, he had expressed reservations concerning the democratic govern- ment (not “democratic” in any modern political or partisan sense of the word, but a form of government in which male citizens of the city-state had a political voice, as opposed to the oligarchic form of government by the few). For most of Socrates’ life Athens had a democratic constitution, but during a brief, troubled time after Athens lost the long Peloponnesian War to Sparta, a group of aristocrats seized power and overthrew the constitution. The leader of this group of “Thirty Tyrants,” Critias, had been a member of Socrates’ circle, and although Socrates himself fell into disfavor with the tyrants, scholars speculate that some of his enemies had old scores to settle, even though the new Athenian democratic government had given amnesty to all involved in the affair after the fall of the tyrants. Another of Socrates’ earlier associ- ates, Alcibiades, had been responsible for a major naval expedition that went terribly wrong: He deserted, and the expedition was destroyed. Those connections may also have contributed to the downfall of Socrates. Eventually his enemies took action. There was no way of getting rid of Socrates by political means, so they resorted to what appears to be a standard charge: that Socrates was “offending the gods and corrupting the youth.” Socrates was tried and convicted by a jury of fi ve hundred male citizens of Athens. The Athenian court would vote once for conviction or acquittal, and once again if the verdict was guilty, in what we today would call the “penalty phase,” determining the punishment. Socrates himself gave two speeches, one in his defense and one concerning his pun- ishment. His speech during the penalty phase featured an in-your-face suggestion

JUMP START © 2000 Robb Armstrong. Reprinted by permission of UNIVERSAL UCLICK for UFS. All rights reserved.

The words of Socrates sometimes turn up in popular culture, such as in this comic strip about a young police offi cer and his family. Here his mother, an erudite woman, quotes Socrates. Another introduction to Socrates from the realm of popular culture was the fi lm Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, although Bill and Ted persisted in pronouncing his name wrong.

Jump Start by Robb Armstrong

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that the proper punishment would be not death but a reward for services to the state, much like a sports hero: to be feted by the city of Athens. The verdict was determined by a simple majority, not by a unanimous vote. The jury was almost split down the middle as to Socrates’ guilt: Some speculate that if Socrates had had 30 more votes in his favor, he would have been acquitted. It seems that 280 voted for conviction, and 220 voted for acquittal. A tie vote—half the difference between 280 and 220—would have been resolved in favor of the ac- cused. But the votes in favor of the death penalty after Socrates’ “reward” speech were considerably higher than for his conviction—which means that some people who had thought him innocent were now so outraged at his behavior that they voted for capital punishment. It seems possible that his enemies did not intend to get rid of Socrates by actu- ally executing him. The standard reaction to such charges by accused citizens was to leave the city and go elsewhere within the Greek realm, and there were many places to choose from, because that realm extended from Italy well into the Middle East. But because Socrates chose to stand trial, arguing that by leaving he would be admitting guilt, his fate appeared sealed. Even so, to the last minute there were powers working to free him; his friends, many of whom were of considerable infl uence, conspired to spring him from jail and bring him to exile in safety. In Plato’s dialogue Crito we hear how Socrates’ good friend Crito pleads with him to listen to his friends and take their offer of escape and life, because “otherwise people will say we didn’t do enough to help you.” Socrates answers:

In questions of just and unjust, fair and foul, good and evil, which are the subjects of our present consultation, ought we to follow the opinion of the many and to fear them; or the opinion of the one man who has understanding? . . . Then, my friend, we must not regard what the many say of us: but what he, the one man who has understanding of just and unjust, will say, and what the truth will say.

When Crito suggests that Socrates ought to escape because he has been con- victed by unjust laws, Socrates replies that two wrongs don’t make a right, and the laws of Athens have supported him throughout his life; even though unjust, they are still the laws of Athens. If he, Socrates, had been a less faithful citizen of Athens, he might choose to leave, but because he never left the city, he believes he has to live by his own rule of respecting the laws and the rules of reason and virtue and not turn his back on them. So Socrates, the citizen of Athens, could not envision a life away from the city, even when the alternative was death. Could Socrates have done a better job defending himself? Given that only a nar- row majority of the fi ve hundred jury members found him guilty, it seems clear it wouldn’t have taken much for that small majority to change their minds. In Plato’s dialogue the Apology (an excerpt of which appears as a Primary Reading at the end of this chapter), Socrates isn’t exactly expressing himself cautiously or diplomatically in his address to his judges. He is assuming they will use rational judgment and see his point of view; he doesn’t seem to understand the considerable animosity many feel toward him. The end result is, of course, a conviction. Since we can see in retrospect

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THE GOOD TEACHER: SOCRATES ’ LEGACY, PLATO’S WORKS 403

that another style of argumentation, or even just being slightly apologetic, might have saved his life, many have speculated that perhaps he didn’t try too hard because he wanted to die and make a point. This theory goes all the way back to Plato’s con- temporary Xenophon, who thought Socrates deliberately antagonized the jury to get a conviction. Others are convinced that he didn’t and claim that he was arguing in a style completely true to his personality and outlook on life, that he fought in court, in his own way, until the very end. Box 8.2 speculates that the world we live in might have looked quite different had Socrates not been executed. In the Narratives section you will fi nd another historical fi gure, Sir Thomas More ( A Man for All Seasons ), who apparently made the same choice: that standing up for the truth is more important than staying alive. But that doesn’t mean he, or Socrates, wanted to die. You might say they chose integrity over personal concerns, and that is probably what makes the Socratic example so compelling. Was Socrates guilty? His accusers may have believed so, although we may fi nd it hard to imagine why. Did he offend any gods? He seems to have been a religious man; he often made the traditional sacrifi ces to the gods, and Plato has him referring to gods or “the god” often in his dialogues. But Socrates also referred to what he called his daimon (spirit), a little voice inside him telling him what to do. It is hard to know whether he was just talking about his conscience or whether he believed in some

The Death of Socrates (1787) by Jacques-Louis David shows Socrates still exploring issues of life and death with his friends, even though he will soon drink the cup of poison prepared for his execution by the distraught jailer.

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404 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

guardian spirit, but it may have seemed to his accusers that he was trying to introduce new gods. Did he corrupt the youth of Athens? Well, yes, if you believe that teach- ing young people to think for themselves, to use their reason in search of the truth, is corrupting them. In his speech in his own defense (see The Apology in the Primary Reading section), Socrates asked those young people to come forth if they felt they had been corrupted; of course, none of the young people of his own circle did. Plato tells us about the last, dignifi ed minutes of Socrates’ life, thereby giving his- tory and philosophy the legacy of someone who chose to die for a rational principle. The scene is vividly described in the dialogue Phaedo . Plato writes that he himself wasn’t present because of illness, and the story of Socrates’ death is told by another student, Phaedo, but others have speculated that Plato may have already left Athens as a precaution, fearing reprisals against Socrates’ supporters. In the end, Socrates’ friends and students are gathered to say good-bye. They are on the verge of break- ing down, while Socrates does his best to keep their spirits up. Even the jailer who brings in the poison apologizes to the old philosopher for having to cause him harm and hopes Socrates will not hold it against him. Socrates assures him that he will not and swallows the poison, an extract of hemlock. He continues talking, but the end approaches quickly. He lies down and pulls a blanket over himself, covering himself completely. But then—it must have been a dramatic moment for his friends—he removes the cover from his face for a fi nal statement. And what are the last words

ANCIENT GREECE

PERSIAN EMPIRE

Ionian Sea

Aegean Sea

Mediterranean Sea

Sea of Crete

Stagira

Sparta

Athens

During the time of Socrates (fi fth century B.C.E.) the Greek cultural realm stretched from Italy in the west to Asia Minor in the east; although people would consider themselves citizens of the Greek culture, their most important affi liation was with the city-state ( polis ) in which they were born. Both Socrates and Plato were native citizens of Athens, while Aristotle (see Chapter 9) came from the Macedonian town of Stagira.

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THE GOOD TEACHER: SOCRATES ’ LEGACY, PLATO’S WORKS 405

coming from the Master’s mouth? None of the wisdom they were used to hearing him speak, such as “The unexamined life is not worth living.” No, he says to his old friend Crito, “I owe a rooster to Asclepius—will you remember to pay the debt?” Crito promises that he will, and within minutes Socrates is dead. The meaning of that request has been discussed by philosophers ever since. Was Socrates driven by the memory of an unpaid debt, or was he talking in symbolic terms? Asclepius was a common Greek name but also the name of the god of healing . Did he want his friends to sacrifi ce the rooster to the god because Asclepius had “cured” him—that is, released his soul from the prison of the body? We can only guess. The effect of Socrates’ death on Plato was profound. Born in about 427 B.C.E., Plato had been Socrates’ student, in an informal sense, for thirteen years, and the death of his teacher caused him to take leave of Athens for another twelve years, during which he traveled to Egypt and Sicily, among other places. Eventually he returned to Athens, and some time before 367 B.C.E. he founded his own school of philosophy, the Academy (Plato’s own home—which he opened up to his students—named after the Greek hero Academus). This school appears to have been the beginning of a more formalized teaching institution, with regular lectures and several professors associated with the school. It remained open until 529 C.E., when it was closed by Christians. As Plato took on the mantle of his teacher, he began to reconstruct Socrates’ intellectual legacy by writing the Dialogues . These books remain some of the most infl uential writings in philosophy, but they also are works of lit- erature, as brilliant as any drama written in antiquity. That Plato from the very fi rst dialogues reveals himself to be a great storyteller is all the more interesting, for, as you may remember from Chapter 2, he himself was not in favor of the arts, because he believed they spoke to people’s emotions and made them forget the cool balance of reason. And, yet, Plato’s own writings are works of art in themselves. And as you also may remember from Chapter 2, that storytelling talent had an interesting ori- gin: Before Plato met Socrates, he was a playwright, engaged in the Athenian annual playwrights’ competitions. So we may conclude that his talent got channeled into

What might have happened if the jury had been convinced of Socrates’ innocence—or if Socrates had been convinced by Crito and had allowed himself to escape? If Socrates hadn’t been exe- cuted, chances are Plato wouldn’t have become a writer or a philosopher, for he wouldn’t have felt compelled to preserve Socrates’ name for posterity and give him philosophical immor- tality. And without Plato’s writings we would have no Platonism, no school infl uencing an- tiquity for nine hundred years and beyond, into

Christianity. And without Plato’s school the young man from Stagira who came to the big city of Athens to get an education— Aristotle— might never have become a philosopher. And without Aristotle’s philosophy? Universities would probably be structured differently, sci- ences would have other categories, ethics would be different, and elements of Christianity would be absent. Our world might look sub- stantially different today if Socrates had died a natural death.

Box 8.2 W H A T I F S O C R A T E S H A D N ’ T B E E N E X E C U T E D ?

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406 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

writing some of the most enduring pieces of philosophical literature, his Dialogues, which for all intents and purposes are dramatic pieces—while ironically, in The Re- public , attempting to dissuade others from going to the theater. In his dialogues, Socrates and his friends and students come alive. We understand their way of talk- ing, and we gain insight into their thinking, which, on occasion, is rather alien to our own day and age. The early dialogues of Plato give a picture of Socrates that is very fresh and probably quite accurate. However, scholars believe that in later dialogues Socrates changes into something that is more Plato’s image of an ideal philosopher than Socrates himself. Indeed, in the last dialogues, Socrates appears as Plato’s mouthpiece for his own advanced theories on metaphysics—theories that Socrates probably never held himself. That may mean that Socrates was indeed a good teacher who did not hinder Plato from “graduating” intellectually. It also means that through this lifelong tribute to Socrates, Plato showed that you can kill a thinker but not his thoughts; so in a sense Plato made certain that Socrates, long dead at the hands of the Athenian judges, lived on to affect the history of thought well after his accusers had turned to dust.

The Good Life

Socrates’ statement to Crito that some things are more important than life itself, such as being true to your principles no matter how others may feel about it, holds the key to what Socrates seems to have considered the “good life” or a life worth living. You may remember from Chapter 1 that Socrates was quoted as having said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” So what is an examined life? That would be a life in which one is not ruled by the opinion of others or even by one’s own opin- ions, those ideas of ours that may or may not have some basis in the truth but that we haven’t bothered to examine closely. If we stop for a minute and examine such opinions, we will probably discover that they constitute the basis for the majority of our viewpoints: We think we live in a great country, or perhaps we think we live in a deceitful, oppressive country. We think that chicken soup is good for colds. We may

Plato (427?–347 B.C.E.) was the son of Ariston and Perictione. They named their son Aristocles, but he became known as Plato, literally “broad.” Some people speculate that it meant “broad forehead,” referring to his wide knowledge, but others trace the term back to—wrestling! Plato was a wrestler in his youth, and his nickname traveled with him into his career as a philosopher. It seems to have indicated that he had broad shoulders. His father died when Plato was a young boy. His mother, Perictione, was apparently a philosopher in her own right, although women in ancient Greece had virtually no independence.

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THE GOOD LIFE 407

think that what scientists say must be true as long as they are wearing white lab coats. Perhaps we think that people who believe in UFOs are nuts, or we think that UFOs abduct humans from time to time. We hear actors weighing in on politics, and if they are our favorite actors, perhaps we value their opinion—but how exactly do actors get to be experts on politics? Some are indeed very well informed (and some actors also happen to be politicians); others just have opinions . And it is the opinion issue that interested and irritated Socrates. We think many things, and if we allow ourselves to examine those opinions, we will usually fi nd that they are based on very fl imsy evidence. Of course, on occasion we feel strongly about something precisely because we have examined it, but, in that case, Socrates would say, we are not talk- ing about opinion ( doxa ) anymore—we are talking about knowledge ( episte-me- ). This, for Socrates, was the test of truth: Can it stand up to unprejudiced scrutiny? If so, it must override any sort of opinion we may have, even though it may hurt the feelings of others; if they see the truth, they, too, will understand, for only ignorance leads to wrongdoing . For Socrates as well as for Plato, this is a truth in itself: No one is willfully evil, provided that he or she understands the truth about the situation. And if a person still chooses the wrong course of action, it must be because his or her understanding is faulty. For a modern person the response to that seems inevitable: What if there is more than one way of looking at the situation? In other words, what if there is more than one truth? We are so used to assuming there is more than one way of looking at something that we sometimes assume there is no truth at all. That, however, is very far from the intellectual attitude of Socrates. For Socrates, as well as for Plato, each situation has its Truth, and each thing can be described in one way that best captures its true nature, its essence. That does not mean that this was a common at- titude among Greek thinkers. In Socrates’ own time, contact with other cultures had brought about a certain amount of cultural relativism, and Greece was suffi ciently heterogeneous to foster a tolerance of different customs. Accordingly, for many of Socrates’ contemporaries, such as the Sophists, relativism became the accepted an- swer to the search for absolute truth. For Socrates, the theory that virtue might be a question of personal preference or relative to one’s own time and culture was the epitome of misunderstanding, and much of the Socratic quest for the true nature, the essence, of a thing or a concept is a countermeasure to the prevailing relativism of the Greek intelligentsia. This also implies a fundamental Socratic principle: that truth should not be confused with appearance. The external appearance of something—a person, or a situation—is not necessarily the same as its true nature. Just as doxa must be discarded for episte-me- , appearance must yield to knowledge of the inner truth. So for Socrates (and indeed also for Plato), seeking the truth, and examining one’s life in the process, should lead to an understanding and knowledge of essential reality beyond the world of change and appearance. Later in the chapter we return to the idea that the truth is somehow not to be judged by our senses but by our rational mind: Plato’s theory of Forms. Virtue for Socrates means to question the meaning of life and to keep one’s integrity while searching, to not be swayed by one’s physical longings or fear of un- pleasant situations or concern for comfort. This ideal is attainable because the Truth

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408 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

can be found—in fact, it can be found by anyone who has as a guide a teacher with integrity. In other words, Socrates says we can’t hope to attain virtue without the use of our reason . Later on (in particular during the Middle Ages), the link between virtue and reason was weakened, but for Plato and Socrates, as well as for Greek antiquity as such, the connection was obvious. Using our reason will make us realize what virtue is and will actually make us virtuous. The good life, therefore, is not a pleasant life in which we seek gratifi cation for the sake of having a good time. The good life is strenuous but gratifying in its own way, because one knows that one seeks and sees the Truth, and one is in control of oneself.

The Virtuous Person: The Tripartite Soul

Let us now focus on what makes a person good. You’ll remember from Chapter 4 that Plato’s brother Glaucon told a story about the Ring of Gyges, stating that if you had the chance to get away with something and you didn’t, you had to be stupid. For Socrates this matter was of grave importance, and this was his answer: A person who does something unjust to others is either ignorant or sick. If we inform that person that he is being unjust, he may realize his ignorance and improve himself. But there is the chance that he will laugh in our face. In that case, Socrates said, he is simply not well—he is out of balance. Glaucon’s argument that an unjust person is happier than a just person carries no weight with Socrates, because an unjust person can’t be happy at all; only a well-balanced person can be happy. But what is a well-balanced person? Everybody has desires, and sometimes those desires can be very strong. We may want something to drink when we are thirsty, something to eat when we are hungry; we have desires for sex, for power, and for many other things. We also have desires to get away from things, as when we move away from a fi re we’re too close to. Those needs and wants Socrates calls appetites, and they are what we must control if we are to achieve the good life. Appetites may rule a person’s life, but that is not good, because the things we desire aren’t necessarily the things that are good for us. So sometimes we pull away from what we want because we realize that it will be bad for us. The power that pulls us back is our rational element, our reason . There is a third element at play; Socrates calls it spirit . Sometimes he calls it willpower . We feel it when we sometimes let our appetites win out over our reason; afterward we feel disgusted with ourselves, and the anger directed at ourselves is our spirit. When we fall off our diet, our reason may have lost the battle, but our spirit will be angry at our weakness and will keep bothering us. What, then, should a person do? Establish a good working relationship between reason and spirit; let reason be clear about what it wants to do, and then train the spirit to help control the appetites. Reason and spirit will, side by side, keep the body healthy and the soul balanced. In Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus Socrates describes the three-sided rela- tionship by the following metaphor: A charioteer has two horses to pull his chariot; suppose one is well-behaved, whereas the other is wild and unruly. He is stuck with both and can’t choose another horse, so he must make the well-behaved horse help

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THE VIRTUOUS PERSON: THE TRIPARTITE SOUL 409

him control the unruly horse and subdue it. So which roles do these fi gures play? The charioteer is Reason, the well-behaved horse is Willpower, and the wild horse is Appetites. Notice that a “balanced” individual to Socrates does not have one-third of each element—he or she has total control by reason and willpower over appe- tites. When reason rules, the person is wise; when spirit controls the appetites, that person is also brave ( because it takes courage to say no to temptation and yes to a painful experience); and when the appetites are completely controlled, the person is temperate . Such a person is well balanced and would not dream of being unjust to anybody; on the contrary, he or she would be the very picture of justice , and justice is the virtue that describes the well-balanced human being who is wise, brave, and temperate. Only that kind of person can be happy in the true sense of the word; Glaucon’s idea that an unjust person is happier than a just person can be discarded, because such a person is off balance. (For another thinker’s view of the tripartite soul, see Box 8.3.)

Plato

Elements of the Soul Virtues Reason —corresponds to— Wisdom Willpower —corresponds to— Courage Appetites —corresponds to— Temperance

Freud

Theory of the Psyche Superego Ego Id

Box 8.3 T H E T R I P A R T I T E S O U L : P L A T O A N D F R E U D

If an individual has succeeded in mastering his or her appetites by using reason to guide willpower, then a fourth virtue comes into play: justice . In that case Socrates and Plato would say we have encountered a truly virtuous individual: a just per- son, a person of internal balance and integrity. In the early twentieth century Sigmund Freud suggested a theory about the human psyche that has some parallels to Socrates’s theory: Freud’s psyche comprises the Id (the Unconscious), the Ego (the conscious self), and the Superego (the codes and rules we have been

taught). Can the Id be compared to appetites? Yes, as long as we remember that, for Freud, the Id can’t be accessed, whereas Socrates believed a person could understand his or her own ap- petites. As for the Ego and the Superego, they don’t match the Socratic schema too well: The Ego is part reason but also part willpower; the Superego has elements in common with both too. The similarity between Socrates’s theory of the soul and Freud’s theory of the psyche is not a coincidence: Freud was a great admirer of Plato’s dialogues.

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410 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

Who corresponds to reason? Wise rulers, says Plato, “philosopher-kings” who would rather not rule; they will get the job done without fuss and with rea- son as their principle of guidance. Who corresponds to willpower in a state? The “auxiliaries,” soldiers and law enforcement. And what about all the rest of the population— merchants, businesspeople, educators, entertainers, private citizens? They correspond to the appetites and must be thoroughly controlled. If they are not—such as in a democracy—then that society is off balance and sick. This re- strictive social plan did not correspond to democratic Athenian society at all, and Plato has been vilifi ed by democratically minded thinkers ever since. See Box 8.4 for Plato’s idea of a well-balanced society. Among modern Plato scholars there is some disagreement about Plato’s inten- tions in his social theory of the ideal state. Its radical principles include not only a strict hierarchy but also rules about marriage and children among the philosopher- kings. For one thing, Plato advocates that anyone would be eligible as a guardian (a ruler or a soldier), depending on his or her talent and regardless of gender; to his contemporaries (and even to some of our contemporaries) the idea of a woman ruler (or president) is outlandish or even outrageous, but Plato apparently found it a completely reasonable thought. Most people today, however, fi nd his rules about childbearing among the guardians too extreme and certainly both outlandish and outrageous: For the sake of eugenics (creating a superior breed of people by mating

Plato himself never suggested that one might illustrate his theory of the balanced soul and the good state with a pyramid, but the image works, for several reasons. Plato imagines his ideal society to be a hierarchy of power, with the philosopher-kings on top, the auxiliaries in the middle, and the general population at the bottom. But Plato also insists that the ideal society has the same structure as the ideal soul. So when the pyramid illustrates the mind of a just person, the confi guration looks like this: At the top of the pyramid we have Reason—the smallest part of our mind, but the most important one. Reason has to dominate and seek the aid of Willpower (sometimes called Passion) to control the Desires (Appetites). The result is a very balanced person who will not be swayed by his or her emotions—just as a pyramid is a very stable structure. Imagine placing the pyramid on its tip—then you’ll have the image of a person who is out of balance, because his or her reason is ruled by desires. You may want to revisit Chapters 2 and 4, and apply the pyramid image to Plato’s reluc- tance to go to the theater for fear of losing control, and reread Socrates’ argument against Glaucon that a person who lets desires control him is sick, and a sick person can’t be a happy person.

Reason

Willpower (Passion)

Desires (Appetites)

Philosopher-kings

Auxiliaries

Merchants (General population)

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THE VIRTUOUS PERSON: THE TRIPARTITE SOUL 411

selected men and women), guardians would be paired off and mated during their childbearing years, but the children would be removed from the mothers and raised in common so that no parent would know his or her own child. Plato envisioned such a plan to allow personal preferences and affi liations to be held to a minimum so that the guardians could focus on what was good for the state. Those radical thoughts have caused some Plato scholars to say that Plato may not have meant one word of his political theory—it was all tongue-in-cheek, a big joke on his students told at a dinner party. Women in government! He couldn’t possibly have been serious. However, at least two things speak for taking Plato seri- ously: For one thing, at some point he left his teaching position in Athens to return to Syracuse, presumably to tutor the young tyrant Dionysius II. Apparently Plato used his own principles as outlined in the Republic to try to groom Dionysius into a guardian, without much success. Even though Plato’s family had intended for him to go into politics, it is obvious that Plato was much more a scholar and a writer than a successful politician. For another thing, Plato’s student Aristotle had no doubt that Plato was serious, and who could be a better judge than a contemporary source who had heard Plato discuss his theories? There is little evidence that Socrates himself ever had such political visions; his main interests seem to have been getting individuals to improve their thinking and

On page 410, you’ll fi nd a graphic illustrat- ing Plato’s notion of a well-balanced soul—not Plato’s own illustration, mind you, but a short- cut that to me gathers some of Plato’s key ideas: The well-balanced person’s reason rules; it is aided by his or her spirit or willpower; and the person’s desires are controlled at all times. Here we expand it to cover Plato’s theory of the ideal society, Plato’s Republic (and it is because of Plato’s social theory that I thought of using the pyramid as an illustration in the fi rst place, since Plato says that society is simply the struc- ture of the soul, in a large format). So, follow- ing the pyramid structure of the ideal balanced soul, we have the ideal balanced society ruled by philosopher-kings (reason) at the top, a small but powerful group. Next we have the auxilia- ries, meaning the soldiers and law enforcement, helping the philosopher-kings keep law and

order, and protecting everybody from unrest and enemy onslaughts (compare willpower or spirit). And at the bottom? “The people,” what Plato calls merchants and tradesmen, meaning everybody who doesn’t get to be in law enforce- ment or the military, or in government (appe- tites or desires). That would mean most of us . And following the parallel of the individual pyramid, the people never have a say about anything at all that goes beyond their own personal and professional lives—but they are not oppressed ( supposedly), since the government is looking out for their interests and the interests of soci- ety as a whole (just as reason looks out for the interests of the entire body). This social model is what has caused critics—fairly or unfairly— to call Plato a supporter of totalitarianism, and the Republic the fi rst blueprint for a totalitarian society.

Box 8.4 A W E L L - B A L A N C E D P E R S O N I N A W E L L - B A L A N C E D S O C I E T Y

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412 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

become better persons. Examining the concept of virtue, he would begin with a concept, a word of common usage, such as justice or piety, and ask his partners in the dialogue to defi ne it, under the assumption there would be one, and only one, description that would be the true one. At some point in the Platonic dialogues, we begin to lose the sense that it is Socrates talking, for another theory develops that is Plato’s own: the theory of Forms.

Plato’s Theory of Forms

When we ask about a person’s view of reality, we generally want to know whether that person is religious or an atheist, pessimistic or optimistic about other people and events, interested in a historical perspective or mainly looking to the present and the future, and so on. Philosophically speaking, however, a person’s view of reality is what we call metaphysics . What exactly is the nature of reality as such? In philosophy the answer will be one of three major types: Reality is made up of things that can be measured ( materialism ); or Reality is totally spiritual, all in the mind ( ide- alism ); or Reality consists of part matter, part mind ( dualism ). (These three theories of metaphysics are described in Box 8.5.) What, exactly, was Socrates’ philosophical

In philosophy we encounter three major theo- ries of the nature of reality, or of metaphysics: materialism, idealism , and dualism . Through the ages people have leaned toward one or the other, and today the prevailing theory in the Western world is overwhelmingly materialistic . That does not mean people are overwhelmingly interested in accumulating riches, although that may be the case. Metaphysical materialism has nothing to do with greed; it merely means you think re- ality consists of things that are material —they or their effects can be measured in some sense. This category includes everything from food to brief- cases to brainwaves. It follows that a materialist doesn’t believe in the reality of things suppos- edly immaterial, such as souls or spirits. Typical philosophical materialists are Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, and Paul and Patricia Churchland. Idealism is the theory that only spiritual things have true existence and that the material world is somehow just an illusion. Again, that has very little to do with the colloquial use of the word,

which we associate with a person with high ideals. Few people in philosophy defi ne them- selves as idealists today, but this theory had a certain infl uence in earlier times. Bishop George Berkeley was an idealist, and so was the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. The Hindu belief that the world we see is a mere illusion, maya, is also an example of idealism. The theory of dualism combines materialism and idealism in that a dualist believes reality consists of a matter-side and a spirit-side—in other words, that although the body is material, the soul∕spirit∕mind is immaterial and perhaps immortal. Although this theory seems to appeal to our common sense, it poses several logical problems, which philosophy has not been able to solve, for how exactly does the mind affect the body if the mind is immaterial and the body is material? René Descartes is the most famous of the dualists, but Plato also is often counted among them, although some might prefer to call him an idealist because of his theory of Forms.

Box 8.5 T H R E E T H E O R I E S O F M E T A P H Y S I C S

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PLATO’S THEORY OF FORMS 413

view of reality? The early dialogues indicate that he seems to have believed in an im- mortal soul that leaves the body at death, which would make him a dualist. In later dialogues, though, Plato chooses to let Socrates speak for a theory—which was obvi- ously Plato’s own—that says reality is very much different from what our common sense tells us. What we see and hear and feel around us is really a shadowy projec- tion of “true reality.” Our senses can’t experience it, but our mind can, because this true reality is related to our mind: It is one of the Ideas, or Forms . What exactly is a Form? Today it is hard to grasp Plato’s concept, but for the Greek mind of Plato’s own day it was not so alien. In early times the Greeks saw each good thing as represented by some divinity; there was a goddess for justice, another for victory. There were the Muses, lesser goddesses representing each form of art. The Olympic gods each had their own areas of protection. At the time of Plato many intellectuals, including Plato himself, had left traditional Greek religion behind. Some of the ancient tendency to personify abstract ideas, though, may have survived in his Forms. A Form is at once the ideal abstraction and sole source of each thing that resembles it. Let us look at an example. There are all kinds of beds today—double beds, twin beds, bunk beds, futons, waterbeds, hammocks. Plato would ask, What makes these things beds? We, today, would approach the question in a functionalistic manner and say something about them all being things to sleep on. Plato would say they are all beds because they all participate in the Form of Bed, a kind of ideal “bedness” not only that they have in common as a concept but also that actually exists above and beyond each singular bed. It is this quality that gives the bed its share of reality, as a sort of dim copy of the true Bed Form. This realm of Forms is true reality, and the entire world in which we move around is only a dim copy of the ideal Form. Where exactly is this world of Forms? It is nowhere that you can see and touch, because then it would just be another example of a copy. It has to be “out of this world,” in a realm that our body does not have access to but that our mind does. So it is through our intellect that we can touch true reality, and only through our intellect. That is why Plato has Socrates tell Phaedrus that trees and countryside can’t teach him anything—because there is nothing to be learned from the senses except confusion. The only true lesson in reality is achieved by letting the mind, the intel- lect, contemplate the Forms, because the world we see changes constantly, but the world of Forms never changes. The Forms are eternal, and for Plato (and for many other philosophers), the more enduring something is, the more real it is. But how did Plato conceive of such a theory? And how does he propose to per- suade us that he is right? One example answers both questions: Think of a circle; now think of a perfect circle. Have you ever drawn one? No. Have you ever seen one? No. Can you imagine one? Yes. Can you describe one mathematically (if you have the training)? Yes. If you have never experienced it, then how can you imag- ine it and describe it? Because your mind understands that the perfect circle really exists—not just as a mathematical formula, but in a higher, mental realm of reality. From this higher realm the perfect Form of a circle (and all the other Forms) lend their reality to imperfect circles and other things in our tangible world; if the Form of a circle didn’t exist, then you wouldn’t have a notion that a circle could be perfect! Today we would say we understand the perfect circle because we can describe it

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414 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

mathematically, but that doesn’t mean it exists somewhere else. (See Box 8.6 for a discussion of how we can know Forms.) Because the world of Forms is purely spiritual and immaterial, some philoso- phers choose to call Plato an idealist; however, more prefer to call him a dualist, because the world of matter is not “nonexistent” but merely of a lesser existence than the world of Forms. Does everything have a Form? Concepts such as justice, love, and beauty have their natural place in the realm of Forms; they may be on this earth incompletely, but their Forms are fl awless. Cats and dogs obviously have Forms; things of nature have a perfect Form in the spiritual realm, which gives them reality. Manufactured objects have Forms too, so in the realm of Forms there is a Form of a chair, a knife, a cradle, and a winding staircase. What about a Form of something that has not “always” been—such as a computer, an iPod, or a microwave oven? Here we are moving into an uncomfortable area of Plato’s theory, because even if microwave ovens are a new invention, presumably their Form has always existed. But what about Forms for dirt, mud, and diseases? Plato gives us the impression that the Forms are perfect and somehow closer to goodness than things on this earth; however, it is hard to envision perfect dirt, mud, and diseases, even though the theory of Forms certainly implies they exist. (A generation later, Plato’s student Aristotle was to criticize the theory of Forms for assuming that every phenomenon has a Form. Aristotle asserted that some

How do we know about the Forms if we can’t learn about them by observing the world around us? Plato believed that we remember the Forms from the time before we were born, because during that time the soul’s home was the realm of the Forms themselves. At birth the soul forgets its previous life, but, with the aid of a philosopher “in the know,” we can be re- minded of the nature of true reality. This is one of the functions of Socrates in the literature of Plato: to cause his students to remember their lost knowledge. The process is known as anam- nesis, a reremembering, or, literally, a nonforget- ting. In Plato’s dialogue Meno, Socrates shows that this knowledge is accessible to everyone, as he helps a young slave-boy “remember” truths of math and logic that he has never learned in this life. Plato, furthermore, believed in reincarnation (transmigration of souls). Reincarnation was not

a common belief among the ancient Greeks, who seem to have believed in a dreary, dark Hades to which all souls were destined to go, regardless of whether they had been good or bad in life. But Plato apparently saw it differ- ently: Toward the end of the Republic, Socrates tells an evocative story of the soul’s long journey after death, called “The Myth of Er.” He claims that the soul must undergo several cycles of life before it is purifi ed suffi ciently to go back to the Forms to stay forever. We know that Plato was infl uenced by Pythagoras, who believed in rein- carnation; but some scholars also speculate that Plato may have been under the direct or indi- rect infl uence of Hindu theories of karma and reincarnation, which had existed in India for at least fi ve hundred years before Plato’s own time. However, other scholars point out that Hindu- ism hadn’t yet spread beyond isolated groups in India.

Box 8.6 T H E T H E O R Y O F A N A M N E S I S

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PLATO’S THEORY OF FORMS 415

phenomena are merely a “lack” or defi ciency of something. A doughnut hole doesn’t have a Form—it is just the empty middle of a doughnut.)

The Form of the Good

For Plato the world of Forms represents an orderly reality, nothing like the jumble of sensory experience. Forms are ordered according to their importance and accord- ing to their dependence on other Forms. Certainly worms and dirt have Forms, but they are very low in the hierarchy; at the highest level are abstract concepts such as justice, virtue, and beauty. At the very top of the hierarchy Plato sees the Form of the Good as the most important Form and also as the Form from which everything else derives. Is the Form of the Good a god, in the fi nal analysis? Followers of Plato around the fourth and fi fth centuries C.E., the Neoplatonists, leaned toward that theory, but it is hard to say whether Plato himself had specifi cally religious veneration for his Forms; it is certain that he had intellectual respect and veneration for them and for the Form of the Good in particular. The Form of the Good allows us to understand a little better what Plato means by saying that evil acts stem from ignorance, because, according to the theory of Forms, if a person realizes the existence of the Forms and in particular the high- est Form of them all, the Good, it will be impossible for that person to deliberately choose to do wrong; the choice of wrongdoing can come only from ignorance of the Good. The choice to follow the Good is not an easy one, though, even when we have knowledge of it, because we have desires that pull us in other directions. Besides, Plato says the fi rst time we hear about the Forms, the theory sounds so peculiar that we refuse to accept our own recollection of it. Plato tells a story to illustrate this, “The

DILBERT © 1998 Scott Adams. Used by permission of UNIVERSAL UCLICK. All rights reserved.

The infl uence of Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” can be detected in this Dilbert strip that asks, What is reality? In the Dilbert universe we can be sure it is our worst nightmare.

Dilbert by Scott Adams

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416 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

Myth of the Cave.” (See the excerpt from Plato’s Republic with the story of the cave at the end of this chapter.) In a large cave a group of prisoners are kept chained to their seats so they can look only in one direction, toward a huge wall. Behind them there is a fi re that casts shadows on the wall. The prisoners, having never seen anything else, believe these shadows are all the reality there is. One prisoner gains his freedom and now sees the cave, the fi re, and the world outside the cave for what they really are—but will the others believe him when he returns? Because the cave is our everyday world of the senses, and because we are the prisoners who see only two-dimensional shadows instead of a multidimensional re- ality, we have the same problems the prisoners have when one prisoner stands up and claims that he or she has “seen the light” and knows that reality is totally differ- ent from what we think. How do we respond to such “prophets”? We ignore them or ridicule them or silence them and continue to live on in our illusion. And what is the duty of the philosopher who has seen “the light” of true reality, the Good and the other Forms, according to Plato? To return to the cave, even if it would be wonderful to remain in the light of the Truth and forget about the world of shadows. The phi- losopher’s duty is to go back and tell the others, and that, Plato believed, was what

In Plato’s “Myth of the Cave,” a group of prisoners are placed so they can see on the wall of the cave only refl ections of objects carried back and forth in front of a fi re behind them. Since this is all they see, they assume it to be reality. Had Plato been acquainted with movie theaters, he might have chosen the movie screen as a metaphor for the shadow world of the senses.

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PLATO’S INFLUENCE ON CHRISTIANITY 417

he himself was doing with his dialogues. For Plato, Truth was not something relative that differed for each person; it was an absolute reality beyond the deceptive world of the senses, a reality that never changes and that we, when we shed the chains of our physical existence—either intellectually or through death—will be able to see and be in the presence of. (For a contemporary Cave allegory with a twist, go to the Narra- tives section and read the summary of the fi lm The Truman Show . Truman Burbank lives in a Cave of his own, unbeknownst to himself, but on live television to the rest of the world.)

Plato’s Infl uence on Christianity

Plato’s momentous infl uence on Western thinking is not measured by how many people took his theory of Forms to heart. As a matter of fact, not many scholars fol- lowed Plato’s metaphysics to the letter; however, his idea of a never-changing realm of goodness, light, and justice to which our soul can have access made its way into Christianity, along with the Platonic disdain for the physical world as an obstruc- tion to that access. Many early Christian thinkers had been trained in the Platonic and Neoplatonic schools of thought (which were probably taught by Hypatia in Alexandria, for one, before she was murdered), and the view of true reality as some- thing that is not of this world came naturally to them; controlling the desires of the body and focusing on the afterlife are elements that Platonic philosophy and early Christian thinking have in common. Saint Augustine (354–430 C.E.), for example, had received a thorough pagan spiritual education before his conversion to Chris- tianity at age thirty-two. He had studied Manichaeism, the then-popular Persian philosophical religion that taught that the powers of light and the powers of darkness are locked in battle until the fi nal day and the powers of light will not win unless we humans help them in their fi ght for goodness. He had studied Neoplatonism, a phi- losophy developed by the thinker Plotinus on the basis of Plato’s philosophy, which taught that this tangible, material world is unimportant compared with the world of the spirit and even that the material world is godless and should be shunned. This intellectual and religious legacy that Augustine brought with him subtly changed the direction of Christianity forever, according to historians. It is, of course, the ultimate irony that Plato’s Academy in Athens was closed in 529 by the Christian emperor Justinian, as you read earlier in this chapter, presumably to stop the pagan infl uence of the ancient school or simply as a symbolic gesture that antiquity had come to an end—but the most infl uential of all Christian thinkers in the early centuries of Chris- tianity, Augustine, was already well acquainted with the philosophical principles of Plato’s metaphysics by the time he converted to Christianity. In the writings of Augustine, Christianity became a religion that, even more than previously, looked to the afterlife as the true reason for human existence and shunned earthly concerns and earthly pleasures. That disregard for the physical world and our physical exis- tence has been heavily criticized since the end of the nineteenth century by scholars such as Nietzsche (see Chapter 10), who believe that it shows an abysmal contempt for what Nietzsche saw as the only true reality there is: the ever-changing reality of our physical existence on this earth.

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418 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

Study Questions

1. What are the elements that constitute a person, according to Plato? What is the proper relationship between those elements? (In other words, what is a virtuous person?)

2. You read that Socrates’ last words referred to paying a debt to Asclepius. What do you think he meant?

3. Explain Plato’s theory of Forms, using his story of the cave as an illustra- tion. Is Plato’s theory of reality (metaphysics) materialistic, idealistic, or dualistic? Explain.

4. Imagine that you were assigned to be Socrates’ legal counsel. What would you advise him to do or say to escape a death sentence? Do you think it might make a difference? Why or why not?

5. Compare African and American Indian tribal virtue ethics with the virtue ethics of Socrates. What are the similarities? What are the differences?

Primary Readings and Narratives

The fi rst two Primary Readings are excerpts from Plato’s dialogues: one from his Republic, the wrap-up discussion about the virtuous person in the good state; and one from his Apology, his version of Socrates’ speech in his own defense. The third Reading is an excerpt from a piece by philosopher Ronald Dworkin, “What Is a Good Life?” The fi rst two Narratives have Socratic themes: a summary of the fi lm A Man for All Seasons, whose title character fi nds himself falsely accused by advisers to King Henry VIII and defends himself in a manner reminiscent of Socrates, and an excerpt from Plato’s Republic, “The Myth of the Cave,” in which people have been imprisoned all their lives so that the only reality they know is the shadows on the wall. The third Narrative is a summary of the fi lm The Truman Show, a story that questions the nature of reality. The fourth narrative is a summary of a Cold War-era science fi ction story, “The Store of the Worlds,” about what truly constitutes a Good Life. The story is brought back from previous editions by reviewer requests.

Primary Reading

The Republic

P L A T O

Excerpt from Book IV, The Republic, fourth century B.C.E. Translated by Francis MacDonald Cornford.

In this excerpt from The Republic, you get the conclusion of Socrates’ conversation with Glaucon about what constitutes a good, virtuous, or, in Socrates’ terminology, just man. Like the ideal state, the ideal person must be controlled by reason and use the spirited

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PRIMARY READING: THE REP U BLI C 419

element (willpower, passion) as its helper to control the appetites. And when the soul works according to this principle, he or she will be wise, courageous, and temperate. With these qualities of virtue, the just person will be highly unlikely to engage in behav- ior that will be harmful to others or harmful to the state: It is not a matter of mere external behavior but a matter of an inner character.

AND so, after a stormy passage, we have reached the land. We are fairly agreed that the same three elements exist alike in the state and in the individual soul.

That is so. Does it not follow at once that state and individual will be wise or brave by virtue

of the same element in each and in the same way? Both will possess in the same manner any quality that makes for excellence.

That must be true. Then it applies to justice: we shall conclude that a man is just in the same way that a

state was just. And we have surely not forgotten that justice in the state meant that each of the three orders in it was doing its own proper work. So we may henceforth bear in mind that each one of us likewise will be a just person, fulfi lling his proper function, only if the several parts of our nature fulfi l theirs.

Certainly. And it will be the business of reason to rule with wisdom and forethought on

behalf of the entire soul; while the spirited element ought to act as its subordinate and ally. The two will be brought into accord, as we said earlier, by that combination of mental and bodily training which will tune up one string of the instrument and relax the other, nourishing the reasoning part on the study of noble literature and allaying the other’s wildness by harmony and rhythm. When both have been thus nurtured and trained to know their own true functions, they must be set in com- mand over the appetites, which form the greater part of each man’s soul and are by nature insatiably covetous. They must keep watch lest this part, by battening on the pleasures that are called bodily, should grow so great and powerful that it will no longer keep to its own work, but will try to enslave the others and usurp a dominion to which it has no right, thus turning the whole of life upside down. At the same time, those two together will be the best of guardians for the entire soul and for the body against all enemies from without: the one will take counsel, while the other will do battle, following its ruler’s commands and by its own bravery giving effect to the ruler’s designs.

Yes, that is all true. And so we call an individual brave in virtue of this spirited part of his nature, when,

in spite of pain or pleasure, it holds fast to the injunctions of reason about what he ought or ought not to be afraid of.

True. And wise in virtue of that small part which rules and issues these injunctions, pos-

sessing as it does the knowledge of what is good for each of the three elements and for all of them in common.

Certainly. And, again, temperate by reason of the unanimity and concord of all three, when

there is no internal confl ict between the ruling element and its two subjects, but all are agreed that reason should be ruler.

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420 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

Yes, that is an exact account of temperance, whether in the state or in the individual.

Finally, a man will be just by observing the principle we have so often stated. Necessarily. Now is there any indistinctness in our vision of justice, that might make it seem

somehow different from what we found it to be in the state? I don’t think so. Because, if we have any lingering doubt, we might make sure by comparing it with

some commonplace notions. Suppose, for instance, that a sum of money were entrusted to our state or to an individual of corresponding character and training, would anyone imagine that such a person would be specially likely to embezzle it?

No. And would he not be incapable of sacrilege and theft, or of treachery to friend or

country; never false to an oath or any other compact; the last to be guilty of adultery or of neglecting parents or the due service of the gods?

Yes. And the reason for all this is that each part of his nature is exercising its proper func-

tion, of ruling or of being ruled. Yes, exactly. Are you satisfi ed, then, that justice is the power which produces states or individu-

als of whom that is true, or must we look further? There is no need; I am quite satisfi ed. And so our dream has come true—I mean the inkling we had that, by some happy

chance, we had lighted upon a rudimentary form of justice from the very moment when we set about founding our commonwealth. Our principle that the born shoemaker or carpenter had better stick to his trade turns out to have been an adumbration of justice; and that is why it has helped us. But in reality justice, though evidently analogous to this principle, is not a matter of external behaviour, but of the inward self and of attending to all that is, in the fullest sense, a man’s proper concern. The just man does not allow the several elements in his soul to usurp one another’s functions; he is indeed one who sets his house in order, by self-mastery and discipline coming to be at peace with himself, and bringing into tune those three parts, like the terms in the proportion of a musical scale, the highest and lowest notes and the mean between them, with all the intermediate intervals. Only when he has linked these parts together in well-tempered harmony and has made himself one man instead of many, will he be ready to go about whatever he may have to do, whether it be making money and satisfying bodily wants, or business transactions, or the affairs of state. In all these fi elds when he speaks of just and honour- able conduct, he will mean the behaviour that helps to produce and to preserve this habit of mind; and by wisdom he will mean the knowledge which presides over such conduct. Any action which tends to break down this habit will be for him unjust; and the notions governing it he will call ignorance and folly.

That is perfectly true, Socrates. Good, said I. I believe we should not be thought altogether mistaken, if we claimed

to have discovered the just man and the just state, and wherein their justice consists. Indeed we should not. Shall we make that claim, then? Yes, we will.

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PRIMARY READING: APO L O G Y 421

Study Questions

1. Compare this section of The Republic with what you have read in Chapter 2 and Chapter 4. What are the characteristics of a just person, according to Socrates and Plato? What are the characteristics of a just state? Do you agree? Why or why not?

2. Why do we need to control our appetites or desires at all times, according to Plato? Do you agree? What are the political ramifi cations of comparing the rule of reason over appetites to the rule of the guardians over the general population?

Primary Reading

Apology

P L A T O

Dialogue excerpt, fourth century B.C.E. Translated by R. G. Bury.

In the Apology, the very fi rst of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates argues in his own defense while on trial. This is not a typical “dialogue,” since Socrates does most of the talking, but we know he has listeners because he begs for their attention and asks them not to heckle him. Is this a true retelling of what Socrates actually said, or is Plato here (as often elsewhere) making things up? Scholars have speculated that Plato, being present at the trial, must surely have remembered every word of this traumatic, horrible event; however, the account was probably not written until some years later, perhaps as much as ten years, so we must assume that Plato tells it not only the way he remembers it but also the way he believes it ought to sound. Since Plato’s account of the trial is not the only one in existence, we can assume that the general gist of Socrates’ defense was the way Plato presented it.

I have said enough in my defense against the fi rst class of my accusers; I turn to the second class. They are headed by Meletus, that good man and true lover of his country, as he calls himself. Against these, too, I must try to make a defense. Let their indictment be read; it runs like this: “Socrates is a doer of evil who corrupts the youth, and who does not believe in the gods of the state, but has other new divinities of his own.” Such is the charge; now let us examine the particular counts. He says that I am a doer of evil and corrupt the youth; but I say, men of Athens, that Meletus is a doer of evil, since he pretends to be in earnest when he is only joking, and is so eager to bring men to trial from a pretended zeal and interest about matters in which he really never had the small- est interest. And the truth of this I will try to prove to you.

Come here, Meletus, and let me ask you a question. You think a great deal about the improvement of youth?

Yes, I do. Tell the judges, then, who is their improver; for you must know, since you care so

much. * You say you have discovered their corrupter, and are citing and accusing me

*A play on Meletus’s name, which means “one who cares” in Greek. [Ed.]

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422 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

before them. Speak then, and tell the judges who their improver is. Observe, Meletus, that you are silent and have nothing to say. But is not this disgraceful, and a clear proof of what I say, that you have never cared about this? Speak up, friend, and tell us who their improver is.

The laws. But that, my good sir, is not my meaning. I want to know who the person is who,

in the fi rst place, knows the laws. The judges, Socrates, who are present in court. What, do you mean to say, Meletus, that they are able to instruct and improve

youth? Certainly they are. What, all of them, or some only and not others? All of them. By the goddess Hera, that is good news! There are plenty of improvers, then. And

what do you say of the audience—do they improve them? Yes, they do. And the members of the Council? Yes, they improve them. But perhaps the members of the Assembly corrupt them? Or do they too improve

them? They improve them. Then every Athenian improves and elevates them except me; and I alone am their

corrupter? Is that what you affi rm? That is what I stoutly affi rm. I am very unfortunate if you are right. But suppose I ask you a question. How about

horses? Does one man do them harm and all the world good? Is not the exact opposite the truth? One man is able to do them good, or at least not many; the trainer of horses does them good, and others who have anything to do with them rather injure them. Is that not true, Meletus, of horses or of any other animals? Surely it is; whether you and Anytus say yes or no. Happy indeed would be the condition of youth if they had one corrupter only, and all the rest of the world were their improvers. But you, Meletus, have suffi ciently shown that you never had a thought about the young; your carelessness is seen in your not caring about the very things you bring against me. Now, Meletus, I will ask you another question—by Zeus I will. Which is better, to live among bad citizens or among good ones? Answer, friend, I say; the question can be easily answered. Do not the good do their neighbors good, and the bad do them evil?

Certainly. And is there anyone who would rather be injured than benefi ted by those who live

with him? Answer, my good friend, the law requires you to answer—does anyone like to be injured?

Certainly not. And when you accuse me of corrupting the youth, do you allege that I corrupt them

intentionally or unintentionally? Intentionally, I say. But you have just admitted that the good do their neighbors good, and evil do them

evil. Now, is that a truth which your superior wisdom has recognized so early in life, and am I at my age in such darkness and ignorance that I do not know that if one of my

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PRIMARY READING: APO L O G Y 423

associates is corrupted by me, I am very likely to be harmed by him? Yet I corrupt him, and intentionally too? So you say, although neither I nor any other human being is ever likely to be convinced by you. Either I do not corrupt them, or I corrupt them uninten- tionally; and in either case you lie. If my offense is unintentional, the law has no cogni- zance of unintentional offenses; you should have taken me aside privately and warned and admonished me. For if I had been better advised, I would have stopped doing what I only did unintentionally—no doubt I would; but you had nothing to say to me and refused to teach me. Instead you bring me up in court, which is a place not of instruction, but of punishment. It will be very clear to you, Athenians, as I said, that Meletus has no care at all, great or small, about the matter. But still I would like to know, Meletus, how you think I corrupt the young. I suppose you mean, according to your indictment, that I teach them not to acknowledge the gods the state acknowledges, but some other new divinities instead. These are the lessons by which I corrupt the youth, you say.

Yes, that I say emphatically. . . . I have said enough in answer to the charge of Meletus; any elaborate defense is un-

necessary. But I know only too well how many are the enmities I have incurred, and this is what will be my destruction if I am destroyed—not Meletus or Anytus, but the envy and detraction of the world, which has been the death of many good men, and will prob- ably be the death of many more; there is no danger of my being the last of them.

Someone will say, “Are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to cause your death?” To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken; a man who is good for anything should not calculate the chances of living or dying; he should only consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong—acting the part of a good or a bad man. . . . Wherever a man’s place is, whether he has chosen it or has been placed in it by his commander, there he should remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything but disgrace. For so it is, men of Athens, in truth.

Strange indeed would be my conduct, men of Athens, if I who, when I was ordered by the generals you chose to command me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me, like any other man, facing death, and if now, when I believe the god orders me to fulfi ll the philosopher’s mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death or any other fear. That would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I feared death, fancying that I was wise when I was not. For the fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom and not real wisdom, being a pretense of knowing the unknown; for no one knows whether death, which men in their fear think is the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is not this ignorance disgraceful, the ignorance which is the conceit that man knows what he does not know? In this respect only I believe I differ from men in general, and may perhaps claim to be wiser than they are—that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know; but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether god or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil. Therefore if you let me go now, and are not convinced by Anytus, who said that since I had been prosecuted I must be put to death (for otherwise I should never have been prosecuted at all), and that if I escape now, your sons will all be utterly ruined by listening to my words—if you say to me, “Socrates, this time we will not lis- ten to Anytus and we will let you go, but upon one condition, that you do not inquire

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and speculate in this way any more, and that if you are caught doing so again you will die”—if this was the condition on which you let me go, I would reply: Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I will obey the god rather than you. And while I have life and strength I will never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any- one I meet and saying to him in my manner, “You, my friend, a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all?” And if the person with whom I am arguing says, “Yes, but I do care,” then I will not leave him or let him go at once, but will interrogate and examine him, and if I think he has no virtue in him, but only says he has, I will reproach him for undervaluing the greater and over- valuing the less. And I will repeat the same words to everyone I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially the citizens, since they are my brothers. For this is the command of the god; and I believe no greater good has ever happened in the state than my service to the god. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to think of your persons or properties, but fi rst and chiefl y to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person. But if anyone says this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Therefore, men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whichever you do, understand that I will never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.

Men of Athens, do not interrupt, but hear me; there was an understanding between us that you would hear me to the end. I have something more to say, at which you may be inclined to cry out; but I believe that to hear me will be good for you, and therefore I beg you not to cry out. I would have you know that if you kill such a one as I am, you will injure yourselves more than me. Nothing will injure me, not Meletus or Anytus—they cannot, for a bad man is not permitted to injure one better than himself. I do not deny that Anytus may perhaps kill me, or drive me into exile, or deprive me of civil rights; and he may imagine, and others may imagine, that he is infl icting a great injury on me; but there I do not agree. For he does himself a much greater injury by doing what he is doing now—unjustly taking away the life of another.

Study Questions

1. What does Socrates mean by saying, “The fear of death is indeed the pretense of wis- dom and not real wisdom”?

2. What does he mean by saying that if the Athenians put him to death, they will hurt themselves more than him?

3. It has been speculated by philosophers that Socrates in his heart really wanted to die, and for that reason he said things in his argument for his defense that would irritate the jury of fi ve hundred citizens (who voted guilty with only a small majority); how- ever, newer research points toward Socrates being serious about defending himself. In your opinion, based on this excerpt, should Socrates have argued for his defense in some other way?

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PRIMARY READING: WHAT IS A G OOD L IFE ? 425

4. Socrates has been called a martyr to the principle of seeking the Truth. Could you imagine any principle so important to you that you would be willing to give up your life for it? Alternatively, can you think of any circumstances that to you would over- ride even the most important principle?

Primary Reading

What Is a Good Life?

R O N A L D D W O R K I N

Essay, 2010, The New York Review of Books . Excerpt.

For Dworkin the idea of living well—with happiness as a life goal—can’t be achieved through the theories of Hobbes (too selfi sh), Hume (too feeling-focused), Mill (too con- sequentialist) or Kant (too duty-oriented). Religious moral rules will only work if one is religious. Plato and Aristotle have a better overall approach, says Dworkin, because they’re looking at the big picture—what Dworkin calls an interpretive account of morality . So fi nding out what a good life is can’t be just getting what we want, because the Good Life is normative: living the way we should live. Living a good life involves two separate moral standards: an ethical contemplation of one’s own role in life, and some kind of fulfi llment. In the end, Dworkin concludes that it isn’t the end result that counts as much as how we got there—as some people have put it, it’s the journey, not the destination. But the journey has to shine, as a work of art. (I have heavily abbreviated the fi rst few paragraphs so I could include a larger section of Dworkin’s article. I hope you will look up the original and read Dworkin’s argument for the Good Life in its entirety.)

Plato and Aristotle treated morality as a genre of interpretation. They tried to show the true character of each of the main moral and political virtues (such as honor, civic re- sponsibility, and justice), fi rst by relating each to the others, and then to the broad ethical ideals their translators summarize as personal “happiness.” Here I use the terms “ethical” and “moral” in what might seem a special way. Moral standards prescribe how we ought to treat others; ethical standards, how we ought to live ourselves. The happiness that Plato and Aristotle evoked was to be achieved by living ethically; and this meant living according to independent moral principles . . .

But there is an apparent obstacle. This strategy seems to suppose that we should understand our moral responsibilities in whatever way is best for us, but that goal seems contrary to the spirit of morality, because morality should not depend on any benefi t that being moral might bring. . . . We are, most of us, drawn to the more austere view that the justifi cation and defi nition of moral principle should both be independent of our inter- ests, even in the long term. Virtue should be its own reward; we need assume no other benefi t in doing our duty . . . But that austere view would set a severe limit to how far we could press an interpretive account of morality . . . That would be disappointing, because we need to fi nd authenticity as well as integrity in our morality, and authenticity requires that we break out of distinctly moral considerations to ask what form of moral integrity

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fi ts best with the ethical decision about how we want to conceive our personality and our life. The austere view blocks that question. Of course it is unlikely that we will ever achieve a full integration of our moral, political, and ethical values that feels authentic and right. That is why living responsibly is a continuing project and never a completed task. But the wider the network of ideas we can explore, the further we can push that project.

. . . We need, then, a statement of what we should take our personal goals to be that fi ts with and justifi es our sense of what obligations, duties, and responsibilities we have to others. We look for a conception of living well that can guide our interpretation of moral concepts. But we want, as part of the same project, a conception of morality that can guide our interpretation of living well.

. . . We can, however, pursue a somewhat different, and I believe more promising, idea. This requires a distinction within ethics that is familiar in morals: a distinction between duty and consequence, between the right and the good. We should distinguish between living well and having a good life. These two different achievements are con- nected and distinguished in this way: living well means striving to create a good life, but only subject to certain constraints essential to human dignity. These two concepts, of living well and of having a good life, are interpretive concepts. Our ethical responsibility includes trying to fi nd appropriate conceptions of both of them.

Each of these fundamental ethical ideals needs the other. We cannot explain the importance of a good life except by noticing how creating a good life contributes to living well. We are self-conscious animals who have drives, instincts, tastes, and preferences. There is no mystery why we should want to satisfy those drives and serve those tastes. But it can seem mysterious why we should want a life that is good in a more critical sense: a life we can take pride in having lived when the drives are slaked or even if they are not. We can explain this ambition only when we recognize that we have a respon- sibility to live well and believe that living well means creating a life that is not simply pleasurable but good in that critical way . . .

We have a responsibility to live well, and the importance of living well accounts for the value of having a critically good life. These are no doubt controversial ethical judg- ments. I also make controversial ethical judgments in any view I take about which lives are good or well-lived. In my own view, someone who leads a boring, conventional life without close friendships or challenges or achievements, marking time to his grave, has not had a good life, even if he thinks he has and even if he has thoroughly enjoyed the life he has had. If you agree, we cannot explain why he should regret this simply by calling attention to pleasures missed: there may have been no pleasures missed, and in any case there is nothing to miss now. We must suppose that he has failed at something: failed in his responsibilities for living.

What kind of value can living well have? The analogy between art and life has often been drawn and as often ridiculed. We should live our lives, the Romantics said, as a work of art . . . We value great art most fundamentally not because the art as product enhances our lives but because it embodies a performance, a rising to artistic challenge. We value human lives well lived not for the completed narrative, as if fi ction would do as well, but because they too embody a performance: a rising to the challenge of having a life to lead. The fi nal value of our lives is adverbial, not adjectival—a matter of how we actually lived, not of a label applied to the fi nal result. It is the value of the performance, not anything that is left when the performance is subtracted. It is the value of a brilliant dance or dive when the memories have faded and the ripples died away.

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PRIMARY READING: WHAT IS A G OOD L IFE ? 427

We need another distinction. Something’s “product value” is the value it has just as an object, independently of the process through which it was created or of any other feature of its history. A painting may have product value, and this may be subjective or objective. Its formal arrangements may be beautiful, which gives it objective value, and it may give pleasure to viewers and be prized by collectors, which properties give it subjec- tive value. A perfect mechanical replica of that painting has the same beauty. Whether it has the same subjective value depends largely on whether it is known to be a replica: it has as great subjective value as the original for those who think that it is the original. The original has a kind of objective value that the replica cannot have, however: it has the value of having been manufactured through a creative act that has performance value. It was created by an artist intending to create art. The object—the work of art—is wonder- ful because it is the upshot of a wonderful performance; it would not be as wonderful if it were a mechanical replica or if it had been created by some freakish accident.

It was once popular to laugh at abstract art by supposing that it could have been painted by a chimpanzee, and people once speculated whether one of billions of apes typing randomly might produce King Lear . If a chimpanzee by accident painted Blue Poles or typed the words of King Lear in the right order, these products would no doubt have very great subjective value. Many people would be desperate to own or anxious to see them. But they would have no value as performance at all. Performance value may exist independently of any object with which that performance value has been fused. There is no product value left when a great painting has been destroyed, but the fact of its creation remains and retains its full performance value. Uccello’s achievements are no less valuable because his paintings were gravely damaged in the Florence fl ood; Leonardo’s Last Supper might have perished, but the wonder of its creation would not have been diminished. A musical performance or a ballet may have enormous objective value, but if it has not been recorded or fi lmed, its product value immediately dimin- ishes. Some performances—improvisational theater and unrecorded jazz concerts—fi nd value in their ephemeral singularity: they will never be repeated.

We may count a life’s positive impact—the way the world itself is better because that life was lived—as its product value. Aristotle thought that a good life is one spent in contemplation, exercising reason, and acquiring knowledge; Plato that the good life is a harmonious life achieved through order and balance. Neither of these ancient ideas re- quires that a wonderful life have any impact at all. Most people’s opinions, so far as these are self-conscious and articulate, ignore impact in the same way. Many of them think that a life devoted to the love of a god or gods is the fi nest life to lead, and a great many including many who do not share that opinion think the same of a life lived in inherited traditions and steeped in the satisfactions of conviviality, friendship, and family. All these lives have, for most people who want them, subjective value: they bring satisfaction. But so far as we think them objectively good—so far as it would make sense to want to fi nd satisfaction in such lives—it is the performance rather than the product value of living that way that counts.

Philosophers used to speculate about what they called the meaning of life. (That is now the job of mystics and comedians.) It is diffi cult to fi nd enough product value in most people’s lives to suppose that they have meaning through their impact. Yes, but if it were not for some lives, penicillin would not have been discovered so soon and King Lear would never have been written. Still, if we measure a life’s value by its consequence, all but a few lives would have no value, and the great value of some other lives—of a

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428 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

carpenter who pounded nails into a playhouse on the Thames—would be only acciden- tal. On any plausible view of what is truly wonderful in almost any human life, impact hardly comes into the story at all.

If we want to make sense of a life having meaning, we must take up the Romantics’ analogy. We fi nd it natural to say that an artist gives meaning to his raw materials and that a pianist gives fresh meaning to what he plays. We can think of living well as giving meaning—ethical meaning, if we want a name—to a life. That is the only kind of mean- ing in life that can stand up to the fact and fear of death. Does all that strike you as silly? Just sentimental? When you do something smaller well—play a tune or a part or a hand, throw a curve or a compliment, make a chair or a sonnet or love—your satisfaction is complete in itself. Those are achievements within life. Why can’t a life also be an achieve- ment complete in itself, with its own value in the art in living it displays?

Study Questions

1. What is the difference between “living well” and having a “good life?

2. What is the difference between “product value” and “performance value,” and how do these concepts relate to living a good life, according to Dworkin? Is he right, in your opinion? Is there more to a good life?

3. Compare Dworkin’s idea of a good life lived critically with Socrates’s statement that the unexamined life is not worth living. Are they saying the same thing? Why or why not?

4. Give three examples of people you think have lived the kind of life that Dworkin considers meaningful, and explain why.

Narrative

A Man for All Seasons

R O B E R T B O L T ( S C R E E N W R I T E R )

F R E D Z I N N E M A N ( D I R E C T O R )

Film, 1966. Based on a 1960 play by Robert Bolt. Summary.

This fi lm, which won multiple Academy Awards, including best picture, best director, and best actor, portrays a real event in England’s history. It is the sixteenth century; Henry VIII is king, and he has a problem: His wife, Catherine, whom the pope gave him dispensation to marry because she was his brother’s widow (and as such, a relative), has not borne him any sons, and since he is concerned about the line of succession, he is looking around for another queen. The problem is that since England is Catholic, the king has no legal access to divorce, unless clever lawyers can fi nd a loophole in his mar- riage. Churchmen, government offi cials, and legal experts, concerned with their own future, put together a strategy: to declare the marriage annulled on the grounds that the pope had no authority to grant the permission to marry in the fi rst place. However, there is one legal expert who refuses to go along with the scheme: Sir Thomas More, a man

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NARRATIVE: A MAN FOR ALL SE AS O N S 429

whom the king considers a friend. Hoping to win him over, King Henry appoints him chancellor and shows up in person at More’s estate on the River Thames to persuade him, but he leaves in anger when it becomes clear that More considers the word of the pope to have a higher authority. Why is it so important for the king to get More on his side, when he has the support of everyone else? Because, as the king himself remarks, More is an honest man who would not choose convenience over his conscience, and receiving More’s blessing would make the plan legitimate to the king. But More refuses to budge, even though he knows that incurring the king’s wrath can be a dangerous thing; indeed, this is the beginning of the end for More, as his erudite daughter Margaret soon realizes. When Henry VIII institutes the English Reformation and outlaws Catholicism so he can divorce Catherine and marry his new love, Anne (who herself will be executed to make way for another queen a few years later), More withdraws from his position as chancellor in silence, never uttering a word in public or in private about the king’s activi- ties. A brilliant lawyer, More is trying to protect himself and his family by following both his conscience and the law to the letter, believing that his silence will be a shield, but he discovers that his silence does not protect him, as it should according to the law. As the king’s man Thomas Cromwell remarks, More is an innocent and does not envision the

In the 1966 fi lm A Man for All Seasons we meet Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofi eld), a lawyer associated with the court of King Henry VIII. In this true story, More becomes a victim of his own high moral standards: The king wants More’s support in annulling his marriage, but More’s professional integrity won’t allow him to give it. In this scene paralleling Socrates’ speech in his own defense (see the Apology ), More argues for his viewpoint and his life, well knowing that he is already condemned.

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schemes being prepared by his adversaries. A young man, Richard, who used to be part of the circle around More but believed he could fi nd glory and fortune by attaching him- self to Cromwell instead, now serves as an informant on More. But there is truly nothing to report: More is a man of integrity, the only lawyer in London who has not accepted bribes on a regular basis, says More’s friend, the Duke of Norfolk. Since More refuses to sign a new oath of allegiance to the king and to accept the new rules of succession ac- cording to the Protestant Church of England, he is called in for a hearing, during which his sharp legal mind outwits Cromwell; but from now on he is considered an enemy of the court, and being his friend becomes dangerous. Norfolk tries to persuade him to do as everyone else, do the convenient thing to save himself and his career, but following one’s principles is more important to More than life and safety. To save his friend Norfolk from the danger and embarrassment of their friendship, he provokes a quarrel that leaves Norfolk hurt and angry, so that he turns his back on More. Soon More fi nds himself a prisoner in the Tower of London, the last stage in the lives of many political prisoners; through several seasons he languishes in the damp cell with- out being allowed to see his family, under constant pressure from Cromwell to either sign the oath or speak up against it. We see how his posture has deteriorated; his hair is gray, and his face shows the hardship of imprisonment. One day he is surprised and overjoyed to see his family—his wife, Alice, his daughter, and her husband—but when he realizes that they have been ordered to come just to put pressure on him, he understands that he will not be seeing them again and that staying in England will endanger their lives; he makes them promise that they will fl ee the country, by different routes, on the same day, and very soon. His daughter asks him why he can’t just sign the oath to save himself—speak it with his mouth and speak against it in his heart—and More answers,

What is an oath, then, but words we say to God? Listen, Meg, when a man takes an oath, he is holding his own self in his own hands, like water—and if he opens his fi ngers then, he needn’t hope to fi nd himself again.

But Margaret is not satisfi ed; to her, it is not her father’s fault if the state is three-quarters bad, and if he elects to suffer for it, then he elects himself a hero. More replies:

That’s very neat. If we lived in a state where virtue was profi table, common sense would make us saints, but since we see that avarice, anger, pride and stupidity commonly profi t far beyond charity, modesty, justice and thought, perhaps we must stand fast a little, even at the risk of being heroes.

More knows that his daughter will understand, but his wife, Alice, is tormented by the suffering he is putting her through—she says she is afraid that when he is gone, she is going to hate him for what he has done to them; and, for once, at this moment, Thomas More begins to lose his composure. It means so much to him that his wife understand why he may be going to his death. He begs her to say she does, for without her under- standing he might not be able to endure what is going to happen to him. And now she looks at him, embraces him, and tells him she understands that he is a good man and that he must do what his conscience tells him to do. Sad but relieved, he hugs his daughter and his wife one last time.

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NARRATIVE: THE MYT H OF THE CA VE 431

At last More stands trial; he has often told his family as well as his adversaries that there can be no trial because they have nothing on him; silence can be used only to signify tacit consent and not dissent. But now there is a witness: A man in fancy clothes, a rich and pow- erful man, approaches the bench. It is Richard, the young man who sold out to Cromwell, More’s former friend who now holds a high public offi ce, a position received in return for the perjury he is about to commit. He swears that he has heard More speak his mind, against the king and the new Church of England. Cromwell asks the questions, and his instructions to the jury consist of saying that the jury hardly need deliberate. Thus we know that they, too, must have been “instructed” before the trial. And indeed the verdict is “guilty.” Almost deprived of his right to speak, More now rises, a condemned man, and breaks his silence, arguing that he is being executed for not agreeing to the king’s divorce, which he certainly was against, because it nullifi ed the authority of the pope. Cromwell decries this as treason; and soon after, on a sunny day in summer, More is executed by beheading.

Study Questions

1. Find similarities between Socrates and Thomas More; are there any signifi cant differences?

2. What does More mean by saying, “When a man takes an oath, he is holding his own self in his own hands, like water—and if he opens his fi ngers then, he needn’t hope to fi nd himself again”?

3. If you were in More’s position, what might you have chosen to do? If you had been in the position of More’s daughter or wife, would you have understood and accepted his actions? Why or why not?

4. Virtue ethics, as you know, focuses not on what to do but on how to be; the fi lm shows More as a man of honesty and integrity, two very important virtues. But would it be possible to criticize More for having failed the test of the virtues of family loyalty and fl exibility? Why or why not? (This question actually reveals one of the problems with virtue ethics: What do we do about confl icting virtues?)

Narrative

The Myth of the Cave

P L A T O

Excerpt from The Republic, fourth century B.C.E. Translated by Francis MacDonald Cornford.

There is no better fi ctional narrative that illustrates Plato’s theory of Forms than the Myth, Fable, or Allegory of the Cave itself. Here you have it in its entirety; the two per- sons talking are Socrates, telling the story, and Plato’s brother Glaucon, listening.

Next, said I, here is a parable to illustrate the degrees in which our nature may be enlight- ened or unenlightened. Imagine the condition of men living in a sort of cavernous chamber

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underground, with an entrance open to the light and a long passage all down the cave. Here they have been from childhood, chained by the leg and also by the neck, so that they cannot move and can see only what is in front of them, because the chains will not let them turn their heads. At some distance higher up is the light of a fi re burning behind them; and between the prisoners and the fi re is a track with a parapet built along it, like the screen at a puppet-show, which hides the performers while they show their puppets over the top.

I see, said he. Now behind this parapet imagine persons carrying along various artifi cial objects,

including fi gures of men and animals in wood or stone or other materials, which project above the parapet. Naturally, some of these persons will be talking, others silent.

It is a strange picture, he said, and a strange sort of prisoners. Like ourselves, I replied; for in the fi rst place prisoners so confi ned would have seen

nothing of themselves or of one another, except the shadows thrown by the fi re-light on the wall of the Cave facing them, would they?

Not if all their lives they had been prevented from moving their heads. And they would have seen as little of the objects carried past. Of course. Now, if they could talk to one another, would they not suppose that their words

referred only to those passing shadows which they saw? Necessarily. And suppose their prison had an echo from the wall facing them? When one of the

people crossing behind them spoke, they could only suppose that the sound came from the shadow passing before their eyes.

No doubt. In every way, then, such prisoners would recognize as reality nothing but the shad-

ows of those artifi cial objects. Inevitably. Now consider what would happen if their release from the chains and the healing

of their unwisdom should come about in this way. Suppose one of them was set free and forced suddenly to stand up, turn his head, and walk with eyes lifted to the light; all these movements would be painful, and he would be too dazzled to make out the objects whose shadows he had been used to see. What do you think he would say, if someone told him that what he had formerly seen was meaningless illusion, but now, being some- what nearer to reality and turned towards more real objects, he was getting a truer view? Suppose further that he were shown the various objects being carried by and were made to say, in reply to questions, what each of them was. Would he not be perplexed and believe the objects now shown him to be not so real as what he formerly saw?

Yes, not nearly so real. And if he were forced to look at the fi re-light itself, would not his eyes ache, so that

he would try to escape and turn back to the things which he could see distinctly, con- vinced that they really were clearer than these other objects now being shown to him?

Yes. And suppose someone were to drag him away forcibly up the steep and rugged

ascent and not let him go until he had hauled him out into the sunlight, would he not suffer pain and vexation at such treatment, and, when he had come out into the light, fi nd his eyes so full of its radiance that he could not see a single one of the things that he was now told were real?

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NARRATIVE: THE MYT H OF THE CA VE 433

Certainly he would not see them all at once. He would need, then, to grow accustomed before he could see things in that upper

world. At fi rst it would be easiest to make out shadows, and then the images of men and things refl ected in water, and later on the things themselves. After that, it would be easier to watch the heavenly bodies and the sky itself by night, looking at the light of the moon and stars rather than the Sun and the Sun’s light in the day-time.

Yes, surely. Last of all, he would be able to look at the Sun and contemplate its nature, not as

it appears when refl ected in water or any alien medium, but as it is in itself in its own domain.

No doubt. And now he would begin to draw the conclusion that it is the Sun that produces

the seasons and the course of the year and controls everything in the visible world, and moreover is in a way the cause of all that he and his companions used to see.

Clearly he would come at last to that conclusion. Then if he called to mind his fellow prisoners and what passed for wisdom in his former

dwelling-place, he would surely think himself happy in the change and be sorry for them. They may have had a practice of honouring and commending one another, with prizes for the man who had the keenest eye for the passing shadows and the best memory for the order in which they followed or accompanied one another, so that he could make a good guess as to which was going to come next. Would our released prisoner be likely to covet those prizes or to envy the men exalted to honour and power in the Cave? Would he not feel like Homer’s Achilles, that he would far sooner “be on earth as a hired servant in the house of a landless man” or endure anything rather than go back to his old beliefs and live in the old way?

Yes, he would prefer any fate to such a life. Now imagine what would happen if he went down again to take his former seat in

the Cave. Coming suddenly out of the sunlight, his eyes would be fi lled with darkness. He might be required once more to deliver his opinion on those shadows, in competition with the prisoners who had never been released, while his eyesight was still dim and un- steady; and it might take some time to become used to the darkness. They would laugh at him and say that he had gone up only to come back with his sight ruined; it was worth no one’s while even to attempt the ascent. If they could lay hands on the man who was trying to set them free and lead them up, they would kill him.

Yes, they would.

Study Questions

1. To recapitulate: This is an allegory of what Plato sees as reality. What does it mean? Who are the prisoners? Where is the cave? What does it mean to see the sun?

2. What did Plato have in mind when he let Socrates speak the fi nal sentences?

3. In what way might this worldview correspond to elements in the worldview of the Christian tradition? Are there signifi cant differences?

4. Can you think of a modern story (fi lm or novel) that speculates about the nature of re- ality? (Does it ask questions such as, Is reality the way we see it? What are we on this earth for? and Is there life after death?) Does it agree or disagree with Plato’s version?

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434 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

Narrative

The Truman Show

A N D R E W N I C C O L ( S C R E E N W R I T E R )

P E T E R W E I R ( D I R E C T O R )

Film, 1998. Summary.

This fi lm is one of those stories we can interpret in a number of ways. That it is a satire on the entertainment industry and its mixing of reality and fi ction is the easy interpretation, but some also see it as an allegory about the freedom of the human spirit in a world that is overly regulated. It could also be one man’s fantasy of being the center of the universe. But in essence The Truman Show is about seeking and fi nding true reality beyond the il- lusion that presents itself as everyday life, and as such it becomes a story with a Socratic twist, a parallel to Plato’s “Myth of the Cave.” Truman Burbank is a young insurance salesman who lives with his wife, a nurse, in the small, pleasant island community of Seahaven, the kind of place where everybody knows everyone else—at least they all know Truman. It’s a friendly town, and Truman

Truman (Jim Carey) is on television 24∕7, but he doesn’t know it. The world is real to him, but everyone else knows it is a soundstage, a world of fakery. The only thing that isn’t faked in the show is Truman himself (a true man, as opposed to all the other characters in the show) and his emotional reactions. Once he realizes his world is not real, will he try to seek true reality, or be content with illusions and safety? Compare the question asked by Socrates in the Myth of the Cave: What is the philosopher supposed to do once he realizes he has been stuck in a cave of illusions all his life?

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NARRATIVE: THE TRU M AN S H O W 435

has never been anywhere else. When he was a boy his father drowned during an outing in their sailboat: Surprised by a storm, Truman’s dad fell overboard and disappeared in the waves. This traumatic experience gave Truman a fear of deep water, so the mere thought of going on the ferry to the mainland, or driving across the bridge, makes him anxious. Nevertheless, he has travel dreams: He wants to go to Fiji. As a boy he wanted to be an explorer, but his teacher was quick to tell him that all the places have already been dis- covered, so why would he want to go anywhere? His best friend since childhood does his best to discourage Truman’s longing for exotic places, and Truman’s wife points out that they can’t afford to just take off, they have obligations and must meet house payments and so on. In fact, everyone seems to be trying to make Truman stay in Seahaven. When he was in high school, he fell in love with Sylvia, a beautiful, elusive girl who seemed to have something important on her mind, but somehow they were always pre- vented from seeing each other—until a fateful evening at the library when they were able to sneak out and make a run for it to the beach. But within minutes a vehicle showed up, presumably driven by her father, who snatched Sylvia away from Truman. She wasn’t normal, he said, and shouted that they were moving to Fiji. So we understand that the reason Truman wants to go to Fiji isn’t just to see a faraway place—it is to look for Sylvia. Before her father took her away, she tried to convey to Truman that something was wrong—but he didn’t understand what she meant. Now, years later, he is beginning to feel that something is wrong. His wife is con- stantly telling him about new household products with unnatural enthusiasm, as if she is acting in a commercial. In his car on the way to work the radio malfunctions, and he hears a voice describing the route he is taking. He walks into a building on the spur of the moment and tries to enter the elevator, only to fi nd that there is no back wall to the elevator—he can see clear through to a backstage area where people are having lunch. But fi rst and foremost, he has a chance encounter in the street with a homeless person who looks awfully familiar to him. He turns, takes a second look—and realizes that it is Dad, returned from the dead! But at that moment, strangers turn up and whisk the older man away on a bus. This is the turning point for Truman: Is somebody trying to prevent him from talk- ing to his father? Increasingly, he has the feeling that his entire reality is somehow staged and that people are not what they seem. And as viewers we know that he is right: Every- thing is staged except for Truman and his reactions, because Truman is the hero of The Truman Show, a live, twenty-four-hours-a-day television series broadcast to the entire world. That was the secret that Sylvia was trying to tell him but never quite managed to convey. It is a hugely popular show. Truman has been on TV from the day he was born, with- out having the slightest idea that his reality isn’t normal. And in a way it is “ normal”—an idealized normality that doesn’t exist for anyone else. His mother is an actor, his wife is an actor, even his best friend whom he has known since childhood—everyone is in on it ex- cept Truman. The Truman Show is the brainchild of the brilliant director Christoph, who watches over everything on the set high above Seahaven, in a control booth disguised as a perennially visible full moon. The control booth makes the sun rise and set electroni- cally, changes the weather, and cues everyone on the set through earphones. The words of friendship spoken by his best friend are lines fed to the friend by Christoph. In a rare

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436 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

interview the great director is asked why Truman has never questioned his reality, and he answers that we all believe the reality that is presented to us. But Truman’s gullibility is coming to an end: When he realizes that the travel agent has no intention of selling him a ticket to Fiji, he packs his suitcase and heads for the bus depot, and buys a ticket to Chicago. But the bus isn’t going anywhere—the bus driver is an actor who can’t get the bus started—and Christoph isn’t about to let Truman leave. There is nowhere to go; the set is enclosed. But Truman doesn’t give up. One night, as the TV crew relaxes because they think he is asleep, what they’re really watching is a dummy under a blanket, with a tape recorder producing snoring sounds. Truman has sneaked out. For the fi rst time in his life he is not on camera. Christoph mobilizes the entire island: All the actors are now engaged in looking for Truman, but he is nowhere to be found—until they think to look for him in the unthink- able place: on the water, in a sailboat, headed for—Fiji? All over the world, viewers watch with bated breath. Will Truman succeed in his quest? Will he escape his confi ning, de- signed world? Even Sylvia is watching, praying that Truman will make it. Christoph does what he can to thwart Truman, even ordering his reluctant engineers to whip up a nearly fatal storm. In spite of his deep-seated fear of water, Truman hangs in there and outlasts Christoph’s rage. He continues on his way toward the horizon—which comes up sooner than expected: All of a sudden the bow of his boat goes right through the sky, a beauti- fully painted backdrop. He has been sailing around in a huge tank on the soundstage. Immediately ahead is a fl ight of stairs, leading up to a door. Truman steps off the boat, walks to the stairs along the edge of the world, and ascends to the door. And now Christoph, desperate, addresses him over the speaker system, a disembodied loving voice coming from above. He tells Truman about how long he has been observing him as a boy and a young man, all the kinds of experiences a parent would remember— and how well he knows him and his fears. Nothing bad can ever happen to him in Seahaven—the real world is a dangerous place. The door is open to the dark, mysterious real world. Is Truman going to go through it and disappear? Or will he act true to his conditioning and go back?

Study Questions

1. What are the similarities between Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” and The Truman Show, and what are the differences? In Plato’s myth the perfect world is outside the cave. Where is it in the fi lm? You may also want to explore the concept of one person being deluded versus humanity as such being deluded. Is this exclusively Truman’s story, or are we all “Trumans,” stuck on the soundstage as in Plato’s cave?

2. What is the signifi cance of Truman’s fi rst name? What does it mean in the context of the story?

3. If you could choose, would you rather have a pleasant life based on a lie, or a diffi cult, unpredictable life founded on a true perception of the world?

4. If we view the story as an illustration of Socratic virtue ethics, developing one’s charac- ter and allowing reason to rule, how might the three virtues of wisdom, courage, and temperance be seen to play out in (1) Truman? (2) the director? (3) the others on the island? and (4) the audience?

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NARRATIVE: THE ST ORE OF THE WO R LD S 437

Narrative

The Store of the Worlds

R O B E R T S H E C K L E Y

Short story, 1959. Summary and Excerpt.

What is a “good life”? For many people today it means a life of no fi nancial worries, of material goods and successful pursuit of pleasures. Socrates believed that a good life must involve intellectual and moral awareness: “The unexamined life is not worth liv- ing,” he said. In order to live a full and fruitful life, one should stay aware and alert, not take things for granted, question authority, acquire knowledge, and certainly also make a point of enjoying oneself. For Socrates a good life would be one spent thinking; analyz- ing; trying to be a fair, just, and decent human being; and not letting the moments of life go to waste. This little story written at the height of the Cold War, with its constant fear of sudden global nuclear annihilation, offers a version of what a good life is that may come as a surprise to you. And then again, perhaps not. For Mr. Wayne’s fantasy of a perfect life doesn’t involve fame or fortune, just the chance to enjoy more of an ordinary life that is gone forever. I think many of us understand the moral of this little story—as does anyone who has come face-to-face with the loss of the daily life he or she has taken for granted. Mr. Wayne is on a clandestine errand: Making certain he hasn’t been followed, he slips into a small, obscure shack, clutching a parcel. Inside the primitive shack is the man he has come to see, Mr. Tompkins. Mr. Tompkins’s activity is illegal, and yet word has spread about it; Wayne would like to know more. Tompkins explains.

What happens is this, you pay me my fee. I give you an injection which knocks you out. Then, with the aid of certain gadgets which I have in the back of the store, I liberate your mind. . . . Your mind, liberated from its body, is able to choose from the countless probability-worlds which the Earth casts off in every second of its existence.

In every second of Earth’s existence, Tompkins explains, alternate realities have been created: All the ways things could have happened, but didn’t, in our own reality. You can spend a year in any alternate reality you choose! But the fee is high: Just about everything you own, plus ten years off your life. It will have the complete feel of reality, and the method of choosing will not even be conscious; your choice will be guided by your deep- est unconscious desires. Tompkins is still working on a way to make it permanent, but so far he can manage only a year, and that is so strenuous to the body that the customer loses ten years of lifetime. Mr. Wayne is fascinated, and tempted, but the price frightens him, so he asks if he can think it over. All the way home on the train to Long Island he ponders. But when he arrives home, he has other things to think about: His wife Janet needs to discuss house- hold problems with him, his son wants help with his hobby, and his young daughter wants to tell about her day in kindergarten. Janet notices that he seems preoccupied,

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438 CHAPTER 8 V IRTUE ETHICS

but he has no intention of telling her that he went to see the weirdo at the Store of the Worlds. Next day his attention is completely absorbed by things at the offi ce: Middle East events cause a panic on Wall Street, so he has to put all thoughts of the Store on the back burner. On weekends he goes sailing with his son; his daughter catches the measles; the boy wants to know about atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs and cobalt bombs and all the other kinds, and Wayne explains to the best of his ability. Sometimes on summer nights he and Janet go sailing on Long Island Sound, and it is cool and lovely. Occasionally he thinks about the Store; but autumn comes, and there are other everyday things to deal with. In mid-winter there is a fi re in the bed- room, and the repairs put all luxuries out of his reach. Working at the offi ce, wor- rying about the political tensions around the world, taking care of his son when he comes down with the mumps—all of a sudden it is spring again—a whole year has passed. . . .

“Well?” said Tompkins. “Are you all right?” “Yes, quite all right,” Mr. Wayne said. He got up from the chair and rubbed his

forehead. “Do you want a refund?” Tompkins asked. “No. The experience was quite satisfactory.” “They always are,” Tompkins said. . . . “Well, what was yours?” “A world of the recent past,” Mr. Wayne said. “A lot of them are. Did you fi nd out about your secret desire? Was it murder? Or a

South Seas island?” “I’d rather not discuss it,” Mr. Wayne said, pleasantly but fi rmly. “A lot of people won’t discuss it with me,” Tompkins said sulkily. “I’ll be damned

if I know why.” “Because—well, I think the world of one’s secret desire feels sacred, somehow. No

offence . . . Do you think you’ll ever be able to make it permanent? The world of one’s choice, I mean?”

The old man shrugged his shoulders. “I’m trying. If I succeed, you’ll hear about it. Everyone will.”

“Yes, I suppose so.” Mr. Wayne undid his parcel and laid its contents on the table. The parcel contained a pair of army boots, a knife, two coils of copper wire, and three small cans of corned beef.

Tompkins’s eyes glittered for a moment. “Quite satisfactory,” he said. “Thank you.” “Good-bye,” said Mr. Wayne. “And thank you .” Mr. Wayne left the shop and hurried down to the end of the lane of grey rubble.

Beyond it, as far as he could see, lay fl at fi elds of rubble, brown and grey and black. Those fi elds, stretching to every horizon, were made of the twisted corpses of cities, the shattered remnants of trees, and the fi ne white ash that once was human fl esh and bone.

“Well,” Mr. Wayne said to himself, “at least we gave as good as we got.” That year in the past had cost him everything he owned, and ten years of life thrown

in for good measure. Had it been a dream? It was still worth it! But now he had to put away all thought of Janet and the children. That was fi nished, unless Tompkins perfected his process. Now he had to think about this own survival.

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NARRATIVE: THE ST ORE OF THE WO R LD S 439

With the aid of his wrist geiger he found a deactivated lane through the rubble. He’d better get back to the shelter before dark, before the rats came out. If he didn’t hurry he’d miss the evening potato ration.

Study Questions

1. What was the world of Mr. Wayne’s secret desire? What might the author want to convey with this story? Does it seem relevant to you? Why or why not?

2. How might Socrates comment on this story? Has Mr. Wayne examined his life, thus making it worth living?

3. Reviewers have described Scheckley’s story as a humoristic piece. Does it seem hu- morous to you, or didn’t the reviewers get the deeper meaning? Might it be both funny and serious?

4. Today we are close to having access to Mr. Tompkins’s invention through computer- ized virtual reality; given the choice of alternate realities, which would you choose to spend a year in? Would you consider the lesson of “The Store of the Worlds”?

5. Is this a didactic story? Why or why not?

6. Apply Dworkin’s concept of life as having performance value vs. life as having prod- uct value with this story. Does Mr. Tompkins’s one year in the past have performance value or product value, or both? Is that important? Why or why not?

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440

Chapter Nine

Aristotle’s Virtue Theory: Everything in Moderation

A fter Plato’s death in 347 B.C.E., leadership of the Academy fell to his nephew Speusippus. History believes that another man had expected to take over, and with good reason, for he was by far the best student ever to be associated with the Academy. That man was Aristotle, who had studied for twenty years with Plato. Scholars now think that because of the amount of traveling Plato did, Ar- istotle may never have been especially close to his teacher; it seems certain that the closeness between Socrates and Plato was never repeated between Plato and Aristotle.

Empirical Knowledge and the Realm of the Senses

Making claims about someone’s infl uence on history can be a risky business because such claims tend to be exaggerated. In Aristotle’s case, however, it is quite safe to say that he is one of the persons in antiquity who has had the most infl uence on Western thinking and that even in modern times few people have rivaled his overall historical importance. As Plato left his legacy in Western philosophy and theology, Aristotle opened up the possibility of scientifi c, logical, empirical thinking—in philosophy as well as in the natural sciences. It is no wonder that Plato made no contribution in that area. He wouldn’t have been interested in natural science, because its object is the world of the senses, far removed from the Forms. Although Aristotle was a student of Plato and did believe in the general reality of Plato’s Forms (see Chapter 8), he believed that Forms are not separate from material things; Aristotle believed the Forms have no existence outside their objects. If we’re enjoying the view of a waterfall cascading off a cliff face, we are at the same time, according to Aristotle, directly experiencing the Forms of cliff, of waterfall, and of falling. If we’re in love with someone and think the person is beauti- ful, we are experiencing the Form of beauty right there in the person’s face. And if we are studying a tree or a fossil, the Form that gives us knowledge about the history of that tree or fossil is right there. In other words, knowledge can be sought and found directly from the world of the senses. From the previous chapter, you may remember Socrates’ remark in Phaedrus that he never ventured outside the city because trees and countryside could not teach him anything—in contrast, Aristotle would most defi nitely look to those trees for knowledge.

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ARISTOTLE THE SCIENTIST 441

This turn in Aristotle’s thinking—from Forms being separate to being insepa- rable from the thing or the experience—is what made it possible for him to think in terms of empirical research (gathering evidence, making hypotheses, and testing theories on the basis of experience). Legend holds that Alexander the Great, on his exploits deep into Persia and Afghanistan, had samples of fl ora and fauna collected and sent to his old teacher. Aristotle would have been delighted to receive such samples and would have studied them carefully, because he believed in the possibil- ity of empirical knowledge.

Aristotle the Scientist

Aristotle was instrumental in founding the sciences—not the exact disciplines as we know them today, but sciences in the sense that the concepts of logic and observation were combined. The extent of his infl uence, however, goes beyond that. It is hard for us to imagine that there was an era when a human being actually could “know everything,” in the sense of having access to all available knowledge at the time, and yet it seems that Aristotle was such a person. (Box 9.1 explores the career of Aristotle as a foreigner in Athens.) He was the author of what we know as classical logic; he laid the foundations of the classifi cations in biology; he developed theories of astronomy; he was interested in politics, rhetoric (the art of verbal persuasion), and drama; he wrote books on the proper structure of tragedy and of comedy; he developed theories of the nature of the soul, of God, and of other metaphysical questions. Indeed, the term metaphysics derives from Aristotle: He supposedly wrote a book on physics and then another book without a title about the nature of real- ity. Because it came after the book on physics, his followers called it the “book after physics,” ta meta ta physica. His book about ethics may prove to have the most enduring infl uence of them all. But he also wrote about the justifi cation of slavery and the nature of woman as a lower being. Aristotle thus presents ideas in his writings that are deeply offensive to most modern Western readers, but philosophers usually choose to read his more controversial writings as historical documents rather than as blue- prints for how to live our lives. In many ways Aristotle was not what we call a critical thinker; indeed, Socrates would not necessarily have approved of him, for he often refrains from analyzing a viewpoint (such as the status and nature of women) but, rather, limits himself to mentioning it. He seems to assume that some things are obvious; most people who lived during his time probably agreed with him. A great many of Aristotle’s writings are lost to us. Aristotle, like Plato, wrote dialogues, and the Roman orator Cicero held them in high regard, but only some fragments remain. For the most part, they’re lecture notes and course summaries that he used in his classes; some were written for general audiences and some for more advanced students. Some of the works are supplemented by notes taken by his students.

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442 CHAPTER 9 ARISTOTLE ’S V IRTUE THEORY: EVERYTHING IN MODERATION

Aristotle was born in Stagira in Northern Greece in 384 B.C.E. His father died when he was young, and he was raised by his sister and her husband. They were of good family, and his father had been the physician to the king of Macedonia. When Aristotle arrived in Athens at the age of eighteen it was, presumably, to get an education as a physician so he could take over the illustrious position of royal physician at home, but that was not to be: He was drawn to Plato’s Academy, and was arguably the brightest student in the school, maturing into his own thinker over two decades. On the side he reportedly made a living giving medical advice to Athenians. When Plato died, Aristotle—thirty-eight at the time—must have assumed that he would be elected as the new leader of the Academy, but he was passed over for Plato’s nephew Speusippus. Considering that Aristotle hadn’t seen eye to eye with Plato about a number of subjects, that’s perhaps not so hard to understand, but perhaps more important, he was not an Athenian citizen, and did not have the rights of native-born citizens of Athens. So he had no recourse, and left Athens, presumably in anger. He traveled to Asia Minor, got married, and began his studies in biology. In 343 he went to Macedonia, where he became a tutor for the young prince, the son of King Philip. (In three short years, that boy would become the regent of Macedonia and later of an immense realm cover- ing most of the classical world. He would come to be known as Alexander the Great.) Exactly what Aristotle’s status was at court is a matter of speculation—some scholars think that his tutor- ing of Alexander was actually a minor job com- pared with the real purpose of his stay, which may have been completely political: King Philip hoped to get Aristotle elected as head of Plato’s Academy even if he’d already been passed over for Speusippus, because Speusippus was anti- Macedonian, and Philip apparently had expan- sionist ambitions and needed a pro-Macedonian

leader of the most powerful school in the Greek culture. But when Speusippus died, Aristotle was passed over a second time, and King Philip focused on going to war with Athens instead. So Aristotle packed up and left for his home in Stagira, but his connection with the Macedo- nian court was by no means over: When Philip died suddenly, and Alexander became king, Alexander found use for his old teacher and sent him to Athens in 335 to open up a school of his own, in competition with Plato’s school. There is speculation that even at that point, Aristotle had hoped to become leader of the Academy, for he traveled to Athens with a huge amount of teach- ing material and an entire staff to run the school, but it never happened. Instead, Aristotle started teaching at the site of the public horse track, known as the Lyceum after Apollo Lykeion, and for twelve years—not a particularly long span, as academic careers go—he taught students and

Box 9.1 W H O W A S A R I S T O T L E ?

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ARISTOTLE THE SCIENTIST 443

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.), Greek philosopher and naturalist, here shown teaching the young Alexander. If one were to pick one scholar as the most infl uential in Western cultural history, it would have to be Aristotle. Not only did he leave infl uential writings in a multitude of fi elds such as biology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, drama, and politics, he also introduced the concept of empirical science to the ancient world. It is said about Aristotle that he knew everything there was to know at the time, and that may well be an accurate description.

wrote books about issues that were of interest to him in philosophy, science, and what we today would call social and political science. A mar- ble bust of Aristotle from 2,300 years ago was recently unearthed in Athens. It is a Roman copy

of an older Greek bust and is believed to be the most accurate likeness of Aristotle ever found. Unfortunately the image was not available for this edition, but the likeness is very similar to the picture on p. 442.

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444 CHAPTER 9 ARISTOTLE ’S V IRTUE THEORY: EVERYTHING IN MODERATION

Aristotle’s Virtue Theory: Teleology and the Golden Mean

Virtue and Excellence

In the fi rst part of Chapter 8, we saw that the Greek conception of virtue was slightly different from our colloquial use of the word. Although calling someone virtuous may for some imply a certain amount of contempt, no such meaning was implied by the ancient Greeks. If you were virtuous, you would not be considered dull or with- drawn from life, because being virtuous meant, above all, that you managed your skills and your opportunities well. To be virtuous meant to act with excellence —we

During the Renaissance, Raphael painted this vision of Plato’s Academy, titled The School of Athens — not a true representation of daily life in the school but, rather, a highly symbolic image of two schools of thought. Two fi gures are approaching the steps in the center: Plato and Aristotle. Plato, the older man, is on the left. On the left side of the painting are some of Plato’s students; but most are historical fi gures, including some from Raphael’s own day, who have subscribed to the Platonic way of thought. Plato is pointing upward to the world of Forms, his image of true reality, whereas the younger man next to him, Aristotle, is stretching out his hand toward us, palm downward. He seems to say that it is in this world we can fi nd true knowledge, not in any intellectual realm re- moved from the senses. On the right we fi nd the Aristotelians of history, the scientists. And on the far right, Raphael has chosen to place himself, peeking straight out at us.

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ARISTOTLE ’S VIRTUE THEORY: TELEOLOGY AND THE GOLDEN MEAN 445

might even say with virtuosity, because this term retains some of what the Greeks associated with virtue. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Aristotle’s philosophy: You might say that virtue lies in the difference between doing something and doing it well. To Aristotle, everything on this earth has its own virtue, meaning that if it “performs” the way it is supposed to by its nature, then it is virtuous. For one thing, this means that virtue is not reserved for humans; for another thing, it means that everything that exists, including humans, has a purpose. There is virtue to a sharp knife, a comfort- able chair, a tree that grows straight, and a healthy, swift animal. For young, growing entities such as saplings and babies, one might talk about potential virtue.

Teleology: The Concept of Purpose

One concept that is essential for understanding Aristotle’s ideas on virtue comes from his metaphysics: the concept of teleology. In Greek, telos means goal or purpose, and a teleological theory or viewpoint assumes that something has a purpose or that

The realm conquered by Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.E.) was immense by the standards of the time period and even of today; however, it was short-lived. On Alexander’s death his generals divided the spoils and had to deal with local insurrections. Nevertheless, the memory of Alexander was kept alive in cultures as far apart as Egypt and northern India; in the mountainous reaches of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northern India the name “Sikander” (Alexander) became a legend: For example, the Afghan city of Kandahar, which fi gured in the war in Afghanistan, is named after Alexander. In Egypt a dynasty was founded by his general Ptolemy, and a city was named after him that centuries later would become the new center of civilization, the city of Alexandria.

MACEDONIAN EMPIRE

EGYPT

Black Sea

Mediterranean Sea

Red Sea

Caspian Sea

Arabian Sea

ARABIA

INDIA

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446 CHAPTER 9 ARISTOTLE ’S V IRTUE THEORY: EVERYTHING IN MODERATION

the end result of some action is all-important. Examples of teleological theories exist even today; we encounter them often in everyday discussions about “the meaning of life.” Modern science, however, has preferred to leave the question of the purpose of the universe behind. Plato also believed in the purpose of things, but Aristotle built his teleology into a complete metaphysical theory of “causes.” (For Aristotle’s four causes, see Box 9.2.) For Aristotle, everything that exists has a purpose, built into the fabric of reality from the very beginning. The idea of a purpose seems reasonable when we look at manufactured objects, because those objects must surely have started with an idea, a purpose, in the mind of their maker. To him, the universe was initially created by a great mind—but this “designer” had no further infl uence on its creation. If a cutler makes a knife, its purpose is to cut well, not just to make a dent. When you bake muffi ns you intend them to be edible, whether they turn out that way or not. But

For Aristotle every event has four causes, or four factors that work on it and bring it into being. These are the material cause, or the “stuff” the thing is made of; the effi cient cause, the force that has brought it into being; the formal cause, the shape or idea (the Form) of the thing; and the fi nal cause, the purpose of the thing. Consider this illustration (for which I give credit to one of my students):

• Material cause: fl our, water, and so on

• Effi cient cause: me, the baker

• Formal cause: the idea of muffi ns

• Final cause: to be eaten!

The material cause and the effi cient cause are fairly straightforward from a modern point of view: We have a general idea what Aristotle means when he says the material cause of a thing is the actual physical mate- rial that makes it what it is. But what about the effi cient creative force? For a muffi n, the creative force is the baker; for a wolf, it would be the wolf’s parents; for a river, it would be mountain springs and precipitation. (Later religious traditions inspired by Aristotle have chosen to read God as the creative, effi cient

force.) But the formal and fi nal causes are less intuitive. In the formal cause we see the last surviving element of Plato’s theory of Forms in Aristotle’s philosophy, but the Form is not outside the object in some intellectual realm; it is right there in the object itself. (Consider the painting by Raphael on p. 444: Aristotle is pointing downward, almost as if saying, “ This world is where you fi nd true reality.”) A suc- cessful muffi n displays the perfect Form of muffi n, whereas a misshapen muffi n is only a weak representation of the muffi n Form. For Aristotle, the fi nal cause was by far the most important cause from a philosophical point of view, because it allows us to understand the purpose of a thing—in other words, its essential qualities and nature. We do not understand the nature of a thing—natural or manufactured— until we understand its purpose. It follows that Aristotle believed everything has a purpose given to it by nature; if the object realizes its po- tential, it has fulfi lled its purpose and is a suc- cess. A sharp knife, a fast rabbit, and a smart human being would be examples of potential purpose actualized because each has become what it was supposed to be.

Box 9.2 T H E F O U R C A U S E S

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ARISTOTLE ’S VIRTUE THEORY: TELEOLOGY AND THE GOLDEN MEAN 447

can’t we have human actions without a purpose? Aristotle would say no, especially if we are creating an object; its purpose is a given thing. What about nature-made objects? Does a tree have a purpose? Does a wolf? an ant? a river? Today we would hesitate before saying yes, because after all, who are we to make such assumptions? If we say the purpose of a tree is to give us shade, or apples, we are assuming that it is here for us humans and not just for its own sake in the order of things. Even if we say the wolf’s purpose is to cull the herd of caribou, we hesitate to say that someone “designed” it that way, with purpose. Today, if we tend to use the term purpose or function to describe how things work in nature, we should probably remind ourselves once in a while that, scientifi cally, we are referring to how things work within the ecosystem, without implying that there is an under- lying designed purpose to nature. (Aristotle himself was not particularly interested in the relations between things in nature, such as an ecosystem, but was more con- cerned with the separate characteristics of natural phenomena.) There may well be such a purpose, as well as a designer, but scientists today generally believe that such assumptions, sometimes referred to as Intelligent Designs, fall outside the scope of science. Few scientists, regardless of how they feel privately, would willingly mix up religious opinions and professional theories. Aristotle, however, had no such com- punction about making statements that refl ected anthropocentrism (the view that everything happens for the sake of humans) or speculations about the general struc- ture of the universe (for he believed he understood it). For Aristotle, everything in nature does have a purpose, although it may not be easy to determine just what that purpose is. How do we go about determining what the purpose is? We investigate what the thing in question does best. Whatever that is will be the special characteristic of that thing. If the thing performs its purpose or function well, then it is virtuous.

The Human Purpose

For Aristotle, there is no question that a specifi cally human purpose in life exists. Each limb and organ of the body has a purpose, he says—the eye for seeing, the hands for grasping—so we must conclude that the person, as a whole, has a purpose above and beyond the sum of the body parts. (For Aristotle, that was an obvious conclusion; today we are not so quick to conclude anything about purposes. See Box 9.3.) The idea that humans are born for a reason and with a purpose is irresistible even to many modern minds. We ask ourselves, “What is the reason for my being here on this earth?” “Why was I born?” We hope to fi nd some answer in the future— some great deed we will do, a work of art we will create, the children we plan to raise, the infl uence we will exert on our profession, or the money and fame we plan to acquire. Some believe their greatest moment has come and gone, like an astronaut who has been on the moon—how do you top that? Such people may spend the rest of their lives searching for a new purpose. Our belief in destiny, in one form or another, infl uences our perception of the purpose of our lives. But that is only half of Aristotle’s concept of telos, because it applies only on a personal level. Aristotle is talking not only about the person becom- ing what he or she is supposed to become but also about the human being as such

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448 CHAPTER 9 ARISTOTLE ’S V IRTUE THEORY: EVERYTHING IN MODERATION

becoming what human beings are supposed to become. In other words, Aristotle believed not only that a telos exists for an individual but also that it exists for a spe- cies. How do we know what the purpose of an individual as a member of a species is? We investigate what that creature or thing does best—perhaps better than any other creature or thing. The purpose of a bird must involve fl ying, although there are fl ightless birds. The purpose of a knife must involve cutting, although there are movie prop knives that don’t cut a thing. The purpose of a rock? To do whatever it does best: lie there. (That is true Aristotle, not a joke.) And the purpose of a human? To reason. We can’t evaluate a person without taking into consideration the greater purpose of being human, which is to reason well:

Now if the function of man is an activity of soul which follows or implies a rational prin- ciple . . . [and we state the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle . . . and if any action is well per- formed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence: if this is the case,] human good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete. But we must add “in a complete life.” For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed or happy.

Scholars are usually generous here in labeling reasoning the purpose of humans —for in Aristotle’s terminology it is the “purpose of man. ” As we go deeper into Aristotle’s works, it becomes apparent that he is not using the word inclusively,

We use teleological explanations quite often even today, although generally they are not ac- ceptable as a scientifi c form of explanation. If we were to explain why giraffes have long necks, we might say something like “So they can reach tall branches.” Saying “so they can” implies that somehow giraffes are designed for that purpose or else that they have stretched and stretched over the ages until they can fi nally reach those branches. (Such a theory of evolution was pro- posed in the nineteenth century, before Charles Darwin. Its proponent was Jean Lamarck, and the theory is referred to as “inheritance of ac- quired characteristics.”) Even though we all know that giraffes do eat leaves off tall branches, it would not suit modern science to assume that that is their purpose. Darwin, with his theory of

natural selection, proposed a new point of view: that giraffes don’t come equipped with a pur- pose, nor does any other creature, but we all adapt to circumstances, and those who adapt the best survive and have offspring. We there- fore must imagine the ancestors of giraffes as being rather short-necked, with some born with longer necks as a result of mutation. Because the ones with long necks could reach the leaves that the others couldn’t reach, they were successful during times of hardship when many of the oth- ers perished. They gave birth to long-necked offspring, who gave birth to offspring with even longer necks, and so on. This is a causal expla- nation; it looks to reasons in the past to explain why something is the way it is today, instead of looking toward some future goal.

Box 9.3 T E L E O L O G I C A L E X P L A N A T I O N S

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ARISTOTLE ’S VIRTUE THEORY: TELEOLOGY AND THE GOLDEN MEAN 449

to cover males and females, as was to become the intellectual habit in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and most of the twentieth centuries: He means males. For Aristotle, men are the creatures who have the true capacity for reasoning; women have their own purpose (such as childbearing) and their own virtues. That may seem controversial enough to a modern reader who believes that men and women should have access to the same social opportunities, but the controversy doesn’t end there: Aristotle has become nothing short of notorious for proclaiming not only that men and women are fundamentally different but also that, in his own words from his text The Gen- eration of Animals, “the female is, as it were, a deformed male.” Man is the default gender for Aristotle, because he sees the male as the perfect human being, and since women aren’t male, they are less perfect. In a nutshell: Men produce semen, and women don’t. Aristotle believed that semen was blood transformed, with the added element of soul or essence. It was thus the father who gave the soul to the baby; the mother “only” provided the physical part, the body. (Here it is interesting to recall that Aristotle believed himself to have a considerable amount of knowledge about the human body, probably because he came from a family of physicians. In all fairness, it would have been impossible for him to know that, biologically, the situation is, in fact, reversed: The early human fetus is, by default, female, and if it has a Y chro- mosome, the male characteristics will develop later in the pregnancy.) In believing woman to be a creature fundamentally different from man, Aristotle seems to have joined forces with the public opinion of the times, although not with the opinion of his own teacher, Plato, who believed that the role of women depended on what they were well suited for, individually. (See Box 9.4 for what others have said about the human purpose.) The purpose for man, Aristotle would say, is to think rationally, on a regular basis, throughout his life, as a matter of habit—in other words, to develop a rational character. And that, according to Aristotle, is the same as moral goodness. For modern thinkers this is a surprising twist: that moral goodness can be linked with being good at something rather than just being good, period. Moral goodness seems for us to have more to do with not causing harm, with keeping promises, with upholding the values of our culture, and so on. For Aristotle, though, there is no

Aristotle inspired an entire school of thought long after he was dead. The Catholic Church came upon his writings some fi fteen hundred years after his death, and Saint Thomas Aquinas incorporated several of Aristotle’s ideas into his Christian philosophy in the thirteenth cen- tury, including the idea that humans have a purpose. For Aquinas, that purpose included

life, procreation, and the pursuit of knowl- edge of God. Other thinkers are not so certain that humans have a purpose; Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) believed there is no such thing as human nature and that anyone who says there is is only looking for an identity to hide behind so that he or she won’t have to make diffi cult choices (see Chapter 10).

Box 9.4 I S T H E R E A H U M A N P U R P O S E ?

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450 CHAPTER 9 ARISTOTLE ’S V IRTUE THEORY: EVERYTHING IN MODERATION

difference between fulfi lling one’s purpose, being virtuous, doing something with excellence, and being morally good. It all has to do with his theory of how one goes about being virtuous. Aristotle recognizes two forms of virtue, intellectual and moral. When our soul is trying to control our desires, we engage our moral virtues. But when our soul concentrates on intellectual and spiritual matters, we engage our intellectual virtues: When we think about objects of this world that are subject to change and try to make appropriate decisions, we engage our practical wisdom, our phronesis. But when we think about higher matters—the eternal questions of philosophy—we use our theo- retical wisdom, our sophia ( philosophy is a combination of philo = “love of ” and sophia = “wisdom”). One may excel in other virtues, but the highest virtue of them all is sophia, actualizing the uniquely human potential for abstract thought. So the intel- lectual virtues involve being able to learn well, think straight, and act accordingly. The moral virtues also involve the use of the intellect, because the only way humans can strive for perfection is to engage their intellect in developing a keen sense of the needs of the moment.

The Golden Mean

Ancient Greece gave us the concept of moderation, or the “Golden Mean.” Over the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi were inscribed “Know Thyself” ( gnothi seauton ) and “Nothing in Excess” ( maeden agan ). Socrates incorporated the idea of moderation in his teachings, as did several other thinkers, but above all it is at the heart of Aristotle’s idea of virtue: an action or a feeling responding to a particular situ- ation at the right time, in the right way, in the right amount, for the right reason—not too much and not too little. By using the Golden Mean, Aristotle believes he describes the “good for man”—where a human can excel, what a human is meant to do, and where a human will fi nd happiness. We will return to the subject of happiness shortly. In his Nicomachean Ethics, named for his son Nichomachus, Aristotle compares the Golden Mean to an artistic masterpiece; people recognize that you can’t add anything to it or take anything from it, because either excess (too much) or defi - ciency (too little) would destroy the masterpiece. The mean, however, preserves it. That may remind some readers of a joke among artists: “How many artists does it take to make a great painting? Two—one to paint it, and the other to hit the painter over the head when the painting is done.” Why the bash on the head? Because there comes a time, if the work is good enough, when more paint would be too much, and sometimes the artist doesn’t recognize that moment. Aristotle would reply that the virtuous artist will know that moment—indeed, that is precisely what constitutes a great artist. If that is the case for art, then it must apply to moral goodness: We are morally good if we are capable of choosing the proper response to every situation in life, not too much and not too little:

Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e., the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on

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ARISTOTLE ’S VIRTUE THEORY: TELEOLOGY AND THE GOLDEN MEAN 451

excess and that which depends on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices respec- tively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue fi nds and chooses that which is intermediate.

Aristotle tells us that every action or feeling must be done in the right amount. In many ways this is quite modern and a very down-to-earth approach to our daily problems. We all have to make big and little decisions every day: How much grati- tude should I show when someone does a favor for me or gives me a present I didn’t expect? How much is the right amount of curiosity to express about my friend’s personal life? (I don’t want to appear to be snooping, and I don’t want to appear cold either.) How much should I study for my fi nal? (I know when I’ve studied too little, but what exactly is studying too much?) How long should I leave the roast in the oven for it to be done to perfection when the kids like it gray and my spouse likes it bloody? How much love should I feel, and show, in a new relationship? We face those types of problems every day, and we rarely fi nd good answers to them. In that sense Aristotle shows a feeling for what we might call the “human condition,” common human concerns that remain the same throughout the ages. Very few phi- losophers have done as much as he to try to give people some actual advice about such mundane matters. Thus, even though Aristotle’s ideas derive from an ancient, alien world of slavery and other policies that are unacceptable to us today, there are features of his works that make his writings relevant for modern times and modern people. At the end of the chapter you’ll fi nd two excerpts from Aristotle’s Nicoma- chean Ethics, in which he explores the Golden Mean as well as the virtue of courage. Does Aristotle actually tell us what to do? Not really. He warns us that we each are prone to go toward one extreme or the other and that we must beware of such tendencies, but the only help we can fi nd on the road to virtue is the idea that we must try and try again. There are three questions one might want to ask. The fi rst is, If this is supposed to be a theory of character, why does it seem to talk about actions and conduct and what to do? The answer is that for Aristotle, this is a question of character because he is not so much interested in our response to singular situations as he is in our re- sponse in general. If we perform a considerate or courageous act only once, he would not call us considerate or courageous; the act must be done on a regular basis, as an expression of the kind of person we strive to be. In other words, we have to acquire some good habits. That means we can’t hope to be virtuous overnight—it takes time to mold ourselves into morally good people, just as it takes time to learn to play a musical instrument well. The second question one might ask is, What does this have to do with the specifi c human virtue of rational thinking? The answer lies in the fact that the way we fi nd out what the mean is in every situation is through reasoning, and the more times we have done it and acted correctly as a result, the better we can build up the habit of responding correctly. Now let’s ask the third question: Does this mean we are supposed to do everything in the right amount, not too much and not too little? It is easy to imagine eating in the right amount and exercising in the right amount, but what about acts like stealing? lying? or committing murder? Must we conclude that we can steal and lie and murder too much but also too little? that

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452 CHAPTER 9 ARISTOTLE ’S V IRTUE THEORY: EVERYTHING IN MODERATION

we will be virtuous if we steal, lie, and murder in the right amount? Hardly, and Aristotle was aware of this loophole; he tells us that some acts are just wrong by themselves and cannot be done in the right amount. Similarly, some acts are right in themselves and cannot be done too often. One such thing is justice: You can’t be “too just,” because being just already means being as fair as you can be. How exactly do we fi nd the mean? After all, it is not an absolute mean; we can- not identify the exact midpoint between the extremes the way we would measure the exact number of calories allowed in a diet. It is far more complex than that, and Aristotle warns us that there are many ways to go wrong but only one way to “hit the bull’s-eye” in each situation. It takes a full commitment, involving the entire person- ality, over a lifetime of training. In his lectures Aristotle appears to have covered a wide variety of virtues. Let us look at a few of them. If someone is in danger, that person can react in three ways: with too little cour- age (in which case he is a coward), with the right amount of courage, or with too much courage (in which case he is being foolhardy). Courage was for Aristotle a very important virtue, and you’ll fi nd his analysis of courage in the Primary Readings. Box 9.5 applies the virtue of courage as well as the vices of cowardice and foolhardi- ness to a specifi c situation, and two stories in the Narratives section focus on courage as a virtue: the ancient Icelandic Njal’s Saga and the fi lm based on Joseph Conrad’s

An application of Aristotle’s theory of virtue: Three women on a bridge see a drowning child being swept along by the waters. One woman is rash and jumps in without looking; the other is too cau- tious and frets so much that the time for action is past. But the third one reacts “just right”: She has developed a courageous character; she chooses an appropriate action and acts at the right time to save the child. (See Box 9.5.)

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ARISTOTLE ’S VIRTUE THEORY: TELEOLOGY AND THE GOLDEN MEAN 453

Imagine three women on a bridge: Heidi, Jill, and Jessica. Below them a dark river is rushing along, sweeping a little boy toward them, carry- ing him to certain doom. Heidi looks down at the swirling water and imagines all the things that could go wrong if she were to attempt a res- cue: the submerged rocks, how heavy her shoes and jeans will get if she jumps in, the fact that she just got over a bad cold, and the fact that she doesn’t swim well. Besides, she remembers, she has to make it to the library before closing time. While she has been doing all this thinking, Jill has already jumped in the river to save the boy. She jumped without thinking, however, and hit her head on one of the submerged rocks and knocked herself out. Jessica sees the boy, and as fast as lightning she calculates the swiftness of the river, the position of the rocks, her own swimming prowess—and she runs down the little staircase to the riverbed, throws in the life preserver that is hanging on the wall, saves the boy, and pulls ashore the unconscious Jill for good measure. Or maybe she sheds her shoes and jumps in and saves the boy. Or shouts to some men who are out fi shing and asks them to give her a hand. The main thing is that she thinks, and then acts, at the right time, in the proper amount. That is courage to Aristotle. Jill acted rashly. Heidi may have had the right in- tentions, but she did not act on them. You must

act on your intentions and succeed in order to be called virtuous. But what if some time in the future, by some odd coincidence, Heidi fi nds herself in the same situation again? A bridge, a drowning child—or some other situation where she might be in a po- sition to help by making the right split-second decision. Her previous failure might help her do better this time around. Aristotle believes we become virtuous through doing virtuous acts; and, if Heidi has learned anything from watch- ing Jessica, then she, too, might do the right thing this time. (But she has to remember that no two situations are exactly alike. In another situation acting exactly as Jessica did could be to act either rashly or too timidly.) Similarly, Jill might have learned from the situation; next time around she might be too timid, but eventually she, too, might get it right. Now Jessica: Can we rely on her to always make the right choice from now on? Most of us would not have such lofty expectations and would forgive her for a future mistake, but for Aristotle it was clear: When you have ascended to the level of a virtuous person, then your future actions will generally also be virtuous, because you have developed virtuous habits. One brave deed does not make a person brave (as one swallow does not make a sum- mer). If Jessica slips and makes a wrong judg- ment call, then she is not so virtuous after all.

Box 9.5 T H E R I G H T D E C I S I O N A T T H E R I G H T T I M E

novel Lord Jim. In addition, the theme of courage is explored as a contemporary virtue in Chapter 11. Let’s consider the act of pleasure seeking. If you overdo it, you are intemperate— but suppose you are not capable of enjoying pleasures at all? That is not a virtue, and Aristotle doesn’t know what to call such a person except “unimpressionable.” The virtue is to know in what amount to enjoy one’s pleasures; that Aristotle calls temperance. Thus for Aristotle, there is no virtue in staying away from pleasures, for “temperance” does not mean “abstinence.” The key is to enjoy them in moderation. Suppose we look at the art of spending money. For Aristotle, there is a virtuous way to spend money too. If you spend too much you are prodigal, and if you spend

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454 CHAPTER 9 ARISTOTLE ’S V IRTUE THEORY: EVERYTHING IN MODERATION

too little you are a miser. Spending just the right amount at the right time on the right people for the right reason makes you liberal. For the Greek mind, for the man of the polis, pride is a natural virtue, and so it is for Aristotle. You can, however, overestimate your honor and become vain, or you can underestimate it and become humble. The virtuous way to estimate yourself and your accomplishments is through proper pride. (See Box 9.6 for a discussion of the differences between Aristotle’s virtues, such as pride, and the traditional Christian list of cardinal virtues and vices.) Is there a virtuous way to feel angry ? Absolutely—by having a good temper or, as we might say today, being even-tempered. Being hot-tempered is a vice, but so is being meek. If you have been wronged, Aristotle believes, you ought to be angry in proportion to the offense against you. (This may remind you of the highly contempo- rary debate about the role of emotions in court, which you read about in Chapter 7.) Let us now consider the virtue of truthfulness. We probably would agree with Aristotle that this is a good thing, but what is his idea of a defi ciency of truthfulness? Not lying, as we might expect, but irony, or as it is often translated, “mock-modesty” (in other words, downplaying the situation). Aristotle obviously would not have enjoyed Socrates’ use of irony. The excess of truthfulness? Bragging. To the modern reader, the excess of truthfulness might be something different, such as being rude by telling someone, “You sure gained weight over the holidays!” But for Aristotle, it is not a matter of not harming others by lying or by being rude but a matter of as- sessing the situation properly, neither underplaying nor overplaying the truth. Here we touch on a hidden element of Aristotle’s virtue theory: Whom is the theory intended for? Not necessarily young people who need to get their lives straightened out. It is, instead, directed at future politicians. The young noblemen and sons of wealthy landowners who had the leisure time to go to school were expected to become the pillars of Athenian society. What Aristotle is teaching them is, in many ways, to be

For a modern Western person, the idea that it is legitimate to take pride in an accomplishment is not strange; we understand why Aristotle says we should not humiliate ourselves by making ourselves less than we are. But his idea that we have a right to feel proud about things that aren’t our own doing, such as being born of a certain class and race, is more problematic. To the traditional Christian mind, in fact, the entire idea of legitimate pride is a grave misconcep- tion. As much as Aristotle became an inspira- tion to medieval Christianity, there is a marked

discrepancy between most of Aristotle’s virtues and the Catholic lists of the cardinal virtues and the cardinal sins. For the Christian it is a cardinal sin to feel pride, because our accom- plishments come through the grace of God and are not our own doing. This is expressed in the Latin words Soli Deo Gloria, the honor (glory) is God’s alone. The cardinal virtues are justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude, faith, hope, and charity. The cardinal (deadly) sins are pride, lust, envy, anger, covetousness, gluttony, and sloth.

Box 9.6 T H E C L A S H B E T W E E N C L A S S I C A L A N D C H R I S T I A N V I R T U E S

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ARISTOTLE ’S VIRTUE THEORY: TELEOLOGY AND THE GOLDEN MEAN 455

good public fi gures. That is why it is necessary to know how much money to spend, in large sums. That is why it is important to know the extent of your pride and your anger. Of course, Aristotle’s virtues are also applicable to other people, but some virtues—such as the virtues of wit or humor—carry a direct message to those young men who plan to enter public life. Most of us probably would like our partners to have a sense of humor. But imagine how important it is for a public fi gure not to be a boor, not to be a buffoon, and to have a ready wit. Aristotle recognized that fact. (See Box 9.7 for additional discussion of virtues.)

Virtues on Aristotle’s list include magnifi cence (spending large sums of money correctly), friendliness, modesty, and righteous indignation (a sense of justice). And Aristotle’s approach can

be applied to many situations we fi nd ourselves in on an everyday basis; you might want to dis- cuss this additional list of virtues and vices and add your own suggestions.

Box 9.7 V A R I A T I O N S O N A R I S T O T L E ’ S T H E M E O F T H E G O L D E N M E A N

A D D I T I O N A L V I R T U E S A N D V I C E S

EXCESS (VICE) MEAN (VIRTUE) DEFICIT (VICE)

Loyalty without critical eye Loyalty Disloyalty

Passivity Patience Impatience

Judgment lacking; intrusion Compassion Absence of feelings

Sense of being perpetually indebted Gratitude Absence of any gratitude

Being too serious Responsibility Irresponsibility

Stubbornness Perseverance Unreliability

Rudeness Honesty Deceit; deception

Rigid adherence to rules Rules set with exceptions Leniency

Anxiety over everything Awareness of real concerns Obliviousness

Speeding Maintaining speed limit Driving too slowly

Excessive studying; workaholism Suffi cient studying to pass test Insuffi cient studying; laziness

And so on and so forth! Can you think of a vice (one not mentioned by Aristotle) that has no mean? Can you think of a virtue that has no excess? In Chapter 7 you read about a theory that it is right and appropriate for a victim of a crime to feel resentment toward the perpetrator, as well as for the community to feel moral indignation on behalf of the victim. Since Aristotle believes

there is a Golden Mean for the feeling of anger— somewhere between being prone to rage and being cold or meek—and he also believes that righteous indignation is a virtue, his thinking is in harmony with this theory. Where, within the virtuous middle range, might the proper resentment∕indignation response be for a person hit by a computer virus? for a rape victim? for a community targeted by bioterrorism?

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456 CHAPTER 9 ARISTOTLE ’S V IRTUE THEORY: EVERYTHING IN MODERATION

There are, then, three dispositions: two vices, one on either side, and virtue in the middle. How do we fi nd the virtue? It may be diffi cult, depending on our own personal failings. If we have a hard time controlling our temper, we might try for a while to be so cool that nothing makes us angry, just to get out of the habit of being irascible; in other words, we might shoot past the target of good temper until we feel we can control ourselves and fi nd the mean. If we tend to overindulge in desserts, we might try to lay off sweet things completely for a while. That is not the ideal situation, but Aristotle advises us to experiment until we get it right. Besides, if we fi nd our- selves at one extreme, it is hard for us to see the difference between the other extreme and the virtue: A chocolate lover fi nds the chocolate hater and the person who has just a few bites of chocolate each week equally dull and unsympathetic. The political extremist may view the political moderate as just another extremist on the opposite front. Indeed, some extremes are closer to the mean, the virtue, than others. Being a coward is probably more opposed to being courageous than to being foolhardy. So if you don’t know what path to choose, at least stay away from the extreme that is more opposed to the mean than the other extreme. We all have to watch out for our own personal failings, and we also have to watch out for temptations, because if we let ourselves indulge in too many pleasures we lose our sense of moderation and proportion. These matters are not easy, and Aristotle knew that we must judge each situation separately. At the end of the chapter you’ll fi nd the ancient Greek story of the “Flight of Icarus,” which illustrates that virtue lies in following a middle course between too much and too little—not because it ensures a bland, average existence, but because it ensures survival. Does Aristotle then propose a set of guidelines for what virtue is that can be ap- plied in all situations? Nothing beyond the general range of the Golden Mean and an appeal to intuition, reasoning, and good habits. In other words, the virtuous person will know how to be virtuous! That has caused some ethicists to call Aristotle an ethical relativist, because virtue is, in a sense, relative to the situation. But labeling Aristotle an ethical relativist is wrong. He never states that morals are completely culture-dependent or that each social group determines what counts as its moral code. On the contrary, Aristotle is quite adamant about virtues having a rock-bottom value for each situation; it is just that situations may differ, and one may be called upon to do more in one context than in another. If we want to apply a modern term to Aristotle, we might dare to call him a soft universalist (albeit with values typical for his day and age): Our responses to situations must remain fl exible, and we each have our own ideals and failings, but the right, virtuous response reveals itself in being ap- propriate to the situation and falls within a range that is recognized by other people of virtue. Is there such a thing as a perfectly virtuous person for Aristotle? Yes, it appears that he thought it was possible. Furthermore, he seems to have believed that if you are virtuous in one respect but fail miserably in another, then you have lost out com- pletely. If you deviate only slightly, though, you are still a virtuous person—a person who is good at being human and at realizing the human potential. In the Narratives section, I have included a story that illustrates Aristotle’s idea that we become virtuous by doing virtuous things and thus developing good habits:

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ARISTOTLE ’S VIRTUE THEORY: TELEOLOGY AND THE GOLDEN MEAN 457

The way to become courageous is to do courageous things, the way to become com- passionate is to do compassionate things, and pretty soon it will become part of your character. The story is Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short-story “A Piece of Advice” about a cantankerous old man who becomes a decent human being by doing decent things.

Happiness

Being virtuous makes you happy—that is Aristotle’s sole reason for designing the development of a virtuous character. But if the goal is happiness, why does he warn us about indulging in too many pleasures? Because pleasure and happiness are not identical, as most ancient thinkers would agree. We have to ask what exactly Aristotle means by happiness. Happiness is what’s “good for man,” according to Aristotle. For most of us a good life means a happy life (see Chapter 8), but a good person means a moral per- son. For Aristotle, there was no confl ict. We can be happy only if we’re good, but in what way? The highest realizable goods are to live well, to be happy, to do well; what is good for man can’t be something that harms him, and indulgence in too many pleasures can certainly be harmful. A further requirement of true happiness is that it must be steadfast; if we rely too much on pleasures, we’ll fi nd that they cease to give us a thrill after a while, so pleasure can’t be the same as happiness. Nor can fame or fortune, because those things are certainly ephemeral—we can lose both overnight. So what is the thing that can be ours forever, that nobody can take away, and that is not harmful but benefi cial to us as human beings? Good reasoning, or, as the ancient Greeks would put it, contemplation. This can be ours forever, and, as anyone who has struggled with an intellectual problem and solved it knows, it can even be exhilarating. For Aristotle, then, the ultimately happy life is the life of the thinker (interestingly, a recent survey declared philosophy professors to have one of the happiest occupations of all!). But Aristotle is a realist too—he adds that, although the truly happy life may be a life of contemplation, it doesn’t hurt to have friends, money, and good looks!

For Aristotle, the mean between the extremes is not an absolute middle; in other words, depending on the situation, the persons involved, and the virtue itself, the mean may be closer to one extreme than the other, and Aristotle advises us to stay away from the vice that is the further from the mean. If you imagine yourself at one of the extremes, you also can imagine that it might be hard to tell ex- actly where the mean is; that is why Aristotle says we must fi nd it through trial and error. A mean that might be viewed as closer to the vice of excess than to defi ciency would be courage, which can be said to be closer to rashness than to cowardice; a virtue that is closer to the vice of defi ciency than the vice of excess might be temperance.

Courage Temperance

Overindulgence ApathyRashness Cowardice

+ +

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458 CHAPTER 9 ARISTOTLE ’S V IRTUE THEORY: EVERYTHING IN MODERATION

What about happiness as a reward for good behavior, in the afterlife? For Plato, the goal of a human life seemed to be a comprehension of the world of Forms and ultimately a reunifi cation with that world in an afterlife. Aristotle seems to have had a different view of spirituality: As far as we can tell, he had no belief in an afterlife any more than he believes in a god who watches over humanity. He states that the soul is the form of a human and the body is one’s matter, but form cannot exist separate from matter, so when the body dies, the soul ceases to exist in any personal way, even if (as he also says) the form of a human being may be immortal. In any event, whatever we are while we are alive will cease to exist when we die; therefore, happi- ness for Aristotle is exclusively a phenomenon for the living and must be achieved in this world for a person’s life to have fulfi lled its purpose. Whereas Plato’s metaphys- ics (as we have seen in Chapter 8) could easily be incorporated into a religion that focused on life after death, Aristotle’s metaphysics offers no “pie in the sky.” Thus it is all the more extraordinary that Aristotle’s philosophy became one of the great pillars of support for Christianity as it evolved in the high Middle Ages. Was Aristotle himself happy in his lifetime? It appears that during his twelve years in Athens running his own school, he enjoyed contemplation, he had money, and he had friends. (Whether he was good-looking you will have to judge for yourself (see Box 9.1), but he reputedly liked to dress in the latest styles.) But with the death of his former student Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.E. at the age of thirty-two, it all came to an abrupt end. The anti-Macedonian feelings that were mounting in the realm controlled by Alexander’s troops (including the city-state of Athens) no longer could be kept in check, and because Aristotle was considered pro-Macedonian, the Athenian city council decided to get rid of him. Ironically, their method was to charge him with the same offense that had been leveled against Socrates, of offending the gods. But whereas Socrates chose to stay and die for his principles, Aristotle packed up and left Athens for good so that “Athens wouldn’t sin twice against philosophy.” He took off for his country estate in Chalcis—a place he had inherited from his mother—but he died the year after, in 322 B.C.E., of a stomach ailment. Here we might want to ask ourselves, According to his own system of seeking the mean between extremes, did Aristotle in the end display courageous behavior, or was his behavior “defi cient”? It is tempting to compare his choice with Socrates’, and many would probably say that the comparison does not come out in Aristotle’s favor. But here we should remember that the relationship Socrates had with the city of Athens was vastly different from that of Aristotle with the city-state; it had been Socrates’ hometown, he had been concerned for its welfare all his life, and he had fought for it as a soldier. Aristotle was, for all intents and purposes, a foreigner, a “migrant worker” in the philosophy trade. He may have felt a certain loyalty to Athens from having spent over thirty years of his life in the city, but there was general discrimination against noncitizens, and Aristotle can’t have been immune to that. He himself might have said that leaving was the perfectly rational, virtuous thing to do: the right action at the right time, for the right reason, not too much and not too little. One might wonder, though, how he must have felt, having never attained what he apparently truly wanted: to take over Plato’s Academy.

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ARISTOTLE ’S INFLUENCE ON AQUINAS 459

Aristotle’s Infl uence on Aquinas

Today, Aristotle looms as one of the most infl uential persons in human history, but several times after his death it seemed as if his writings were destined to be totally forgotten. After his death, his books were collected by the new leader of the Lyceum, Theophrastus, who had been a student of Aristotle’s; and subsequent gen- erations of leaders hid the books to preserve them from theft and other threats— especially since the Lyceum was temporarily closed when foreign philosophers were kicked out of Athens around 300 B.C.E. The Lyceum did reopen and stayed open until its offi cial closure by Emperor Justinian in 529 C.E., but it was never the great success story that Plato’s Academy had become. Aristotle’s own books were damaged in storage and would have been lost had it not been for an avid book collector, Apellicon, who simply appropriated them along with other classic writ- ings and brought them to Rome in 100 B.C.E. Here they were copied, starting a new Aristotle fad among Roman philosophers, but even that was to fade away: When the Lyceum was fi nally closed by the Roman emperor along with Plato’s Academy, the scholars working at Aristotle’s school feared for their safety and fl ed to Persia with copies of Aristotle’s books. Back in the Roman cultures around the Mediterra- nean, Aristotle’s works were largely forgotten, and even the location of the Lyceum was lost, until its rediscovery in 1997 by archaeologists. Primarily in Alexandria, it was the Platonic spirit that survived to put its mark on the new world religion. In the Middle East, though, Aristotle’s works were studied continually. As the sci- entifi c spirit declined in the West, Arabic scholars kept Aristotelian research alive until the advent of another new world religion, Islam, and early Islamic scholars were infl uenced by Aristotle’s philosophy. It was not until well into the next mil- lennium that an interest in Aristotle was rekindled in the C hristian world. Eventu- ally his theories found their way back into Western philosophy through the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). In the late Middle Ages and through the Renaissance, Aristotle eclipsed Plato as a philosopher and was known in European intellectual circles (as he had been for centuries in the Arabic world) as “The Phi- losopher.” So for a man who for all intents and purposes didn’t have an established career by the time he was thirty-eight, whose life’s unfulfi lled ambition apparently had been to become leader of Plato’s school, and who eventually lost his job be- cause of political persecution, Aristotle’s posthumous career is nothing short of remarkable: His infl uence on philosophy itself is immeasurable; his theories of sci- ence laid the groundwork for the basic scientifi c concepts in the Western tradition after the so-called Dark Ages of the early Medieval period; his entire system of clas- sifi cation of sciences and humanities became, to a great extent, the inspiration for the structuring of the fi rst universities in Europe in the high Middle Ages and the Renaissance; he provided inspiration for Islamic interpretations of the Koran; and some of his ideas became the cornerstone of the theology of Catholicism, through the works of Aquinas. It was Aristotle’s concept of teleology that became particularly fascinating for Aquinas: If everything has a purpose, then surely it was designed by God. And if we humans, with our free will, decide to follow God’s purpose for us, then it

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must mean we are following God’s will, and we are doing right; on the other hand, if we decide to go against God’s purpose, we are doing wrong. So what is God’s purpose for us? Aquinas identifi ed four specifi c goals that together made up what has become known as Aquinas’s natural law: (1) We are obliged to preserve our own lives. (2) We are obliged to procreate within marriage. (3) We are obliged to live as good citizens among other people. (4) We are obliged to seek knowledge, primarily about God and his creation. Those four rules are natural to us because we have been designed that way, says Aquinas. It doesn’t mean those rules can’t be broken—people commit suicide, people have babies outside of wedlock or take measures to avoid getting pregnant, some people care little about living in har- mony with others, and some show no interest in seeking knowledge about God. However, they are going against God’s will—a will that, for Aquinas, is knowable and understandable to humans, because that will is rational, and humans have been endowed with reason so we can understand God’s rules. So if we decide not to follow our built-in purpose, it is because of a sinful willpower. (Aquinas’s natural law is not to be confused with the laws of nature we are familiar with from science. Such scientifi c laws are descriptive, whereas Aquinas’s natural law is normative: You can’t break the law of gravity, but you can break the law of procreation.) What happens to people who break the rules of the natural law? Aquinas is convinced that they will not get away with it—they might in this life, but certainly not in the next. That is why there is also divine law, for those offenses that God knows about but other humans haven’t discovered. On this earthly plane there is also, of course, human law, so that criminal offenses that are discovered can be punished. And the entire universe is run by God according to eternal rules, the eternal law. You may recognize some of Aquinas’s views on natural law as contemporary Catholic doctrine. For example, it is Aquinas’s rule of self-preservation that forbids suicide, and his rule of procreation that forbids abortion, contraception, and ho- mosexual relationships (because all procreation must take place naturally between married couples, without hindrance, and in no other way). This was not always so: Aquinas’s teachings were for centuries considered controversial by the Church, and not until a Church council in 1914 was it decided that they would from then on be considered offi cial Catholic doctrine. So we can say that Aristotle long after his death not only made an everlasting mark on Western science and philosophy, as well as Middle Eastern philosophy, but also to this day has been infl uential within Christianity.

Some Objections to Greek Virtue Theory

As mentioned earlier, the particular brand of ethical theory known as virtue ethics that we fi nd in the Greek tradition by and large disappeared from view with the rise of modern philosophy. That was not merely because the texts were forgotten; it was a concerted effort by scholars to fi nd a better approach to ethics, because as the centuries passed it was becoming clear, for a number of reasons, that the Greek

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SOME OBJECTIONS TO GREEK VIRTUE THEORY 461

theories of virtue had several shortcomings. For one thing, Thomas Aquinas found it diffi cult to reconcile Aristotle’s virtues not just with Christian virtues but also with the Christian respect for God’s laws. In the Christian approach to morals, following commandments is far more important than striving toward virtues, and belief in the human ability to shape one’s own character autonomously is considered to be a sin of pride. You become what you ought to be by God’s grace, not merely by your own effort. Philosophy, after parting ways with theology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, began to look critically at virtue ethics from a secular point of view, for, as we have seen, Aristotle was talking about the virtues of a ruling class, virtues that could not be disputed by someone with a different point of view. The modern, political vision of equality does not enter into the Aristotelian moral theory, and from both a Christian and a social viewpoint, an egalitarian approach had become indispensable for an acceptable moral theory by the eighteenth century. For those scholars believing in “natural rights” for all people, it was necessary to set up a moral theory that everyone could follow regardless of status, birth, or intelligence, and such a theory could be based only on laws that were clear and reasonable. Vir- tues were criticized as being too vague and logically problematic, because what hap- pens if two virtuous people disagree about what to do? How can one persuade the other? There is no recourse to reason in that case except to declare one person less virtuous than the other, so virtue ethics is not a tool in itself for solving confl icts. Such a problem does not arise if you have a clear set of moral and civil laws to refer to. That is what is needed if we regard each other as equals—not a theory with a static view of what makes a person virtuous. The rejection of virtue theory in favor of a rule- or duty-oriented moral theory was, therefore, considered a step forward in moral egalitarianism. There is a more fundamental problem embedded in classical virtue theory: its basis in teleology. It was natural for Plato and Aristotle to assume that as human ac- tions had a purpose, so did humans themselves have a purpose, and that purpose was to let their rationality shine because that was what human nature was all about. And because this is the human purpose, what is good for humans must begin and end with rationality. But that gives rise to a series of questions: (1) Must what is good for someone always be linked with what he or she does best? Suppose a man is excellent at forging paintings. Does that mean his life should include this as a purpose, to make him happy? Aristotle and Plato would reject this on the basis that forging paintings is bad in itself, but that is not a very satisfying answer because it assumes that we know beforehand which purposes are acceptable and which aren’t. However, even if we stick to the idea of rationality, it is not at all obvious that this is the human purpose. Remember that Damasio says we are primarily emotional beings, not rational beings. (2) Why must we talk about a human “purpose” at all? Science and philosophy today do not, as a rule, talk about purposes of nature, including human nature. A purpose requires that someone has that purpose; indi- viduals may have purposes, but we hesitate to claim that nature has a purpose or even that there is a higher power with a purpose. This is outside the realm of sci- ence and also that of contemporary moral philosophy. (3) Even if humans are very

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good at being rational, they are not excellent at it, at least not everybody, and even the select few geniuses can’t be rational all the time. We are instead good at being able to act rationally some of the time, and with those qualifi cations it is hard to claim that rationality is our overriding purpose. And (4) Why should there be just one purpose for humans? A knife can be used to cut, to throw, to clean your nails (don’t try this at home), to hang on the wall, and any number of other things. A tree surely has more functions than to supply humans with shade and fruit—it provides oxygen, its leaves fertilize the ground, it provides a home for birds and squirrels and maggots, it supplies a subject for an art class to paint—and makes more trees. Why should we assume that each thing or species has one function that defi nes it? Humans surely have a multitude of functions. It is doubtful, then, whether a theory of virtue should, indeed, involve the question of function or purpose at all. Contem- porary theories of virtue tend to steer clear of this ancient, problematic issue, as we will see shortly.

Study Questions

1. Explain Aristotle’s theory of the four causes.

2. What is Aristotle’s Golden Mean? Does it imply that the virtuous person is an average person of average talents and intelligence?

3. Explain Aristotle’s theory of virtue in detail, using at least three examples. At least two of the examples must be Aristotle’s own.

4. In the end, Aristotle was accused of the same crimes as Socrates, but, unlike Socrates, Aristotle chose exile. Evaluate Aristotle’s choice: Was he himself display- ing courage? Was he a coward? Was he rash? How do you think Aristotle would have defended his course of action?

Primary Readings and Narratives

The two Primary Readings are excerpts from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. The fi rst is from Book II, in which Aristotle explains the doctrine of the Golden Mean. The second is from Book III, in which he elaborates on the virtue of courage. The fi rst Narrative is the ancient Greek myth of the fl ight of Icarus, illustrating Aristotle’s theory that the virtuous person always seeks the middle way, avoid- ing the extremes of excess and defi ciency: Flying on wings made of feathers and wax, Icarus disregarded his father’s advice to take a middle course. The next Narrative explores the theme of courage; it is an excerpt from Njal’s Saga, the Icelandic epic that takes place in the late Viking Age. In the excerpt, Njal, his wife, Bergthora, and their little grandson face death with stoic courage, choosing to perish together. This is followed by Joseph Conrad’s novel and fi lm Lord Jim, a story of cowardice, courage, and honor. The fourth Narrative is an excerpt from a twentieth-century short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, “A Piece of Advice,” in which a nasty, temperamental man learns virtue by developing the habit of pleas- ant behavior.

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Primary Reading

Nicomachean Ethics

A R I S T O T L E

Excerpt from Book II, fourth century B.C.E. Translated by W. D. Ross.

This excerpt from Chapters 4, 6 and 7 in Nicomachean Ethics contains some of Aristotle’s most famous writings on virtue: He explains the relationship between virtue and conduct in Chapter 4, and in Chapter 6 he outlines the general theory of the Golden Mean. The excerpt from Chapter 7 gives us most of Aristotle’s own list of virtues as examples of the relationship between the mean fl anked by two extremes, too much and too little.

4 The question might be asked, what we mean by saying that we must become just by doing just acts, and temperate by doing temperate acts; for if men do just and temperate acts, they are already just and temperate, exactly as, if they do what is in accordance with the laws of grammar and of music, they are grammarians and musicians.

Or is this not true even of the arts? It is possible to do something that is in ac- cordance with the laws of grammar, either by chance or at the suggestion of another. A man will be a grammarian, then, only when he has both done something grammatical and done it grammatically; and this means doing it in accordance with the grammatical knowledge in himself.

Again, the case of the arts and that of the virtues are not similar; for the products of the arts have their goodness in themselves, so that it is enough that they should have a certain character, but if the acts that are in accordance with the virtues have themselves a certain character it does not follow that they are done justly or temperately. The agent also must be in a certain condition when he does them; in the fi rst place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and thirdly his action must proceed from a fi rm and unchangeable character. These are not reckoned in as conditions of the possession of the arts, except the bare knowledge; but as a condition of the possession of the virtues knowledge has little or no weight, while the other conditions count not for a little but for everything, i.e. the very conditions which result from often doing just and temperate acts.

Actions, then, are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temper- ate, but the man who also does them as just and temperate men do them. It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temper- ate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.

But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the latter will not be made well in body by such a course of treatment, the former will not be made well in soul by such a course of philosophy.

6 Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle

PRIMARY READING: N I C O M A C H E A N E T H I C S 463

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by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both fi nds and chooses that which is intermediate. Hence in respect of its substance and the defi nition which states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard to what is best and right an extreme.

But not every action nor every passion admits of a mean; for some have names that already imply badness, e.g. spite, shamelessness, envy, and in the case of actions adul- tery, theft, murder; for all of these and suchlike things imply by their names that they are themselves bad, and not the excesses or defi ciencies of them. It is not possible, then, ever to be right with regard to them; one must always be wrong. Nor does goodness or bad- ness with regard to such things depend on committing adultery with the right woman, at the right time, and in the right way, but simply to do any of them is to go wrong. It would be equally absurd, then, to expect that in unjust, cowardly, and voluptuous action there should be a mean, an excess, and a defi ciency; for at that rate there would be a mean of excess and of defi ciency, an excess of excess, and a defi ciency of defi ciency. But as there is no excess and defi ciency of temperance and courage because what is intermediate is in a sense an extreme, so too of the actions we have mentioned there is no mean nor any excess and defi ciency, but however they are done they are wrong; for in general there is neither a mean of excess and defi ciency, nor excess and defi ciency of a mean.

7 We must, however, not only make this general statement, but also apply it to the individual facts. For among statements about conduct those which are general apply more widely, but those which are particular are more genuine, since conduct has to do with individual cases, and our statements must harmonize with the facts in these cases. We may take these cases from our table. With regard to feelings of fear and confi dence courage is the mean; of the people who exceed, he who exceeds in fearlessness has no name (many of the states have no name), while the man who exceeds in confi dence is rash, and he who exceeds in fear and falls short in confi dence is a coward. With regard to pleasures and pains—not all of them, and not so much with regard to the pains—the mean is temperance, the excess self-indulgence. Persons defi cient with regard to the pleasures are not often found; hence such persons also have received no name. But let us call them ‘insensible’.

With regard to giving and taking of money the mean is liberality, the excess and the defect prodigality and meanness. In these actions people exceed and fall short in contrary ways; the prodigal exceeds in spending and falls short in taking, while the mean man exceeds in taking and falls short in spending. (At present we are giving a mere outline or summary, and are satisfi ed with this; later these states will be more exactly determined.) With regard to money there are also other dispositions—a mean, magnifi cence (for the magnifi cent man differs from the liberal man; the former deals with large sums, the latter with small ones), an excess, tastelessness and vulgarity, and a defi ciency, niggardliness; these differ from the states opposed to liberality, and the mode of their difference will be stated later.

With regard to honour and dishonour the mean is proper pride, the excess is known as a sort of ‘empty vanity’, and the defi ciency is undue humility; and as we said liberal- ity was related to magnifi cence, differing from it by dealing with small sums, so there is a state similarly related to proper pride, being concerned with small honours while

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that is concerned with great. For it is possible to desire honour as one ought, and more than one ought, and less, and the man who exceeds in his desires is called ambitious, the man who falls short unambitious, while the intermediate person has no name. The dispositions also are nameless, except that that of the ambitious man is called ambition. Hence the people who are at the extremes lay claim to the middle place; and we our- selves sometimes call the intermediate person ambitious and sometimes unambitious, and sometimes praise the ambitious man and sometimes the unambitious. The reason of our doing this will be stated in what follows; but now let us speak of the remaining states according to the method which has been indicated.

With regard to anger also there is an excess, a defi ciency, and a mean. Although they can scarcely be said to have names, yet since we call the intermediate person good- tempered let us call the mean good temper; of the persons at the extremes let the one who exceeds be called irascible, and his vice irascibility, and the man who falls short an inirascible sort of person, and the defi ciency inirascibility.

There are also three other means, which have a certain likeness to one another, but differ from one another: for they are all concerned with intercourse in words and actions, but differ in that one is concerned with truth in this sphere, the other two with pleasantness; and of this one kind is exhibited in giving amusement, the other in all the circumstances of life. We must therefore speak of these too, that we may the better see that in all things the mean is praiseworthy, and the extremes neither praiseworthy nor right, but worthy of blame. Now most of these states also have no names, but we must try, as in the other cases, to invent names ourselves so that we may be clear and easy to follow. With regard to truth, then, the intermediate is a truthful sort of person and the mean may be called truthfulness, while the pretence which exaggerates is boastful- ness and the person characterized by it a boaster, and that which understates is mock modesty and the person characterized by it mock-modest. With regard to pleasantness in the giving of amusement the intermediate person is ready-witted and the disposition ready wit, the excess is buffoonery and the person characterized by it a buffoon, while the man who falls short is a sort of boor and his state is boorishness. With regard to the remaining kind of pleasantness, that which is exhibited in life in general, the man who is pleasant in the right way is friendly and the mean is friendliness, while the man who exceeds is an obsequious person if he has no end in view, a fl atterer if he is aiming at his own advantage, and the man who falls short and is unpleasant in all circumstances is a quarrelsome and surly sort of person.

Study Questions

1. According to Aristotle, can we become virtuous just by doing the right thing? Can a person be virtuous without doing the right thing?

2. Examine the virtue of proper pride. The modern equivalent of humility might be called low self-esteem. Do you think there is such a vice as too much self-esteem? Why is pride considered a sin by the Catholic tradition?

3. Set Aristotle’s list of virtues and vices up in a schema with “too little” to one side, vir- tue (the mean) in the middle, and “too much” to the other side. Are there virtues miss- ing that you think ought to be essential to a virtue ethics? If yes, which ones?

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Primary Reading

Nicomachean Ethics

A R I S T O T L E

Excerpt from Book III. Translated by W. D. Ross.

You may remember that the fi rst virtue on Aristotle’s list was courage, and we shall look at the theme of courage for the next few pages. Here Aristotle goes into detail examining what he considers true courage.

That it is a mean with regard to feelings of fear and confi dence has already been made evident; and plainly the things we fear are terrible things, and these are, to speak without qualifi cation, evils; for which reason people even defi ne fear as expectation of evil. Now we fear all evils, e.g. disgrace, poverty, disease, friendlessness, death, but the brave man is not thought to be concerned with all; for to fear some things is even right and noble, and it is base not to fear them—e.g. disgrace; he who fears this is good and modest, and he who does not is shameless. He is, however, by some people called brave, by a transfer- ence of the word to a new meaning; for he has in him something which is like the brave man, since the brave man also is a fearless person. Poverty and disease we perhaps ought not to fear, nor in general the things that do not proceed from vice and are not due to a man himself. But not even the man who is fearless of these is brave. Yet we apply the word to him also in virtue of a similarity; for some who in the dangers of war are cowards are liberal and are confi dent in face of the loss of money. Nor is a man a coward if he fears insult to his wife and children or envy or anything of the kind; nor brave if he is confi dent when he is about to be fl ogged. With what sort of terrible things, then, is the brave man concerned? Surely with the greatest; for no one is more likely than he to stand his ground against what is awe-inspiring. Now death is the most terrible of all things; for it is the end, and nothing is thought to be any longer either good or bad for the dead. But the brave man would not seem to be concerned even with death in all circumstances, e.g. at sea or in disease. In what circumstances, then? Surely in the noblest. Now such deaths are those in battle; for these take place in the greatest and noblest danger. And these are correspondingly honoured in city-states and at the courts of monarchs. Properly, then, he will be called brave who is fearless in face of a noble death, and of all emergencies that involve death; and the emergencies of war are in the highest degree of this kind. Yet at sea also, and in disease; the brave man is fearless, but not in the same way as the seamen; for he has given up hope of safety, and is disliking the thought of death in this shape, while they are hopeful because of their experience. At the same time, we show courage in situations where there is the opportunity of showing prowess or where death is noble; but in these forms of death neither of these conditions is fulfi lled.

What is terrible is not the same for all men; but we say there are things terrible even beyond human strength. These, then, are terrible to every one—at least to every sensible man; but the terrible things that are not beyond human strength differ in magnitude and degree, and so too do the things that inspire confi dence. Now the brave man is as dauntless as man may be. Therefore, while he will fear even the things that are not be- yond human strength, he will face them as he ought and as the rule directs, for honour’s

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sake; for this is the end of virtue. But it is possible to fear these more, or less, and again to fear things that are not terrible as if they were. Of the faults that are committed one consists in fearing what one should not, another in fearing as we should not, another in fearing when we should not, and so on; and so too with respect to the things that inspire confi dence. The man, then, who faces and who fears the right things and from the right motive, in the right way and at the right time, and who feels confi dence under the corresponding conditions, is brave; for the brave man feels and acts according to the merits of the case and in whatever way the rule directs. Now the end of every activity is conformity to the corresponding state of character. This is true, therefore, of the brave man as well as of others. But courage is noble. Therefore the end also is noble; for each thing is defi ned by its end. Therefore it is for a noble end that the brave man endures and acts as courage directs.

Of those who go to excess he who exceeds in fearlessness has no name (we have said previously that many states of character have no names), but he would be a sort of madman or insensible person if he feared nothing, neither earthquakes nor the waves, as they say the Celts do not; while the man who exceeds in confi dence about what re- ally is terrible is rash. The rash man, however, is also thought to be boastful and only a pretender to courage; at all events, as the brave man is with regard to what is terrible, so the rash man wishes to appear; and so he imitates him in situations where he can. Hence also most of them are a mixture of rashness and cowardice; for, while in these situations they display confi dence, they do not hold their ground against what is really terrible. The man who exceeds in fear is a coward; for he fears both what he ought not and as he ought not, and all the similar characterizations attach to him. He is lacking also in confi dence; but he is more conspicuous for his excess of fear in painful situations. The coward, then, is a despairing sort of person; for he fears everything. The brave man, on the other hand, has the opposite disposition; for confi dence is the mark of a hopeful disposition. The coward, the rash man, and the brave man, then, are concerned with the same objects but are differently disposed towards them; for the fi rst two exceed and fall short, while the third holds the middle, which is the right, position; and rash men are precipitate, and wish for dangers beforehand but draw back when they are in them, while brave men are keen in the moment of action, but quiet beforehand.

As we have said, then, courage is a mean with respect to things that inspire con- fi dence or fear, in the circumstances that have been stated; and it chooses or endures things because it is noble to do so, or because it is base not to do so. But to die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is softness to fl y from what is troublesome, and such a man endures death not because it is noble but to fl y from evil.

Study Questions

1. Aristotle is often assumed to have said that “a brave man is never afraid.” Is this a fair statement?

2. What, according to Aristotle, is the most courageous behavior? Do you agree with him?

3. Would Aristotle consider Socrates’ choice to stand trial a brave decision? Why or why not?

4. After September 11 a debate arose in the media about whether hijacking a plane and deliberately fl ying it into a building, causing death and anguish to civilians, was a

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“cowardly act.” In many people’s opinion the terrorist actions were the very picture of cowardice, using innocent people as weapons against other innocent people. A dissent- ing view came from television talk-show host Bill Maher, who suggested that deliber- ately fl ying an airplane into a building was not cowardly (and for that remark his show was eventually cancelled). Media magnate Ted Turner chimed in, calling the hijackers “brave” but “a little nuts.” In your view, were the terrorists brave or cowardly? Is there a third possibility? For a solution you might want to turn to Chapter 10 and the section on Philippa Foot, who suggests that a virtue without good intentions is no virtue at all.

5. In Chapter 11 you’ll fi nd an expanded discussion of courage, distinguishing between physical and moral courage. Apply Aristotle’s Theory of the Golden Mean to both kinds.

Narrative

The Flight of Icarus

Ancient Greek Myth.

This myth illustrates an element in Aristotle’s virtue theory that most Greeks were fa- miliar with because it corresponds to the classic Greek ideal of moderation, or what the Greeks called sophrosyne; in the Nicomachean Ethics we know it as the mean between ex- tremes, not too much and not too little. The story of Icarus, part of Greek mythology, has been used often as a symbol in Western literature over the past several hundred years.

Wanted for the murder of his nephew, the great artisan Daedalus hid out on Crete, where he built King Minos a labyrinth to house the monster Minotaur (a creature with a bull’s head and a man’s body). Here Daedalus lived for years, fell in love with one of Minos’s slaves, and had a son by her, Icarus. When Icarus was a young man, Daedalus decided to leave Crete. But Minos did not want to lose his master craftsman and so locked Dae- dalus and his son up in the labyrinth; they escaped with the help of Minos’s wife. It was diffi cult to get off the island, because Minos kept all his ships under military guard, but Daedalus had an idea: He fashioned a pair of feather wings for himself and another pair for Icarus. The quill feathers were threaded together, but the smaller feathers were held together with wax. Daedalus was quite emotional when he told Icarus how to use the wings on the perilous journey, admonishing his son not to fl y too high to avoid having the wax be melted by the sun and not to fl y too low so that ocean water wouldn’t soak his feathers. Then he told his son, “Follow me!” and they set out across the ocean toward the northeast. They had already traveled a considerable distance when Icarus, for whatever reason, disobeyed his father. He began rising toward the sun, enjoying the air currents and the sweep of his great wings. When Daedalus looked back to see if his son was still following close behind him, there was nobody—but far below, on the waves, fl oated the feathers of Icarus’ wings. He had risen too close to the sun, and the wax on his wings had melted, plummeting him

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toward the water below; Icarus had drowned. His father circled around and around until the body of his son rose from the waters; then he picked it up and carried it to a nearby island where he buried it.

Study Questions

1. Is this story meant to be taken literally? Why or why not?

2. Bruegel’s painting shows the fall of Icarus, but you have to look hard to fi nd him. Why do you think the artist didn’t make Icarus the focal point of the painting?

3. In Western literature the story of Icarus has often been used as a metaphor for overex- tending yourself, or being overconfi dent. It has been taken as a warning not to reach above your station in life, to “know your place.” Is this lesson exactly the same as the original story teaches? (What would Aristotle say? What lesson might a parent be try- ing to teach his or her child when telling this story?)

4. Is this a didactic story? Why or why not?

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fall of Icarus (c. 1558). The inventor Daedalus made wings of feathers and wax for himself and his son, Icarus, so they could escape from Crete, but Icarus fl ew too close to the sun, and the wax melted. If you look closely, you can see the legs of poor Icarus in the water (right-hand corner). Bruegel was so fascinated by this story that he painted it twice, both times with the farmer in the foreground. This is the original painting; the second is nearly identical except that Daedalus is shown fl ying above the cliffs. The Roman poet Ovid, who retold the story, specifi cally mentioned in his Metamorphoses that the fall was witnessed by a plowman, a shepherd, and a fi sher- man, and that is why Bruegel put them in his painting. What do you think the signifi cance might be of the artist’s having placed the tragedy of Icarus off to the side?

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Narrative

Njal’s Saga

Prose epic, ca. 1280. Author unknown. Summary and Excerpt.

This story is set in the latter part of the Viking Age (700–1000 C.E.). It isn’t a story of Vikings, however, but of their relatives, who stayed in Iceland to farm the land. The area was settled by the Norsemen (mostly Danes and Norwegians) about 800, and by the time Njal’s Saga was written it was a land of great unrest; blood feuds and various intrigues led to the Danish takeover of the country, which for four hundred years had been independent. Njal’s Saga is one of many sagas, which are historical epics about past life in Iceland. Nordic mythology teaches that the world as well as the gods eventually will perish in a natural disaster. Thus the Norsemen (the farmers as well as the Vikings) held to the belief in a gloomy fate looming ahead. Even though Christianity was by that time the of- fi cial religion, the old view of life being ruled by fate still had a hold on people’s minds. This very brief outline cannot explain the complex plot of the saga and can only hint at the inevitable tragic ending. Njal, his wife, Bergthora, and their four sons are car- rying on a blood feud with neighbors, not because either party is evil, but because over the years events have led in that direction. Through misunderstandings and gossip, the enmity between Njal’s family and their neighbors grows, even though Njal does his best to avert it by talking sense to everybody. His negotiations backfi re, though, and things get worse. At the Alting (the place of arbitration), it becomes clear that all hope of peace is lost, and Njal goes home and prepares for a siege. His adversary, Flosi, arrives with a hundred men, and Njal asks his sons to help him defend the house from inside. The enemy are quick to take advantage of the situation and set fi re to the farmhouse.

There was an old woman at Bergthorsknoll called Sæunn. She knew a lot about many things and had second sight. She was very old by this time, and the Njalssons called her senile because she talked so much; but what she predicted often came true. One day she snatched up a cudgel and made her way round the house to a pile of chickweed that lay there, and started beating it and cursing it for the wretched thing that it was. Skarp- Hedin [one of Njal’s sons] laughed at this, and asked her why she was so angry with the chickweed.

The old woman replied, “This chickweed will be used as the kindling when they burn Njal and my foster child Bergthora inside the house. Quickly, take it away and throw it into some water or burn it.”

“No,” said Skarp-Hedin “for if that is what is ordained, something else will be found to kindle the fi re even if the chickweed is not here.”

The old woman kept nagging them all summer to take the chickweed indoors, but they never got round to doing it. . . .

Months later, Flosi has now shown up with his force of one hundred men, and Njal has fortifi ed himself and his household inside the farmhouse. Now the chickweed that fi g- ured in Sæunn’s predictions becomes a weapon:

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. . . They [Flosi and his men] brought the chickweed up and set fi re to it, and before those inside knew what was happening, the ceiling of the room was ablaze from end to end. . . .

Njal said to them, “Be of good heart and speak no words of fear, for this is just a passing storm and it will be long before another like it comes. Put your faith in the mercy of God, for He will not let us burn both in this world and the next.”

. . . Now the whole house began to blaze. Njal went to the door and said, “Is Flosi near enough to hear my words?”

Flosi said that he could hear him. Njal said, “Would you consider making an agreement with my sons, or letting any-

one leave the house?” “I will make no terms with your sons,” replied Flosi. “We shall settle matters now,

once and for all, and we are not leaving until every one of them is dead. But I shall allow the women and children and servants to come out. . . .”

. . . Flosi said to Bergthora, “You come out, Bergthora, for under no circumstances do I want you to burn.”

Bergthora replied, “I was given to Njal in marriage when young, and I have prom- ised him that we would share the same fate.”

Then they both went back inside. “What shall we do now?” asked Bergthora. “Let us go to our bed,” said Njal, “and lie down.” Then Bergthora said to little Thord [their grandson], Kari’s son, “You are to be taken

out. You are not to burn.” The boy replied, “But that’s not what you promised, grandmother. You said that we

would never be parted; and so it shall be, for I would much prefer to die beside you both.” She carried the boy to the bed. Njal said to his steward, “Take note where we lay our-

selves down and how we dispose ourselves, for I shall not move from here however much the smoke or fl ames distress me. Then you can know where to look for our remains.”

The steward said he would. An ox had recently been slaughtered, and the hide was lying nearby. Njal told the

steward to spread the hide over them, and he promised to do so. Njal and Bergthora lay down on the bed and put the boy between them. Then they

crossed themselves and the boy, and commended their souls to God. These were the last words they were heard to speak. The steward took the hide and spread it over them, and then left the house. . . .

Study Questions

1. Do you think Njal, Bergthora, and the little boy display courage, or are they just giving up?

2. Would removing the chickweed have prevented the arson?

3. For the old Norsemen and -women, the name and reputation you left behind when you died was all-important. How do you think Njal and Bergthora were regarded after they died?

4. Would Aristotle recognize their fi nal act as courageous? Why or why not?

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472 CHAPTER 9 ARISTOTLE ’S V IRTUE THEORY: EVERYTHING IN MODERATION

Narrative

Lord Jim

R I C H A R D B R O O K S ( D I R E C T O R A N D S C R E E N W R I T E R )

Film, 1965. Summary. Based on the novel by Joseph Conrad, 1900.

Lord Jim is one of the fi nest fi ctional explorations of a human soul trying to do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason. The fi lm based on Joseph Conrad’s classic novel tells the story of a young man named Jim who dreams of doing great deeds. As a newly appointed offi cer in the British Mercantile Marine, he spends quiet moments on board his ship fantasizing about saving damsels in distress and suppressing mutinies. After having been stranded in a Southeast Asian harbor because of a broken leg, Jim takes a job as chief mate to a crew of drunken, raucous white sailors with an equally unpleas- ant captain on the rusty old Patna, which is transporting a group of Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. Once they are at sea, a storm approaches, and Jim inspects the ship’s hull. It is so rusty it is on the verge of breaking up. Back on deck Jim sees that the crew is lower- ing a lifeboat into the water—just one, for themselves. No measures are being taken to save the hundreds of pilgrims on the ship. Jim insists to the others that he is staying on board, but, at the last minute, as the storm hits, he comes face to face with his fear of death, which causes him to push aside all dreams of heroic deeds, and he jumps into the lifeboat after all. Believing that the Patna is lost already, the men in the lifeboat set course for shore. When they arrive, they see that someone got there ahead of them; in the harbor lies the Patna herself, safe and sound. She was salvaged and towed to shore by another crew, and all the pilgrims are safe. Jim is relieved that no one was lost, but his dreams of valor have been shattered—he is tormented by guilt. There is an inquest, and Jim decides to tell all, to the dismay of his superiors, who believe that dirty linen should not be aired in public. His testimony so affects the prosecutor that the prosecutor later kills himself, leaving a note saying that if fear can break even one of us, how can anyone believe him- self to be safe and honorable? Jim’s offi cer’s papers are canceled. Everywhere he goes from now on, the memory of the Patna will haunt him; somebody will recognize him or mention the scandal, and he will have to go somewhere else, to another port and another odd job. Is Jim a coward? Were all the dreams of noble deeds just fantasies? He doesn’t know. Months later, in some harbor in Southeast Asia, Jim is now a common dock- side worker. One day, while transferring goods from shore to ship, he fi nds himself in a new, dangerous situation: A worker with a grudge against the shipping company lights a fuse that threatens to blow up the ammo being freighted to the ship, and he calls out to all hands to jump, before it blows. But Jim, on hearing the yell “Jump!,” stands fast. The only man remaining on board, he puts out the fi re and becomes a hero. The administrator of the shipping line, Stein, offers him a job, which Jim later accepts because he wants to get out of town. The job entails taking the guns and ammunition up river to the village of Patusan to help the local people fi ght against

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a tyrant. He becomes the hero of the people, respected and trusted. They call him Tuan Jim, Lord Jim. He now believes that he fi nally has proved himself, but in fact the real test is yet to come. A band of pirates land in Patusan, and with the help of a traitor from the village, they trick Jim into believing that they have good inten- tions. They are white, they promise they will sail away without harming any of the villagers, and Jim chooses to believe them; he lets them go without disarming them, trusting their word. He vows to the chief of the village that if anyone is harmed because of his decision, he will forfeit his own life. As it turns out, the chief’s own son is killed in a fi ght between the pirates and the villagers. The villagers expect Jim to fl ee to save his life, and Stein tries to make Jim leave the village with the native woman he loves, but this time Jim stands fast; he explains to Stein, “I have been a so-called coward and a so-called hero, and there is not the thickness of a sheet of paper between them. Maybe cowards and heroes are just ordinary men who, for a split second do something out of the ordinary.” In the morning Jim goes to the chief, who is mad with grief over his son, and offers him his life. Does the chief kill Jim? Read the book or watch the fi lm.

To stay or to jump? Jim (Peter O’Toole) is about to make the decision that will ruin his life: During a storm, he abandons ship and the many passengers who had put their trust in him, in Lord Jim (Columbia Pictures, 1965).

NARRATIVE: L O R D J I M 473

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Study Questions

1. Is Jim a coward, or is he courageous? Is it possible to be both?

2. Do you think we all are like Jim in the sense that we all have a moral breaking point which, when we reach it, reveals the frailty of our character?

3. How would Aristotle rate Jim? Is he in the end a virtuous person?

4. Although the virtue of honor is not on Aristotle’s list, it was an important concept in his day. Today it may not seem terribly important to many in the Western world, but in the time period of Lord Jim, the concept of personal honor was at least as important as when Aristotle was alive. Do you agree with the author ( Joseph Conrad) that it is more honorable for Jim to confess his failings during the inquest than to keep quiet and follow the lead of his superiors? Is Jim an honorable man? Why or why not?

5. Compare the plot of Lord Jim with Aristotle’s prescription for the perfect tragic plot (see Chapter 2): Something horrible happens to an ordinary man, not because of some vice or depravity of his character, but because of a great error in judgment. Does this fi t Jim? If so, is Aristotle right that we feel pity and fear because we understand what he is going through—that we might react the same way?

Narrative

A Piece of Advice

I S A A C B A S H E V I S S I N G E R

Short story, 1958. Translated by Martha Glicklich and Joel Blocker. Summary and Excerpt.

This story takes place in a pre–World War II Polish-Jewish village; Singer (1904–1991), who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1978 for his “impassioned narrative art,” drew on his Polish-Jewish background for most of his stories. Baruch lives with his wife’s family in the village of Rachev; it is a much grander household than his own childhood home was because his father-in-law is a wealthy man and likes to live in style. The father-in-law is a good man in many ways, and a learned man, but he has one major fault: He has a terrible temper. Unwilling to forgive and forget, he harbors resentments over any little offense. One time Baruch borrowed a pen from him and forgot to return it, and that sent his father-in-law into such a fi t of rage that he struck Baruch in the face. This upset the family terribly because a father-in-law does not have that kind of authority over his son-in-law, but Baruch, being an easygoing young man, was quite willing to forgive the older man. The differences between the two men are noticeable: The older man is fastidious, and Baruch is lazy; his father-in-law is always sharp and on top of things, whereas Baruch is terribly forgetful and sometimes can’t even fi nd his way home because he doesn’t pay attention to where he is. But after the incident with the pen, Baruch’s father-in-law approaches him—a rare event—and

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asks his advice on how to control his anger, for he has alienated all his business partners. Baruch suggests that they go to see the Rabbi of Kuzmir, a neighboring town. At fi rst the older man scoffs at the thought, but later he agrees to go. They arrive in Kuzmir on a Friday afternoon (at the beginning of the Sabbath) after a long journey through the winter snows, and Baruch’s father-in-law goes to talk with Rabbi Chazkele; for three-quarters of an hour he is alone with the rabbi, and then he emerges, irate, calling the rabbi a fool, an ignoramus, to the embarrassment of his son- in-law. What was the rabbi’s advice that so infuriated Baruch’s father-in-law? That he must become a fl atterer. For a week he must fl atter everyone he meets, going through the motions of saying nice but insincere things to all of them regardless of who they might be. And that, to the father-in-law, is worse than murder. But Baruch suspects there must be a deeper meaning to the odd piece of advice. The older man wants to go home imme- diately, but since it is the evening of the Sabbath they can’t leave for home (because one does not travel on the Sabbath, between sunset on Friday and sunset on Saturday). So they stay in Kuzmir to celebrate the Sabbath and listen to the prayers of Rabbi Chazkele. Both Baruch and his father-in-law are deeply moved by the rabbi’s chanting, and by his words.

The rabbi commented on the law. And what he said was connected with what he had told my father-in-law at their meeting. “What should a Jew do if he is not a pious man?” the rabbi asked. And answered: “Let him play the pious man. The Almighty does not require good intentions. The deed is what counts. It is what you do that matters. Are you angry perhaps? Go ahead and be angry, but speak gentle words and be friendly at the same time. Are you afraid of being a dissembler? So what if you pretend to be something you aren’t? For whose sake are you lying? For your Father in Heaven. His Holy Name, blessed be He, knows the intention and the intention behind the intention, and it is this that is the main thing.”

How can one convey the rabbi’s lesson? Pearls fell from his mouth and each word burned like fi re and penetrated the heart. It wasn’t so much the words themselves, but his gestures and his tone. The evil spirit, the rabbi said, cannot be conquered by sheer will. It is known that the evil one has no body, and works mainly through the power of speech. Do not lend him a mouth—that is the way to conquer him. Take, for example, Balaam, the son of Beor. He wanted to curse the children of Israel but forced himself to bless them instead, and because of this, his name is mentioned in the Bible. When one doesn’t lend the evil one a tongue, he must remain mute.

Why should I ramble on? My father-in-law attended all three Sabbath meals. And when, on the Sabbath night, he went to the rabbi to take leave of him, he stayed in his study for a whole hour.

On the way home, I said, “Well, father-in-law?” And he answered: “Your rabbi is a great man.”

The road back to Rachev was full of dangers. Though it was still midwinter, the ice on the Vistula had cracked—iceblocks were fl oating downstream the way they do at Passover time. In the midst of all the cold, thunder and lightning struck. No doubt about it, only Satan could be responsible for this! We were forced to put up at an inn until Tuesday—and there were many Misoagids staying there. No one could travel further. A real blizzard was raging outside. The howling in the chimney made you shiver.

NARRATIVE: A P I E C E O F A D V I C E 475

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476 CHAPTER 9 ARISTOTLE ’S V IRTUE THEORY: EVERYTHING IN MODERATION

Misoagids are always the same. These were no exception. They began to heap ridi- cule upon Hasids—but my father-in-law maintained silence. They tried to provoke him but he refused to join in. They took him to task: “What about this one? What about that one?” He put them off good-naturedly with many tricks. “What change has come over you?” they asked. If they had known that he was coming from Rabbi Chazkele, they would have devoured him.

What more can I tell you? My father-in-law did what the rabbi had prescribed. He stopped snapping at people. His eyes glowed with anger but his speech was soft. And if at times he lifted his pipe about to strike someone, he always stopped himself and spoke with humility. It wasn’t long before the people of Rachev realized that my father-in-law was a changed man. He made peace with his enemies. He would stop any little brat in the street and give him a pinch on the cheek. And if the water carrier splashed water entering our house, though I knew this just about drove my father-in-law crazy, he never showed it. “How are you, Reb Yontle?” he would say. “Are you cold, eh?” One could feel that he did this only with great effort. That’s what made it noble.

In time, his anger disappeared completely. He began to visit Rabbi Chazkele three times a year. He became a kindly man, so good-natured it was unbelievable. But that is what a habit is like—if you break it, it becomes the opposite. One can turn the worst sin into a good deed. The main thing is to act, not to ponder. He even began to visit the ritual bath. And when he grew old, he acquired disciples of his own. This was after the death of Rabbi Chazkele. My father-in-law always used to say, “If you can’t be a good Jew, act the good Jew, because if you act something, you are it. Otherwise why does any man try to act at all? Take, for example, the drunk in the tavern. Why doesn’t he try to act differently?”

The rabbi once said: “Why is ‘Thou Shalt Not Covet’ the very last of the Ten Com- mandments? Because one must fi rst avoid doing the wrong things. Then, later on, one will not desire to do them. If one stopped and waited until all the passions ceased, one could never attain holiness.”

And so it is with all things. If you are not happy, act the happy man. Happiness will come later. So also with faith. If you are in despair, act as though you believed. Faith will come afterwards.

Study Questions

1. Is this an example of virtue ethics or ethics of conduct? Explain your answer.

2. Do you think someone can become a better person by constantly doing the right thing, even if his or her inclination is to do something else entirely? What might Aristotle say?

3. Comment on this quote: “One could feel that he did this only with great effort. That’s what made it noble.” What might Kant say to that? After you’ve read Chapter 10, return to this question and discuss what Philippa Foot might answer.

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