In one of the comments to my post on Calvin and Servetus the spectre of moral relativism was raised. Maybe some people might get offended at this, but I was pleased. I not pleased because I had merely provoked a reaction but because I was pushing a pretty contrarian position so that I could see what gives (The give away was ‘That is the best defence I can mount.’)
I remain open in my conclusion about the extent to which Calvin should be condemned for his part in Sevetus’s execution, quite open to the possibility that it was an inexcusable lapse. As I have made quite clear I hope, I am against capital punishment, and against sanctioning people for expressing their opinions, unless those opinions are expressed with malevolent intention and lead to great harm. After all, Calvin himself was really expressing his opinion to the Genevan authorities when he called for Servetus’s execution, the execution being carried out by others. One way you could understand the structure of my defence of Calvin was that he sincerely believed that in speaking his opinion on Servetus he was trying to prevent what he believed to be Servetus’s higher crime of seeking to corrupt souls and destroying the Church for his own glorification.
Note that I am not at all condemning Servetus here, nor closing out the possibility that Servetus’s execution wasn’t at best a ghastly mistake, at worst a brutal crime. The issue is Calvin and how we arrive at a judgement of his actions. If he is to be condemned then that must be done through joined-up argument, and it isn’t enough to simply condemn him according to our own systems of ethics–that would be merely to repeat the mistake with which Calvin is being accused.
At the centre of the charge of moral relativism I think was the idea that true wisdom is compassionate and non-violent. I agree, but we have to be careful no to get to caught up in our own ideas of what that non-violence looks like. Again, I think that we live in a culture–the modern industrial state–that fetishises violence, and am a pretty militant pacifist, but does that mean that quietism is always everywhere the compassionate and non-violent response? I don’t think so. It isn’t difficult to come up with thought experiments where the most compassionate response to the situation becomes violent in a different context. For example I think it was a shame that the Tibetan state was so corrupt as to disregard the prophesies of the 13th Dalai Lama (the predecessor of the current Dalai Lama) and fail to prepare adequate defences in anticipation of the Chinese invasion (and I believe this is the position of the current Dalai Lama’s, but I can’t locate the evidence). Given the horrible ongoing Tibetan and Chinese tragedy today this is a not a position that can be easily dismissed.
The underlying point is that all action must be motivated by a desire to relieve suffering, and the temptations to pursue selfish gain or the harming of others must be resisted and defeated. This is an eternal truth, the underlying message of right religion and philosophy (expressed in non-theistic terms) but the way it plays out will vary according to the situation, including the norms and expectations of the actors. To insist on a particular code of behaviour that must be true for every situation is I think is problematic.
Moral relativism becomes a problem when people try to undercut morality itself. So some might mount a defence of Calvin like I have and conclude from a successful defence that ethical behaviour is a mere fairy story as we can’t even agree that burning people for their opinions is wrong. If the intention of the argument is to conclude Calvin (or anybody else whose actions we are considering) mustn’t be acting with the greatest care and precision–especially when they are calling for somebody’s execution–then this is moral relativism for sure. My argument is really an epistemic one–that it is difficult to be certain about the ethics of a situation that we only partially understand.
That said, while we do live in degenerate times where the public understanding to right religion and philosophy are concerned, one of the things I do appreciate is religious pluralism, one of the finer achievements of the modern liberal state. It is nots unique–India, for example, has a history of religious pluralism that can be traced to ancient times–but I think it is an achievement to be grateful for.
One Comment
Hello, Chris.
I do like the way you have stuck with this. The way you present the issue now is as though floating it in a balloon across our field of vision, inviting people to shoot it down. Playing along, I believe I have given it both barrels and reloaded. Is it still flying?
“If he is to be condemned then that must be done through joined-up argument, and it isn’t enough to simply condemn him according to our own systems of ethics–that would be merely to repeat the mistake with which Calvin is being accused.”
I don’t think condemnation is the issue at all. If we show that Calvin was out of order, by general means of joined-up argument and, in particular, by reference to the terrain as viewed from from the higher ground of the true sages of history, we find ourselves leaving Calvin where he is and climbing up to where the understanding is better. Unlike JC (John Calvin, not Jesus Christ), the sages are not big on condemnation.
Every sage is, by definition, an exponent of what you refer to as Right Philosophy. If the word ‘Right’ is to have a verifiably real referent, the sages are surely our go-to guys, since it is only through them that we have received the highest of teachings with regard to the nature of Reality and the meaning and purpose of life. Following their lead, we find we cannot follow Calvin; taking a sage’s-eye-view results not in condemnation of him but in his complete dismissal, not for reasons of personal ethics but on absolute grounds.
We find that Calvin’s Philosophy is not Right; in the light of that which is self-evidently correct, his teachings reveal their own unsound nature through an obvious disharmonious relationship to truth. Even then, when we see the failure of the philosophy to pass intellectual muster, it is the teaching that is dismissed rather than the person. It falls away from truth all by itself. We’re not closing our minds against entertaining the ideas involved or refusing at any time to re-examine them but what we are doing is allowing ourselves to directly perceive their true philosophical significance: zero, or very close to it.
True, if expressed publicly, such dismissal hurts people’s feelings, generally in direct proportion to the amount of time, energy and sentiment they have invested in those teachings. Contrary to modern notions, however, as your blog makes crystal clear, the protection of people’s feelings is not the best guiding principle with regard to matters of truth. It isn’t personal; it’s impersonal. We’re not pinning anything on Calvin. We’re taking his teaching and pinning it to the Truth.
Thus, we do not repeat the mistake with which Calvin is accused: we’re not out to get him; we’re not angry at him; we don’t hate him. Looking at the individual, we understand that he is not standing alone but is among the many; as noted earlier, he was of his time, i.e., worldly, up to his eyes in what might be called ‘theo-politics’. On balance, his life comes down on the side of tragedy. It’s not hard to have compassion for one as lost as he, who clearly thought he had been found. He knew not what he did.
“At the centre of the charge of moral relativism I think was the idea that true wisdom is compassionate and non-violent.”
Compassionate, yes, but not necessarily non-violent. It’s very strange how the word ‘violence’ is now used almost entirely pejoratively in contemporary discourse, when it really should be neutral and descriptive. As you say, it’s easy to think of situations where a ‘violent’ response is the correct one. I’ve also read that the Dalai Lama regrets that Tibet did not make every effort to resist invasion at the time.
Meeting aggression passively is no answer to that aggression since, far from stopping it, it allows it go into ascendancy, thereby enthroning tyranny and supporting bullies the world over in their belief that ‘might makes right’. By our passivity, agreeing to might’s rightness, we suffer, our loved ones suffer, innocent people unknown to us suffer; we may even be said to have harmed the bully by letting this behaviour work for them, thereby letting a terrible tendency become entrenched in them. Neither is counter-aggression appropriate, given that it makes the conflict spiral out of control and causes the situation to explode. The answer lies in the kind of non-aggressive self-defense that comes from and moves toward robust health and maximum integrity. These observations seem very elementary indeed. Of course, there are those who teach that there should be no self to defend in the first place – this is true only from a point of view in which there is no other to defend against either. At this enlightened level of insight, beyond self and other, all actions are correct, being expressions of unity; this goes for so-called ‘violent’ actions, just as much as any other kind. Plainly, our Calvin was not coming from here at any point either before or after the Servetus affair.
“The underlying point is that all action must be motivated by a desire to relieve suffering, and the temptations to pursue selfish gain or the harming of others must be resisted and defeated.”
Absolutely, as long as a movement in the direction of increasing understanding first trumps and thereafter guides that well-meaning desire, in order that we may avoid being a do-gooder who, despite impeccable intentions, only helps to lay more paving-stones on the world’s road to hell.
“This is an eternal truth, the underlying message of right religion and philosophy (expressed in non-theistic terms) but the way it plays out will vary according to the situation, including the norms and expectations of the actors. To insist on a particular code of behaviour that must be true for every situation is I think is problematic.”
This is spot-on. The truth doesn’t change; behaviour can and must. The issue, then, for all of us, is:
A. What is our relationship – or the relationship of this thing – to that which does not alter? (This question, however we frame it, expresses the very essence of all true philosophical inquiry. Every real, enduring answer is found in this direction. The answers we settle for are an exact reflection of the quality of our understanding.)
B: This being the case, how shall I act/live/be? (This question is always answered in the light of our answer to Question A. By their fruits, we really do know them. We can see who understands what by observing their behaviour.)
“My argument is really an epistemic one–that it is difficult to be certain about the ethics of a situation that we only partially understand.”
This is true. Hence, philosophical inquiry (Question A), first increasing our own proximity to that which is unchanging by permanently turning ourselves over to it before doing anything else, then referring the situation towards certain self-evidently absolute standards of value, and thereby receiving as full an illumination as possible with regard to that situation.
“…one of the things I do appreciate is religious pluralism, one of the finer achievements of the modern liberal state. It is nots unique–India, for example, has a history of religious pluralism that can be traced to ancient times–but I think it is an achievement to be grateful for.”
Religious pluralism is essential to sanity. That said, it only really means something in a society that is essentially religious. What the modern liberal state giveth with one hand, it taketh away with the other. Modernity is defined by its reaction to and progression away from tradition. Believing itself to be ‘transcendent’ to tradition, it robs every tradition of its deeper meaning and then offers to sell meaning back in an adulterated form that is essentially rooted in materialism. Traditions which buy this find it comes at a very high price, with all kinds of epistemic strings attached. Even at it’s most seemingly benign, the spirit of modernity renders every tradition impotent. Beside this subtlty, visible enemies of religion, represented by the likes of Dawkins and Dennett, are much more like friends than enemies: their attacks strike sparks and stir dying embers to life. Benign modernity, coiled up within each tradition, feeds directly upon its heart and kills it from within.
As it enters the later stages of it’s own logic, modernity appears to be becoming less tolerant and hospitable to religion; there is a growing impatience with the whole business. Witness the recent banning of the wearing of religious symbols in public, for example (this has even occurred in Italy, of all places!). Assaulting tradition from without, the New Atheism is a recent expression of an older spirit that moves forcefully against all religion. Dawkins has the appearance of integrity on his side when he expects and demands consistency in those he targets. He pours scorn and ridicule upon those believers who, having submitted their lives and minds to the ‘reign of quantity’ in every other important respect, hold on to the last remaining vestiges of their inherited tradition for reasons that are purely social and sentimental and therefore intellectually indefensible.
Upon the battle-ground that Dawkins stalks, the war has long-since been won, at least from his point of view; he is simply sticking the knife in and finishing off those who, until now, have done no more than hold on to a last gasp. Even the fight against ID is a skirmish upon materialist ground. The retreat of the enemy to regroup on higher intellectual ground puts them out of sight philosophically; they appear to have disappeared. This leaves only pockets of resistance, a few guerilla-movements in the hills and jungles, and a highly mysterious underground that has always been with us and always will be, despite the best efforts of Dawkins and others to eradicate it.