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Life Imitates Art (and So Does the News)

image of movie opening title sequence

There is an old saw that life imitates art. But what exactly does it mean? Is it not the other way around – that art imitates life?

Many answers have been given to this question, but here’s one that I find plausible: life imitates art insofar as it reveals truths about us and our world. Such truths are not true because we find them corroborated by personal experience or the annals of history. The truths of art are true because they frame how we understand ourselves and our history in the first place. We might say, then, that life imitates art insofar as the truths of art help us make sense of life. They help us make sense of our human condition and what we value in it.

Take Homer’s Odyssey. According to one classicist, the great epic poem tells us “something true about life…It’s about homecoming…It’s about the bonds that connect family members over many years despite time and distance.” This is platitudinous, but nonetheless correct. The poem still speaks to us today partly because it transfigures our conceptions of what home and family are. That is, the poem compels us to understand homes and families differently, including our own. And we can appreciate such truths even when we have never left home, much less been to war.

If life imitates art, then so does the news. And there is one little-known artwork that seems to ring especially true given the current state of our union. The work I have in mind is “Stars in My Crown” (1950), a small-budget western film directed by Jacques Tourneur. The film tells the story of Walesburg, a small, predominantly white town in the postbellum South. Their story is strikingly similar to ours. Or we could say that our story imitates theirs.

Like our country right now, Walesburg is sick in body and soul. The town is not only plagued by an epidemic, but also struggling with the scourge of racism. The nature of these ills, as well as the town’s responses to them, are telling.

The racial troubles start – at least in the film – one lazy afternoon. An orphan named John Kenyon is fishing with his dear friend, a former slave named “Uncle” Famous Prill. John is a wide-eyed and well-mannered boy who is deeply loyal to Famous, and with good reason. Famous is a humble old man with a heart of gold. He has long been a guiding light in the community. As John tell us: “I don’t guess there was a boy or man in Walesburg who hadn’t had him for a teacher.”

While John and Famous are sitting along the creek beside their fishing rods, Lon Backett pulls up on his buckboard. Lon runs the general store, as well as a small mining operation outside of town. He wants to speak with Famous because the mica vein his workers have been mining runs under Famous’s property, and Lon wants to buy him out.

Lon makes several offers, but Famous graciously declines each one: “I got a long-tailed coat for Sundays. A house, got a bed, And I gets my vittles three times every God’s day, don’t I? Mr. Backett, what does I want with $16?” Lon drives off in a huff.

A few minutes later, Parson Josiah Gray comes along. The three discuss what had just transpired. They try to calm Famous down, assuring him that he is entitled to his land. After all, he is a free man under the law. But Famous knows better: “just saying a good thing don’t make it so.” The parson gets it. He acknowledges that no matter what assurances he gives, Famous will not have it easy: “I guess Lon Backett will have to kick up an almighty big stink before he learns his lesson.” This is a terrible understatement. Lon’s “stink” will nearly cost Famous his life.

While Lon drums up hostilities against Famous, the citizens of Walesburg start falling deathly ill with “slow fever.” Typhoid. Eventually they will discover that it is from the contaminated school well. Until then, the town goes into a lockdown. School closes and the church is shuttered. The graveyard begins to fill. The doctor and parson work double-time to serve the sickly and dead. (It is only then, by the way, that the doctor becomes integrated into the community. He was an educated elite from the big city and with a disdain for small town life. Townspeople sensed it, and for a long while they distrusted him. Sound familiar?)

During the epidemic, the threats against Famous intensify. Lon’s men are out of work and angry. One night they tear up his corn crop, destroy his winter food stores, and set loose his livestock. They come back another night as Night Riders, clad in white hoods and brandishing torches. They leave a burning cross in front of the porch and pin on Famous himself a note demanding that he give up his land or suffer the consequences.

When the note reaches Parson Gray the next day, he storms into the saloon where Lon and his clansmen hang: “Haven’t you seen one poisoned well spread grief and trouble through half the town? Don’t you realize the poison in that well was catlap compared to this?” The men are unmoved. If the parson wants a fight, they will give it to him.

Later that night the lynch mob surrounds the home of Famous, rope in hand, and orders him to come out. The parson intervenes. He asks that he be permitted to read Famous’s will before the dreadful deed is done. As the parson reads the will, he names each of the hooded men one by one. Famous intends to bequeath something to each of them: a razor for Bill Cole, who had wanted a beard since he was “knee-high to a hop toad,” an axe for Matt Gibson, his dog to Justin Briley, and even the mica vein for Lon Backett, since he seems to want it “powerful bad.” The men realize that they cannot go through with their plans. Not against Famous.

The film closes with a scene from church the next Sunday. The parson and his flock are singing:

“I am thinking today of that beautiful land
I shall reach when the sun goeth down;
When thro’ wonderful grace by my Savior I stand,
Will there be any stars in my crown?”

The camera pans the room, showing many of the townsfolk we have come to know. Most of them have been regularly attending services, but some have come for the first time. Everyone in the town seems to be there, celebrating together. The camera trains on Lon, with his hands piously clasped as he pours himself into the hymn. He looks as though he has, finally, learned his lesson and is now praying that there may still be stars in his crown.

This wholesome final scene has all the trappings of a feel-good Hollywood ending. A community looks healed and the credits will soon scroll. But then, just behind Lon through a church window, we catch a quick glimpse of Uncle Famous walking down the road, alone. The shot is easily missed. It is a subtle indication that the devastating effects of the peculiar institution continue, and often in ways that go unnoticed by those not suffering from them. The joyous churchgoers are unaware. And to the extent that we viewers believed everything in the town to be turning out alright, we, too, were complicit in the self-deception.

Today we face a similar situation. Coronavirus vaccinations promise an end to this terrible pandemic. Yet while our body politic has a path to health, there is no easy inoculation for the racism that has been poisoning our collective soul. And while most of us acknowledge the difficulties of combating racism, “Stars in My Crown” presents those difficulties in an especially perspicacious way.

First, the film shows how deep-rooted racism is often sustained because it advances the interests of the rich and powerful. This is not to say that racism is reducible to economic or class warfare. The point is rather that racist beliefs and practices are often reinforced because they serve the privileged. Lon Backett foments racial tensions in Walesburg because it advances his business interests. In America today there are many such people who sow racial division for their own gain. The billionaire businessman Charles Koch recently confessed that he and his political associates had “screwed up by being so partisan.” Koch seems well-intentioned. He seems to believe in equality and justice for all. But he and his Koch Network (now named, and not without irony: Stand Together) have invested millions of dollars in the very political messaging that has helped bring racial tensions in America to a fever pitch. This is hardly a new problem. And it persists because those who stand to benefit from systemic racism, however well-intentioned they may be, are easily blinded to the unjust reality they help create.

The film also shows the complexities of the human heart and how it so readily accommodates brotherly love, racial resentment, and economic anxiety. The Night Riders are undeniably racist, and their hate is further stoked by fears that without mining work they will be unable to feed their families. Yet however much racial hate they have, and however much that hate is exacerbated by worries about money, their enmity is nevertheless counterbalanced by a love and respect for Famous. “Sinners also love those that love them” (Luke 6:32). This is a complicated psychology, but not an uncommon one. What makes it complicated is that we cannot easily determine root causes. What is the real reason behind the Night Riders acting as they did, and what was mere pretense? Was their economic anxiety heightened by racial resentment? Or vice versa? Was their brother-love genuine, or just racism suffering from weakness of will? These very sorts of questions are being intensely debated right now (see, for example, here, here, and here).

Above all, the film reminds us how easily we ourselves are prone to overlook these challenges. When “Stars in My Crown” first debuted, The New York Times praised it: “The true spirit of Christmas – Peace on Earth, Goodwill Toward Men – is reflected both in word and deed in the heartwarming Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture.’” How far from the truth. The film does not warm our hearts, but rather warns us about our hearts. The film enjoins us, Ta-Nehisi Coates does, to “resist the common urge…toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice.”

Now some readers might be saying to themselves: “I’ve read Coates, and I’ve thought quite a bit about these issues. I doubt that I really need to watch some B-western made nearly a century ago by an aristocratic Frenchman.” This may very well be true. Or it may not be. As Famous tells us in the film, just saying a good thing don’t make it so. We may think we understand what’s going on around us and in the news, and yet we may also be poorly mistaken.

Vainglories Are Like Ogres — Part II: Why is Vainglory Such a Big Deal?

photograph of winner's podium sketched on blackbaord with colored chalk

In this series of posts, I want to talk about a particular challenge with the vice of vainglory. This is a challenge I’ve been struggling with for years, and unfortunately it is not one that I have a good solution to. The challenge, in a nutshell, is that vainglory comes in layers.

However, it would be difficult to jump straight into that discussion, since vainglory is not a vice that people talk about a lot these days. So, I’m going to develop this discussion over the course of three posts.

  • In the previous post, I explained what vainglory is and how it differs from the vice of vanity.
  • In this second post, I explain why vainglory is such a big deal and worth combating in our own lives.
  • Finally, in the third post, I will talk about why the layered nature of vainglory has made it so difficult to combat in my own life.

Why It’s a Big Deal

There are two parts to showing why vainglory is a big deal. First, we need to show that vainglory is destructive. Second, we need to show that it is common. Ants are no big deal because though they are common, they are not destructive. And blackholes are no big deal, because while they are destructive, they are not common. But vainglory is both.

A Destructive Vice

There are lots of reasons that vainglory is a destructive vice. The first, and probably simplest reason, is that vainglory often tempts us away from the pursuit of primary goods. Often the best action we can perform is not the action that will lead to the biggest boost to our reputation. I like how Steven Pinker puts the point when talking about effective altruism:

“[W]e have a large set of motives for why we’re altruistic and some of them are ulterior — such as appearing beneficent and generous, or earning friends and cooperation partners. Some of them may result in conspicuous sacrifices that indicate that we are generous and trustworthy people to our peers but don’t necessarily do anyone any good.”

Plato made this point long ago. Good things are often accompanied by the appearance of the good. And over time, we can come to care more and more about the appearance and less and less about the reality. We move from wanting to help the poor to wanting to look like we are helping the poor.

Of course, this is true only to the extent that I care about my reputation for its own sake, and not merely as a means to helping the poor. If I really do care about being thought generous merely so that others will be generous as well, then no such conflict can arise. This is why Aquinas thinks that the dangers of vainglory occur when one desires a reputation for the wrong reasons.

Not only can vainglory tempt us away from the good, it can also be a powerful temptation towards evil. The classic philosophical example here is from Augustine’s Confessions. In Book II, he describes a point in his adolescence where he vandalized another’s pear tree, not to eat the fruit, nor to sell it, but simply to act maliciously. Augustine considers this such a terrible act, not because the damage was that great, but because it was done for malice’s sake. What could drive him to such an action? According to Augustine it was vainglory, a desire to be approved of by one’s friends: “As soon as the words are spoken ‘Let us go and do it’, one is ashamed not to be shameless.”

C.S. Lewis, that great popularizer of Augustine, says something similar. He argues that, of all desires, the desire to be approved of by those ‘in the inner ring’ is the “most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.” (If you don’t believe this, just consider the results of the Milgram experiment where a majority of participants were willing to perform an action which they thought was delivering possibly fatal electric shocks just because they were told to by an authority figure.) Like Augustine, Lewis emphasizes that the temptation is not about what one will gain from being approved of. Instead, the temptation comes from the simple sweetness of being thought well of by one whose approval you desperately desire.

“And the prophecy I make is this. To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which ‘we’—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something ‘we always do.’

And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.”

Of course, this temptation can only occur to the extent that you desire approval, not for what is good, but simply as such. If I merely want to be approved for my honesty, then a desire for approval will not usually tempt me to join in a deception. This is one reason, then, why Aquinas thinks that the vice of vainglory involves a desire for mere approval, rather than approval for what is really good.

A second danger in vainglory is that the vainglorious lose control over their own happiness. You have much more control over how good you are than you do over what other people think of you. You can control what you do, but not what people think. Thus, the more your happiness depends on the approval of others, the fickler your happiness will be.

This point is made best, I think, by Dumbledore. In the fourth Harry Potter book, Hagrid is distressed that many dislike him simply because he is half-giant. To this worry Dumbledore replies: “Really, Hagrid, if you are holding out for universal popularity, I’m afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time.” Ultimately, there is nothing Hagrid can do about the prejudice and poor judgment of others. However, if he grows less vainglorious, he will come to realize that the mere unqualified approval of others is not ultimately that important and should not stand as a precondition to his happiness.

Of course, not all approval is equally fickle. If someone is a good judge of character, they are more likely to think well of you to the extent you are good. This is one reason, then, why we should care more about the approval of those who are wise; their approval is less fickle and so provides a more secure foundation for happiness.

A third, but by no means final, danger of vainglory is that it can lead to dishonesty. If I come to care just about my reputation, then what matters is not being good but being thought good. Thus, I will be tempted to get others to think me good by any means I can, and not merely by becoming a better person. The vainglorious person is always faced with a temptation to make themselves look better than they really are: to take more credit for a group project than they really deserve, to make one’s motives look more noble than they really were, to exaggerate just a little bit the quality of what one did.

Why do people cheat in friendly board games? It is not like you get anything when you win, and you have not even accomplished anything if you win by cheating. The answer, of course, is that we like to be thought the winner by others. In other words, vainglory is behind many of those everyday dishonesties which populate ordinary life. And just as with the other dangers, this helps us understand why certain desires for recognition are particularly vicious. If you just care about your reputation, rather than caring that people recognize what is actually good about you, you will be more strongly inclined towards dishonesty.

The Ubiquity of Vainglory

I expect that many of you already will agree that vainglory is ubiquitous. Hopefully, you already recognize that you personally are vainglorious. (Of course it’s possible that you lack this vice, however, I expect that most people who don’t believe they are vainglorious think that because they are self-deceived, and not because they have actually reached such lofty heights of virtue.) But it is still worth understanding just why we humans are so inclined to the vice of vainglory.

While there are lots of explanations we can give for the ubiquity of vainglory, let’s just consider the explanation given by evolution. Human psychology evolved to help us survive and reproduce as a social creature within human community. And the thing is, our reputation was far more important to our reproductive success in early human communities than it is now.

There are two layers, then, to this evolutionary distortion. First, evolution selects traits important for reproductive fitness rather than goodness. Second, evolution optimized for a culture where reputation mattered in very different ways.

The Reproductive Fitness Distortion. Let’s take the point about reproductive fitness first. Often the good way to be is not going to be the same thing as the way that increases your chance at successful reproduction. The person who gives all their extra resources to the poor may be a morally better person, and do more for the common good, but they will not necessarily have lots of super successful offspring.

We can make the same point with other types of goods. For instance, the good proper to belief is truth. But even if it is good to believe true things, that does not always mean that believing true things best serves your reproductive fitness. Dan Kahan makes this point in explaining why scientific literacy correlates with partisan conformity more than with truth.

“Nothing any ordinary member of the public personally believes about the existence, causes, or likely consequences of global warming will effect the risk that climate changes poses to her, or to anyone or anything she cares about. Nothing she does as a consumer, as a voter, as a contributor to political campaigns and causes, or as a participant in public conversation will be of sufficient consequence on its own to have any impact. However, if she forms the wrong position on climate change relative to the one that people with whom she has a close affinity—and on whose high regard and support she depends on in myriad ways in her daily life—she could suffer extremely unpleasant consequences, from shunning to the loss of employment. Because the cost to her of making a mistake on the science is zero and the cost of being out of synch with her peers potentially catastrophic, it is indeed individually rational for her to attend to information on climate change in a manner geared to conforming her position to that of others in her cultural group.”

Obviously, we don’t consciously try to believe whatever our social group approves of. We think that what we believe really tracks the truth. However, there is a disconnect between what we aim at in thinking and what our cognitive apparatus has evolved to secure. This point is easy to see in selfless terms; we can recognize why believing the truth or serving the poor might trade off with reproductive fitness. But this is also true of things like happiness. Someone who cares what other people think is likely to be both more reproductively fit and also less happy.

The reason we are inclined to be excessively concerned with reputation is because reputation has a bigger influence on reproductive fitness than it does on happiness or goodness. Thus, evolution has inclined us to overinvest in our reputation at the expense of other goods.

The Evolutionary Environment Distortion. Not only did evolution optimize for the wrong thing, it also optimized for the wrong environment. Most of human evolution occurred when we lived in small communities of thirty to a hundred people. But we now live in massive, globalized societies.

If you live in a small community of thirty people, then a single person not liking you is an issue, five people not liking you is a huge problem, and fifteen people not liking you is a disaster. You did not get to select amongst forty thousand undergraduates those five most like you to be friends with, you had to be friends with the only five people available. In this environment, it made a lot more sense to make sure that each and every person you came across was impressed by you. Not only that, it was also a lot easier to make sure that everyone was impressed by you, because to be the best at something you only needed to be better than a small group of people.

Nowadays, however, it is both harder to stand out, and far less important. Despite that, all our evolved impulses still think it is incredibly important to do whatever it takes to make sure that every single person we come across knows just how great we are.

Hopefully, you now have a sense both for what vainglory is, and why it is so dangerous. In the final post, I’ll talk about one reason I’ve had so much trouble combating my own vainglory.

Is Moral Mediocrity Bad?

illustration of cartoon crowd with most wearing masks

Here’s a question to consider in a pandemic: do we wear masks and socially distance because we should, or because we’re conforming to what others do? No doubt part of the explanation involves moral reasons: we wear our masks and socially distance to prevent others from getting ill. But that isn’t the whole explanation. Moral psychology backs this up: there is good evidence that we’re morally mediocre; i.e., we aim to be morally on par with our peers, not much worse or much better. And the implication is that moral reasons don’t explain as much of our behavior as we want to believe. Most of us don’t steal candy bars from the story for the sole reason that stealing is wrong; we have practical reasons too: it is easier to simply purchase them, dealing with the police isn’t fun, getting caught would be embarrassing, and so forth.

The empirical evidence from psychology strongly suggests we modulate our behavior based on what others do. To give a few examples: people are more likely to reduce household energy use if shown statistics that they use more than their neighbors. We are subject to peer pressure on a host of practices like littering, lying, tax compliance, and suicide. Moral mediocrity shouldn’t surprise us: as a social species, it not only matters what we do, but how we look to others. We rely on others to cooperate with us for our survival, and so it matters what others think of us if we want them to cooperate with us.

Is moral mediocrity bad? Not particularly; but it isn’t great either. Moral mediocrity can be bad if our peers are morally terrible. Aiming to be about as good and as bad as Nazis would clearly be bad; we should want to be substantially better than Nazis. Of course that’s an extreme case, but there are less extreme ones, too: the social science evidence we reviewed earlier would suggest that we would be less likely to wear masks and socially distance if our peers didn’t do likewise. However, moral mediocrity can also be good: in a just society, where everyone does what justice requires because everyone else is just as well would be a good society in which to live. Citizens in a just society would be good parents and grandparents, they would comply with just norms and laws, pay their debts, wouldn’t cheat or steal, and would only use violence to defend themselves or innocents when necessary. The moral mediocrity of the citizenry isn’t great; but such a society would be. Like many things, moral mediocrity is a mixed bag: some good; some bad.

However, optimal moral agents don’t just act morally; they act for moral reasons too. Suppose Omar is drunk and feeling generous, and gives Sally the cash in his wallet. As it happens, Omar owes Sally that exact amount. But Omar didn’t give Sally the money because he owed her, but because he was drunk and impulsive; had he been hanging with someone else, he would have given them the money instead. This is not a case where Omar’s actions aren’t motivated by just reasons, but rather circumstance. There is nothing especially wrong here; Omar did a good thing). But one should get credit for doing the right thing if one acts from duty, not just as a by-product of something else. When we act for moral reasons, it shows our motives are rooted in moral duty; they aim at the moral good, instead of hitting it accidentally. Kant explains the importance of acting from duty (not merely in accordance with duty):

“[There] are some souls so sympathetically attuned that, even without any other motive of vanity or utility to self, take an inner gratification in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the contentment of others insofar as it is their own work. But I assert that in such a case the action, however it may conform to duty and however amiable it is, nevertheless has no true moral worth, but is on the same footing as other inclinations.”

The evidence of our moral mediocrity suggests we deserve less credit for morally good actions than we often think. We are the beneficiaries of the moral progress made by those who came before us; the reason, say, we think slavery is wrong has far more to do with the cultural period in which we were born than any profound moral insight and bravery on our part as individual moral agents. And this would suggest that we should protect our moral inheritance, instead of free-riding on the hard-won moral victories of those from the past.

And we should clarify in closing: nothing here is reason to discount the role of choice and free will in shaping the kind of moral agents we are. However, it is often tempting to overemphasize the role that agency plays in shaping our moral character and choices, and to downplay the role of our peers and environment. Highlighting our tendency toward moral mediocrity is meant, if nothing else, to correct this imbalance of emphasis.

Iris Murdoch and the Moral Dimensions of Literature

gouache and ink painting of Iris Murdoch

“Literature” wrote Iris Murdoch, “is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.” This year marks 100 years since her birth; presenting an opportunity to reflect upon her unique philosophical perspective and the things it can still teach us. She published over 25 novels, but also made a significant contribution to moral philosophy, arguing for a kind of paradigm shift in the way the subject is understood and treated by philosophers.

One of the outcomes of her view on morality is that it bears a much closer relationship to art and literature than most philosophers would dream of affording it. But literature does not, for Murdoch, have a moral function in any straightforward sense which might be suggested by the notion of its bearing a kind of moral message – suggested, for instance, by the familiar phrase “the moral of the story.”

The moral dimension of literature is tied, rather, to Murdoch’s sharp critique of the commonly accepted view of the goals and methods of moral philosophy of her own day – tied, as they had become, to those of science – an orthodoxy which retains significant influence in contemporary moral philosophy.

Murdoch did not try to work out a system of ethics. Her critique questions the view of moral philosophy in which an absolute universal and objective ethical perspective is sought and in which the central concern of moral philosophy is the action of the individual moral agent in a moment of decision made against a background of facts. Murdoch thought that the sphere of the moral was broader and deeper than this traditional picture suggests.

She was particularly critical of the behaviorist model of the human being in which anything other than observable behavior is philosophically unintelligible. The behaviorist view is roughly that we cannot know anything about others except what we can see in their behaviors or actions, we therefore cannot attribute complex inner mental states to them, or at least we cannot talk about such states – rendering the “inner life” epistemically and philosophically off limits.

Murdoch thought this was a reductive and unrealistic picture of the human being and she advocated for a re-emergence of the “inner life” as a potent and central part of any adequate understanding of the moral dimension of life, and therefore of our understanding of ethics. This meant for Murdoch that many more concepts than just the usual suspects of moral evaluation, such as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ or ‘good’ and ‘bad’ have important moral dimensions; concepts for instance with which we judge others or reflect upon our own experience, like grief, sentimentality, wonder, admiration, pity, love, or humor can also be understood as important ethical concepts.

Bernard Williams applied the descriptive designation ‘thin’ moral concepts for those which are empty or general – like “good” or “right” and “bad” or “wrong.” He applied the term ‘thick’ to moral concepts which are more descriptive, and which usually require moral evaluation that considers individuals and contexts that don’t operate at the same level of generality. Such concepts are important ‘secondary moral words,’ and yet more generalized formulations of moral philosophy will tend not to recognize them as moral concepts at all because of their relation to the particular characteristics of individuals and contexts.

Murdoch thought the moral work was done at precisely the level of these kinds of concepts; it was not to be found in isolated decisions in particular moments, but in the work of attention, sustained by one’s efforts to see things with clarity and justice. The aim was to shake off, as far as possible, what she called ‘the fat relentless ego’ which could cloud our vision and hamper the moral effort.

In an essay called The Idea of Perfection Murdoch gives a famous example of a mother-in-law (M) making an effort to change her view of her daughter-in-law (D) whom she does not like, and has a tendency to see in an uncharitable light. Of the kind of effort M must employ, Murdoch says: “Innumerable novels contain accounts of what such struggles are like.”

The concept of moral progress is of vital importance to Murdoch – her view is not that morality consists in arriving, in full possession of all the relevant facts and theories, at the right decision in a moment of choice, but that there is an ongoing process of engagement that one enters into, which is a process of coming to better understand things by the quality of one’s attention.

In the example of M and D, M makes an effort to see D in a better light, by getting beyond her own biases she tries to see D for who she is – and for Murdoch this kind of effort of attention is moral progress, because M is trying to see D in a just and loving way. Because of this, the nature of the moral task is endless. That is, morality does not begin nor end with a decision or action, but is a sustained effort in one’s life and one’s outlook. As Murdoch says: “Moral tasks are characteristically endless not only because ‘within’, as it were, a given concept our efforts are imperfect, but also because as we move and as we look our concepts themselves are changing.”

As such, Iris Murdoch’s work centralizes the notion of ‘attention’ as a moral concept, and argues for the importance of the ‘inner life’ to morality, suggesting that the locus of morality is not the moment of choice, but the reflective attitude one takes to the situations and people around us. The work of attention, she says “builds up structures of value round about us, [so that] at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over.”

Attention, here, is not a matter of what will be illuminated by finding out more accurate information. It involves ‘being present to’ what one sees in a way that implicates oneself in the activity of seeing and thereby implies an activity in oneself – where I am morally ‘at issue’ in the way I apprehend the world and in the spirit in which I see others and myself.

In her essay Vision and Choice in Morality Murdoch suggests that:

When we apprehend and assess other people we do not consider only their solutions to specifiable practical problems, we consider something more elusive which may be called their total vision of life as shown in their mode of speech or silence, their choice of words, their assessments of others, their conception of their own lives, what they think funny…”

Yet many of the things listed here would not usually come into the sphere of what most moral philosophers would count as moral at all. Murdoch is suggesting that many of the concepts with which we think of people and of various aspects of life, which are not usually considered as having to do with morality, are in fact related in various ways to the moral life.

If we take this seriously, and want to reflect on what Murdoch calls the ‘total vision of life’ as morally active, then literature is one tool we have to do that with – again a tool which is not ordinarily thought of as part of the moral philosopher’s toolkit.

A moral interest in literature can help the work of attention because it gives us access to a vast reservoir of learning, thinking, and evaluating human situations and human lives; because literature involves imaginative effort and because works of literature can provide a form and a context in which to navigate the moral possibilities of concepts like wonder, admiration, pity, love, and humor.

What the Ray Rice Video Suggests About Our Moral Thinking

At 1:00 AM on September 8 TMZ posted a disturbing security video showing Ray Rice, formerly of the Baltimore Ravens, punching his then-fiancée, Janay Palmer, rendering her unconscious. At 11:18 AM the Ravens tweeted that Rice’s contract had been terminated. At 11:41 AM, the NFL tweeted that Rice had been suspended from the league indefinitely.

Here’s at least one odd thing about this: it was already known that Rice punched Palmer and rendered her unconscious. As early as February 2014 there were reports of what the video depicted. So, why the outrage now? Why the sudden calls for action? After all, nothing morally relevant is changed by the fact that now many people have seen the punch rather than merely having been told about it.

Perhaps you’re like me, though. Although there were reports of the incident in February 2014, you weren’t aware of the incident until now. There’s nothing about seeing the incident that changes its moral features, you might say, it’s just that the video gave the story a wider reach and now you’re aware of it. This, in turn, increased the pressure on the Ravens and the NFL to take action.

That’s perhaps a comforting thought, at least with respect to our reaction to the case (it’s not so comforting a thought with respect to the Ravens and the NFL). But it masks a thought that is less comfortable, even for you and me. The less comfortable thought is that even if you or I had known about the incident in February, we still probably wouldn’t have responded in the same way as we did after seeing the video. Why? Because there is considerable psychological evidence that our moral responses to cases are strongly influenced by our emotions. [1. For a nice, accessible, summary of some of this research, see Joshua Greene’s 2013 book, Moral Tribes (Penguin Press) His website includes additional papers on the same topic] And—for most of us anyway—seeing a video of domestic violence is much more emotionally engaging than reading a dry report of the same thing.

This should give us pause. Sure, suffering might feel worse if we see it, but does it really make it worse? It seems not. A seen punch hurts just as much as an unseen one; a child that we see starving suffers just as much as one that we do not see. There’s an important lesson here: our moral psychology can sometimes fool us into making spurious distinctions. Our proximity to suffering or way of learning about suffering is not plausibly a morally relevant feature of it, but we often treat it as if it is.[2. This is not a new point. In his 1972 paper, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Peter Singer writes: “The fact that a person is physically near to us, so that we have personal contact with him, may make it more likely that we shall assist him, but this does not show that we ought to help him rather than another who happens to be further away.” (p. 232).] This can have profound consequences, not just with respect to domestic violence in the NFL, but with respect to us playing our appropriate moral role in the world.

Is Stealing Really Wrong?

In this video, Kate Manne, a philosophy professor at Cornell University,  offers a critical examination of the traditional notion that stealing is inherently wrongShe focuses on the case of The Barefoot Bandit. He grew up in dire straits, and he worked his way up from stealing bread to stealing planes. He committed over 100 burglaries, but for silly things. He’d sneak in to take a bubble bath, or eat a pint of ice cream. Sometimes his thefts were very large, but he was never violent and never confrontational. He ended his spree by stealing a plane and going to the Bahamas. Upon being arrested, the 18 year old was hailed by some as a folk-hero.

After polling the audience, we discover in the video  that almost half the audience has some sympathy for this criminal. She then lists off a host of real and fictional people who achieve cult status, but are primarily known for being thieves. Consider Yogi Bear. We don’t seem to have a problem with Yogi Bear, and so Manne notes that all of these examples show that we are, in her words, “a bit schizophrenic” with our attitudes toward the maxim that stealing is inherently wrong.

She calls this feeling of sympathy The Permissiveness Intuition. The video goes on to explore the moral psychology of that intuition, and she tries to articulate why some of us might have this permissiveness intuition. She then tries to tackle the question as to whether we are justified in having the permissiveness intuition. In other words, she asks – are some of us right when we have this permissiveness intuition. (The discussion of the permissiveness intuition starts at the 14 minute mark and last for only 10 minutes).

What do you think? Why might some people feel sympathy for these kinds of thieves? Are these intuitions reasonable?