On moderation
Socrates describes a virtue as the mean between two vices.
This is what we may call a moderate. This is what folk are alluding to when they describe themselves as politically moderate, though most people who do so lack the cultural or historical competency to know this is to what they refer. As this notion of "moderate" changes and becomes more conservative, it's that the overton window is changing and become, well, evil.
So, I'm taking back the word. When I am virtuous, I am by definition a moderate.
Here are some positions of mine that I view as incredibly moderate, and the opposite ends:
Moderate position: Health Care For All!
Vice: Health care only for the rich!
Vice: Health care in exchange for work!
Moderate position: All citizens over 18 can vote! Once per election!
Vice: Children, resident aliens, undocumented aliens can all vote. multiple times.
Vice: Only white white men can vote.
Moderate position: Anybody can join the military!
Vice: Who needs a military?
Vice: Only white christian men can join the military.
Moderate position: Trump has taken extra-legal steps that are at least problematic.
Vice: Trump is in violation of the constitution and should be removed from 1600 Penn immediately and without due process.
Vice: MAGA
See? In every possible position, the one I hold as true is the mean between two vices.
What are some others?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is part of why I find Socrates a little self-indulgent (that and the anti-heuristic bias of the Socratic method): this technique if gameable-AF.
ReplyDeleteModerate position: Kill and eat the weak and infirm.
Vice: Kill and eat everyone.
Vice: Never eat anything. Starve to death.
Oh sure.
ReplyDeleteIn my own view, there are at least two things that we should compare a moderate action stance against:
1. Does this, when universalized as an axiom, do harm or ill?
2. Would my moral examplars do this?
That is: As far as I can tell, does acting like this create a better or worse world and, would the people who I want to be like do this?
I'm not sure what to do if those two things contradict (hint: do the best you can in the moment, go home and think deeply), but when they agree then that's a thing to do.
Well, sure, Socrates works way better if you assume he was building on the foundations handed down by Kant.
ReplyDeleteOr JS Mill, father of virtue ethics.
ReplyDeleteI do like the insight that "moderate" is about the mean between the edges of the Overton window, not some mean between the actual extremes of the possible.
ReplyDeleteSocrates wrote nothing down, and we only know of him from Plato and Xenophon, but he almost certainly didn't think this about virtue. Plato and Xenophon both tell us he believed virtue to be a singular concept in accordance with truth that, in any situation, leads to the best result by an objective, universal measure we know of through the Forms.
ReplyDeleteAristotle wrote that there is a golden mean between vices that are virtues. We only have his scattered lecture notes and some letters, though, so exactly how vices are determined is a little opaque. Likely they're just anything that does harm to the doer (social or physical), but maybe not.
The Socrates of Plato would hate that enough to bath, wear shoes, and go to a dinner party to tell him he's wrong. The whole point of Plato's Meno is that there cannot be multiple virtues, much less a different virtue for each different action, or for different people or social classes.
And yeah, much better to find the moral imperative outside of Kant. That shit-bag helped create scientific racism.
Edit: My husband would also like me to point out that Nichomachean Ethics, where the sophrosune between two vices comes from, is of disputed origin and might not be Aristotle either.
Yeah, that was the right insight I meant to promulgate. And folks who describe themselves that way are like Burr; If you stand for nothing, what'll you fall for?
ReplyDeleteThere's a concept that PR identified (and weaponized) called the window
ReplyDeleteBasically, our brain has one scale, and we resize our experience to fit. The seven-point scale is usually the one I see:
Unthinkable
Terrible
Discouraged
Acceptable
Preferred
Celebrated
Policy
One of the major applications is that, while it's actually very hard to directly change people's opinions on what's discouraged/acceptable/preferred directly, it's actually much easier to alter it by changing what's policy or unthinkable.
I take too long to finish typing.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to read what all has appeared, and then try again ; ' ]
Jesse Cox remidning us about the Overton window ain't a bad thing. :-)
ReplyDeleteThe universal test is a good rule, but it's not perfect. You could argue that if everyone started riding the bus tomorrow, the public transit system would collapse. So maybe I shouldn't ride the bus. I've seen people make similar arguments against vegetarianism.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, everyone is not actually going to start doing [insert virtuous behavior] all at once tomorrow. My riding the bus would marginally reduce CO2 emissions, make public transit more viable, and possibly encourage others to do so. So it is a good thing. Likewise, the entire world is not going to become vegetarian at once, and just me abstaining from meat for one day might help reduce CO2 emissions, so it's good.
One of the important questions for me has always been, if the circumstances or positions were reversed or changed, would I feel the same way? What if it was my face being punched instead of my fist doing the punching, what if this person were poor instead of rich, or white instead of black, or a Democrat rather than a Republican, would I be reacting the same way? What if this person I'm angry at was my child or my parent?
I'm not arguing that we should always treat everyone the same way. War criminals should be treated differently than refugees. But it's important to treat the refugees I'm inclined to dislike as generously as the refugees I'm sympathetic to. And doing so is likely to make me more aware of my own prejudices.