Hypocrites and Bulstrodes

Miriam has a nice comment at her blog on the distinction between hypocrisy, and 'Bulstrodism' (as shown in Eliot's Middlemarch):

"There may be coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs." (Middlemarch, ch. LXI)

The hypocrite, according to GE's definition, is a self-conscious actor who knows that his practices and his principles are at odds; he deceives others, but not himself. That element of self-conscious performance is missing from Bulstrode's career, because he really has convinced himself that his behavior conforms to Christian standards (a conviction increasingly under pressure by the end of the novel, of course). He isn't "acting" like a Christian, but genuinely thinks that he is one. Which is why there's such emotional heft to Bulstrode's eventual collapse: he loses the fiction of self-righteous identity that he has constructed for himself, and thus realizes that his own self is actually a sham. In GE's terms, had Bulstrode been a hypocrite, only the public image produced for others would have been at risk.

In any event, I think that a lot of what gets written off as hypocrisy--especially religious hypocrisy, but political hypocrisy as well--is really Bulstrodism.

This is a great distinction (and one small example of why moral philosophers who don't read George Eliot should hang their heads in shame). This theme is closely related to the very difficult and tangled problem of moral self-deception; certainly Bulstrodism is a form of self-deception in a way that 'coarse' hypocrisy is not. Bulstrodism, in fact, sounds very similar to Butler's account of self-deceit:


Sermons By Joseph Butler, Samuel Clarke

People think Bulstrode a hypocrite, but Bulstrode faced with the charge of hypocrisy can dismiss it out of hand: obviously he's not a hypocrite, because he is entirely sincere -- 'honest', as Butler says. It's a casuistical honesty. Bulstrode's rationalizing of his handling of the Raffles affair is a masterpiece of casuistical self-deception:


Middlemarch A Study of Provincial Life By George Eliot

But it's honest. And, what is more, it is all through a form of moral reasoning: Bulstrode really does care what's right and what's wrong, and he carefully thinks it through. He just always manages to think things through until he has put himself in the right.

Making Truth Holy

Since our Sages admonished us to accept the truth whatever the source, I have also searched among the works of the gentile exegetes, and if I found them to have expressed a particular truth, I have exalted it to the Lord and it became holy.

Moses Mendelssohn, in his commentary on Ecclesiastes, quoted in David Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment, University of California Press (Berkeley: 1996) p. 42.

Atheist Bus Campaign

I see that the Atheist Bus Campaign finally managed to get off the ground and gather together its donations. According to the the campaign website:

As Richard Dawkins says: “This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think - and thinking is anathema to religion.”

I'm inclined to think that thinking is anathema to advertising slogans, inasmuch as they don't allow much room for things like evidence or argument; but insofar as there is a rational motivation for any sort of advertising campaign, it's not to 'make people think' but simply to establish a presence (which is all that advertising campaigns ever really do). And so I would imagine it is here.

Meanwhile, it makes the Methodists happy and got donations from religious thinktanks so I'm sure Dawkins is right that alternative slogans on buses will put religion to flight....

Learning Something New Every Day

From the Vatican City website:

Even though Vatican City has no direct access to the sea, by virtue of the Barcelona Declaration of 1921, it is allowed to sail its own vessels flying the papal flag.

However, the Vatican does not avail itself of this right at this time.

Each Partly in the Right, All in the Wrong

I cannot, I imagine, be the only person eager for this election cycle to be over, so that finally we may have a waning of the power of politics to make intelligent people say stupid things, sane people act like madmen, well-rounded people obsess about narrow issues, tolerant people slip into blatant bigotries, and rational people slip into every sort of slipping. In the meantime, here is a salutary poem by John Godfrey Saxe.

The Blind Men and an Elephant
by John Godfrey Saxe

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, "Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he;
"Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said:"E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

Moral:

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

Level Playing Fields

Rebecca Roache at "Practical Ethics" discusses the 'smart drug' controversy. I don't think such things are 'cheating' myself, for reasons associated with Roache's first reason, but I think the argument goes completely off the rails here:

However, even banning cognitive enhancement would not ensure a level playing field for students. This is the second reason to answer ‘no’ to the question above. Consider that, even without access to drugs like Ritalin, most students have to compete with other students who are naturally more intelligent, disciplined, alert, and focused. As such, most students are already at a disadvantage. It may be objected that, in aiming at a level playing field, we should ignore such ‘natural’ advantages, and concentrate only on ensuring that students have equal opportunities to achieve the best grades given their existing abilities. However, even this does not leave us with a level playing field. Some students are able and willing to employ personal tutors, others are not. Some students spend most of their time out of school studying, others spend their time relaxing or working to earn money. Some students use caffeine or computer software to aid their studying—both of which are types of cognitive enhancement—others do not. Such practices ensure that, even without prescription drugs like Ritalin, students do not compete on a level playing field. And, that schools and universities do not currently outlaw the use of personal tutors, caffeine, and studying outside of school suggests that creating a level playing field is not as important as some opponents of enhancement suggest.

However, none of this is relevant to the question of a 'level playing field'. Consider athletics, where we definitely do want a 'level playing field'. And rewrite Roache's argument, mutatis mutandis:

"However, even banning physical enhancement would not ensure a level playing field for students....Consider that, even without access to drugs like steroids, most athletes have to compete with other athletes who are naturally faster and stronger, with more discipline and endurance. As such, most athletes are already at a disadvantage. It may be objected that, in aiming at a level playing field, we should ignore such ‘natural’ advantages, and concentrate only on ensuring that athletes have equal opportunities to achieve given their existing abilities. However, even this does not leave us with a level playing field. Some athletes are able and willing to employ personal trainers, others are not. Some students spend most of their time outside of the sport practicing, others spend their time relaxing or working to earn money. Some athletes use carbohydrate loading or exercise machines to aid their practice—both of which are types of physical enhancement—others do not. Such practices ensure that, even without drugs like steroids, athletes do not compete on a level playing field. And, that schools and universities do not currently outlaw the use of personal trainers, carb-loading, and practice outside of school suggests that creating a level playing field is not as important as some opponents of enhancement suggest."

Clearly something has gone utterly wrong with this sort of argument: clearly, whatever people may mean by a "level playing field," it has to be radically different from what this argument takes it to mean, since this argument makes the only level playing field a nonexistent one. So either this argument ends up being a reason for regarding the notion of a "level playing field" as simply incoherent, or it breaks down entirely.

[UPDATE: Rebecca responds to this concern in a comment.]

A Different Decalogue

Jon Rowe has an interesting post at Positive Liberty in which he notes that John Adams once suggested to Thomas Jefferson that the original Decalogue was not Exodus 20:3-17 but instead Exodus 34:14-26 (as a possibility; he explicitly doesn't commit to it). This is actually a view that became fairly common with Wellhausen in his formulation of the documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch; and Wellhausen himself held that Goethe (from whom Adams derives the suggestion) was a predecessor on this point.* In Goethe the assumption underlying the argument was that the Jewish religion could never have begun with a teaching of such abstract and universal ethics as the Exodus 20 Decalogue; the Jews were a particularistic people, and so their law must have been a particularistic covenant that was only gradually universalized through time. The view is usually seen as also requiring the assumption that Exodus 34:28 refers not to a renewal of the words of Exodus 20 (as seems certainly required by the corresponding account in Deuteronomy), but to the words of Exodus 34 themselves.

There's an article online, by Bernard Levinson, that discusses some of the later history of this proposal of a 'Ritual Decalogue' in higher criticism.

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* Goethe's essay on the subject was the Zwo wichtige bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen, which Adams had heard about (but not actually read), and which was published in the collected works. As far as I can tell, the source of Adam's information on the work is unknown. Goethe eventually came to regard his own argument as a rather strange one, resulting more from his reading at the time than from having thoroughly thought the matter out.