Work In Progress

This is incomplete. It's a meditation, nearly a sermon, on the lectionary readings for last Sunday. I had in mind something more along the lines of one of Kierkegaard's "Edifying Discourses," and I may come back and hammer it into that shape eventually (in fact, I'm sure I will; already I can see how to alter the tone here. Now if I just have time to do it....). So for now, think of it as a Work in Progress:

Genesis 18:20-32

18:20 Then the LORD said, "How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin!
18:21 I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me; and if not, I will know."
18:22 So the men turned from there, and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the LORD.
18:23 Then Abraham came near and said, "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?
18:24 Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it?
18:25 Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?"
18:26 And the LORD said, "If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake."
18:27 Abraham answered, "Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.
18:28 Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?" And he said, "I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there."
18:29 Again he spoke to him, "Suppose forty are found there." He answered, "For the sake of forty I will not do it."
18:30 Then he said, "Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there." He answered, "I will not do it, if I find thirty there."
18:31 He said, "Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there." He answered, "For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it."
18:32 Then he said, "Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there." He answered, "For the sake of ten I will not destroy it."

Luke 11:1-13

11:1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples."
11:2 He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
11:3 Give us each day our daily bread.
11:4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial."
11:5 And he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread;
11:6 for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.'
11:7 And he answers from within, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.'
11:8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.
11:9 "So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
11:10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
11:11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish?
11:12 Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?
11:13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

Utilitarianism, we call it. The philosophy of providing the greatest good for the greatest number. It is our secular moral code, the way we have organized our economy, our society, our culture, our world. Majority rule: and what is good for the majority, is the best society can provide, the ideal organization of groups and interests to maintain a balance where all are well served. It’s a new idea in the history of Western thought, one developed in the 19th century, in Britain. It’s an old idea; it has its roots in Aristotle’s “Ethics,” the first book in Western culture to give us an idea of how to live to maximize our happiness; but it’s really an idea as old as social order itself. So long as some portion of society has sufficient control, it always sets the terms for who is included in the greatest number, and what the greatest good is. And most of the people who are excluded from that consensus are too busy getting through the day to worry about why they share so little of this “greatest good” they may only hear about, if at all.

The flip side of utilitarianism would seem to be another great philosophy out of the 19th century, and also out of Britain: Marxism. A social order and economy which levels downward and denies the tools of power to any one group, which looks for a utopia when individual ownership has vanished and is forgotten because all share equally in what is needed by all. But that isn’t really the opposite of utilitarianism, because Marxism is fundamentally an economic doctrine, and utilitarianism aims at providing guiding moral principles we can all agree are valid and valuable. Marxism functions by coercion until the state withers away, coercion no longer needed. Utilitarianism functions by appealing to self-interest, by assuring security in what you possess because the greatest good for the greatest number produces a state as near perfection as it is possible to obtain, and if it means there are inevitably losers and winners, then there are fewer of the former than there are of the latter, and so the society as a whole reaches a perfect equilibrium almost impossible to upset.

And then along comes God, the power from which there is no appeal, the power perfect in itself and wholly outside the system of greatest good for the greatest number, and God has the power to sweep all our pretensions and presumptions and prevarications away. God doesn’t sit on the side of the greatest number, or of the greatest good, but with the poor and the neglected and the outcast. For God, justice is the greatest good, and when justice is denied, God upsets the game board and starts the game over again. But then along comes Abraham, to challenge both God and society, by pointing out that justice means the greatest good for the smallest number.

The sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, by the way, was not sexual, it was social. The sin of these two cities was in abusing travelers, beating guests, throwing them out of the town after attacking them. It is no coincidence this story comes just after Abraham has been a model of hospitality at the oaks of Mamre. When the travelers stop at his tent, Abraham rushes out and invites them to stay; he gives orders to his wife and the servants to prepare the meal, he entertains his guest while it is prepared, and then he serves it to them himself. He is the very model of a Middle Eastern host. Immediately after this meal and the blessing on Sarah, God says he’s heard bad things about Sodom and Gomorrah, and must go see if it is true. He doesn’t mention the sin we all associate with the city’s name; God goes, again, as a traveler, to see if it is true that hospitality is wanting in the two cities of the plain. If it is, then God will bring justice. But, asks Abraham, is collective punishment justice? Are the righteous to be punished with the guilty? If the city if guilty of sin, do the sinners have so much power over the innocent?

His argument is considered a model of bargaining in the bazaar, but it’s not the argument that’s interesting, it’s the basis of the argument. Abraham argues in a classic reductio manner: if 50 are found righteous, can the city be saved? And if 50 is enough, why not 45? Why not 40? Why not, finally, 10? Is it truly quantity that counts, or quality?

Under utilitarianism, of course, it is only quantity that counts; quality is lagniappe, a little something extra, the bonus for those left in the greatest number when all the sorting is sorted out. Indeed, quality is the cream that rises to the top of the society, to those for whom the society exists, those who have all the best and deserve it because, after all, they are the best. Or so the reasoning usually goes. Quality is for those who deserve it, and that is usually the least number of all; but then, there is only so much quality to go around, and only so many people who can appreciate it. Greatest good for the greatest number never means an equal distribution to all in the majority. It simply means the majority is better off then the minority, and in both groups there are then gradations of good, spread unequally between the largest number in either group, and the smallest number. The latter, of course, get the cream that is available. There is, after all, only so much cream available from any gallon of fresh cow’s milk.

Abraham slyly turns that upside down. It is the lack of hospitality that has brought doom near the gates of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is the failure to provide for the least among us all: the traveler far from home, far from familiar protections, relying solely on the kindness of strangers. If the hosts are not kind, the hosts themselves are damned. Travelers and strangers are always the least and lowest among us, we always owe them our most gracious hospitality. But if that isn’t shown, is the entire household to be punished? If the greatest good for the greatest number is not just, is the greatest punishment for the greatest number a way to restore justice? Why wouldn’t it be?

The answer is obvious, of course. As Abraham asks, "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” Surely not, because that means we would be punished, too! That would not be justice! Justice must be discriminating. But utilitarianism tells us precisely that justice cannot be discriminating! Society must be arranged so as to provide the greatest good for the greatest number, and personal considerations do not enter into the equation. Indeed, they cannot, because then society would not objectively provide the greatest good for the greatest number, but would subjectively serve those in power, and punish others for failing to have power. The great appeal of utilitarianism is its arbitrariness, its objectivity, its refusal to play favorites. That is what makes the utilitarian system fair. It does not select who is rewarded; it does not select who is deprived. It deals justly because it deals blindly, without fear or favor. Surely that is justice. Surely justice must be blind.

But a blind bull in a china shop is not a metaphor for justice; it is simply a model for thoughtless destruction.

Abraham has just been the model of hospitality, the very opposite of the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. He has just fed the three travelers at the oaks of Mamre, has just been their servant. Now he is the very model of compassion. Does Abraham have family or friends in the cities on the plain? This story does not tell us so. Abraham simply wants to see justice done, wants to see God’s compassion, not God’s punishment. Abraham here is not just a model of hospitality, or the very figure of compassion; Abraham here represents every one of us, in our relationship with God. It is not a one-way relationship, the relationship of lord over subject, of master over slave. We too easily imagine that; that anyone who rules over us does so despotically, without regard to our concerns, our compassion. Or if the ruler is not above our interests, the ruler is weak and not worthy of our respect. We are wrong, of course. The ruler needs us. The ruler wants us. The wise ruler is our guide, not our despot. This story displays, early on, the relationship of God and humanity; a relationship where God listens, where God’s compassion can be stirred, can be encouraged, can be engaged. A relationship where God has to realize there are other interests, other views, other people involved.

That’s the fundamental problem of utilitarianism: it sweeps away the concerns of the individual, or even the minority, in favor of an easier solution which fastens onto what the majority, or in reality the powerful, favor. God here is the powerful; God, here, rules and has an absolute right to power, a right that cannot be overruled. But God is a god of justice, not of rule; a god of justice, not of power. And justice is a relationship, not a blind force that rules without regard for the needs of the ruled.

Justice, Abraham argues, is not utilitarianism; it is its inverse, perhaps even its opposite. The greatest good is justice, but the greater good is compassion. The greater good is recognizing that the facts determine the outcome, not the system, the moral code, the perceived needs of the many or even the powerful. For the sake of 10, says God, Sodom and Gomorrah will be spared. Not for the sake of God; that reason comes later, after the Exile, when God pledges to bring Israel back for God’s sake, because of God’s compassion. This time it is Abraham’s appeal that stirs God’s compassion. It is Abraham’s challenge to the easy answer of utilitarianism, of ruling without distinction, of establishing a system which is given responsibility for what people don’t want to be responsible for. We are, Abraham understands, responsible to each other; but does that mean we are also responsible for each other? If we are, then at what point do the actions of the few redeem the actions of the many? For if they never do, then all are lost, and there is no hope anywhere under God’s heaven.

Utilitarianism rewards the powerful by telling them their position and their power is the best for everybody, that it ensures the system provides the most equitable distribution possible. But we don’t want justice distributed as equitably. We don’t want the blameless punished because of the wicked. Yet one is as just as the other, if all we are concerned about is the greatest good for the greatest number. But we don’t live our personal lives that way.

Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

We live our personal lives aware of what those we care for, need. The only difference between us, and Abraham is the limit on who we care for. We care for our families, our friends; Abraham cares for the people in Sodom and Gomorrah. We ask for good things for ourselves; Abraham asks for good things for others. He asks for this, not just for the just, but for the unjust as well. What do we weigh on the scales of justice, for whom do we see them balance? For the many? Or for the few? Our children are the few, but in our hearts and minds they are the only ones; and still, we who are evil know how to give them good gifts. Why do we restrict those gifts only to those we care for? If we ask God to give us the Holy Spirit, won’t we be asking God to make us care for others, wherever they are, whoever they are?

The Problem of Utility

Stanley Fish started a fairly interesting discussion here, arguing in his usual (and rather glib) contrarian fashion that what he actually does for a living serves no useful purpose, except to him. It's basically an unarguable point, because it starts with an unargued premise: that there is, or should be, a fundamental utility to all human endeavors, and the measure of that utility should be both material and functional. So that even a perfectly dreadful movie like "Terminator 3" or "Top Gun" (watched some of both of them last night on TeeVee), or a seemingly pointless event like the Golden Globe Awards, are actually valuable because they generate so much money by the creation of so many jobs. So Mr. Fish's basic question is: where's the trickle down for the humanities? And his basic answer is: there isn't any.

It is, in other words, a nice utilitarian argument. And it's my humanties education that allows me to say so. Which, not to put too fine a point on it, is a rather different order of critical thinking from that done by politicians, political pundits, or sports commentators (three groups Mr. Fish cites as counter-examples of the importance of learning critical thinking via the humanities. If they can do it, Mr. Fish avers, who needs philosophy professors?). But still, I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

What is the utility of the humanities? What, indeed, is the utility of morality, or justice? My main problem with the jurisprudence of John Rawls, to pick an example for comparison and contrast, is that his theory of justice simply tries to salvage the worst aspects of utilitarianism by giving them a slightly more palatable justification. Mr. Fish's arguments function in much the same way: in his quirky contrarianism he purports to save the worst parts of the status quo from themselves, when in fact he doesn't advance any argument at all, except the argument of his own cleverness. Well, that's making it too personal (but Mr. Fish loves to be personal; the only argument he advances for the humanities as an academic pursuit, is the pleasure it gives him, and his opportunities to share that pleasure with others). Let's back up and try to come at this as a topic, not a subject for gossip.

Rawls' theory of justice has always bothered me precisely because it assumes utilitarianism is basically sound, and it simply must be tweaked to make it slightly less inhumane. The fundamental appeal, to human selfishness, is taken as a given: it is the presumptions such selfishness leads to that Rawls tries to adjust. The premise here is basically Calvinistic, or at least Calvinism as it is popularly understood; which is to say, it is not the Calvinism as expounded by Jean Cauvin (the Frenchman from Switzerland known in English as "John Calvin"). Calvin was far subtler a thinker (they usually are), and more aware of human nature's proclivity for self-justification (a basic tenet of selfishness: the ability of the subject to justify any action which it deems a benefit). His solution had far less to do with accepting this atate of affairs than with establishing a system for restraining it. Utilitarianism is not the apotheosis of Calvin's thought, but its perversion. Calvin saw human selfishness as a given; an evil, and so one that needed to be restrained. Utilitarianism takes selfishness as a given, too, but regards it, not just as a necessary evil, but simply as necessary. Selfishness is not harnessed under a utilitarian model, it is the essential condition of a utilitarian model. And from there it is a short step to reducing everything to a rubric of utility: Do I need this? Does it benefit me? If not, why do I have it?

So Mr. Fish considers that no one needs his analysis of the poetry of George Herbert; that the only reason to read such poetry, for him anyway, is to delight in its word play, to delight, too, in one's ability to appreciate such word play. It's a sort of reductio ad absurdum that lowers literature to precisely the level I tell my students not to take poetry (especially) to; to treat the reading of a poem as "like solving a puzzle." Sure, you can do that, but already you've reduced the poem to a binary object: it is either of use, or it isn't. David Hume might be pleased (he reduced philosophy to two types of statements, analytic and synthetic, and then showed both were useless pursuits) and Wittgenstein might even be sympathetic (he was the most anti-philosopher of professional philosophers), but the fundamental error remains unexamined: why should works of art "mean" at all?

Because, Mr. Fish would respond, it keeps academicians in business. This is the work of the academy after all, he says: to read texts and find interesting puzzles in them and show off their cleverness to their students. It's a line of argument that's only about 100 years old (actually), and its signal product in the humanities (other than the disgust with it of people like Auden, who actually wrote a poem once to prove a critic of his work wrong about what Auden could, and could not, write) are the two novels by James Joyce, both self-consciously "literary" works which came into existence just as English professors were discovering they could stop teaching the greatness of "authoritative" works, and start teaching their "meanings" (perhaps we should blame the French Symbolistes, too; but then, you can blame the French for everything, if you try hard enough). It may come as a shock, but the "humanities" was not always synonymous with treating literary works as either "texts" nor puzzles to be elucidated, and philosophy and theology to this day (both academic fields within the humanities) are still not taught by seeking out the clever word play and puzzles of Aquinas or Kant (O, the exploding zeppelin that attempt conjures up!), or Heidegger or Derrida. So there's another problem with Mr. Fish's argument, or rather another possible response: Speak for yourself, Mr. Fish. Some of us have slightly better things to do than solve the wordplay of George Herbert's "sunbeam."

But still, we should get away from this idea that all human endeavor is about utility, or it's about nothing at all. Here, for example, is an interesting question that could easily come up in a Freshman philosophy class: What is "real"? :

Lynne Matallana, president of the National Fibromyalgia Association, a patients’ advocacy group that receives some of its financing from drug companies, said the new drugs would help people accept the existence of fibromyalgia. “The day that the F.D.A. approved a drug and we had a public service announcement, my pain became real to people,” Ms. Matallana said.

Interesting problem there. Was Ms. Matallana's pain not "real" before the FDA approved a drug for "fibromyalgia," a condition defined in the article as "characterized by chronic, widespread pain of unknown origin" which "primarily affects middle-aged women." Now, Mr. Fish would immediately respond here (I imagine) that he carefully delineates a distinction between the humanities as an academic concern, and the interest of the non-academic realms; and point out (I'm sure) that I'm blurring those distinctions, as some of his critics did. Well, his distinction is valid, but his point is not. Let's go on a moment.

In that hypothetical Freshman philosophy course, this would make a good topic for discussion: what, after all, is "real"? I've used the movie "A.I." before to illustrate the problem of the reality of the self. The child-robot in the story is not "real" because he is an artificial construct; yet he behaves like a human being. Is he "real," or not? If not, why not? If so, how? Ms. Matallana insists her pain is real, and certainly it is. How do we define pain, after all, except as what the mind (whatever that is!) perceives. But there is chronic pain from physical trauma, and there is pain with no known source or cause. Is the latter less real, simply a matter of insufficient will-power or a psychological state? And are psychological states "unreal" because they have no physical basis? Pain, after all, is utilitarian. It tells us to remove our hand from the hot stove lest we burn the skin away completely. But chronic pain goes from utility to debilitating; it becomes anti-utility, not just useless but damaging. In my legal practice we spoke of "soft tissue injuries," like neck pain from whiplash. This was the worst kind of pain, because it could neither be proven nor disproven. A broken shoulder blade would show up on X-ray, and certainly produce pain. But a "soft tissue" injury betrayed no source for pain; yet, was the pain "real," or imagined, or even pretended to?

Ms. Matallana's problem is physical, but perhaps also psychological, but perhaps also philosophical, even sociological. How do we define pain, and give credence to those who claim it? Is pain entirely personal, or is it also social? Her sense of self is caught up in this situation, and the analysis of that sense covers many disciplines, not all of them "hard" sciences. But many of those disciplines, including the humanities, even literature, might have something to offer to her self-understanding. Would any of those offerings rest on the ability to discern word play in a poem? Well, perhaps the pleasure of the discernment might be of some value to Ms. Matallana; one can never be sure. But is that all the humanities are, discerning cleverness? Is it cleverness that leads me to ask "what is real?" or "what is the self?" Or are these real questions which a situation like Ms. Matallana's calls up? Is my answer, or any answer to those questions, of utility to her? Perhaps not. Are they, then, merely dilletantish pursuits which I have no grounds for asking society's support? Well, perhaps if I ask as Socrates did at his trial; but otherwise, am I really asking for so much? Is there really no need for careful consideration of these questions at all?

Ms. Matallana's sense of her self, and of her place in her community, and even of her community, is not a simple and unitary one which has existed without change in form or substance for all of human existence. Who exists who can point out these questions and provide this information except scholars in the humanities? One might as easily ask about the utility of biblical scholarship, or any scholarship for that matter. Of what use is it to preserve the text of "Beowulf" or "Gilgamesh," except when it provides the basis for a movie script (which is certainly of greater good to a greater number than Tolkien's touchstone essay; even his novel is of more utility than the work he actually devoted his life to)? What is the good of trying to understand Aquinas or Augustine, except to Catholic scholars and theologians no one else pays attention to? Part of the answer, of course, is that Aquinas and Augustine are so central, so fundamental, to the way the Western world thinks, that to understand them is to better understand ourselves. But the non-utilitarian part of the answer is that in the work of scholarship we see the preservation of what it is to be human; not what it means, simply what it is. If there is something uniquely human among the animals, it is the creation and enjoyment and necessity of culture, and the preservation and passing on of that culture is both a good thing and a necessary thing and a valuable thing, even if it doesn't make me richer or happier or a better parent or husband. Perhaps, like morality (as distinct from Aristotelian ethics), it is simply good; and perhaps good is sometimes simply good enough.

Certainly the field of humanities is at least more than Stanley Fish's delight in his cleverness at discerning George Herbert's use of the word "sunbeam" as a metaphor.

The ones who walk away from Western civilization....

Maybe I'm straining at gnats and swallowing camels, but help me out here, I'm confused.

Per Thought Criminal we come upon this review of the last book by Richard Dworkin, a review in which I learn Dworkin spent his life working on a justification of Brown v. Board of Education, a justification which rests upon some, shall we say "eternal truths" which transcend and indeed undergird the law, however the law is particularly expressed in any time and any place.  But, as the book of my youth put it, without Marx (history) or Jesus (God).

So far, so good.  I have one of Dworkin's books, which I picked up in law school when I stuck my toe in the waters of jurisprudence.  I also got Rawls' most famous book then, and spent more time trying to follow Rawls' argument (which was neatly relegated to one volume) than Dworkin's (scattered across several), but I finally discarded Rawls because he was too interested in tweaking utilitarianism than discarding it.  James and Dosteoevsky, in other words, are better people to read on the subject; Rawls, for all his attempts to surmount the ethic/economic theory, ends up just an apologist for it.  I must admit I was never interested enough in Dworkin to follow him further.

But I digress.

Back to Dworkin's last work, and we start here:

But Dworkin went further: rights don’t just limit democratic authority; they also explain where democratic authority comes from. In addition to rights, Dworkin says, human beings have interests—for example, in having income and leisure. In contrast to rights, however, interests must often be compromised. Yet here, too, rights play a role. In a world in which people are seen as equal bearers of rights, interests may be justifiably balanced and traded against one another only provided that the interests of different people are considered equally. It is in giving expression to this kind of equality—the right to “equal consideration”—that the principle of majority rule matters. If we allowed a minority to outweigh the majority, that would mean the interests of the minority were being weighted more heavily than those of the majority, and so moral equality would be violated. Only through majority rule, Dworkin argues, does “each count for one and none for more than one.”

Now here the arch-conservatives will prate:  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights...."  And even though the arch-conservatives use this as proof the "Founding Fathers" were all fundamentalist Christians, first they overlook the radical assertion that all men (humans) are created equal, because they want to insist that some are more equal than others.  And already we have a foundering of the "democratic authority," because authority always presumes a wielder of power and those against whom it is wielded, so that originally only white male landowners had the franchise, because they alone had "skin in the game."

And if you haven't heard that argument being resurrected, you haven't been listening.  We must exclude the poor and the impoverished, the argument goes, the renter and not the owner, because they have no "skin in the game," and will only vote to get their hands in the pockets of those of us who deserve the vote.  Humans, as the reviewer says Dworkin said, have interests, such as having income and leisure.  But some deserve those interests more than others; so the CEO gets a vacation, while the desk jockey at the bottom of the corporate ladder is lucky to get any time off at all.

And so on and so on; and who is to say the CEO is wrong, or is mistreating the desk jockey?  In America, at least, almost no one.  Which doesn't argue for ethics based on religion, since Norway and Sweden are far less religious, but famously have laws mandating much more time off for employees than American allows, or would seemingly ever allow.

Still, the modern consensus is if democratic authority doesn't come from all the governed, it is not democratic authority.  And yet isn't it clear today that the interests of the minority outweigh the interests of the majority?  Or is that just a structural problem of the system of representation established by the Constitution and the 50 states, and a general disinterest in voting for anyone beyond, occasionally, the President?  Do the interest of the majority, in other words, get expressed in polls, or at the voting booth?

On the other hand, it is clear the majority of the country is not rich, and that the minority of the country has the whip hand when it comes to elections and candidates and political parties.  So if the minority outweighs the majority, isn't it clear that moral equality (whatever that is; let us not presume we know) is violated?

And then, of course, how do we constrain majority rule so that we get Brown v. Board of Education, and not the injurious status quo?

Now, you can take God out of this:

One reply—Richard Rorty was among its best-known advocates—is to say that, although rights don’t have a foundation in religion, they don’t need them: morality is just about the ways that people judge and respond to various situations, and rights theory is the name for one kind of response. To say that you believe in “rights” is no more than a substantivized way of expressing that you are convinced there are things that ought not be done to people, even in pursuit of a good end. There’s no need to think that rights are some spooky kind of entity hovering behind the ways that people think and behave. To borrow a phrase from Rorty, ascribing rights to people is “the way we do things around here.”

But then you're back up against utilitarianism, and pretty soon we're living in Omelas, and no one can explain why you should leave or where you would go, because if you reject utilitarianism and God, what do you have left?

Aye, there's the rub.

Or, as our reviewer puts it:

Yet what justification can be given by someone who rejects that view? What is it about the individual whose life would otherwise be sacrificed for the collective good that makes the sacrifice wrong? To say that she or he has a right not to be put to death in order to save others is just to put a name to the problem. We also need, it seems, a satisfying reason why—something about the victim that explains why he or she has a value that overrides instrumental calculations about the greatest good. It is at this point that religious-sounding vocabulary tends to slip back into the discussion. Rawls, for example, talks about each person having an “inviolability founded on justice,” although he does not explain just what “inviolability” might amount to.

You can, in other words, build a better ethical system; but you've got a lot of building to do.

And let me return to the foundation of western ethics:  Aristotle.  Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is descriptive rather than prescriptive.  Aristotle is the father of practical Western thought.  His ethic (behavior; customs) is to find a happy man and emulate him, because the end (telos, goal) of ethical behavior is to be happy (among those "self-evident" truths Jefferson identified), and doing what a happy man does will make you happy, too.  Monkey see monkey do is all you know and all you really need to know.

Which is why the Hebrews are more important to Western civilization for the matters of ethics than the Greeks are.

Here is the crux of the matter, and it is simply wrong, in part because it isn't in the least theological:

If morality were just a matter of God’s will, then presumably whatever God willed would be good for that reason and no more. But if God is indeed just, it must be possible for human beings to recognize independently why his commands are good. Of course, goodness is essential to God, so he could not conceivably will anything that was not good—but, still, it is not his willing something that makes it good. As Seneca once wrote, “I do not obey God; I agree with him.” So, Dworkin argues, any reasonable religion must acknowledge the priority of value over the will of the Deity. But in that case, the supernatural narrative of creation, revelation and prophecy that surrounds the moral teachings of religion is dispensable.

I say it isn't theological because the review starts out wondering why Dworkin ended his career considering theological issues.  But the presumption here is a silly one:  that obedience to God is based on fear of punishment from God (the "fear" of God referenced in the translations of the scriptures into English is not equivalent to the fear of nuclear holocaust).  That is a blinkered and frankly ignorant view of the Scriptures, a reading that often makes people think there is a disjunct between the God of Abraham in the "Old Testament" and the God of Jesus in the "New."  (One more reason I prefer the terms "Hebrew Scriptures" and "Christian scriptures").  The Hebrews were not punished by God with the Babylonian Exile; rather, God left them to their own devices.  God withdrew God's protection from them not because God was piqued, but because they suffered the consequences of their actions.  They didn't suffer for their apostasy, they suffered for their selfishness and greed.  The problem of David was that he lusted after Bathsheba; but the story of Solomon's lust for power isn't so graphically represented in the Scriptures, because he made sure he was represented by the wisdom he purchased by employing scholars.  And his representation is Ecclesiastes and the Proverbs, neither of which rests so firmly on God as to express an idea that if you don't dot every "i" and cross every "t", you will suffer for it in this life or the next.  Proverbs is practically Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and Ecclesiastes is so dour and pessimistic it is hardly makes its way into the lectionary.  Yet both are far closer to secular ethics than to the ethic of pleasing God represented by the story (not the history, mind) of Jonah and Nineveh.

The prophets have one consistent message for Israel, which is why so many prophets over such a long period of time found their works included in the canon:  Israel failed to live the way God provided to them, so Israel suffered the consequences of that failure.  Not the consequences of their apostasy, else God might well have tossed them aside.  Israel didn't reject the God of Abraham and break the covenant; they failed to abide by the justice given to them through the covenant.  As Jeremiah says, in a passage that I think sums up the teachings of the prophets as well as any few verses do:

Woe to him who says,
"I shall build myself a spacious palace
with airy roof chambers and
windows set in it.
It will be paneled with cedar
and painted with vermilion."
Though your cedar is so splendid,
does that prove you a king?
Think of your father: he ate and drank,
dealt justly and fairly; all went well with him.
He upheld the cause of the lowly and poor;
then all was well.
Did not this show he knew me? says the Lord.
But your eyes and your heart are set on naught but gain, set only on the innocent blood you can shed,
on the cruel acts of tyranny you perpetrate.

Jeremiah 22: 14-17 (REB)

The lesson of the prophets is never about punishment and anger and rebuke; it is about justice, it is about righteousness, it is about how we treat each other.  Even when Ezekiel sees the spirit of God leave the temple in Jerusalem, it is an affirmation that God is not tied to a place (a radical notion at the time). And the valley of the dry bones affirms the "priority of value over the will of the Deity."

And the prophets all affirm that how we treat each other is the first and most proper subject of ethics.

We can argue the epistemology of revelation as only a supernatural matter another time; but that revelation, along with creation (the relation of God to what exists) and prophecy (the truth as told by God to God's people and ultimately the world) can be set aside is debatable if only because the argument here is not well founded.  God's will is not the directing of every thought and act of every individual human throughout time and across time.  Nor is priority of value superior to the will of the Deity, because we only know the will of the Deity through what is held valuable.  After all:

What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?

And the "Golden Rule," as pronounced by Jesus of Nazareth, is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Is that an expression of God's will?  Or of God's wisdom?  Once we step away from the idea of God as Cosmic Commander of our Days, we enter far more interesting territory about ethics and the nature of God.

What Digby said

goes a little deeper than this. Digby calls it "Post-Modern Serfdom," but it's as old as human community.

We come back, again and again, to the issues of utilitarianism (and, no surprise, I found the Digby link through Paul Krugman's blog. What's the connection? Well, Krugman's an economist, and utilitarianism underlies economic theory). The center of utilitarianism, of course, is "enlightened self-interest," which is nothing more or less than the acceptance of the Christian doctrine of Original Sin. That is, the assumption is that we are all selfish, but if we pursue goals which are "enlightened," i.e., which to some degree or another move us toward altruism and away from selfishness, but retain a self-interest in the outcome which we cannot forego (there's the "original sin," the basso continuo we can't write out of the composition of human nature), then the rising tide of self-interested altruism will float all boats.

It's not an idea confined to economics, by the way. Barbara Tuchman has written a book analyzing different historical events, including the Vietnam War, and analysing them as failures of national enlighted self-interest. Why, in other words, do even nations continually act agains their own self-interests? We could ask that again today, with regard to our "War on Terror." As Frank Rich quoted on Sunday:

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he “never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

Which brings us back to Digby's observation.

“We have always known<" quotes Krugman in another column, "that heedless self-interest was bad morals.” He is quoting F.D.R. He goes on:

“We know now that it is bad economics.” These words apply perfectly to climate change. It’s in the interest of most people (and especially their descendants) that somebody do something to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but each individual would like that somebody to be somebody else. Leave it up to the free market, and in a few generations Florida will be underwater.

And the solution, of course, is a utilitarian one: enlightened self-interest.

The solution to such conflicts between self-interest and the common good is to provide individuals with an incentive to do the right thing.

Well, I suppose; but I'm more inclined to Auden's answer (one he himself rejected as too idealistic: "New styles of architecture. A change of heart."

Enlightened self-interest too easily turns into the self-interest which enlightens me; not the self-interest which leads to enlightenment. The problem with an analysis that leads to the common good arising from individuals having an incentive to "do the right thing" is that the incentive mentioned is usually "by doing something for yourself that just happens to help someone else." On that path we end up with the kind of charitable giving I mention below, and the self-interest is seldom all that enlightened. It may be functional (to a point), but it is function that serves a few while relying on a system that still exploits the many. You get to eat your cake and have it too, in other words. Which, in the long run, is neither enlightened nor finally, in your self-interest (which you may not live to see, but eventually you will have eaten the sour grapes which set your childrens' teeth on edge). Sure it's bad economics, but until the bubble bursts, we can all enjoy the ride! And when the bubble finally does burst, we can always find someone else to take the blame. I lived in Austin through the 1980's when insane real estate speculation led to a bursting real estate bubble that left the city with the highest per capita percentage of empty office space in the country (and Austin is still not that large a city, 20 years later), and a huge number of abandoned houses. The real estate speculators, of course, blamed the environmentalists who constantly fight to preserve the natural beauty of the Austin area which draws so much real estate development in the first place. Sound familiar? As the housing bubble continues to burst in the national economy, look for more and more complaints directed at those who had nothing to do with the speculation; but don't look for any mea culpas from those who did. "Enlightened self-interest" keeps the focus on what is in my self-interest; and the first principle of self-interest is self-preservation. "Enlightened" self-preservation tends to be the luxury of those who are already secure in their own needs, and feel able to give out of what they have left.

What does this have to do with Digby? Well, quite simply, in a market based culture where everything is for sale, it is quite logical to think that even a gift of charitable giving is actually a purchase, and a purchase is always an exchange, never really a gift. When we think of gift, we think of something given without expectation of return, but when we give we always expect a return. We expect at least an acknowledgement, a "thank-you," a smile, a bit of gratitude. We never give without expecting something back, and the difference between giving a quarter to a homeless person who says "God Bless You" or holding a poor relative for ransom for the "gift" of $100 a month is only a difference in degree, not in kind. When I lived in a parsonage and had money from a church to offer to those in need, I never asked what they would do with the money. I know some pastors who only hand out food, or fast-food coupons, so the money isn't spent on liquour. Perhaps I should have done the same, but I never asked where the money would go, because I wasn't buying them or their burdens; I was offering help, and leaving it to them to take it or abuse it. But this is not a practice or a custom confined to the US because it espouses "free-market capitalism." It's a human trait as old as human community itself.

There is a reason so much of the Mosaic law is concerned with care for the poor and the powerless, for the widow and the orphan (real categories who also symbolize those with the least access to the necessities society provides, or is supposed to provide). There is a reason Israel had to be constantly reminded of its obligations to such classes of persons, and why the prophets returned again and again to the question of justice as a question of what you did for the least of these. Jesus didn't invent anything when he tells the disciples in Matthew "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me," he simply radicalized the Psalmist, who repeatedly says that God sits with the poor and the powerless. It is a reminder, constantly, of who the society should take care of, else what is a society for? And it is not an argument of enlightened self-interest. It's a simple matter of justice.

So I don't think Digby has it quite right here:

And this impulse (which is not confined to the right although they're the ones who seem to make a fetish of it --- at least since the temperance movement ran out of gas) is why government programs were developed in enlightened, modern Western societies in the first place. Charity robs the recipient of the dignity and personal liberty to which all people have a claim, rich, poor or in the middle. Using government to act as the safety net instead of the good will (or good mood) of those of means allows that.

Government can be just as crushing as private charity. I remember trying to help a woman who needed medical care, but the only way she could qualify was to divorce her husband so the house they owned couldn't be counted as an asset; that was the barrier to her receipt of any medical aid. That law has since been changed, but if I remember it, by definition this wasn't that long ago. Government charity in America has never come without strings. The "Graeme Frost" affair which prompted the post Digby is responding to did not leap sui generis from the forehead of Michelle Malkin or some commenter on a right-wing blog. It is a concept with roots in Charles Dickens' Victorian England. It is a concept as old as "God helps those who help themselves." It is a concept which has its roots in the history of human community. And it wasn't enlightened, modern Western societies which began public charities, or took it away from the good will or good mood of the private sector. That root actually goes back to the Church.

Kings of England, for all too brief a period, brought in beggars from the kingdom so that, on Good Friday, in an enactment of the "sacrament that wasn't" from the Gospel of John, the king would bathe their feet and then give them gifts as a sign of the king's recognition that God was with the poor. Not exactly charitable relief of their poverty, but a humbling act that recognized the words of Jeremiah:

Think of your father; he ate and drank,
dealt justly and fairly; all went well with him.
He upheld the cause of the lowly and poor;
then all was well."--Jeremiah 22:16

The custom didn't last long. Too soon the king grew tired of such humility, and the act faded into giving gifts from the royal treasury, without even the king's attendance. Michel Foucault opens his book on society and healthcare with the anecdote about the last of the leprosy colonies, colonies run on the Continent largely by the church. There was even a ceremony for removing the leper from society. As he was dragged backward out of the church to be transported to the colony, the priest would bless him and pronounce him a blessing on the community, a reminder that God was with the least and the least wanted. God, presumably, should stay out of the church when contagious, though, or badly disfigured, but still the charitable act came from the church, which in concert with the state prevailed on the monarch to provide for the destitute. This was something monarchs did, not just out of enlightened self-interest, but either out or nobless oblige, or simply because the church directed them to. The reasons, of course, would vary, but to say "enlightened, modern Western society" invented a better form of public charity, is to assume all public charity before that always followed what the French today would call the "Anglo-Saxon model."

But that model, of value for value, is the one we are stuck with in this country, for better or worse. Clearly the Scandinavian countries, to pick an example, have a different view of how society should be organized. It may be a better view, but only if you accept the premises they have accepted. Until the society does, that model won't work in this country. So we fall back on the notion of "enlightened self-interest," or "utilitarianism," or "the greatest good for the greatest number." And enlightened self-interest never quite gets beyond what I can see as a benefit to me, rather than what simply serves simple human dignity.

When I was a student in seminary, I was struck one day by a charitable campaign in the small town I was living in. Men were "selling" penny pieces of candy for $1.00, or however much more you wanted to give. The money went to a charity, of course, but it was apparently so much easier, without a celebrity-driven national telethon to fall back on, or the symbolism of fireman (who represent selfless public servants), to give something in exchange for the donation. Since we would never see the effects of our largesse, we needed some catalyst to open our pocketbooks, and a piece of candy was it. Is it really surprising, then, that we still see charity, by and large, as a matter of purchase, of exchange, of an economy in which I should seek a return on my investment?

The sharp-eyed will have noted that there's little seeming difference between the challenge of Jeremiah to the king, and the notion of "enlightened self-interest." There is, of course, quite a distinction, and it isn't based on a "God will smite thee" kind of ethics. Doing "the right thing" because you are the king and charged with that responsibility is quite different from "doing the right thing" because it will aid you in the end. The former is a burden of power and duty; the latter is a way of avoiding responsibility by assuring yourself that what you want can actually help others out. The king, after all, can easily justify his fine palace (which is what Jeremiah is criticizing) as a necessity of governance, much as the much hallowed (and poorly understood) Solomon defended his need for power and arms (and, thus, more and more wealth) as actually being in the best interests of Israel (in the end, it wasn't. In the end, God was right, and Israel would have been better off without kings (a statement made before there was a throne for David to ascend to). There is an almost straight line from Solomon to the Exile, but the line is so long that few would have denounced the consequences of Solomonic rule on the basis of "enlightened self-interest," since the results would be felt by their children's children's children, and were largely unforseeable in Solomon's time. The problem with enlightened self-interest, in a nutshell, is that my self-interest no more inevitably leads to the good of all than your self-interest does. It's that old problem of what Christians call "original sin" again. That, and the sad, sad truth that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I have no doubt the torturers in the CIA have intentions every bit as good as those of George Frenkel; but the differences between them couldn't be more stark, the results more disastrous, in the former case, for the common good. Thus it has been; thus it will always be.

It does not, of course, have to be this way. But changing it will require more than mere "enlightenment."

Prologue to a discussion of Christ and Culture

I'm not a fan of Steven Pinker anyway, but the opening paragraphs of this recent New York Times Magazine article surprised even me:

Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in “I Hate Gates” Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?

Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.

It’s not hard to see why the moral reputations of this trio should be so out of line with the good they have done. Mother Teresa was the very embodiment of saintliness: white-clad, sad-eyed, ascetic and often photographed with the wretched of the earth. Gates is a nerd’s nerd and the world’s richest man, as likely to enter heaven as the proverbial camel squeezing through the needle’s eye. And Borlaug, now 93, is an agronomist who has spent his life in labs and nonprofits, seldom walking onto the media stage, and hence into our consciousness, at all.

I doubt these examples will persuade anyone to favor Bill Gates over Mother Teresa for sainthood. But they show that our heads can be turned by an aura of sanctity, distracting us from a more objective reckoning of the actions that make people suffer or flourish.

The assumption here is that an "objective" assessment is ever and always an unalloyed good. By this measure, of course, Bill Gates and Norman Borlaug are both better persons than Jesus of Nazareth (who, after all, only healed a handful of people, and that's only hearsay, at best; "Go, and sin no more"? Talk about an "air of sanctity"!), or Mahatma Gandhi (sure he liberated a country, but how many people did he feed? Did he leave any charities behind to continue his work?).

Yes, the comparisons are more than a bit absurd, but you get the idea. Morality as measured by material benefit; is that really morality? Is utilitarianism truly the only measure of "good" possible in this world? Of course, the opposite extreme cannot be argued as the only measure, either. Morality that doesn't provide some good to the agent is a pretty dessicated thing. That's one understanding of why Jesus of Nazareth reportedly performed healings and other miracles, as a sign that the "good life" had its own rewards.

Pinker's point is, of course, that objectivity has its own rewards. He concludes:

Far from debunking morality, then, the science of the moral sense can advance it, by allowing us to see through the illusions that evolution and culture have saddled us with and to focus on goals we can share and defend.

But only, of course, once we recognize the universal good of science, and the awesome truthiness of objectivity.

Pardon me if I sound skeptical; but I've heard this argument before, and it's about as subtle (and persuasive) as any argument against religion that I've stumbled across, or had shoved in my face, on the Web. I don't, for one moment, deny Pinker's thesis: science can certainly add to our knowledge of something so fundamental to human existence as morality. But used this way science remains a tool of utilitarianism (interestingly enough, the "morality" of those "who have blunted emotions because of damage to the frontal lobes become utilitarians." Hmmmm.....) and the advance he seeks is defeated by the claims he makes.

What Pinker seems to be doing is trying to place morality on a scientific basis, the better to get us all to agree on what morality is, or what rules should be followed. Ah, would that it were that simple. Morality, for example, is not necessarily limited to "a ... reckoning of the actions that make people suffer or flourish." That's the basis of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and while it's a perfectly valid basis for assessing "good" and "not good" (to avoid the judgmental overtones of "bad") conduct, we would do well to conduct this discussion by first separating "ethics" and "morality." Contrary to popular opinion, they are not mere synonyms for each other, like "far" and "away" or "null" and "void." I find it far more useful to separate ethics (how should I behave in a community to maximize my happiness; a/k/a Aristotle's standard) from morality (how should I behave on a desert island?). It's a distinction Pinker thoroughly fails to recognize, and thereby hang a number of problems with his analysis.

Where am I going with this, besides engaging in pointless Pinker bashing (after all, what does he care what I have to say)? I'm building an approach to the topic of ethics, and morality, because I'm re-reading Richard Niebuhr's classic work of Christian ethics Christ and Culture. I also have a new book, a 'conversation" between Vattimo and Rorty, which promises to provide some interesting insights into questions of religion (including the fact that post-modernism is neither), and I need a starting point for that discussion. Niebuhr, for example, makes much of the conundrum of Christ as presented in the gospels, and the conundrum is, quite apparently, an ethical (not to say moral) one:*

Ancient Roman civilization, says Gibbon, was bound to reject Christianity just because Rome was tolerant. This culture, with its great diversity of customs and religions, could exist only if reverence and assent were granted to the many confused traditions and ceremonies of its constituent nations....But Christ and Christians threatened the unity of the culture...with their radical monotheism, a faith in the one God that was very different from the pagan universalism which sought to unify many deities and many cults under one earthly or heavenly framework....Divinity, it seems must not only hedge kings but also other symbols of political power, and monotheism deprives them of their sacred aura. The Christ who will not worship Satan to gain the world's kingdoms is followed by Christians who will worship only Christ in unity with the Lord whom he serves. And this is intolerable to all defenders of society who are content that many gods should be worshipped if only Democracy or America or Germany or the Empire receives its due, religious homage. The antagonism of modern, tolerant culture to Christ is of course often disguised because it does not call its religious practices religious...and also because it regards what it calls religious as one of the many interests which can be placed alongside economics, art, science, politics, and techniques. Hence the injunction it voices to Christian monotheism appears in such injunctions only as that religion should be kept out of politics and business, or that Christian faith must learn to get along with other religions. What is often meant is that not only the claims of Christ and God should be banished from the spheres where other gods, called values, reign. The implied charge against Christian faith is like the ancient one: it imperils society by its attack on its religious life; it deprives social institutions of their cultic, sacred character; by its refusal to condone the pious superstitions of tolerant polytheism it threatens social unity. The charge lies not only against Christian organizations which use coercive means against what they define as false religions, but against the faith itself.

H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper & Row 1975), pp. 7-9

The ancient criticism of Christians bears consideration in light of Pinker's critique of Mother Teresa. Is there a universal standard or morality, or not? If there is, what is it? Everything old, you see, is new again.

Dig a little deeper into Pinker's argument, you find all kinds of assumptions running wild in it. F'rinstance, he makes much of studies which show that people on the Web all think alike, despite their culture. Culture, however, isn't all that distinctly ethnic, and as could be argued from the recent phenomenon of Ron Paul raising a record amount via the Internet, while failing to make more than a marginal showing in any Republican primary (or even to surprise one pollster with his electoral successes of failures), samplings from the Internet may seem very broad, but are actually very thin. The aggregation of the like-minded from the world population that has Internet access is hardly statistically significant of anything, except the ability to aggregate the like-minded with the aid of communications technology. Branching away from that, Pinker cites brain studies involving different ethnicities again (which, for Pinker, stand for different cultures). But how fundamentally different are modern cultures which have access to, and understanding of, modern medical technology of the type which can scan and survey and record brain activity? These studies, in other words, aren't exactly of people in "fringe" regions far from the influence of Western culture (which pretty much dominates the globe, at least in terms of countries which could employ such technologies, and the people who would submit to them for purposes of biological studies). Do these studies prove biology underlies all human behavior? Well, only if they first remove the possibility that culture does so, and that Western values haven't become largely universalized at least broadly enough to account for the similarities of judgment Pinker relies on.

I do not mean to say that such similarities cannot exist. One of my seminary professors introduced me to the study of the works of Emmanuel Levinas by telling a story I haven't otherwise corroborated, wherein Levinas saw a man save a child from an oncoming car on a busy street. The child and the man were strangers to each other, so Levinas began to wonder what forces were at work in this interaction, and being a philosopher rather than a biologist (or a linguist!), he began to develop a philosophy of relationship based on the concept of the Same and Other. Which is only to say there are several possible explanations for such altruistic behavior, and if science is going to lay claim to presenting the "true" one, it's going to have to do better than Pinker's presentations.

What Pinker is not discerning here, in any way, is the nature and influence of culture on any ethical or moral judgment. Which is not entirely surprising; Niebuhr takes several pages to carefully describe in the most general terms what "culture" is for the purposes of his discussion, after first averring he is describing it in "...tenuous fashion." Still, he comes up with seven basic elements, which he elaborates better than I can do here (we'll get back to this, I hope):

1) Culture is social, "it is inextricably bound up with man's [sic] life in society...Individuals may use culture in their own ways; they may change elements in their culture, yet what they use and change is social. Culture is the social heritage they receive and transmit. Whatever is purely private, so that it neither derives from nor enters into social life, is not a part of culture. Conversely, social life is always cultural."

2) "Culture, secondly, is human achievement....[W]e are dealing with what man [sic] has purposefully wrought and with what man can or ought to do. The world so far as it is man-made and man-intended is the world of culture."

3) "...the world of culture is a world of values....What men have made and what they make, we must assume, is intended for a purpose it is designed to serve a good. It can never be described without reference to ends in minds of designers and users....To be sure, the ends that human achievement serves may change; what was intended for utility may be preserved for the sake of aesthetic satisfaction or of social harmony; yet the value-relation is inescapable wherever we encounter culture."

4) "...the values with which these human achievements are concerned are dominantly those of the good for man....In defining the ends that his activities are to realize in culture, man begins with himself as the chief value and the source of all other values. What is good is what is good for him."

5) ...culture in all its forms and varieties is concerned with the temporal and material realization of values." Niebuhr links this, not to mere material gain, but to efforts "to embody in concrete, tangible, visible, and audible forms" the ideals of the culture, or "what has been imaginatively discerned." It seems to me here we have a definite linkage between rational ends, which flow from desires, and emotional needs, which determine (after all) what we consider "rational."

6) "Because all these actualizations of purpose are accomplished in transient and perishing stuff, cultural activity is almost as much concerned with the conservation of values as with their realization....Culture is social tradition which must be conserved by painful struggle not so much against nonhuman natural forces as against revolutionary and critical powers in human life and reason." When Pinker identifies thoughts which are repugnant even questionnaires, has he identified a principle of biology, or of sociology? "Never think my thoughts, never share my hearth, whoever does such things."

7) "Finally, attention must be directed to the pluralism that is characteristic of all culture. The values a culture seeks to realize in any time or place are many in number....Culture is concerned with that is good for male and female, child and adult, rulers and ruled; with what is good for men in special vocations and groups, according to the customary notions of such good." One quick example is from the tale of Gilgamesh. When Enkidu is created by the gods to be a companion to Gilgamesh, he is all animal. A temple prostitute goes to him, and they copulate for several days, until he is civilized. The value, of course, is for culture to have stable persons in it, persons who fit in the community. The people have asked for Enkidu because Gilgamesh, their ruler, is himself so uncivilized and wild in his appetites. The method by which Enkidu is civilized would hardly satisfy a post-Victorian Western society, or even occur to the post-"Free Love" American culture; but the value of such "civilizing" is apparent to all. Is that value, however, biological? Or is it merely a concomitant of human communities, one without which communities cannot function, or sometimes even survive?

From these brief description alone you can already question Pinker's reliance on the studies he cites. Is what he sees in those results the consequence of culture, or of biology? Which of these tenets of culture, in fact, can be said to be wholly biological, even if they could be said to be shared by human societies as different as those of Gilgamesh and Beowulf and Shakespeare's Othello? Are these similarities not as likely to come from the human need for community, and for the social orders that arise therefrom? The society of Gilgamesh barely resembles that of Beowulf, or that of Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (the Wife of Bath is particularly unimaginable in either of the other two contexts), yet the ways of ordering that we call "culture" are fundamentally the same in each. It takes a bit more than a political boundary or an ethnic designation to answer that question, and Pinker frankly fails to address it.

In the end, Pinker is not wrong, but his assumptions are as specious as those of the advocates of the Social Gospel which Niebuhr's brother Reinhold (ironically, Christ and Culture is dedicated "To Reinie.")dissected in Moral Man and Immoral Society. Like the advocates of the Social Gospel, Pinker wants to find a system of thought which will eradicate all disagreement:

The science of the moral sense also alerts us to ways in which our psychological makeup can get in the way of our arriving at the most defensible moral conclusions. The moral sense, we are learning, is as vulnerable to illusions as the other senses. It is apt to confuse morality per se with purity, status and conformity. It tends to reframe practical problems as moral crusades and thus see their solution in punitive aggression. It imposes taboos that make certain ideas indiscussible. And it has the nasty habit of always putting the self on the side of the angels.

Though wise people have long reflected on how we can be blinded by our own sanctimony, our public discourse still fails to discount it appropriately.
...
Far from debunking morality, then, the science of the moral sense can advance it, by allowing us to see through the illusions that evolution and culture have saddled us with and to focus on goals we can share and defend. As Anton Chekhov wrote, “Man will become better when you show him what he is like.”

Once we all become objective enough to see the truth as Pinker does, once we, in other words, all think like Pinker, then we can usher in the new millenium; or at least all learn to get along. Unfortunately, as "Reinie" pointed out, it will never be that simple:

While it is possible for intelligence to increase the range of benevolent impulse, and thus prompt a human being to consider the needs and rights of other than those to whom he is bound by organic and physical relationship, there are definite limits in the capacity of ordinary mortals which makes it impossible for them to grant to others what they claim for themselves. Though educators ever since the eighteenth century have given themselves to the fond illusion that justice through voluntary co-operation waited only upon a more universal or a more adequate educational enterprise, there is good reason to believe that the sentiments of benevolence and social goodwill will never be so pure or powerful, and the rational capacity to consider the rights and needs of others in fair competition with our own will never be so fully developed as to create the possibility for the anarchistic millennium which is the social utopia, either explicit or implicit, of all intellectual or religious moralists.

All social co-operation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion. While no state can maintain its unity purely by coercion neither can it preserve itself without coercion. Where the factor of mutual consent is strongly developed, and where standardised and approximately fair methods of adjudicating and resolving conflicting interests within an organised group have been established, the coercive factor in social life is frequently covert, and becomes apparent only in moments of crisis and in the group's policy toward recalcitrant individuals. Yet it is never absent. Divergence of interest, based upon geographic and functional differences within a society, is bound to create different social philosophies and political attitudes which goodwill and intelligence may partly, but never completely, harmonise. Ultimately, unity within an organised social group, or within a federation of such groups, is created by the ability of a dominant group to impose its will.

....

The limitations of the human mind and imagination, the inability of human beings to transcend their own interests sufficiently to envisage the interests of their fellowmen as clearly as they do their own makes force an inevitable part of the process of social cohesion. But the same force which guarantees peace also makes for injustice. "Power," said Henry Adams, "is poison"; and it is a poison which blinds the eyes of moral insight and lames the will of moral purpose. The individual or the group which organises any society, however social its intentions or pretensions, arrogates an inordinate portion of social privilege to itself.

And that's without even bringing in the prospect of "Original Sin."


*I won't attribute my distinction between "ethics" and "morals" to Niebuhr. The terms are usually used interchangeably, even in discussions of ethics and morality; but part of my presentation is, that they shouldn't be.

The man with the hammer is handing out nailing guidelines....

Chris Hayes:

What he'd come to realize, he wrote, was that "it isn't a question of correct theory or incorrect theory, but whether or not the results of the implementation of that theory are right or wrong in a moral sense."

Economics began it's life as moral philosophy. Adam Smith was considered an ethicist. Utilitarianism, which became wed to modern economic theory so thoroughly almost no one questions it any longer (see., e.g., Rawls' "Theory of Justice," which doesn't critique utilitarianism at all, but only seeks to modify its harsher, "Omelas" effects), began life as a moral philosophy. Almost all Western thought, upon the rise of the university, was considered a branch of theology, and theology was always concerned with ethics. It was only after empiricism took precedence over the system of thought (in the Anglo-American realm) that all thought slowly but inexorably became "scientific."

As I've said before, there's a reason existentialism and phenomenology are products of Europe (the "Continent") and give rise to schools of thought (such as modern day philosophy of religion, and many modern theologies) which are disparaged in Anglo-American circles. And there is a reason, which Chris Hayes doesn't quite touch on, why "efficiency" is preferred in economics (at least by the "Chicago school") over equity.

Equity, after all, is a product of the ecclesiastical courts. There is a reason English barristers wear robes and white wigs; it is a tradition. But it is a tradition that began with the Church. The barrister's robes included a pocket in the back, where payment for services rendered was supposed to be placed (without the barrister seeing it or, publicly at least, touching it). Barristers were related to clergy, and clergy were not supposed to be paid directly for their services. Money is the root of all evil, don't you know? But the traditions of equity in the law stem from the ecclesiastical courts, courts one could turn to in England at one time when the civil courts had failed to do justice, usually because of some "technicality." The ecclesiastical courts might be available to a party, if certain conditions could be met; and a greater interest in justice than in the letter of the law (or, more accurately, the demands of the common law) meant the courts of the church could offer relief not available in civil courts. When the church courts were finally abolished, the principles and rules of those courts survived in the civil courts as "equity." Sometimes, you see, the civil courts were too "efficient," and so the church courts had to be "fair." Contrary to what Professor Sanderson says in Chris Hayes post, society does deal with what is "fair" through its institutions, and has done so for centuries. Indeed, if we hadn't, the entire structure of the justice system would have come down centuries ago.

There is, in other words, always a moral sense; and setting it aside in the name of "efficiency" or, better, "measurement," is a fool's game. It is also, in the language of Professor Sanderson, grossly inefficient. Consider the state of the prisons in the United States today as one example: we can measure "justice" by the yardstick of prison time, and that seems to be a most satisfactory measure for many people. No politician ever lost office by arguing for stiffer prison sentences and more jails to house criminals, all of whom are dangerous, else why would we have to lock them up? But is the system efficient, at all? Are we really better off, as a nation, with the highest incarceration rates in the world? It's easily measured, but is it efficient? Shouldn't we consider a system that is more fair, that is more rational, that takes into account something other than number of prisoners and number of years behind bars?

Science is associated with measure, and measure is associated with truth, and the closer science gets to what is measurable, the closer to truth it comes. That is the assumption running about in the United States, anyway. "Hard" sciences have measurable data on their side, and therefore they are more "true" than "soft" sciences, which try to emulate the "hard" ones by getting data they, too, can measure. It helps if the data doesn't seem to need interpretation, of course. Interpretation introduces error, and error is the bugbear of "science." Or, at least, it's supposed to be.

There are still people who reject Thomas Kuhn's work in the philosophy of science, because he calls into question the measurement of the universe, and the reliability of data. But Kuhn points out a salient fact that is all to easily overlooked: all data is a matter of interpretation. Indeed, this was the simple secret of David Hume, the one that drove Kant out of his academic dreams and into philosophical history. Hume divided the world into two kinds of information: that which would be easily empirically verified, such as "This stone is heavy," (or weighs a specific amount, as determined by an agreed upon scale of measure) and "This object is beautiful." The former, he pointed out, was trivial information, of no real value beyond the obvious (perhaps, we could say, useful to engineers, but of no philosophical or greater value). The latter, he said, was merely interpretation, and could not be verified. And so it was equally irrelevant. What were we left with, then? Tending sheep, said Hume. Philosophy, he decided, trying to say anything universal about objects and ideas, was a mug's game.

Which pretty much shuts down science and, in this case, economics, too. If Professor Sanderson were to point out to me that "fair" is an indeterminate concept, I would point out to him that describing a system as "efficient" is really no different from describing it as "beautiful." His "efficiency" is really no more grounded in truth or science, than "fairness" is. Now what?

In truth, of course, we don't insist upon such absolutism, nor do we need to (which, if we stick to the realm of philosophy, is where Kant comes in; but let's leave that alone for now). Sanderson is insisting upon a kind of absolutism in his lectures, at least as Hayes describes them; one slanted to give him the outcome he prefers. When Hayes describes Sanderson's technique as "Socratic," it is precisely the carefully calculated approach of Socrates that Sanderson is following. Socrates was not so interested in discovering Truth as in establishing his philosophical preferences as truth (although more accurately, Socrates was interested in irony. Socratic dialogue, in its logical conclusion, is a snake that not only eats its tail, but swallows everything attached to that tail).

Back, then, to ethics.

Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's Utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?

We tend to think of ethics as a matter of individual behavior and individual concern; this is completely wrong. Aristotle's "Ethics," which introduced the word into non-Greek European tongues, was wholly concerned with the individual fitting into the society at large. Aristotle's advice, boiled down to its essence, was to find the happiest, most successful person in your society, and emulate him (it would be "him" for Aristotle). Conform, in other words, to what society expected and rewarded, and happiness (and success!) will spring from that.

It is well to remember Aristotle is the "observer" of the universe, and the prototype for the "scientist" as popularly understood today. He tries to draw his conclusions from what he sees rather than from what memories he recovers, as Plato's Socrates does.

So ethics, for most of European history, was a societal concern. Ethics was not (and still isn't, really) a matter of what was in your heart, but what was in your actions. And your actions took place in a society of humans, so ethics was a matter of how the society functioned, not how you got on with your personal concept of God or good. So when the concept of society began shifting, because of the Industrial Revolution, from property to productivity, from patronage to open markets, the question of how should we then live almost inevitably became an economic question (and it was no coincidence the influential economists in the 18th century were British, or that a Frenchman like Charles Fourier despised them). And so economics began its life as a moral philosophy, where the morality was for the society at large, or at least for the greater good. And, according to Chris Hayes' post, it's still a matter of morality: those who benefit are those who deserve to. "Trade works the same way as technological progress: While it might put some people out of work, in the end, it makes everyone better off." Or, in simpler terms, the greatest good for the greatest number. Losses are inevitable, and regrettable, but this is the great truth of the universe: "in trade, there's an enormous amount of agreement between economists about what constitutes the truth. The disagreements are between economists and everybody else."

Economics explains it all to you, if only you choose to understand. Not only is it ethical, it's scientific and therefore true. But, of course, nothing is that simple, especially ethics:

On the whole, then, we must conclude that no philosophy of ethics is possible in the old‑fashioned absolute sense of the term. Everywhere the ethical philosopher must wait on facts. The thinkers who create the ideals come he knows not whence, their sensibilities are evolved he knows not how; and the question as to which of two conflicting ideals will give the best universe then and there, can be answered by him only through the aid of the experience of other men. I said some time ago, in treating of the `"first" question, that the instuitional moralists deserve credit for keeping most clearly the psychological facts. They do much to spoil this merit on the whole, however, by mixing with it that dogmatic temper which, by absolute distinctions and unconditional "thou shalt nots," changes a growing, elastic, and continuous life into a superstitious system of relics and dead bones. In point of fact, there are no absolute evils, and there are no non‑moral goods; and the highest ethical life--however few may be called to bear its burdens--consists at all times in the breaking of rules which have grown too narrow for the actual case. There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see. Abstract rules indeed can help; but they help the less in proportion as our intuitions are more piercing, and our vocation is the stronger for the moral life. For every real dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situation; and the exact combination of ideals realized and ideals disappointed which each decision creates is always a universe without a precedent, and for which no adequate previous rule exists. The philosopher, then, qua philosopher, is no better able to determine the best universe in the concrete emergency than other men. He sees, indeed, somewhat better than most men what the question always is-‑not a question of this good or that good simply taken, but of the two total universes with which these goods respectively belong. He knows that he must vote always for the richer universe,, for the good which seems most organizable, most fit to enter to complex combinations, most apt to be a member of a more inclusive whole. But which particular universe this is he cannot know for certain in advance; he only knows that if he makes a bad mistake the cries of the wounded will soon inform him of the fact. In all this the philosopher is just like the rest of us non‑philosophers, so far as we are just and sympathetic instinctively, and so far as we are open to the voice of complaint. His function is in fact indistinguishable from that of the best kind of statesman at the present day. His books upon ethics, therefore, so far as they truly touch the moral life, must more and more ally themselves with a literature which is confessedly tentative and suggestive rather than dogmatic‑-I mean with novels and dramas of the deeper sort, with sermons, with books on statecraft and philanthropy and social and economical reform. Treated in this way ethical treatises may be voluminous and luminous as well; but they never can be final, except in their abstractest and vaguest features; and they must more and more abandon the old‑fashioned, clear‑cut, and would‑be "scientific" form. (emphasis added)

Interesting how the economics professor wants to squeeze all the ambiguity out of the world, while "the American James, who seems so mild, so naively gentlemanly....remains, a genuinely radical thinker." As LeGuin points out, it was also James, in the same lecture quoted above, who pointed out that:

All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.

Need I point out that the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth were never about the past, or the present, but always about what was coming?

"Whatever you did for the least of these...."

Tena raises an excellent question regarding the post below:

One just discusses what is the greatest good for the greatest number and without mentioning God at all, hasn't one really been talking about God, if one believes? Do you see what I mean?

One that interestingly (serendipity? Synchronicity? Moving of the Holy Spirit? You decide.) connects with this.

Her question, intentionally or not, is cast in terms of a modern ethical system: utilitarianism. It's a system so compelling John Rawls had to refute it by using its own terms against it. But there are other ways to respond to utilitarianism, and Tena's is one of them.

I mean to put these observations in stark contrast to one another, because both are true, and compelling, in their own ways. The idea that so long as we speak of the greatest good for the greatest number, we speak of God; and the idea that so long as we care for the least among us, we care for God.

And above all, the idea that we cannot afford to stand in judgment over the actions of another. We may feel, well, compelled to; but compulsion does not equal justification.

I know I'm leaving this hanging. It's Mother's Day, and I have other obligations myself. But I hope to return to this soon.

Oy! Oy! Oy! Oy! Oy!

I should post this at Fr. Jake's place, where it won't go unnoticed; but a comments block is no place for what I have to say in response to this:

Usually it is the progressives who are blamed for often being too quick in taking the consequentialist approach to most ethical questions; the greatest good for the greatest number is the right thing to do. The problem with this approach is that it can create victims. Sometimes, that cannot be avoided, when faced with difficult moral decisions. Apparently, the "centrists," or at least one of them, are now choosing to use this ethical approach to justify bigotry.

Sorry, but the simple, short, and direct response is: utilitarianism (the greatest good for the greatest number) is NEVER the correct response to an ethical question, especially when faced with "difficult moral decisions." Let me give you an example from a play I was just teaching: Shakespeare's "Othello."

In the course of teaching that play I realized something about the characters of Desdemona, Othello, and Iago. Desdemona and Othello have much in common, despite the seeming differences which Iago, from the beginning of the play, sets out to exploit. Iago assures Roderigo in the very first scene of the play that the newly-minted marriage between the Moor and the "supersubtle Venetian," as he calls her, will not last. Desdemona, he tells Roderigo, will soon tire of her exotic warrior and his tales of world travel and courageous fighting, and realize that, as a sophisticate of Venetian society she has little in common with the military commander who rose through the ranks to his position of power. And Othello will all too soon realize he has no understanding of the ways of Venetian society Desdemona takes for granted.

Iago, in other words, can't see Othello and Desdemona being other than he is: a worldly materialist grounded only in his self-interests and self-aggrandizement. Before he begins to discourse on Othello and Desdemona, Iago tells Roderigo how he despises those men who do their duty to others and end up worn out and discarded. The men who "have some soul," as Iago puts it, are those who show their duties outwardly, but privately take care of themselves and so, when they are cashiered, have lined their coats (again, Iago's metaphor) so they are taken care of when retirement is forced upon them. If you hear echoes of the parable of the unjust steward and the lesson "Make friends on earth so that when the end comes, they will welcome you into the eternal homes," I don't think that's an accident. Iago also tells Rodgerigo, in a clear reversal of the famous "I am that I am" from the burning bush: "I am not what I am." But that's another analysis for another time.

Iago is wrong about the love between Desdemona and Othello, because what Iago actually preys on is not Othello's easy boredom with Desdemona, but Othello's transcendent sense of right and wrong: his morality, in other words. Emilia, Iago's wife, might as well be speaking for her husband when, at the end of Act IV, just before Othello enters that same bed-chamber to murder his wife for what he thinks are her thousand infidelities, she and her mistress discuss the possibility of cuckoldry:

DESDEMONA
Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?

EMILIA
The world's a huge thing: it is a great price.
For a small vice.

DESDEMONA
In troth, I think thou wouldst not.

EMILIA
In troth, I think I should; and undo't when I had
done. Marry, I would not do such a thing for a
joint-ring, nor for measures of lawn, nor for
gowns, petticoats, nor caps, nor any petty
exhibition; but for the whole world,--why, who would
not make her husband a cuckold to make him a
monarch? I should venture purgatory for't.

DESDEMONA
Beshrew me, if I would do such a wrong
For the whole world.

EMILIA
Why the wrong is but a wrong i' the world: and
having the world for your labour, tis a wrong in your
own world, and you might quickly make it right.

DESDEMONA
I do not think there is any such woman.

EMILIA
Yes, a dozen; and as many to the vantage as would
store the world they played for.
But I do think it is their husbands' faults
If wives do fall: say that they slack their duties,
And pour our treasures into foreign laps,
Or else break out in peevish jealousies,
Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us,
Or scant our former having in despite;
Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace,
Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know
Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell
And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
As husbands have. What is it that they do
When they change us for others? Is it sport?
I think it is: and doth affection breed it?
I think it doth: is't frailty that thus errs?
It is so too: and have not we affections,
Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
Then let them use us well: else let them know,
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.

There it is: the eye for an eye, the tooth for a tooth. If men wrong us, argues Emilia, we have every right to balance the scales by wronging them. Two wrongs don't make a right, but the first excuses the second, if only that rude justice be done. This is not morality, but ethics: the pursuit of that which assures happiness for the pursuer. And it is, as Iago is as well, resolutely horizontal: that is, it remains on one plane, flat; there is no transcendence in it at all, nothing that rises above the material level of a zero-sum game where if you make me lose something, I regain only by taking something from you.

And it is precisely in the issue of transcendence that morality departs from ethics, and the two are distinguished.

Othello to some degree, Desdemona to a far greater degree, understand the importance of morality over ethics. As Desdemona says to Iago:

Unkindness may do much;
And his unkindness may defeat my life,
But never taint my love.

She stays true to this resolve. Even as Othello smothers her, she accepts her fate; so much so that when she revives long enough to speak to Emilia, she tries to deny her death is either suicide or murder by her husband. In her morality she is linked to Othello: they both understand that it is the transcendence of morality which makes it true. That morality, of course, also blinds them to the evil of Iago, but it preserves their souls and makes Othello a tragic, and not just a pathetic, figure.

What torments Othello and causes Desdemona, even on her death bed, to refuse to blame Othellos for her death, is something that transcends the material universe Iago is bound to, and utilitarianism affirms. As Othello says to Iaqo, speaking of Cassio but actually speaking of himself:

They that mean virtuously, and yet do so,
The devil their virtue tempts, and they tempt heaven.

Iago, of course, never means virtuously, and so the devil never tempts his virtue, for he has none. As he says shortly after Othello's words, speaking of Desdemona but actually speaking of himself:

Her honour is an essence that's not seen;
They have it very oft that have it not:

Here is the crux of the play, in fact: honor is what we give others, just as we give them our trust. But both are earned from their actions, and may be, as Iago proves, entirely undeserved. Still, without them, how would we function? And yet honor and trust that remain rooted only in the horizontal plane of the material, are worthless, whether they are spent on Iago or given to Desdemona. Only when they are transcenden, are they truly valuable. As Emilia tells Desdemona, virtue is a thing of the world; gain the world, and you can redefine virtue. But Othello and Desdemona understand that in gaining the world, you will lose your own soul. And no redefinition of virtue will win that back for you.

So, is there a point where "unavoidable victims must be created for the greater good"? It depends, of course, on what you consider the "greater good." Iago unashamedly sets himself up as the only valid recipient of the "greater good," but he does so by assuring himself that everyone else thinks the same, and those who don't have no soul. Desdemona and Othello know better; and it is the violation of that transcendent morality (or his perception of it, relying too much on the lies of Iago) which drives Othello to his madness. He is not even concerned with the world's view of him. When Lodovico comes from Venice to relieve him of command and allow him to leave Cassio behind, Othello is not assuaged by the apparent assurance that whatever cuckoldry may have happened, the cause will soon be far from his spouse; instead, he takes it as one more sign of preferment, one more indication that in a fallen world the moral man must stand for the right despite the consequences. When Othello kills Desdemona he does not, like Iago, resort to further murders in order to hide his crime; instead, he confesses it, even in the face of Desdemona's death-bed denial of his crime.

The first sacrifice of morality must always be the moral agent herself. A morality which asks a sacrifice of the other greater than that asked of the moral agent is no morality at all; it is, at best, a cruel ethic. The problem with utilitarianism as an ethic, in a nutshell, is that it is a materialist ethic. The greatest good is always defined as a horizontal good, and that is always an unalterably a zero-sum game unless the greatest good is defined as something transcendent rather than merely imminent. So long as the greater good is confined to the horizon the latter, there must always be "unavoidable victims...created for the greater good." That may yet be ethical; but it is never moral.

None of which is to condemn Fr. Jake nor the point he has to make in his post about the ABC's failure to invite Bishop Gene Robinson to Lambeth (it is a serious slight, indeed, IMHO, and not one to be excused because the good Bishop is seen by some to be a divisive figure. No less so, frankly, and for no better reason, than our Presiding Bishop. Yet the reason for not inviting one, while inviting the other, is surely a distinction without a difference, since many in the Anglican Communion still object to women priests, as well.). What the Archbishop of Canterbury is faced with is the dilemma of the institution: like nations, can the institution itself afford to be moral? Can it ask sacrifices of its constituents that they would not ask of themselves? If it does not, it is not transcendent of the individuals which comprise it. But if it does, is it transcendent? Or tyrannical? If the church as an institution is not moral, what good is it? But if it is not cognizant of the material, what virtue does it have? Desdemona recognizes that virtue is a thing of the world, and in the world. Emilia sees it only as a thing of the world. Desdemona also sees, however, that it must be transcendent, as well as immanent: or it is no virtue at all, it is, as Iago says, merely "a fig!" And if that's all it is well, then, the church, and we, have a problem indeed.