Virtue Quest

Zeno - founder of Stoic philosophy

Here’s a punchy quote from After Virtue that, I think, summarizes the heart of his argument:

I remarked in Chapter 13 that when teleology [I'll explain this below the quote - RK], whether Aristotelian or Christian, is abandoned, there is always a tendency to substitute for it some version of Stoicism. The virtues are now not to be practiced for the sake of some good other, or more, than the practice of the virtues itself. Virtue is, indeed has to be, its own end, its own reward and its own motive. It is central to this Stoic tendency to believe that there is a single standard of virtue and that moral achievement lies simply in total compliance with it.

Okay, first off, let me translate teleology. That’s philosophical techno-babble for an inherent purpose or direction in things themselves. So, a common example is an eye: the eye is for seeing, so sight is the purpose or end of the eye. An eye is directed toward sight, so sight becomes a standard of goodness internal to the eye itself. The major debate is whether the human person has such an end, and what that implies. Aristotle’s idea was that the purpose of human life is to contemplate abstract truth. Christianity’s idea is usually called “heaven” but is often put in similar terms as Aristotle: to gaze on the face of God.

The Stoics, and their Enlightenment inheritors, disconnected the idea of moral action from any goodness for the moral person. It’s not seen as virtuous to do the right thing if you’re getting anything out of it for yourself.

Major guilt trip

This, more than anything the nuns did to me as a kid, is the source of my own guilt today. I almost feel in my gut that I have to act against my own nature and gifts and joys, that I have to be unhappy, in order to really be good. Sort of like saying that the eye has to avoid seeing and work real hard at hearing in order to be good. Pretty dumb, huh?

But that’s what happens when morality gets divorced from the actual person who is acting morally, and from the situation in which he or she is acting. Morality is reduced to a set of rules, which more and more become arbitrary and unrealistic. No wonder our culture has such an abhorrence of rules and restrictions: we know deep down that there’s something wrong with a demand for obedience for obedience’s sake.

On the other hand, if we recognize that we don’t have to reinvent morality from scratch every second of every day, and that rules are meant to remind us of our nature rather than force us to work against it, then morality becomes much less of a burden. I can relax a little, because I only have to ask, “Does this action fit with my own nature and abilities in this situation?” I don’t have to agonize over whether it’s “right” or not, whether it’s the “best possible action” or anything like that. I’m here. Something needs doing. If I can do it, great! If not, well, not much I can do about it and feeling guilty isn’t going to help matters any.

Mike Flynn, author of a few speculative fiction novels, including the fascinating Eifelheim, asks the question in the style of a medieval academic debate.

A quick summary, as I understand his argument: classical virtue theory provides a basis for morality among atheists; but most atheists these days reject, not only God, but also any notion of natural good. Therefore, atheists can act morally, but have largely destroyed their own philosophical basis for doing so.

My take: most of us, with or without God, are hypocrites. I do all sorts of stuff I know is wrong; and when I do good things, I don’t always have good reasons for it. So I would separate out the question into two parts:

1. Can atheists act morally? Yes. Experience shows that most atheists do good stuff most of the time.
2. Do atheists have a philosophical basis for moral behavior? That’s a question we can leave to the academics to debate.

For myself, I find my own motivation for acting morally is usually based on what other people will think of me, rather than religious motives. Not that that’s the best reason for doing anything; but at least it’s good to know how weak my moral reasoning can be.

The original effect

Tim Burton appears to have lost his imagination.

He’s come a long way since the joy of “Beetlejuice” and the genius of “Edward Scissorhands.” Even his adaptation of “Batman” brought an originality to the superhero movie that had been sorely lacking.

But at least since “Sleepy Hollow” his films have followed a steady trend away from character and plot and toward a desperate attempt to recreate the curlicue atmosphere of the classic “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. He hasn’t bothered coming up with interesting stories, relying instead on twisting other people’s tales to suit his vertiginous vision. He’s put Johnny Depp in all sorts of white makeup (none of which matches the beauty of Edward) and he’s papier-mached or CGI-ed trees imitating the Mandelbrot set or the Golden Ratio (depending on his mood). And he’s sacrificed some truly beautiful stories to these visual allusions to his own better work.

“Alice in Wonderland” is no exception. Naturally, he had to start by making Alice older – nineteen – in order to add a touch of sex appeal and to develop a loose and unconvincing coming-of-age story in an attempt to add depth. (As if a story about a girl falling down a mile-deep rabbit hole needed to go any deeper!) He then gives Depp some erratic antics, and his muse Helena Bonham Carter (does anyone else cast her anymore?) her standard sneer-pout-sneer-pout, and his special effects department a blank check to put as many curlicues as they can into the set dressing.

To their credit, Depp as the Mad Hatter and Mia Wasikowska as Alice turn in solid performances, almost covering over the unwarranted shifts in character and the gaping plot holes. Anne Hathaway, on the other hand, was unable to transcend the absurd role of the White Queen with humanity or believability. Or maybe it was just frustration with Burton’s demand that she keep her hands constantly in the air.

Ultimately, the film fails on the level of imagination. (And yes, this is where I make the virtue connection.) Imagination requires a freedom of mind, as well as a solid grounding in reality – neither of which Burton seems able to muster any more. The closest to reality he comes is the idea that international trade is a way to get rich. But his grasp of courtship, of the tension between social expectation and personal expression, and of the nature of authority all fail to consider the human person anything other than a plot-point to be manipulated into a special-effects sequence.

Ultimately, he has no notion of the difference between good and evil. The Red Queen is arbitrary and unpleasant. The White Queen is arbitrary and (so we’re told) pleasant. But the White Queen also brews a witch’s potion without moral qualm – though she’s made some vague vow against taking life; and she shows no virtue or reason she should merit Alice’s loyalty any more than the Red Queen. Well, except that she is albino and her body is not distended by CGI.

Mr. Burton would have done much better had he taken the time to meditate on Lewis Carroll’s works, rather than mutilating them.

I, the party of the first part....

I was listening to the radio on the way into work this morning and heard a story about how some scientists are afraid they’ll have to throw out the past eight years’ worth of research on human embryonic stem cells.

The reason? It seems that proper consent was not obtained for some of the stem cell lines that President Bush approved back in 2001. I can only assume they were talking about these objections from a UCSF team.

I had to laugh. They can’t do the research because they don’t have a signed permission slip?

Yet these same people pooh-pooh those who object on the grounds that the embryos are human lives being destroyed. Because that’s just not an important question.

Consent: the sole criterion of the good?

My friend Mark likes to point out that our culture seems to have rejected every virtue except tolerance, and every standard of goodness or value except informed consent. He notes that neither of these are sufficient to base a human society on; in fact, they both ultimately lead to a society that collapses upon itself.

I think the problem is that we have, by and large, accepted unquestioningly the myth that we are first and foremost individuals. A nation, a community, even a family, is presumed to be something that we enter into by choice. We have a “social contract,” and all our relationships suddenly have the nature of a contract. They are negotiated, agreed to, and disputes are adjudicated based on the terms of the contract as understood by the parties.

No wonder we have so many lawsuits. No wonder politics has become the common religion practiced by Americans. No wonder the only solutions we can come up with to any problems are legal ones.

No wonder we pay more attention to a medical form than to a human life.

Why human nature is important

On the other hand, all the ancient and medieval thinkers knew that the human person is a social animal. “No man is an island,” as John Donne put it. We cannot be born without other people. We cannot survive without a family. We cannot accomplish any tasks without relying on others to provide what we cannot provide for ourselves.

And we cannot be fully human without other people to converse with, to laugh with, to play with, to work with. We actually are least human when we are isolated as individuals.

When we forget this, when we base our entire sense of goodness on my own individual consent – as if I were utterly independent of the rest of the world – then we lose sight of what is truly good for the human person: love, friendship, collaboration, joy and peace. All these are gifts; they cannot be legislated and are not subject to a contract. We have no right to them. The only consent required is the consent to receive them from those who love us.

Sometimes words can hinder clear communication as much as they help it.

I’ve seen many commentators, on this blog and elsewhere, object to the phrase “intrinsically evil” with reference to torture. So I’d like to try to translate and/or clarify what this phrase really means.

Evil

From a philosophical point of view, evil is not a thing itself. Rather, evil is the twisting or destruction or denial of a good thing. Evil must have a good thing to distort; it cannot exist as a separate thing, any more than “big” can exist without some thing to be large.

Keeping that in mind, when we call something “evil” or “bad” or “wrong”, what we really mean is that the thing is not what it ought to be. A “bad” apple is one that has rotted, or perhaps one that has not yet ripened. An “evil” deed is one that fails to enact the love or truth which it should.

Intrinsic

It’s understandable to me that some would consider the phrase “intrinsic evil” to be an oxymoron. After all, what’s wrong with the apple is not that it exists; it’s that it lacks the good that it ought to have.

This is also where we get the very sane requirement to love a sinner (because he or she is good, being a creature of God) and to hate the sin (because such actions distort or pervert the goodness of being human).

Now, some evils are accidental. If I step on my co-worker’s toe because I wasn’t watching where I was going, I harm the health of my co-worker and the camaraderie between us; but that is easily remedied by an apology and (if I was wearing my steel-toed boots) an ice pack.

But other evils are actions whose entire purpose is to distort the good. A deliberate lie, for example. Or, if I were to stomp on my co-worker’s toe out of spite. Whatever good thing I might be seeking (safety or advantage or even a vengeful kind of justice) is itself ruined because my action is itself meant to harm. The intention is to attack what is good, such as truth or health, in another.

And this is what “intrinsically evil” conveys: an act with the direct purpose of attacking, distorting, twisting, breaking down, or altogether destroying some good thing. That is, the evil is intrinsic (rooted inside) the action.

Torture

Now, just as human life and human dignity is perhaps the greatest good we have in this life, attacks on human life and dignity are some of the greatest evils.

This is why torture, which directly attacks the dignity of another by physical and mental and spiritual torment, is considered an evil so great that it is absolutely prohibited. It is not an act that one can commit accidentally. It requires someone to twist and distort some part of his or her conscience in order to do it. It is literally inhuman.

Now, I’m happy to concede that there are limits to the usefulness of the phrase “intrinsically evil”. But an objection to the phrase cannot be an excuse for a twisting of one’s conscience to the point that torture becomes an acceptable practice, under any circumstances.

Cross-posted from Coalition for Clarity.

Justice is not blind

Tomorrow – today, already, in some time zones – is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, celebrated as a holiday in these United States. This coming week is also a big deal for the pro-life movement, with the national March for Life in D.C. on Friday the 22nd, preceded closer to my home by the Washington State March for Life on Tuesday the 19th.

Both these movements, civil rights and right to life, are movements of social justice that base themselves in the idea of human rights. They argue that basic human rights are (or have been) unjustly denied to human beings.

They both are political movements, asking for changes in the letter or in the application of law. They ask that the law conform to the ideal of justice. But they both also acknowledge that justice truly comes to life in the concrete actions of individual people.

Human law and Natural Law

Dr. Martin Luther King repeated a saying of St. Augustine’s on the relationship of legal justice to moral justice: “An unjust law is no law at all.” That is to say, there is a law higher than any laws that human legislators can pronounce.

This higher law usually goes by the name, Natural Law. Natural Law claims to be a universal moral and ethical code, rooted in human nature and common to every culture and creed in the world. Natural Law is the ideal of justice, the standard by which all human laws are measured.

The theory is that, if anyone from any culture gave a question sufficient thought, he or she would arrive at the same basic conclusion about what is right or wrong, what is good and what is evil. Freedom and equality are good, theft and murder are evil, for example. Therefore, these are principles that can be applied across national borders and religious differences.

This is the basis of fundamental human rights. Today, people largely agree that human rights belong to all people, regardless of racial, ethnic, or national background. In the U.S., at least, many people disagree about whether human rights belong to all people, regardless of their stage of biological development.

Legal justice, social justice, personal justice

So, the laws our government makes and enforces should not merely follow the will of the people; the law should reflect the justice of Natural Law, of fundamental and universal human rights.

But justice requires more than human legislation. It is not enough to permit people of different skin color to use the same drinking fountain or to attend the same schools. People are more than just citizens; they are members of a society, a culture, and justice requires that they be treated as fully human in that social context.

Regarding race and ethnicity, this remains a live question in the U.S. Should there be such a thing as “black identity” (or “Irish” or “Latino” or anything else)? If so, how do people of diverse “identities” treat each other with fairness and respect?

Regarding abortion and euthanasia, this question is almost forbidden. The social climate thrusts the entire matter onto the individual, the mother of an “unwanted” child – as if there are no social implications to children being “unwanted.”

Finally, justice appears properly as a virtue in the actions of individuals. Today, in this situation, facing this person or these people, how does one act with fairness and respect? How does one give to each person what is due to him or her?

Justice begins by recognizing the dignity of every human person, based simply on the fact of his or her humanity. And this becomes obvious in our actions in times of crisis: look at the response to the earthquake in Haiti. No one questions whether the Haitians are human enough, or are worthy. It is enough to know that they are human, and that their suffering is beneath human dignity.

Justice is acting to restore that dignity, wherever it is threatened.