Not completely off topic, but well above the normal fray. I wrote this ten or twelve years ago:
What I want to discuss is Socrates’ question about whether it is better to inflict an injury or to have an injury inflicted upon you. It’s a favorite of sophists and sophomores, I know, but I think it strikes at the very core of justice. The justice I seek and seek to defend is not “out there”, apart from myself. Justice (or injustice) is not what others do to me, it’s what I do to myself and to others. Where I find myself availing myself of the fallacies tu quoque or two wrongs make a right, I am rationalizing injustice, and the worst havoc I am wreaking is upon my own ego.
The Nazarene’s answer to Socrates was this: It is better to have an injury inflicted upon you, because redemption is still possible to one who has not inflicted injury upon another. I don’t believe in an afterlife and I don’t believe redemption hinges upon any one event. But I do believe that a “justice” that is itself unjust is vain at best and evil at worst.
We can make a joke by saying, “Political philosophy is the means by which ethical systems betray themselves.” There are actually a host of reasons for this, and all of them are amusing to me. For one, a political system has a meta-goal apart from the ethical system in which it is rooted: It must function in the real world.
Moreover, the political system itself has a meta-ethical or even extra-ethical goal in that its proponents will tend to imbue it with what they view are essential survival characteristics even if these betray the ethical system in which the political philosophy is putatively based. Any form of argument that the polity can or should or must do what it would be immoral or criminal for any individual to do is a form of this error. The counter is, but if we don’t inflict this injury, the polity won’t survive. And the counter to that is that a dispute resolution system that survives by crime is a predator, not a justice system.
Moreover yet again, it is very common for proponents of political philosophies to claim that these essential survival characteristics are in some way manifiestations of nature, rather than expressions of ideas. The usefulness of this approach is beyond doubt: Nature is not open to dispute, where ideas always are. The challenge to this, of course, is to carry the claims back to the object. If the manifestations cannot be observed in nature, they are creations of the mind. This doesn’t make them necesssarily invalid, but it does make their defense invalid. The general process — man is what my theory needs him to be — is what I call metaphysically creative solipsism. A less polite name would be “conjuring”.
Finally we come back to the schoolyard rationalizations that each of us remembers from the hazy days of youth: “You do it, so we can, too!” (the fallacy tu quoque); and, “He hit me first!” (the fallacy two wrongs make a right). Without intending to joke, I think that one way of understanding political philosophy in general is as an attempt to rationalize all of the bad impulses of childhood. By answering in a way opposite that chosen by the Nazarene, the proponent tacitly admits that there is no essential difference, in his mind, between justice and injustice, it’s all a matter of whose ox is gored.
And I know I make advocates of forceful dispute resolution apoplectic. The issue is not the essential survival characteristics of a culture or a polity. The issue is not effecting the retribution of a vengeful but seemingly indisposed god. The issue is not “me and mine” or “might makes right” or any other rationalization for doing unto others precisely what your political system attempts to forbid them to do unto you. The issue is justice. What is it, and how do we achieve it?
Now the obvious contrary — defended with hysterical hyperbole, entirely frictionless slippery-slopes and cacophonic brass bands — is this: If your proposed system of dispute resolution forebears to commit crimes in pursuit of its own enduring existence, then how will it survive?
And that is something you need to think about. For on the one hand, the question admits that all of the political philosophies we’ve talked about so far are defended in “might makes right”. And on the other, it asks, by implication, is it possible for a political system to persist without being defended in “might makes right”?
I don’t know the answer to that, although I think it’s a wrong-headed question. Carried back to an individual person, the question is: Is it better to inflict an injury or to have an injury inflicted upon you?
Boom!
I love working this way.
If predation is the only way your political philosophy can persist, why would you want any part of it? In contrast to that belief, I believe the moral is the practical. But even if it should turn out that morality is bested by criminality, I should not want to be a proponent of criminality. I would choose to be injured rather than to be forevermore an inflicter of injuries.
How about you?
Mike Farmer says:
Thank you, sir.
August 10, 2008 — 5:23 am
Teri Lussier says:
>If predation is the only way your political philosophy can persist, why would you want any part of it?
To the very core of my being, this drives my life in as many ways as I can apply it.
August 10, 2008 — 6:43 am
Louis Cammarosano says:
I believe that Nietzsche took the opposite view-better to be the party doing the injuring as that party gets the benefit/pleasure of inflicting the injury and then gets to seek redemption through apology to the inflicted party.
The injured party Neitzsche would argue gets the wrong end of the stick twice
-first when he is injured
-second by being judged as to whether he accepts the apology.
August 10, 2008 — 7:39 am
Sean Purcell says:
Great post that I would like to sink my teeth into with you Greg, but I am off to show a property.
One thought on solipsism: When I look at something… let’s say the US flag, I see stripes of red and white. When you look at the flag you also see stripes of red and white. But here’s the thing: when your brain is finished processing the color red from the neuron communications stemming from the light waves bouncing off the flag, the color you “see” might be what I would call green. There is no way any of us will ever know what the other “sees” even though we all refer to it as the same thing.
August 10, 2008 — 11:05 am
Don Reedy says:
Greg,
It is clear to me, through my own belief system, that indeed such a defense not only exists, but thrives.
Taken at its core, Christianity, through its component “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s”, it is possible to defend one’s faith or philosophy in spite of limitless might in opposition to that belief. True, such a commitment does not come without the very real threat of physical harm, nor does it come without the need to rise above the very nature of humanity.
I, too, choose to receive injury rather than inflict, in the manner of the Nazarene. Know, however, that I will render unto those who are criminal in their actions, such injury as is allowed and acceptable within the Christian philosophy I embrace. There is no dichotomy here. My role is to strive to be “Greek”, acknowledging and embracing those natural gifts of the body and spirit in which we all participate. My morality guides, but will not hamper. My morality defines, but does not negate. Do good. Be patient. Seek to know yourself, your fellows in this adventure, and your God.
Sean,
I can tell you that a red and white flag is red and white. I’d love to carry on a conversation with you about the preposterous political postures that see “green” where red and white are clear. But, as you say, onto work for some clients tonight, and saving this for a time we can get together to talk.
August 10, 2008 — 5:40 pm