Moral Health

From the fact that I am and should be entirely free to say certain things and to do certain things, what simply does not follow—not in the least—is that your disapproval of what I say and do is thereby out of order.  And, of course, it goes the other way around: from the fact that you are free to do and say certain things, it most surely does not follow that I am out of order in disapproving of what you say and do.  Modern democracies throughout the world seem to have lost sight of this truth.

Time and time again, the response to criticism is the banal utterance “I have a right to behave in this way”, as if having a legal right to engage in the behavior in question thereby made that behavior acceptable or decent or immune to criticism.

You will notice, for instance, that the idea of women dressing “slutty” is increasingly receding into the moral background.  Now, the explanation for this, surely, is hardly that women are no longer dressing slutty or that we now see that we were entirely mistaken in thinking that this was even a possibility.  Quite the contrary, there are respects in which things have gotten progressively worse.  Why, showing “Ass and Tits” to the point of being absolutely lewd has become the order of the day.  We fastly approaching the point where there is not enought wardrobe to have a wardrobe malfunction.

What has happened, of course, is that women started insisting that “They have a right” to dress this way.  A like line of reasoning applies to the use of profanity that has infiltrated the airwaves.

Now, I wish someone would tell me just how it follows from the truth that women have a right to so dress precludes others from having the right to say that women who so dress themselves are dressing slutty?  There is no calculus of rights that yields that result.  The same holds for speech.

Philosophers are quick to invoke John Stuart Mill’s “No Harm Principle”.   However, the very man who asserted that principle, namely J. S. Mill, also thought that approbation and disapprobation played a fundament role in maintaining a good society.

What he surely had in mind is that there are social ideals towards people should aspire but which society should not require of people.  This point is very easily seen with speech.  Suppose I make the egregiously ungrammatical utterance “Me ain’t not feeling good”.  You will no doubt have understood the point I am trying to convey; and surely it can be said that I have a right to speak that way.  But just as surely there are a number of ways in which I am open to criticism if I do speak that way; and it would be just plain absurd to suppose that you may not raise those criticisms.  Indeed, you ought to raise them notwithstanding the fact that it is unmistakably true that I have a right to speak as I did.

Without soaring to the heights of Shakespearian eloquence, there is a vastly superior way of speaking; and you should remind me of this rather than give me the impression that what I have said is “Just lovely”.

The same applies to dress.  Suppose I, a professor, were to lecture in jeans half-way down my buttocks, with the upper-half of my underwear showing while wearing a do-rag.  Do I not have a right to dress in that manner for my lectures?  Absolutely.  After all, I am not harming anyone; and my attire does not impact upon my ability to speak with precision and eloquence.

But it goes without saying that my wearing such attire is inappropriate on a number of levels.  So it is, notwithstanding the fact that I act perfectly within my rights in wearing such attire.  More importantly, I very much hope that if I should ever show up to lecture thus attired, then all those who know me would find the wherewithal to express their disapprobation for my wearing what I unquestionably have a right to wear.

The right to behave in a certain way does not preclude moral disapprobation, and so moral criticism, on the part of others.  Mill never supposed that it did, though one would not know that from the cavalier way in which his name is invoked in support of this or that form of outrageous behavior.

Roughly put, rights reflect the baseline below which we should not fall.  They do not constitute either an excuse or a justification to be indifferent to or to ignore the zenith of excellence of which human beings are capable.

Mill understood that excellence at its best has its source in the inspiration that we receive from others as opposed to some obligation imposed upon us by society.  Accordingly, Mill was not the champion of what passes for modern liberalism; for modern liberalism seems to have a disdain for excellence and anyone who would dare to expect it from others.

It is striking that the call for excellence is invariably countenanced as imposing one’s values; whereas the insistence upon being utterly mediocre is always countenanced as none other than the exercise of one’s rights.

Needless to say, the call for excellence is not an imposition of values.  Rather, it is a public challenge that a person should re-think her or his behavior.  Anyone who engages in this or that public behavior should not be threatened by the challenge.  Quite the contrary, she or he should take the challenge as an opportunity to make the case for her or his view.  By contrast, the sustained insistence upon mediocre behavior is certainly one of the ways in which the values of society change.  In both cases, then, the prevailing values of society are at stake.

The downfall of modern democracy is ineluctably tied to the mistaken view that criticism has no place with regard to behavior that people have the right to engage in.  This is the downfall of democracy because the widespread acceptance of this view makes the public valorization of excellence unacceptable.  Accordingly, with the widespread acceptance of the view that criticism of mediocrity is out of order the many oasis of inspiration to be excellent, namely the public valorization of excellence, invariably dry up.

We miss this truth because we are brimming with satisfaction.  It is a truth, however, that Mill saw from afar.  After all, it was he who exclaimed that it is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.  Modern liberalism, alas, takes issue with precisely that truth, suggesting that being a satisfied pig is, in the end, the one and only thing that we can all agree upon.  The idea of excellence, modern liberalism tells us, has no real claim to our assent because what counts as excellence is just someone’s opinion.

Quite obviously, the three items mentioned in the title of this blog-entry are rather unrelated—unless, perhaps, one wants to say that each represents some sort of flaw.  That, however, is not the tactic that I shall take.  Indeed, I want to put American Slavery on one side and the other two—the war in Iraq and Paris Hilton—on the other.  This is because initial reflections regarding American Slavery some hundreds of years ago raise deep, deep questions regarding the way in which we think about the latter two.  As one might imagine, the issue of moral objectivity comes into play.

If American Slavery reveals anything, it reveals that moral right and wrong has nothing whatsoever to do with how many people concur with the view in question.  For time was when the majority of people throughout the world clearly supposed that there was nothing wrong with slavery in general or the enslavement of blacks in particular.

Needless to say, we don’t look back and say “Slavery was all right back then, but it is terribly wrong now, because most people nowadays think that slavery is wrong unlike what most people back then thought”.  Surely, the right or wrong of slavery—like the right or wrong of rape or gratuitous killing—has nothing whatsoever to do with what most people think.  The issue of slavery, however, serves the discussion well precisely because an about-face did occur in the way in which people thought about slavery. (more…)

For many blacks in the United States, the idea of black American imperialism is pretty much an oxymoron.  You know how the argument goes: “How on earth can black Americans be imperialistic, given that (a) they and their descendents were victims of slavery and were accorded second-class citizenship, at best and (b) their present standing remains that of second-class citizenship”.

Alas, it is a truth—perhaps a surprising one—that the wrongs of slavery and social injustice do not at all prevent blacks Americans from being ever so imperialistic.

Examples are always helpful.  One of the most stunning things is that black Americans suppose that their view of blacks applies to blacks throughout the world.  Now, there can be no doubt that the struggle for equality on the part of blacks in the United States has had a most lugubrious effect upon the social standing of blacks throughout the world.  But from this very poignant truth, what most certainly does not follow by any stretch of the imagination is that how black Americans conceive of things for blacks applies tout court to blacks throughout the world.  To think that it does is nothing but sheer arrogance. (more…)