The first thing that ambitious academics in the Humanities and Social Sciences do to get ahead is create a “technical” vocabulary with which to camouflage the banal, dishonest, and just plain indefensible in what they write. Philosophers have been among the worst offenders. In particular, the philosophers marketing specific “moralities” should be approached with the greatest skepticism and caution, whether the “moralities” occur in ethical “theory” or in political “theory.” Neither of these is a “science” in any sense and neither of these needs a technical vocabulary. What is needed, however, by the ordinary man is a critical principle to guide his thinking safely through the barrage of bullshit coming down all around him. Here’s one:
No one wants others to be free (and many don’t even want to be free themselves).
We see this in the ubiquitous effort to subordinate people. Some want to subordinate them because they don’t trust their free judgment and inclinations (perhaps rightly), some want to subordinate them for their own benefits. Some would even say they’re subordinating them for “their own good.” And usually when they say they are “liberating” them, they are actually subordinating them.
I remember (I think) a movie from way back in the 50s called “The Roots of Heaven” in which the ever fascinating Juliette Greco played a French refugee ex-pat bar maid in equatorial
That line is surely not as famous as Menjou’s in
And when men want to liberate other men (or women), they first sell them a theory.
Now, look, whatever else a moral theory may do, it takes away your freedom. You can parse it this way, you can parse it that way, but the point of a moral theory is to tell you what to do. Kant doesn’t shy away from this, he tells you that morality comes in the form of an absolute imperative. Forget the fancy language: an imperative is an order. And, of course, the Absolute Ruler of the Universe doesn’t shy away from this either; all of his unasked-for advice comes in the form of … what?
Commandments!
Forget the archaism, they are commands.
Morality, then, comes in the form of commands, in the form of orders. YOU may want to do this or that, but you may not do this or that. Rather, thou shalt do THIS.
The orders may be good ones or bad ones, they may be well or ill advised, but they always super-impose themselves on your will.
Kant tries to finesse this brutal fact by trying to convince you that the orders reflect the will and intention of your “true” self, but this is (once again) bullshit. You don’t have a reasoning machine concealed within you that is the true you. Most people don’t even have the reasoning machine of a mentally impaired goat within them, much less a Spock. The very existence of Kantians proves that Kant was wrong on the “concealed reasoner” thesis.
Whatever “we” are, we are the complete package, some reasoning, some inclinations, a lot of randomly assorted preferences. And what are the commandments then?
At best, they express a wish, a nostalgia, a longing on the parts of some that everyone behave in a certain way, a way they like. But when those people get impatient with the level of cooperation they are getting, they up the pressure by means of “theories.” Kant offered the last big shot at a moral “theory.” But the desire to introduce the will of others into each organism (because that is precisely the objective of a moral theory) has remained just as strong as it was in Kant’s own mind. Kant wrote at the end of the 18th C, when the French Revolution arguably set in motion the ideas that were ultimately to culminate in Marx and Engels’ Manifesto and Marx’s Kapital.
The Socialist theory has exactly the same motivations as moral theories. Socialism does not trust the individual, and for that reason it insists on centralized state control over everything the individual does.
And the reasoning behind this power grab is inherently a moral one: the State has the right (a moral notion) to control all aspects of the individual’s life that have an impact on the lives of the others.
Of course, since everything that an individual does has some kind of impact on his environment, it follows that the State has the right to regulate every aspect of every individual’s life.
We see this occurring right now in the Obama administration’s activities. Health care “reform” is not “reform,” it is take-over and control. Environment protection is not about “environment,” it is about ceding increasing power to the State. In N.Y. state, for example, Bloomberg makes move after move to regulate what it is that people eat, how often they exercise, and so on. The argument is always the same: your behavior has an impact on the lives of those around you, hence the State has the right (nay, the obligation) to control you.
I modestly confess to some prescience on this issue, since I did complain bitterly when seat-belt legislation was passed years ago that it was indefensible. The reason, of course, was that injuries sustained from a lack of restraint affected only the person not strapped in. While such an injury is certainly regrettable, it was not clear to me then and is not clear to me now that the State should have the right to prevent people from injuring themselves. The argument holds mutatis mutandis for suicide.
The camel’s nose in all of these cases lies in the “interpretation” that is given to key notions. As Tom Lehrer (a great philosopher) once wrote: “When correctly viewed, everything is lewd!” Similarly, when correctly viewed, everything affects (NOT “impacts”) everyone else. While I have no dog in the abortion fight, it similarly seemed an extraordinary reach to me when the Supreme Court ruled that a woman’s right to “privacy” included the right to abortion. It’s that kind of reasoning that can give a court a bad name.
I conclude, then, that there are always forces that for one reason or another are interested in subordinating your judgments and inclinations to their own; that they work to accomplish this by various expedients of brain-washing (which they call “education”); that they hope to control you by substituting their own mechanical formulae for your own decision making processes; and that they hope that ultimately you will think that their processes are actually your own.
To the extent that there are liberals and progressives, they have succeeded.
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