Everyone who has ever judged another has done so on the basis of an explicit or implied moral philosophy that rests on assumptions about virtue and knowledge. That includes you. So, you—and I—might consider asking a series of questions: “Just what is the basis of my moral philosophy and, thus, my judgments? Do I believe that my moral philosophy is arbitrary or based on irrefutable axioms? Have I simply adopted some older system of morality, making, in the process, slight situational changes as suited my needs in this or that circumstance? Is my explicit or implied moral philosophy just another mechanism devised to support my Ego and the Group Ego with which I identify? Could I argue logically for my moral philosophy?”
It is possible that every Occidental moral philosophy rests not on irrefutable knowledge, but on re-trampled and time-worn paths that lead back to Socrates and Plato. Doesn’t our moral philosophy derive from our sense of what is or is not virtuous action? That last bit refers to the argument for Meno’s definition of virtue. Meno is Plato’s guy in the eponymous book, who, in a discussion with Socrates, argues for a system of justice based on helping friends and harming enemies. * Might I argue that in twenty-first century United States a moral system based on emotion, rather than logic, accepts Meno’s definition of virtue and justice?
We will always have controversies that elicit judgments based on personal moral philosophies. As we judge those we consider to be on the wrong side of those controversies, we do so on the basis of our surety. It’s in our nature to argue opposing positions, mostly political ones, but also social and religious positions. Regardless of the tendency to think that political judgments differ from social and religious ones, moral philosophy still pervades our political minds. Since the demise of many western monarchies and the emplacement of congresses and parliaments, many westerners have tended to characterize controversies from the perspective of politics. We still hear the charge today that everything is “political,” that all is “politics.” And fitting into that context is Meno’s definition of virtue, summarized by Rachel Barney as “virtue consists in the political skills which enable him [i.e., any person] to harm his enemies and help his friends, without incurring harm to himself.” ** One reason for our Menoan thinking lies in having not just universal access to media, but also in having media with universal access. Media with agenda can broadcast “knowledge” on which we base our judgments.
Take the current controversy over placing a physical barrier between two countries, such as the second fence Hungary okayed at its border with Serbia to keep out immigrants. *** Oh! You thought I was going to say U.S. and Mexico. Okay, let’s look at the controversy over the wall at the southern border of the USA. In 2013 many Republican senators voted against spending money on a wall, and House Republicans didn’t even address the issue under Speaker John Boehner. All 52 Democrats in the Senate supported building a wall at that time. Five years later, when Republicans supported building a wall, no Democrats signed onto the effort, and Speaker Pelosi said the House wouldn’t spend a dime on the project, with some Democrats calling the wall “immoral.” Go figure. It was moral in 2013 but became immoral in 2018. Are we in an Age of Meno? Is the virtuous position one that favors a wall or not? What is the moral philosophy here? Is everything political? Is the U.S. Congress a personification of Meno’s definition of the virtuous person? Does it make judgments on the basis of harming political enemies and helping political friends? Note, in giving your answer, the role of media in shaping the moral philosophy behind opposing sides of the argument. Note also the surety of knowledge assumed by contemporary “moral philosophers.”
And here’s where we always run into a problem. We have motives for doing whatever we do, but personal motives are never objective. They are the consequence of personal knowledge and desire. Whether or not the U.S. Congress (or any other country’s parliamentary body) ever approves a border wall is irrelevant in this discussion because the point applies to every judgment each of us makes and every obligation each satisfies.
Is a border between two countries an objective entity set by international law, agreed on universally, and outside personal or subjective interpretation? Is any property boundary ultimately invalid since it depends upon a mere legal construct based on a set of principles or laws accepted at the time of its origination? Can you apply your answer to the previous two questions to your own circumstances? Do you have any form of personal wall?
I know that presenting a series of questions doesn’t satisfy most readers. We want answers, nay, crave answers. But in matters we consider to be political, all of us judge on the basis of moral axioms, on what we believe to be self-evident truths. Yet, when we look at controversies as they are handled by people separated by political power, we see that moral philosophizing is, at best, a situational phenomenon. We’re not even talking differences in generations with regard to building a wall. With regard to the building of a wall between the United States and Mexico, we’re talking about the same people changing their votes in just five years. What changed? What moral philosophy dictated that change? Was it a matter of acquiring new knowledge that displaced the old knowledge? If it was, then can we take a lesson about the surety we have in the knowledge we now have, that what we knew has been overridden by what we now know? What of our current surety?
Maybe there’s a lesson in this for all of us. Admit it: You judge. You hold opinions based on what you think is sound knowledge that frames your moral stance. So, look back at your own judgments that you once believe rested on sound knowledge and virtue. All of us, need to examine our “moral” judgments on the basis of what we thought we once knew with certainty.
*Plato. Meno. In the dialogue between Meno and Socrates, Meno’s sixth response is: “Let us take first the virtue of a man—he should know how to administer the state, and in the administration of it to benefit his friends and harm his enemies; and he must also be careful not to suffer harm himself.” Online at. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/meno.html Accessed February 19, 2019. This version of virtue is part of the Homeric tradition if you think of how Odysseus returns to his homeland and ruthlessly dispatches the suitors who have occupied his house. The hero has no qualms about judging and condemning his enemies.
** Barney, Rachel, "Callicles and Thrasymachus," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/callicles-thrasymachus/ . I recommend glancing through a paper related to the subject: Prichard, H. 1912. “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” Mind (n.s.), 21 (81): 21-37. Online at http://www.ditext.com/prichard/mistake.html Accessed February 19, 2019.
***Twenty-eight countries have border walls; others have plans to build one; some have proposed to build them but have not yet acquired funding. The longest, if we ignore the Great Wall of China built long ago, is the 3,280-km-long wall under construction between India and Bangladesh. Ukraine is building a 2,000-km wall between it and Russia. Turkmenistan has separated itself from Uzbekistan by 1,700 kilometers of wall, and India matches that length in its border with Burma. Even China is constructing a 1,416-km wall at its border with N. Korea. You can find a list at https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-border-walls.html Accessed February 21, 2019.
It is possible that every Occidental moral philosophy rests not on irrefutable knowledge, but on re-trampled and time-worn paths that lead back to Socrates and Plato. Doesn’t our moral philosophy derive from our sense of what is or is not virtuous action? That last bit refers to the argument for Meno’s definition of virtue. Meno is Plato’s guy in the eponymous book, who, in a discussion with Socrates, argues for a system of justice based on helping friends and harming enemies. * Might I argue that in twenty-first century United States a moral system based on emotion, rather than logic, accepts Meno’s definition of virtue and justice?
We will always have controversies that elicit judgments based on personal moral philosophies. As we judge those we consider to be on the wrong side of those controversies, we do so on the basis of our surety. It’s in our nature to argue opposing positions, mostly political ones, but also social and religious positions. Regardless of the tendency to think that political judgments differ from social and religious ones, moral philosophy still pervades our political minds. Since the demise of many western monarchies and the emplacement of congresses and parliaments, many westerners have tended to characterize controversies from the perspective of politics. We still hear the charge today that everything is “political,” that all is “politics.” And fitting into that context is Meno’s definition of virtue, summarized by Rachel Barney as “virtue consists in the political skills which enable him [i.e., any person] to harm his enemies and help his friends, without incurring harm to himself.” ** One reason for our Menoan thinking lies in having not just universal access to media, but also in having media with universal access. Media with agenda can broadcast “knowledge” on which we base our judgments.
Take the current controversy over placing a physical barrier between two countries, such as the second fence Hungary okayed at its border with Serbia to keep out immigrants. *** Oh! You thought I was going to say U.S. and Mexico. Okay, let’s look at the controversy over the wall at the southern border of the USA. In 2013 many Republican senators voted against spending money on a wall, and House Republicans didn’t even address the issue under Speaker John Boehner. All 52 Democrats in the Senate supported building a wall at that time. Five years later, when Republicans supported building a wall, no Democrats signed onto the effort, and Speaker Pelosi said the House wouldn’t spend a dime on the project, with some Democrats calling the wall “immoral.” Go figure. It was moral in 2013 but became immoral in 2018. Are we in an Age of Meno? Is the virtuous position one that favors a wall or not? What is the moral philosophy here? Is everything political? Is the U.S. Congress a personification of Meno’s definition of the virtuous person? Does it make judgments on the basis of harming political enemies and helping political friends? Note, in giving your answer, the role of media in shaping the moral philosophy behind opposing sides of the argument. Note also the surety of knowledge assumed by contemporary “moral philosophers.”
And here’s where we always run into a problem. We have motives for doing whatever we do, but personal motives are never objective. They are the consequence of personal knowledge and desire. Whether or not the U.S. Congress (or any other country’s parliamentary body) ever approves a border wall is irrelevant in this discussion because the point applies to every judgment each of us makes and every obligation each satisfies.
Is a border between two countries an objective entity set by international law, agreed on universally, and outside personal or subjective interpretation? Is any property boundary ultimately invalid since it depends upon a mere legal construct based on a set of principles or laws accepted at the time of its origination? Can you apply your answer to the previous two questions to your own circumstances? Do you have any form of personal wall?
I know that presenting a series of questions doesn’t satisfy most readers. We want answers, nay, crave answers. But in matters we consider to be political, all of us judge on the basis of moral axioms, on what we believe to be self-evident truths. Yet, when we look at controversies as they are handled by people separated by political power, we see that moral philosophizing is, at best, a situational phenomenon. We’re not even talking differences in generations with regard to building a wall. With regard to the building of a wall between the United States and Mexico, we’re talking about the same people changing their votes in just five years. What changed? What moral philosophy dictated that change? Was it a matter of acquiring new knowledge that displaced the old knowledge? If it was, then can we take a lesson about the surety we have in the knowledge we now have, that what we knew has been overridden by what we now know? What of our current surety?
Maybe there’s a lesson in this for all of us. Admit it: You judge. You hold opinions based on what you think is sound knowledge that frames your moral stance. So, look back at your own judgments that you once believe rested on sound knowledge and virtue. All of us, need to examine our “moral” judgments on the basis of what we thought we once knew with certainty.
*Plato. Meno. In the dialogue between Meno and Socrates, Meno’s sixth response is: “Let us take first the virtue of a man—he should know how to administer the state, and in the administration of it to benefit his friends and harm his enemies; and he must also be careful not to suffer harm himself.” Online at. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/meno.html Accessed February 19, 2019. This version of virtue is part of the Homeric tradition if you think of how Odysseus returns to his homeland and ruthlessly dispatches the suitors who have occupied his house. The hero has no qualms about judging and condemning his enemies.
** Barney, Rachel, "Callicles and Thrasymachus," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/callicles-thrasymachus/ . I recommend glancing through a paper related to the subject: Prichard, H. 1912. “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” Mind (n.s.), 21 (81): 21-37. Online at http://www.ditext.com/prichard/mistake.html Accessed February 19, 2019.
***Twenty-eight countries have border walls; others have plans to build one; some have proposed to build them but have not yet acquired funding. The longest, if we ignore the Great Wall of China built long ago, is the 3,280-km-long wall under construction between India and Bangladesh. Ukraine is building a 2,000-km wall between it and Russia. Turkmenistan has separated itself from Uzbekistan by 1,700 kilometers of wall, and India matches that length in its border with Burma. Even China is constructing a 1,416-km wall at its border with N. Korea. You can find a list at https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-border-walls.html Accessed February 21, 2019.
RSS Feed