Apparently, Paul does not understand the concept of hypocrisy.
After Jeb Bush admitted to smoking marijuana during his prep school days, Rand Paul called him a hypocrite on the ground that he now opposes what he once did.
But this accusation shows a failure on Paul's part to grasp the concept of hypocrisy. An adequate definition must allow for moral change. One who did not attempt to live up to the ideals he now espouses ought not be called a hypocrite; the term 'hypocrite' applies to one who does not attempt to live up to the ideals he now espouses.
See my category Hypocrisy for more on this philosophically juicy theme.
Hypocrites are those who will not practice what they preach. They espouse high standards of behavior — which is of course good — but they make little or no attempt to live in accordance with them. Hypocrisy is rightly considered to be a moral defect. But what are we to say about those people who will not preach what they practice? For want of a better term, I will call them hypocrites in reverse.
Suppose a person manifests in his behavior such virtues as honesty, frugality, willingness to take responsibility for his actions, ability to defer gratification, respect for others, self-control, and the like, but refuses to advocate or promote these virtues even though their practice has led to the person's success and well-being. Such a person is perhaps not as bad, morally speaking, as a hypocrite but evinces nonetheless a low-level moral defect akin to a lack of gratitude to the conditions of his own success.
These hypocrites-in-reverse owe much to the old virtues and to having been brought up in a climate where they were honored and instilled; but they won't do their share in promoting them. They will not preach what they themselves practice. And in some cases, they will preach against, or otherwise undermine, what they themselves practice.
The hypocrite will not honor in deeds what he honors in words. The reverse hypocrite will not honor in words what he honors in deeds.
I am thinking of certain liberals who have gotten where they are in life by the practice of the old-time virtues, some of which I just mentioned, but who never, or infrequently, promote the very virtues whose practice is responsible for their success. It is almost as if they are embarrassed by them. What's worse, of course, is the advocacy by some of these liberals of policies that positively undermine the practice of the traditional virtues. Think of welfare programs that militate against self-reliance or reward bad behavior or of tax policies that penalize such virtuous activities as saving and investing.
Marijuana legalization may be the same-sex marriage of 2014 — a trend that reveals itself in the course of the year as obvious and inexorable. At the risk of exposing myself as the fuddy-duddy I seem to have become, I hope not.
This is, I confess, not entirely logical and a tad hypocritical. At the risk of exposing myself as not the total fuddy-duddy of my children's dismissive imaginings, I have done my share of inhaling, though back in the age of bell-bottoms and polyester.
I fail to see what is illogical about Marcus's taking a position today that differs from the position she took back when she wore bell bottoms. Logic enjoins logical consistency, not such other types as consistency of beliefs over time. Here is a pair of logically contradictory propositions:
Marijuana ought to be legalized Marijuana ought not be legalized.
Here is a pair of logically consistent propositions:
Marcus believed in 1970 that marijuana ought to be legalized Marcus believes in 2014 that marijuana ought not be legalized.
There is nothing illogical about Marcus's change of views.
And surely there is nothing hypocritical about Marcus's wising up up and changing her view. To think otherwise is to fail to understand the concept of hypocrisy.
I once heard a radio advertisement by a group promoting a "drug-free America." A male voice announces that he is a hypocrite because he demands that his children not do what he once did, namely, use illegal drugs. The idea behind the ad is that it is sometimes good to be a hypocrite.
Surely this ad demonstrates a misunderstanding of the concept of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a moral defect. But one who preaches abstinence and is abstinent is morally praiseworthy regardless of what he did in his youth. Indeed, his change of behavior redounds to his moral credit.
A hypocrite is not someone who fails to live up to the ideals he espouses, but one who does not attempt to live up to the ideals he espouses. An adequate definition of hypocrisy must allow for moral failure. An adequate definition must also allow for moral change. One who did not attempt to live up to the ideals he now espouses cannot be called a hypocrite; the term applies to one who does not attempt to live up to the ideals he now espouses.
Marcus embraces Pee-Cee lunacy in the following passage (emphasis added):
I'm not arguing that marijuana is riskier than other, already legal substances, namely alcohol and tobacco. Indeed, pot is less addictive; an occasional joint strikes me as no worse than an occasional drink. If you had a choice of which of the three substances to ban, tobacco would have to top the list. Unlike pot and alcohol, tobacco has no socially redeeming value; used properly, it is a killer.
Well, I suppose one cannot expect clear and independent and critical thinking and proper use of language from a mere journalist.
What, pray tell, is the proper use of tobacco? Smoked in pipes and in the form of cigars it is assuredly not a killer. One does not inhale pipe or cigar smoke. And while cigarette smoke is typically inhaled, no one ever killed himself by smoking a cigarette or a pack of cigarettes. (People have died, however, from just one drinking binge.) To contract a deadly disease such as lung cancer or emphysema, you must smoke many cigarettes daily over many years. And even then there is no causation, strictly speaking.
Smoking cigarettes is contraindicated if you desire to be optimally healthy: over the long haul it dramatically increases the probability that the smoker will contract a deadly disease. But don't confuse 'x raises the probability of y' with 'x causes y.' Cigarettes did not kill my aunts and uncles who smoked their heads off back in the day. They lived to ripe old ages. Aunt Ada to 90. I can see old Uncle Ray now, with his bald head and his pack of unfiltered Camels.
Why are liberals such suckers for misplaced moral enthusiasm?
Tobacco has no socially redeeming value? What a stupid thing to say! Miss Marcus ought to hang out with the boys at a high-end cigar emporium, or have breakfast with me and Peter and Mikey as we smoke and vape at a decidely low-end venue, Cindy's Greasy Spoon. For the record: I do not smoke cigarettes.
Just as alcohol in moderation is a delightful adjunct to a civilized life, a social lubricant and an aid to conviviality, the same is true of tobacco.
Which to ban if one of the three were to be banned? Alcohol obviously! Stop being a dumbassed liberal and try thinking for a change. How many auto accidents have been caused by smokers of tobacco as compared with drinkers of alcohol? Are you aware that the ingestion of nicotine increaases alertness? How many men beat their women and children under the influence of tobacco?
One who strives for the ideal but falls short is no hypocrite, but at a certain point the quantity and the quality of his fallings short must plant in his mind a seed of doubt as to whether he really avoids hypocrisy. He preaches continence, say, but finds it hard to contain his thoughts, which are not particularly seminal, let alone his sap, which is.
If, per impossibile, there were such a catalog as the Seven Deadly Sins as seen from the Left, hypocrisy would be in first place. Why? Although some who identify themselves as liberals or leftists can be counted among the religious, the dominant note of the Left from at least 1789 on has been anti-religious. Couple this with the fact that perhaps the most egregious forms of hypocrisy are found among religionists, especially the televangelical species thereof, and you have the beginning of an explanation why liberals and leftists find hypocrisy so morally abhorrent. That men of the cloth and their followers exhibit the worst forms of hypocrisy is captured in standard dictionary definitions of 'hypocrisy.' My Webster's shows, "a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; esp.: the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion." One reads something similar in the OED.
As a prelude to forthcoming posts on hypocrisy as seen by Kant and Hegel, here is a Kantian hymn of praise to sincerity. From Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (trs. Greene & Hudson), p. 178, n. 2:
O sincerity! Thou Astraea, that hast fled from earth to heaven, how mayst thou (the basis of conscience, and hence of all inner religion) be drawn down thence to us again? I can admit, though it is much to be deplored, that candor (in speaking the whole truth which one knows) is not to be found in human nature. But we must be able to demand sincerity (that all that one says be said with truthfulness), and indeed if there were in our nature no predisposition to sincerity, whose cultivation merely is neglected, the human race must needs be, in its own eyes, an object of the deepest contempt. Yet this sought for quality of mind is such that it is exposed to many temptations and entails many a sacrifice, and hence calls for moral strength, or virtue (which must be won); moreover it must be guarded and cultivated earlier than any other, because the opposed propensity is the hardest to extirpate if it has been allowed firmly to root itself. And if now we compare with the kind of instruction here recommended our usual mode of upbringing, especially in the matter of religion, or better, in doctrines of faith, where fidelity of memory in answering questions relating to these doctrines, without regard to the fidelity of the confession itself (which is never put to the test) is accepted as sufficient to make a believer of him who does not even understand what he declares to be holy, no longer shall we wonder at the lack of sincerity which produces nothing but inward hypocrites.
My barber today asked me if I had done any travelling since last I saw him. I lied and said that I hadn't, when in fact I had been to Geneva, Switzerland. If I had told the truth, then that truth would have led to another and yet another. "And what did you do in Geneva?" "I was invited to a conference on Bradley's Regress." And thus would I have had to blow my cover as regular guy among regular guys in that quintessential enclave of the regular guy, the old-time barber shop. I might have come across as self-important or as a braggart. I might have come across as I come across to some on this weblog.
Lies often lead to more lies, but truth-telling can get you in deep too. Life in this world of surfaces and seemings often goes down easier with a dollop of mendacity. In a world phenomenal and phony a certain amount of phoniness is forgivable. But how much?
My exposure of the Dictionary Fallacy was not intended to cast doubt on the utility of dictionaries. Far from it. Some of their entries are excellent starting points for philosophical inquiry. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, hypocrisy is "assuming a false appearance of virtue or goodness, with dissimulation of real character or inclination, especially in respect of religious life or belief." As a lexical definition, that is hard to beat. Having been handed the OED ball, however, I now run with it. What the philosopher wants is a theory of hypocrisy. That will almost certainly involve a precisification of the lexical concept along with an adjustment of the concept so that it coheres with the concepts of other moral phenomena in the vicinity such as lying, self-deception, 'bullshitting,' bad faith, insincerity, and what all else.
Assume the worst. Assume that Seneca was a hypocrite: he didn't believe what he wrote or try to live in accordance with it. What would it matter? How is it relevant to the fact that countless thousands, over the centuries, have derived inspiration, consolation, and strength from passages such as the following? If a message is sound, it is sound regardless of the moral condition of the messenger.
Seneca, De Tranquillitate Animi, X, 4 (tr. Basore):
All life is a servitude. And so a man must become reconciled to his lot, must complain of it as little as possible, and must lay hold of whatever good it may have; no state is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find in its some consolation. . . . Apply reason to difficulties; it is possible to soften what is hard, to widen what is narrow, and burdens will press less heavily upon those who bear them skillfully.
The English 'hypocrite' derives from the Greek hypokrites, actor. Although one cannot use etymology to show what a word means or even what it ought to mean, let alone its 'true and inherent meaning' (there is no such thing), in the present case the etymology provides a valuable suggestion as to how the word is used and how it ought to be used in an adequate and comprehensive theory of moral phenomena. The suggestion is that the hypocrite plays a part in public that is at variance with what he is in private. (This formulation may need refinement in light of the possibility of a man's playing a role before himself alone. I once wrote in my journal: "Am I a poseur in the pages of my own journal?" The question makes sense and suggests that a person could be a hypocrite in private.)
Hypocrites are those who will not practice what they preach. They espouse high standards of behavior — which is of course good — but they make little or no attempt to live in accordance with them. Hypocrisy is rightly considered to be a moral defect. But what are we to say about those people who will not preach what they practice? For want of a better term, I will call them hypocrites in reverse.
Suppose a person manifests in his behavior such virtues as honesty, frugality, willingness to take responsibility for his actions, ability to defer gratification, respect for others, self-control, and the like, but refuses to advocate or promote these virtues even though their practice has led to the person's success and well-being. Such a person is perhaps not as bad, morally speaking, as a hypocrite but evinces nonetheless a low-level moral defect akin to a lack of gratitude to the conditions of his own success.
These hypocrites-in-reverse owe much to the old virtues and to having been brought up in a climate where they were honored and instilled; but they won't do their share in promoting them. They will not preach what they themselves practice. And in some cases, they will preach against, or otherwise undermine, what they themselves practice.
The hypocrite will not honor in deeds what he honors in words. The reverse hypocrite will not honor in words what he honors in deeds.
I am thinking of certain liberals who have gotten where they are in life by the practice of the old-time virtues, some of which I just mentioned, but who never, or infrequently, promote the very virtues whose practice is responsible for their success. It is almost as if they are embarrassed by them. What's worse, of course, is the advocacy by some of these liberals of policies that positively undermine the practice of the traditional virtues. Think of welfare programs that militate against self-reliance or reward bad behavior or of tax policies that penalize such virtuous activities as saving and investing.
Other posts on this topic are filed under Hypocrisy.
Is the Pope a hypocrite for protesting Islamic violence when the church he heads engaged in violence itself? To answer this question, we need to consider the nature of hypocrisy.
I once heard a radio advertisement by a group promoting a "drug-free America." A male voice announces that he is a hypocrite because he demands that his children not do what he once did, namely, use illegal drugs. The idea is that it is sometimes good to be a hypocrite.
Surely this ad demonstrates a misunderstanding of the concept of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a moral defect. But one who preaches abstinence and is abstinent is morally praiseworthy regardless of what he did in his youth. Indeed, his change of behavior redounds to his moral credit.
A hypocrite is not someone who fails to live up to the ideals he espouses, but one who does not attempt to live up to the ideals he espouses. An adequate definition of hypocrisy must allow for moral failure, otherwise all who espouse ideals would be hypocrites. An adequate definition must also allow for moral change. One who did not attempt to live up to the ideals he now espouses cannot be called a hypocrite; the term applies to one who does not attempt to live up to the ideals he now espouses.
If you see my point, you will appreciate that Pope Benedict cannot be called a hypocrite for condemning Islamic violence. But Karen Armstrong in a piece in the Guardian Unlimited disagrees:
The Muslims who have objected so vociferously to the Pope's denigration of Islam have accused him of "hypocrisy", pointing out that the Catholic church is ill-placed to condemn violent jihad when it has itself been guilty of unholy violence in crusades, persecutions and inquisitions and, under Pope Pius XII, tacitly condoned the Nazi Holocaust.
The context shows that Armstrong credits the accusation of hypocrisy. But what Armstrong fails to realize is that what the Church did in the far-off past, but no longer does, is quite irrelevant to the question whether it is hypocritical in condemning present-day Islamic violence.
There is another incoherence in Armstrong's piece that Dennis Prager noted. Armstrong condemns the Pope for hypocrisy given the Church's alleged failure to help the Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. But she also condemns him for criticizing Islamic violence which also threatens Jews.
There is something wrong here. Not long ago Jews were under threat from Nazis, now they are under threat from militant Muslims. If Armstrong is right to criticize the Church of Pius XII — a question I leave undecided — then consistency would seem to demand that she praise Benedict XVI for speaking in defense of the Jews.
There are two ways to avoid being a hypocrite. So as to have handy labels, I'll call them the liberal way and the conservative way.
Liberal Way: Adjust your standards downwards to the point where there is no discrepancy between what you do and what you espouse. Take what you do and are inclined to do as your benchmark, and then make sure you never espouse any course of action inconsistent with it. Espouse only what you live, and live all that you espouse. This approach guarantees that you will never be a hypocrite.
Deflect moral criticism of what you do and leave undone by pointing out the utter consistency of what you do and what you espouse, and by insisting that such consistency is the acme of moral accomplishment.
Conservative Way: Espouse and defend lofty and choice-worthy standards of behavior and make a serious effort to live in accordance with them. You will fall short from time to time. But if you persevere in your striving with a sincere intention of realizing to the best of your ability high standards, you will never be a hypocrite.
Obviously, only one of these ways can be recommended, and you don't need me to tell you which one it is.
