by (Originally published 6 April 2008)
This is an analysis of George Neumayr’s “Self-Indulgent Liberal Man”, which is perhaps unimportant, but which article I found so egregiously badly-argued that it demanded a response.
An analysis of
Self-Indulgent Liberal Man
by George Neumayr
Original located at http://www.americanprowler.com/article.asp?art_id=2003_10_16_23_46_27.
Original text quoted.
Analysis/comment by Greg Byshenk.
Modern liberalism, even as its philosophers hold that no act is objectively sinful, treats hypocrisy as a serious sin. Why? If nothing is sinful, why is hypocrisy sinful? Hypocrisy is sinful — that is, damaging to the soul — if the moral principles the hypocrite voices then violates are true. But liberals tell us those principles aren’t true, that humans can depart from them without damage to their character. So what’s the moral problem with violating a moral code liberals consider false in the first place?
Let’s start right here at the beginning.
It is suggested in some way that “Modern Liberal[s]” [“Modern liberalism” is not the sort of agent that can “hold” or “treat” anything] “hold that no act is objectively sinful”. This is perhaps true, but only in a perverse sort of way, because, to the extent that we are dealing with politics rather than religion, “modern liberals” don’t deal in “sinful” at all. They may recognize many different things as “bad”, or even “objectively bad” — including “hypocrisy”, but “sinful” is not a part of the political equation — at least outside of theocracies. [note: it might be that a committed believer in the “objectively sinful” might wish to argue that the exclusion of the “sinful” from political discourse is itself an error — or even “sinful” — but this is an entirely different discussion, and a different point than what Neumayr is attempting to argue.]
Indeed, the choice to deal with “sinful” in the context of political theory seems a strange one, but probably necessary if Neumayr is to be able to give the impression of making sense. If he were simply to write of “bad”, then his claim would be plainly specious, given that “modern liberals” consider all sorts of different things “objectively bad”.
All of which leads one to wonder just who are these “philosophers” of “Modern liberalism”? I am familiar with the work of many of them, and am not aware of any who consider hypocrisy a “serious sin”. It is certainly considered by most to be bad, and perhaps arguably “objectively” bad — but “sinful” seems to be incoherent within the context of “modern liberalism”.
Which means that the question Neumayr poses: “If nothing is sinful, why is hypocrisy sinful?” is absurd. It presumes a falsehood — that modern liberals consider “hypocrisy sinful” — and proceeds to argue based upon that false presumption. Which means that, no matter how rigorous any such argument might be (and this one is hardly rigorous), the supposed conclusions drawn are meaningless.
But, let us examine Neumayr’s exposition of the question. He expands:
Hypocrisy is sinful — that is, damaging to the soul — if the moral principles the hypocrite voices then violates are true. But liberals tell us those principles aren’t true, that humans can depart from them without damage to their character. So what’s the moral problem with violating a moral code liberals consider false in the first place?
We could rewrite this more clearly and in more appropriate terms as “if the moral principles the hypocrite violates are true, then hypocrisy is bad — that is, damaging to the character of the hypocrite or his/her moral community”. Here I have both replaced the religious terminology (adequately, I think), and also rewritten the statement in a more straightforward form. But in rewriting the statement in a more standard “if/then” form, an interesting feature comes to light: even if we assume that this statement is true, it will not do the work that Neumayr wants it to do. In even a true conditional statement (a statement in the form “if a, then b”), the truth of the consequent (the “then …” part of the statement) tells us absolutely nothing about the truth of the antecedent (the “if …” part of the statement).
The problem here, which Neumayr’s seems to attempt to hide, is that there may be all manner of other reasons for hypocricy to be bad. To a follower of Kant, hypocrisy is self-contradiction, which undermines the foundations of moral judgment; to a follower of Habermas, hypocrisy is deception, which undermines the foundations of moral discourse; to a communitarian, hypocrisy undermines the foundations of the moral community of which the hypocrite is a part. In none of these cases is the judgment of hypocrisy’s “badness” based upon claims to universal truth of the moral claims asserted by the hypocrite and then acted against.
Consider an analogous but somewhat trivial case: that of traffic laws. Traffic laws are certainly not universal objective truths; yes, in any given jurisdiction it will be true that the traffic laws are whatever they happen to be in that jurisdiction, but a law that “the speed limit on expressways shall be 65mph” is not any sort of universal objective truth. Nonetheless, someone who argues for — or perhaps even votes to enact — a particular speed limit, but then violates that speed limit, is a hypocrite.
Hypocrisy is a moral problem, but liberals can’t reach that conclusion on the basis of liberal moral philosophy. In order to denounce it, they have to suspend their customary moral relativism and borrow the principles of conservative moral philosophy. Then, once the target of their moral outrage over hypocrisy is thoroughly eviscerated, they abandon those principles and return to a skepticism about right and wrong in which all forms of deception, including hypocrisy, are defensible.
As illustrated above, this entire paragraph is nonsense and dishonesty. Modern liberals have good grounds for judging hypocrisy to be bad. It simply is not true that the only justification for judging hypocrisy to be bad is that: the hypocrite says X, but does not-X, and X is objecively true. A person claiming to keep kosher while eating a ham sandwich is a hypocrite, which has absolutely nothing to do with the “truth” of “do not eat pork”.
Liberals on the hunt for hypocrisy carry an air of moral superiority. Why? Do they assume hypocrisy is a lower moral state than their standardless self-indulgence? Aristotle, among other moral philosophers, considered it a higher one. The hypocrite, whom Aristotle would call “incontinent,” can retrieve his soul; the shameless see no reason to try, and therefore are morally hopeless.
And here we arrive at the most egregiously dishonest piece of Neumayr’s writing, the attempt to identify ‘hypocrisy’ with ‘incontinence’ (or ‘weakness of will’). The attempt to do so ought to be suspect on its face; consider that even the universalizing religions (from which Neumayr’s thinking seems to spring) recognize that ‘incontinence’ is a normal human weakness, but condemn ‘hypocrisy’.
Though they are both examples of failing to meet espoused moral standards, hypocrisy is not at all the same thing as incontinence. Incontinence is “moral weakness”, if you will. The incontent person truly recognizes and believes in the moral standards s/he espouses, but is (at times) unable to live up to those standards. The hypocrite, on the other hand, espouses moral standards, but does not truly believe them — or does not believe that they apply to him or her.
This is why hypocrisy has always been condemned, while incontinence can be forgiven. The incontinent person may be weak, but truly espouses his or her standards, while the hyprocrite falsely and deceptively espouses his or her standards, without believing them. The incontinent person sets high standards that s/he may fail to meet, while the hypocrite sets high standards for others, while having no intention of meeting them him or herself.
It is true that it can often be difficult to determine whether a person is a hypocrite or merely incontinent, but one way to judge is to examine the person’s actions after failing to meet the espoused standards. Because s/he truly believes in the standards, the incontinent person will accept the appropriate consequences for violating them. If I truly believe that one who does X should suffer Y, then if I have done X, it is right and proper that I should suffer Y. The hypocrite, on the other hand, will attempt to avoid the consequences of his or her actions. Since s/he never really believed in the espoused values in the first place, s/he will feel no compulsion to be bound by them, or to suffer any consequences because of them.
“The self-indulgent man,” he wrote, “is not apt to repent; for he stands by his choice; but the incontinent man is likely to repent the self-indulgent man is incurable and the incontinent man curable; for wickedness is like a disease such as dropsy or consumption, while incontinence is like epilepsy; the former is a permanent badness, the latter an intermittent badness.”
And similarly, the hypocrite will not repent. Certainly s/he may feign repentance, but the words will be as empty as the original espousal of values.
Aristotle compares the incontinent man to a “city which passes all the right decrees and has good laws” but fails to put them to use, whereas the licentious man is like a city which passes “wicked laws and puts them to use.”
And neither is a metaphor for the hypocrite. The hypcorite is like a ruler who passes laws and expects others to obey them, while having no intention of obeying them him or herself.
The latter is the city hypocrisy-hunting libertines seek to build., and woe to the conservatives who don’t join them. Rush Limbaugh is their latest prey. The Washington Post this week recounted a “hilarious” evening Al Franken spent at a D.C. bar mocking Limbaugh. Franken, said someone at the bar, “does a great impression of Rush Limbaugh in a 12-step program. He said, ‘Rush is having problems with the step where you acknowledge a higher power. He’s wondering if you can acknowledge yourself as a higher power.’ It was hilarious.”
This is morally sicker than the abuse of painkillers, and probably not curable in Franken’s case. Franken hates Rush not for breaking the moral law, but for once upholding it. Conservatives love the sinner and hate the sin;Franken hates the sinner and loves the sin.
Liberalism is an ongoing childish project to make conservatives cry uncle, and hypocrisy charges are the means of twisting their arms. The liberals’ purpose in catching a conservative out in some hypocrisy is not to say, “You stepped away from the moral law you espouse. Go back,” but to say, “You stepped away. Now keep leaving it and endorse our libertine laws.” They don’t see a soul in distress, but a potential convert to their libertinism. They nab conservatives not to save them but to silence their criticism of the liberal city Aristotle described. A city that sees no sin except hypocrisy. A city that takes pride in passing immoral laws and keeping them.
Hypocrisy is wrong, but a society which decides to live up to its standards by not having any is worse.
And here Neumayr’s thesis becomes completely incoherent. He at least appears to be trying to claim both that “liberals” espouse bad standards and that they espouse no standards. Plainly these claims cannot both be true. “No standards” is the absence of standards, and cannot be the same thing as “bad standards”, which must be some sort of standards, rather than their absence.
How is is that such absurdity could be published?
Traditional conservatives believed in conserving what was good about their tradition. But even this phrasing llustrates an important point: not all within the tradition is good or worth conserving. Indeed, traditional conservatism was born with the recognition that some of what is traditional must be allowed to change — although only with great care. The conservative position was that what is “long established should not be changed for light and transient causes”. But, like the founders of the USA, traditional thinking conservatives recognized that there may well be deep and important causes that demand changes in what has been long established.
Traditional thinking conservatives believed that what has been “long established” has some claim merely because it has been so long established. But note that this is only some claim. For traditional thinking conservatives, it is not the case that what is long established cannot be questioned or evaluated against what is new and different, but only that its establishment adds some extra weight to its side of the balance, and that it should not be “changed for light and transient causes”. This is a thinking conservativism that recognizes both that there is weight to traditional values, and that the tradition standing behind a value does not make that value absolute.
But what Neumayr presents is something completely different: a new “conservatism” that is not so much unthinking as anti-thinking. Any traditional value is to be given absolute status; the attempt even to question such a value or evaluate it in comparison to some other is heresy. Then again, perhaps this is a sign of the weakness of this form of conservatism: if one’s values cannot be defended, then one can only attack those who challenge them.
