42. Fragility of goodness

Aristotle accepts that we cannot rise above our potential, towards the absolute. We are subject to forces we cannot fully control, and the correctness of ideas and judgements depends on circumstances. Universal rules of goodness do not work.

The philosopher Martha Nussbaum in her Fragility of goodness gives a beautiful exposition on this. The tragedy of circumstance is demonstrated in the classical Greek tragedies. Agamemnon had no other choice than the one between his daughter, to whom he had paternal duties, and his army, to which he had the duties of the commander, and he chooses the second. The hero is caught in a situation where he cannot do good and must choose between two evils, and he is punished for it. Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon, could not forgive him and in revenge she had him killed. Even heroes do not always carry blame for their destiny. Tragedy demands compassion, but this need not entail lenity or impunity.

Martha Nussbaum makes a connection with monotheism versus the old Greek polytheism. Long ago at Latin school I was told that monotheism is a sign of civilization, and I wondered on what that claim was based. Polytheism yields a sense of a variety of different, possibly conflicting moral duties. Perhaps that harbours the greater wisdom. Both American messianic capitalism and the extremism of Muslim terrorists are rooted in monotheism. Both make an appeal to the righteousness that has fallen on them by revelation of a God for whom they are the chosen people. Only one God can be the right one, and the appeal to another God can only be an expression of evil. If you are not with us, you are against us. Praise the lord and pass the ammunition.

However, the problem is not a matter of theistic religion so much as of something that emerges in it. It also arises in ideology. We have seen it in nazism and communism. Present conflicts are not a matter of Christian vs. Islamic faith, but of conflicting platonic pretensions in both of them. It is not about a contrast between Christ and Mohammed, but between Plato and Aristotle. If ‘we’ are on the side of the good, and the good is universal, then outsiders must be bad. And if the good is pure, the ‘we’ must not just neutralize but eradicate the vile, the outsiders.

This can take the form of a millenarian Christian idea that the kingdom of God will be achieved after an apocalypse, at the end of times, but with the twist that this can be realised on earth by human intervention. That aberration of Christendom has manifested itself several times in history. Recently with George W. Bush, as John Gray claims. However, such interpretation explains neither Muslim extremism nor the atheistic Utopias that were brought forth by enlightenment thought. The roots lie in the platonic, transcendent dream that is the source of theistic religion but also of other absolutisms such as engendered by the radical Enlightenment.