Emotions & Morals, pt. 3: David Hume -- British Sense Theorists

Francis Hutcheson importantly influenced fellow Scot David Hume, although Hume would argue against Hutcheson's particular view of benevolent affections (see prior post on Hutcheson here). Before analyzing closely some places where Hume's moral theory differs from that of his mentor Hutcheson, what, first, is the main area of agreement between them?

When antonyms are, literally, synonyms

I normally do not post two entries on one day. Well, for that matter, I normally do not post -- if that means publishing more than 182.62 submissions per year. But today is a Friday, and so I make an exception.

Gene Weingarten has a playful but pointed column in The Washington Post about the, to his sense and mine, dangerous demise of the English language, or the culture in which it is employed: "Weighing in on 'literally,' but figuratively, of course." (And if you want background, try this article last month from the UK's Daily Mail.)

Now Weingarten thinks that it is absurd when words are redefined to mean the same thing as their opposites. I am the one who thinks it dangerous when literal means figurative.

Whether words refer to reality (so Augustine), or whether they have meaning in connection with the real activities, or forms of life, into which they are woven (so Wittgenstein), or whether it is some combination of the two, this much is clear. The plasticity that allows a word meaning X simultaneously to mean not-X reflects something significant -- and troubling -- from an Augustinian or Wittgensteinian perspective. Why? Because it signals how confused and confusing is the reality in which we live (Augustine), or the activities and forms of life that contemporary culture takes (Wittgenstein), or both.

Maybe the closest approximation I can think of to this plasticity is the explanation of "fuhgeddaboudit" in Donnie Brasco. In fact, this scene is not merely amusing but actually illustrates the point. Donnie's world, living simultaneously as a law enforcer and as a mobster, was psychologically confusing and his life confused. Ultimately, Donnie could not handle the tension, his personality was changing, his marriage was dissolving, and he could no longer play the part of both at the same time. This example of semantic confusion (and contradiction) could be broadly instructive -- for words, people, and social institutions.

Butler and Rousseau on Identity

Discussions, often controversial ones, about same-sex marriage are largely, among other things, about one's gender identity.  And discussions about gender identity can vacillate from the deterministic pole ("I was born this way") to the performative pole ("I construct my own 'gender,' which might differ from my 'sex'").  A recent speech by Lori Watson, Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at the University of San Diego, illustrates especially the performative emphasis.  The speech was given in support of the Catholic university's Pride organization student group, which was organizing its 2nd Annual Drag Show.  In thinking about contemporary issues involving gender identity, I returned to the influential theorist Judith Butler.  Her 1990 book Gender Trouble is a seminal study of performativity that is influential in gender/queer circles such as Professor Watson's.

As I began Butler's 2004 book Undoing Gender, in which she clarifies her position on this passive/performative spectrum, I began to wonder about the pedigree of her central theoretical claims.  To what extent does her balancing act now between biological determinism and social construction resemble concerns about identity that also flowered in another era like the Enlightenment?

Although Judith Butler herself would likely not draw connections between her critique of gender and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s critique of the Enlightenment, some noteworthy echoes (and perhaps unacknowledged debts) exist. In particular, her insistence in Undoing Gender that gender “is a practice of improvisation within a scene of constraint” (p. 1) reflects, despite some important differences, a comparable tension that in his discourses Rousseau argued attended human self-invention in Enlightenment society: enslaving liberation, or alternatively liberated confinement. This similarity between Butler and Rousseau appears in several respects: recognition, the paradox of agency, and (in)authenticity.

Nietzsche and Foucault on Domination

Michel Foucault is justifiably regarded as a Nietzschean thinker.  In Madness and Civilization, Foucault adapts Friedrich Nietzsche’s genealogical method of inquiry and extends Nietzsche’s idea that “in all events a will to power is operating” (“Second Essay:  ‘Guilt,’ ‘Bad Conscience,’ and the Like,” in Genealogy of Morals, 514). Influenced by Nietzsche, Foucault interprets the history of madness in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries as attempts to control or dominate others, especially when society’s morals are perceived to be violated or threatened. 

Making Sense of Wilson, pt. 3b: Fairness

What about fairness and private property ownership?  In my last post, I mostly focused on applying Prof. Wilson's categories of fairness to relationships between persons.  These are important, and they are often overlooked.  We need to think, probably more than we typically do, about relational fairness between individuals.  But questions about fairness between groups, particularly differences in ownership of property by various societal segments, are also important and happen to be currently at the forefront of national conversation.  So we need to think about that, too.

Reminders

Big picture reminders are sometimes necessary.  For instance:

• what is legal is not always just;
• what is permitted is not always prudent; and
• what is required is not always right.

Enduring Classical Benefits

In a recent post, I drew attention to a political and ethical tension:  the government's position in the United States to permit gendercide (or female foeticide), which is legal, and the ostensible position of the United States government with respect to other countries regarding the same permitted termination of life, which the Secretary of State has said should be prohibited.

Shortly after making that blog entry, I ran across the following discussion of ethical matters in ancient Greece.  It has to do with the development of moral theory and practice from Homeric myth to fifth-century Athens.  In his A Short History of Ethics, Alasdair MacIntyre discusses the tug of war between nomos (law, custom, convention) and physis (nature), the order of society and the order of the universe, as it relates to one's understanding of virtue and moral expressions within cultures and across them.  I take it that this tug of war is parallel to the tension in the U.S. domestic approach to gendercide through selective abortion and its foreign approach to the same question.

I mention Prof. MacIntyre's discussion for another reason.  It is often asked, Of what benefit or enduring significance are the humanities and especially the study of classics?  One answer might be that such study helps us to understand ourselves, our institutions, and our moral theory and practice -- and to make informed judgments about them -- in ways that we might not do without classical knowledge and some reflection.

I offer the following, then, as evidence of the enduring benefits of a classical education.  The tension in the U.S. is not new.  The Athenians, too, were conflicted.  Who knew, right, that an account of the development of moral reasoning in ancient Greece could be, well, just so relevant to contemporary discussions?  It is.  What, then, might we learn about justice from their experience and moral investigations that can help to improve ours?

Between Homer and writers five centuries later there is a great change in Greek myths about the order of the universe.  The Homeric myth does reflect, though with much distortion, the workings of an actual society in which a close form of functional organization is presupposed by the moral and evaluative forms of appraisal which are in use.  The later assertions of order in the universe reflect not a structure that is, but one that was, or one that is struggling to survive.  They are conservative protests against the disintegration of the older forms and the transition to the city-state.  The myths themselves cannot but open up the question of the difference between the order of the universe and the order of society.  But above all, this question is sharpened by a widening awareness of radically different social orders.

         The impact of the Persian invasions, of colonization, of increase in trade and therefore in travel, all these brings home the fact of different cultures.  The result is that the distinction between what holds good in Egypt but not in Persia, or in Athens but not in Megara, on the one hand, and what is the case universally as part of the order of things becomes overwhelmingly important.  The question asked about any moral rule or social practice is, Is it part of the essentially local realm of nomos (convention, custom) or of the essentially universal realm of physis (nature)?  Linked to this is of course the question, Is it open to me to choose what rules I shall make my own or what restraints I shall observe (as it may be open to me to choose which city I shall live in and what therefore shall be the nomos by which I live)? or does the nature of the universe set limits upon what I may legitimately choose?  (MacIntyre, Short History, 10-11)

… Different cities observe different customs and different laws.  Does and should justice differ from city to city?  Does justice hold only within a given community between citizens? or should it hold also between cities?  The Athenians condemn the character of Alcibiades because he did not observe the restraints of dikaiosune in his behavior within the Athenian state.  But their own envoys behave just like Alcibiades in their attitude toward other states.  That is, they equate what is morally permissible with what the agent has the power to do. (MacIntyre, Short History, 11-12)

Reflections on the Grammar Wars

I have wondered at times if many people disregard proper grammar because they devalue clear reasoning.