Monday, September 29, 2014

165. Absolute terror

Earlier in this blog, I argued against universalism and absolutism. Here I try to connect that with the current crisis surrounding IS (ISIS, ISIL).

 Should terror be fought with universal values, or are those precisely the source of it? Moral universalism leads to nationalism, intolerance, discrimination, missionary zeal, conquest and suppression. It is totalitarian in its absolutist claim to apply always and to everyone. The human being cannot achieve the absolute, and reaching beyond human limitations makes the world inhumane. This applies as much to the presumed universal blessings of Western democracy, capitalism and market, as it does to those of communism, Christian faith and Islam.

But, one may object, terror surely is an absolute evil? Does that not demand an absolute counterweight? What terror is, is often the judgement of a dominant power concerning its rebels. The rebels are inspired by their own absolutisms of faith or ideology.

What is terror? If it is defined as violence against innocent bystanders, then the interventions in Vietnam, Iraq en Afghanistan were terrorist, as earlier colonial interventions by the Netherlands in Indonesia, France in Algeria, Belgium in Congo, Great Britain in India, etc.

If terror is defined as a deliberate targeting of the population, then the use of nerve gas by Italy in Eritrea in the 1930s, the bombardment of Dresden in WWII, and the atom bombs on Japan were terrorist.

The boundary between these two definitions of terror is not sharp. It depends on how much collateral damage one accepts.

In what regard, then, if any, is the terror perpetrated by IS (or ISIS, or ISIL) worse than bombardment with much collateral damage?

Is it perhaps the manner of violence? Is the physical, personal closeness of the knife and sword of IS worse than the distant, impersonal slaughter by bombs? Or is it an affront to our sensibility of civilisation? In its past, the West overcame its own bloodshed by the sword, progressing to bombs, and it is an affront to history, the cultural achievement of the Enlightenment, to be thrown back into barbarism.

Not only outcomes count, in suffering, blood and death, but also motives. Terror seems more acceptable when it aims to curtail aggression, or terror (as now regarding IS), or to enforce peace (as formerly in Kosovo). Or when it arises from compassion with victims, as now concerning IS. However, IS will claim that it also acts from compassion and protection against injustice, suppression and violence regarding Sunnites.

I propose that the horror is deepest when terror is based on some absolute, in religion or ideology, transcending humanity, devoid of all reasonableness, limit and moderation. Devoid of human virtue. That arose before, in the holocaust, the Pol Pot regime and Rwanda, and now in IS.

But wait. The Enlightenment produced its own absolute, that of reason, replacing the absolute of God. That yielded the rational choice of economics, which yielded markets, resulting in an absolutist market ideology. Now, markets do not seek terror, violence against the population. Nevertheless, it does produce violence. Is it a sufficient excuse that this effect is not intended? In philosophy this is an issue of debate. The claim that violence was not intended may be a sop, turning a blind eye, masking intention.

My conclusion is this. While Enlightenment thought and market capitalism are absolutist, in contrast to IS the terror of bombarding IS is based on debate, in press and parliament, in a weighing of pros and cons, with an ear for opposition. It is a case of the debatable ethics that I plead for in this blog.

The tragedy of bombing IS is that without doubt it will call forth the next wave of extremism and terrorism, but a point was reached where nevertheless action had to be taken.

The worst tragedy is that the very absolutism of the worst terror also forms its attraction. Especially to some young people, attracted by the transcendence of the absolute, rising above the mortal self, the lure of the pure, and the unconditional, in a flight from the nihilism and shallow materialism of Western society, and from the compromise and hypocrisy of adulthood. They flee from the absolute of markets, back to the absolute of God, dropping democracy and destroying freedom and reasonableness. 

Sunday, September 21, 2014


164. Trust as virtue

 Trust yields a good illustration of virtue ethics. Trust is not a moral obligation but a virtue. It requires character. It is contingent, not universal: one should not always trust, blindly or unconditionally, but depending on experience, customs and conditions. Trust can be both emotional and rational. It can yield dilemmas. It requires actions that are appropriate to specific circumstances. It requires practical wisdom to perceive and judge what is salient in those circumstances.

Here I pick up elements from the earlier analysis of trust in this blog (in items 68-73).

As I discussed there, trust is a matter not only of intentions but also of competences. One must not only have good intentions but also the ability to act upon them.

Trust is emotional since it is accompanied by risk, fear, hope and doubt. It is rational in the analysis of reasons why the trustee, the trusted person, organization or system, may or may not be trustworthy.

Trustworthiness requires virtues of character, such as being reasonable, forbearance, commitment, endurance, consistency, empathy, openness, courage, and the right amount of self-confidence.  

A shortage of self-confidence breeds suspicion, out of an excessive sense of vulnerability. Too much self-confidence blinds one to risks or overestimates ability to deal with them.

Trust requires courage because it presupposes acceptance of uncertainty. If one were certain about what will happen and what people will do, there would be no talk of trust.

Trust requires reasonableness, forbearance, and reciprocity, give and take, in taking appropriate action. When something goes wrong one should not immediately conclude foul play. One should extend benefit of the doubt and give an opportunity to explain what happened. Disappointment of expectations may be due to a mishap that is no one’s fault, a shortfall of competence, or lack of attention or commitment, rather than bad intent. Then one must have endurance and commitment to help improvements. In other words, one should not immediately go for ‘exit’, but give ‘voice’ a chance.

Conversely, when one makes an error, one should own up to it, explain, help to redress damage, and show how one aims to prevent similar errors in future. One should also be open concerning one’s fears. That gives the other side an opportunity to take action to mitigate them. In other words: trust requires openness.

Empathy is needed to understand the motives and position of others, including threats they suffer, in order to take them into account in forbearance, and to judge risks and reliability.

Trust is not ‘being nice’. Precisely because there is trust one can afford to be critical.

More trust can allow for less control, but trust is not boundless and where it ends control must start. Trust is not unconditional. In case of persistent error or cheating, controls are tightened, or voice turns into exit.

Trust is imperfect. It breaks under pressures of survival, as in times of crisis. Then self-interest is likely to prevail, and relations may break. The challenge then is to end a relationship in as trustworthy a fashion as possible, helping to limit the damage it causes, and helping the other side in the exit.

One may also face different, conflicting obligations, to family, job, community, and conscience, and one may have to choose.

Finally, apart from trust as a means to govern relationships, it also has intrinsic value: for many people, for virtuous people, dealing on the basis of trust is more agreeable and is part of humane relationships.

In sum, trust requires virtues of courage, self-confidence, forbearance, openness, reasonableness, endurance, and voice. One should analyze specific events in specific conditions, with an open mind, to arrive at appropriate action. One can encounter conflicting obligations. One should seek a balance between trust and control, between self-interest and altruism. And trust also has intrinsic value.

The capability of trust is a good example of what Aristotle called ‘practical reason’.

Monday, September 15, 2014


163. Virtue: emotions, nature and others

 For Kant, emotions and human nature were suspect. Emotions and natural desires and instincts are likely to eclipse moral duties. Morality should be a matter of pure reason, undiluted or biased by interests, emotions or natural drives.

In Aristotelian virtue ethics, by contrast, emotions are part of identifying morally relevant situations, and of triggering action. Emotions also contribute to the intrinsic value of moral action. Seeing a face in anguish one may not only see a duty to help, but also a rush of feeling in wanting to do so.

In his later work (The metaphysics of morals), Kant did allow for emotions, but they were only possible side effects of morally good actions, as a bonus, still not part of their motivation.[1]

Aristotelian virtue ethics was oriented towards human nature. It was teleological, aimed at realizing the distinctive, essential goal that constitutes the nature of the human being. For Aristotle that was the use of reason. That is what distinguishes humanity from other creatures. But clearly human nature, as embodied in the human genome, also has an immoral side. Culture (e.g. ethics) and institutions (e.g. rule of law) are needed to bend or contain evil natural impulse, and to nurture beneficial inclinations such as benevolence, empathy and civic responsibility.

While Kantian ethics originally aimed at moral perfection, later Kant recognized that other features of human life had an inevitable place, and he quoted the Roman poet Horace: ‘The wise man has the name of being a fool, the just man of being iniquitous, if he seeks virtue beyond what is sufficient.’[2] There can be too little self-love, in sacrifice of the self to duty.

Aristotelian ethics proposed the notion of the perfectly virtuous individual as a guiding example. However, as Athanassoulis noted, this is not because such an individual inspires ‘the right action’ in any set of conditions. That would be in conflict with the recognition, in virtue ethics, that any set of conditions is, in principle, unique, not allowing for any a-priori, universally good action. What the ethical role model offers is a demonstration of mastery in perceiving morally relevant features of a situation, and arguing what would then be virtuous. He/she does not prompt the proper actions but is a source of learning to better deal with moral perception and judgement, in practical wisdom. Not a perfect model but a teacher in imperfection on the move.

How about the other person? In Kantian ethics it is an abstract, generalized, universal other that has to be taken into account, in acting according to the categorical imperative.

In Aristotelian virtue ethics the other is part of moral obligations but not a source of moral enlightenment. As in other ancient philosophy, the ideal still lingers of ataraxia, invulnerability, tranquillity, in the avoidance of dependence on others for the flourishing of life.

In contrast with that, as I have argued repeatedly, in this blog, the self needs the other for its flourishing. In particular for opposition to moral prejudice, for correction of moral myopia. It is not just from the occasional virtuoso in virtue that one can learn, but also from the experience, successes and failures, and resulting insights, of others more in general. 

This connects with my discussion, in item 120 of this blog, on how literature can make people better by exercising moral imagination.

In fact, this need for imagination, to grasp the ideas and motives of others, as needed for judgement and thought, is part of Kant’s later philosophy (Kritik der Urteilskraft). 





[1] Nafsika Athanassoulis, 2013, Virtue ethics, London: Bloomsbury.
[2] Quoted in Simon Blackburn, 2014, Mirror, mirror. The uses and abuses of self-love, Princeton University Press, p. 3.

Monday, September 8, 2014

162. Obligation and virtue

Here I start a short series on ethics, in particular virtue ethics. It expands on an earlier discussion of Kantian duty ethics (item 38) and Aristotelian virtue ethics (item 39).

Kantian duty ethics looks at proper motives for actions. Utilitarian ethics looks at outcomes of actions, in terms of wellbeing or utility. Both yield universal rules of obligation or duty, overriding other good things in life. This yields problems that compel us to adopt a third brand of ethics: virtue ethics.

The first problem with rule ethics is that the meaning of the rule can be ambiguous. Athanassoulis[1] took the example of the rule not to lie. Strictly, lying is knowingly telling an untruth. But how about omitting a relevant truth, or telling irrelevant truths. That may be just as bad as lying, or worse. 

Second, there are exceptions. White lies, such as complimenting a host on a bad meal, in order not to offend him/her, may be good.

Third, there may be conflicting obligations. Athanassoulis took the example of having to choose between saving one’s own drowning baby and someone else’s. Here the obligation of a parent may trump a more general obligation to try and save people.

Fourth, the fulfilment of an obligation may be blocked by circumstances, by bad luck. One may be hindered (restrained to jump into the water), or one may lack the competence (inability to swim). ‘Good’ can mean ‘morally good’ but also ‘competent’. Competence matters, next to intentions.

Fifth, one may do good unintentionally, and does that count?

Sixth, Bernard Williams showed that moral judgement may be conducted in retrospect and may then be subject to scenarios. [2] He gave the example of being unfaithful to one’s partner. In retrospect it is bad in the scenario of resolving differences and staying together, but perhaps it is good, as an inevitable move, forcing the issue, in the scenario of breaking up an unworkable relationship.

Seventh, and above all, perhaps, actions also have other than moral values. Next to duties there are values of self-realization, bringing one’s talents to flourishing. Next to extrinsic value, such as the instrumental value or obligation of an action, the action may have intrinsic value, in wanting to conduct it. Athanassoulis took the example of visiting a friend in hospital. The friend thanks you for it, and you say ‘I was just doing my duy’. The friend will not like that, and may even have preferred you to stay away, if that was your motive. As a friend you are supposed to want to visit.
 
In virtue ethics the prime question is not ‘what should I do’ but ‘how should I live’. Virtues are ‘excellences of character, which are internalized dispositions of action, desire and feeling’[3]. Examples are courage, sincerity, truthfulness, openness, reason, empathy, benevolence, striving for excellence, creativity, … For Aristotle, the central, overarching virtue is reason.

The virtue of virtue ethics is that it allows for the problems found for duty ethics. Moral principles become clear only in context, conformance depends on conditions, different rules or principles can be in conflict with each other, and other values and virtues are at stake, such as intrinsic value.

Some philosophers conclude from all this that virtue ethics should abandon duties and obligations, in an ethics without morality. I think that is a mistake. ‘How I should I live’ has implications for ‘what I should do’. The point, I propose, is not that all forms of morality disable the good life, but that morality should not take the form of absolute, strict and universal rules. There can be moral principles or ‘guidelines’, of virtues, that do not allow for a-priori judgement regardless of context, but provide a logic or language for arguing good or bad, depending on conditions and other values of the good life.

That is what I called ‘debatable ethics’ (in item 118). Moral judgement entails debate on intentions, motives, competences, outcomes, conditions, and different dimensions of virtue, including intrinsic next to extrinsic value, depending on the context at hand.




[1] Nafsika Athanassoulis, 2013, Virtue ethics, London: Bloomsbury.
[2] Bernard Williams, 2008 [1993], Shame and necessity, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
[3] Bernard Williams, 2011 [1985], Ethics and the limits of philosophy, London: Routledge, p. 40.

Monday, September 1, 2014


161. Play, invention and evolution

In a recent issue of the Dutch magazine ‘De Groene Amsterdammer’[1], the following question was raised. Play is observed universally among people and animals, especially when young. Evolutionary logic tells us that traits can have survived only if they were expedient to survival and reproduction. But play appears to be pointless, rollicking around. Much energy is spent on it, and how could that be afforded if it did not contribute to survival and/or reproduction? Apparently, counter to evolutionary logic, some things, such as play, can have value for themselves. 

Play as a value in itself reminds me of existentialist philosophers such as Nietzsche, with his Will to Power, or Heidegger, with his Being in the World. I my philosophical view I would associate play with the will to creation, which I consider to be a basic drive, as discussed earlier in this blog. Playing seems close to the experimentation that leads to creation.

But whatever intrinsic value play may have, value for itself, not as an instrument for survival, the question still remains how it could have survived in evolution.

One answer could be that play also has a socializing function, to find out what one can afford to do to other people, which helps survival.

Apart from that, here I propose that an inherent drive to play, as a joy for itself, can be conducive to survival.

In fact, that is what I have argued with my ‘theory of invention’, set out in a book in 2000[2], and in item 31 of this blog. There, I argue that invention arises from experimentation with existing competence (knowledge, skill) in novel contexts, which generates failure, a resulting incentive to adapt, as well as material and directions for experimental change, arising from the novel context.

Soon after I published the book I received a response from a psychologist (in New Zealand), saying that what I described is known a ‘principle of overconfidence’ that children display in play: disingenuous, fearless, sometimes reckless expansion into novel contexts of what they can do, think or say.

Entrepreneurs appear to have kept that instinct alive in spite of regimentation in education and employment. Perhaps that is why often entrepreneurs are dropouts, to escape from such regimentation. Innovation requires room and an impulse to play. One of the fundamental problems of much innovation policy is that it does not leave enough room for play.

So, my argument is that while apparently wasteful, an autonomous drive of playful experimentation is conducive to invention, has contributed to survival, and as a result has become embedded as an instinct in the genome.

Intrinsic joy of play and survival in evolution can go together, and perhaps must go together

[1] Of 7th august 2014.
[2] Bart Nooteboom, 2000, Learning and innovation in organizations and economies, Oxford University Press.