I Say Good, You say Evil, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off (Montaigne, Vol. 25, pp. 42-51, 55-82, 91-98, and 115-125)

In the Old Testament, Isaiah wrote:

     "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"  Isaiah 5:20.  This is an oft-quoted verse in Christianity.

This statement presumes an ability to know what is good and what is evil.  Montaigne challenges this assumption.  He argues in his essay "That The Relish of Good and Evil Depends in a Great Measure Upon the Opinion We Have of Them" that, even though we all have the same faculties, our many different customs and opinions shows that whether something is good or evil is a matter of subjective opinion.  Montaigne argues:

     "If the original being of those things we fear had power to lodge in us by its own authority, it would then lodge itself alike, and in like manner, in all; for men are all of the same kind, and saving in greater and less proportions, are all provided with the same utensils and instruments to conceive and to judge: but the diversity of opinions we have of those things clearly evidences that they only enter us by composition; one person, peradventure, admits them in their true being, but a thousand others give them a new and contrary being in them" (115, emphasis added).

How are Good and Evil determined?

The issue is, then, whether good and evil are objectively or subjectively determined.  To address this issue, we have to define our terms.  Montaigne and Isaiah are, in my mind, addressing questions of morality.  In modern times, the moral good and the moral evil are implicated in areas of sexuality, religion, war, and administration.  It is addressed in the area that we call ethics.  This area of study addresses not only how a person should act in a certain situation, but also how we, as a people determine to govern ourselves.

Dr. Adler makes a distinction between the types of moral goods.  There is the "real good" and there is the "apparent good."  The "real good" is "the object of my natural desire" whereas the "apparent good" is the object of my "conscious desire."  (See How to Think About the Great Ideas at 145-148)  And what, Dr. Adler asks, is the distinction between natural and conscious desire?

     "... [M]y conscious desires are the particular cravings I may have in mind at any moment [like a car or a fountain pen].  Natural desires are the cravings, shall I say, the tendencies, the appetites that are built into human nature [like food, water, etc.]....  If this is understood, then you see at once that the real good, because it corresponds to the things which satisfy our natural desires, the desires that are constant on a human nature, must be the same for all human beings everywhere at all times" (Id. at 148).

Thus, Adler concludes that the real good is "what a man naturally does desire and consciously should desire" (148).  This supports, in some sense, the more objective view of good and evil.  That is, the good can be determined through a science of ethics that gives us knowledge, as opposed to opinion, regarding the good and the evil.  But this leads to another question:  what is the highest good?  (148-151)

The highest good is almost universally acknowledged to be happiness (the Stoics and Kant disagree).  And Adler describes the happy man as a man that has: (1) some degree of wealth; (2) health, pleasure, and rest; (3) friends and social life; and (4) knowledge, wisdom, and virtue.  He calls these the "four goods" (151).  The first three, Adler argues, are somewhat outside of our control, and rely in some measure on luck.  Only the fourth good, knowledge and wisdom, is "the only goods that are entirely within my control, entirely within my power of choice and action."  And thus, "these goods are the specifically moral goods, the goods upon which the possession of all these other goods depend" (151-52).  But in my mind, contrary to Adler's argument, even the capacity for knowledge and wisdom can depend in part on our ability to obtain it.

Montaigne: the Power of Custom and the Good


With this background from Professor Adler in place, let us return to Montaigne. He states in his essay Of Custom, And that We Should Not Easily Change a Law Received, that human practice spans the imagination:

     "I do believe, that no so absurd or ridiculous fancy can enter into human imagination, that does not meet with some example of public practice, and that, consequently, our reason does not ground and back up" (Great Books, Vol 25, 44).

If the limit of human practice is only limited to the limit of human imagination, then how do we decide the framework within which we allow or disallow certain practices.  And to what extent do we enforce this through the rule of law, and to what extent do we enforce this through mores and customs?

The issues surrounding these questions are illustrated to some extent in the debate surrounding gay rights.  Those opposing gay rights currently claim they are being unfairly targeted as bigots.  This led, for example, to Peter Vidmar finding it necessary to resign from a position with the Olympic Committee because of his position on Proposition 8. Others say that one of the costs of a free society is the chance that you will be denounced for taking an unpopular view.  It's part of the price of participating in the marketplace of ideas.  Taking a step outside this debate, it is to me amazing how views have changed regarding homosexuality over the past 25 years.

What I take from this development, and from reading Montaigne, is that to the extent a certain custom or practice is exercised, it is likely to that same extent that the custom is judged as good or bad.  This does not necessarily inform us as to the "goodness" or "evilness" of the particular custom, but merely that the group will find it as "good" only on the basis of its customary nature.  Public support for homosexuality, just like public support against homosexuality in the past, is not indicative (by itself) of homosexuality being "good" or "evil."  According to Adler, the "really good" arises from our natural desires.  It is for this reason that the source of homosexuality is so hotly debated.  If same sex attraction is natural and outside the control of the person possessing it, then it would be a deprivation of an actual and real good to organize society in such a way as to deprive the person the right to act on his or her natural attractions on the one hand, and society as a whole on the other hand, of that good.

In the end, what I get from Montaigne is that we should look at our customs.  We should question them and ask why they are in place.  And we should question their "goodness" not on the basis of their customary place in our lives, but rather on how they contribute to our individual or collective happiness.  This leads to another question (beyond the scope of this post) regarding the conflict that sometimes arises between the protection of individual rights and ensuring the greatest good for the greatest number.  I'm sure this issue will reassert itself again and again.

Know yourself? Yikes!! (Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Vol. 36, pp. xv - 184)

My book group decided to read Candide, and so I skipped ahead in my reading to Swift's Gulliver's Travels.  I will get things back in order (Montaigne) in my next post.

Neither Swift nor Voltaire thought too much of man and his nature.  Check out some of these quotes from Candide:

• “Pangloss still maintained that everything was for the best, but Jacques didn’t agree with him.  It must be said, said he, that men have somehow corrupted Nature, for they are not born wolves, yet that is what they become.  God gave them neither twenty-four pound cannons nor bayonets, yet they have manufactured both in order to destroy themselves.”  Voltaire, Candide, p. 9.
•  “Ask every passenger on this ship to tell you his story, and if you find a single one who has not often cursed the day of his birth, who has not often told himself that he is the most miserable of men, then you may throw me overboard head first.”  Voltaire, Candide, p. 24.
•  “… man [is] bound to live either in convulsions of misery or in the lethargy of boredom.”  Voltaire, Candide, p. 73.

And then there is this little nugget from Gulliver's Travels:

• “He looked upon [men] as a sort of animals to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen whereof we made no other use than by its assistance to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones which nature had not given us.  That we disarmed of the few abilities she had bestowed, had been very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavors to supply them by our own inventions.”  Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, p. 278.

Are Swift and Voltaire correct in their evaluations?  Are we the miserable, corrupt beings described?  If so, what are the consequences of this in the way we conduct our lives?  In the way we know things?  In the way we decide to govern ourselves?  I happen to be reading another book that addresses some of these issues.  Gordon Wood, in his excellent Creation of the American Republic tracked the political thought of the framers of the Constitution from 1776 to 1787.  This quote by Noah Webster in 1787 was revealing:

      "... government 'takes its form and structure from the genius and habits of the people; and if              on paper a form is not accommodated to those habits, it will assume a new form, in spite of all the formal sanctions of the supreme authority of the State ... A paper declaration is a very feeble barrier against the force of national habits and inclinations" (Wood 377).

So, what did the framers think about the "genius and habits of the people"?  Wood argues that the framers were disappointed that the Americans  immediately following the revolution proved themselves to be less than virtuous.  William Van Murray, in responding to Montesquieu's argument that republicanism was dependent on virtue, argued that "[t]he republics of antiquity failed because they had 'attempted to force the human character into distorted shapes'" (Wood 611).  And in synthesizing many of the arguments of the late 1780s, Wood argued: "America would remain free not because of any quality in its citizens of spartan self-sacrifice to some nebulous public good, but in the last analysis because of the concern each individual would have in his own self-interest and personal freedom" (612).

In the end, the founders did not design the constitution for a virtuous people nor is virtue necessary for the success of our republican democracy.  The checks and balances and the separations of power and other doctrines create incredibly inefficient government processes.  But because we are self-interested and by nature corrupt, the founders thought it necessary to put these controls in place.  "If men were angels," argued Madison in The Federalist 51, "no government would be necessary."  This is not to say that public virtue is non-existent.  Nor is it to say that it is unnecessary (yes, I strongly disagree with Ayn Rand and her philosophy of selfishness).  It is to say, though, that it is unrealistic to rely exclusively on public virtue as the foundation of good government.

Swift, and to a lesser extent Voltaire, clearly do not think highly of humanity.  The framers are for the most part in their camp.  The divisiveness and conflict present today is not new nor will it go away soon.  But because our constitution is designed to our habits and inclinations as self-interested and often selfish creatures, I think our republican democracy will weather the current (and future) storms.

Whence Is Evil? (The Book of Job and Saint Augustine, Vol. 18, pp. 1-125)

As a young and idealistic 19 year old, I served an LDS mission in Texas (as a "visa-waiter") and in Belgium and France.  While working as a missionary, the question that I was asked more than any other was: if there is a God, then why is there so much pain and suffering in the world?  I answered the stock answer I was taught.  Evil was there to test us and to make us better.  For there is an opposition in all things, as it says in the Book of Mormon.  

But this is a difficult problem for believers.  Much more difficult than I had supposed when I was on my mission. If God is perfect and omniscient, then why does he permit evil to occur?  If, as it says in Genesis 1:31, "God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good," then how do we reconcile this "goodness" with the evil that is all around us?

The answer to this question is never adequately answered in the Book of Job.  At least not intellectually.  In fact, God is a fickle being in this story.  He enters into a wager with Satan (his creation) and allows Satan to tempt Job with horrible afflictions, including the loss of his friends, his riches, and his family.  When Job prays for help, God gives him the "do you know who I am?" treatment:  "Where was thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?  declare, if thou hast understanding."  Job 38:4.  

So why did God enter into a wager with Satan?  Why does God delay the punishment of the wicked?  And bring misery to the just?  Job's answer to this question is: "I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not."  Job 42:3.  And from God's perspective, as written in the Book of Isaiah.  "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord."  Isaiah 55:8.  In the end, we are to take it on faith that God can do what we mere mortals cannot.  And God has his reasons for doing whatever he needs to do.  For the non-believer, this is a convenient answer.  A way for religious authorities to maintain control over their followers.  For believers, this is a faith-promoting story designed to show people an example of faithful submission to God.  

Augustine takes a more intellectual approach.  Augustine really struggled with the problem of evil.  "Whence is evil?" he asked in Book III, 12 (p. 16).  Later, he lamented: "understood I not, clearly and without difficulty, the cause of evil."  (Book VII, 4, p. 44). Augustine later considers the notion that "free-will was the cause of our doing ill..."  (Book VII, 5, p. 44).  But he is not initially satisfied with this answer.  "Who made me?  Did not my God, Who is not only good, but goodness itself?" he asks.  "Whence then came I to will evil and nill good, so that I am thus justly punished?"  In other words, if God is good, then why did he create man to commit evil?  Augustine eventually comes to the conclusion that God did not make evil and that evil is not a substance:

"That evil then, which I sought whence it is, is not any substance: for were it a substance, it should be good.  For either it should be an incorruptible substance, and so a chief good; or a corruptible substance, which, unless it were good, could not be corrupted.  I perceived therefore, and it was manifested to me, that Thou madest all things good, nor is there any substance at all which Thou madest not all things equal, therefore are all things; because each is good, and altogether very good, because our God made all things very good."  (Book VII, 18, p. 49).  

As Adler argued, "[t]hus man cannot blame God for having created him evil.  For man and everything else that God created are good insofar as they are.  Evil comes into the world from free will which turns to something that is less good in preference to a greater good"  (Adler 93).  Augustine concluded that iniquity was composed "of no substance, but the perversion of the will, turned aside from Thee, O God, the Supreme, towards these lower things, and casting out its bowels, and puffed up outwardly."  (Book VII, 22, p. 50).  Thus, there is no evil that comes from God.  "There are only greater and lesser goods.  Evil consists not in choosing something intrinsically evil, but in choosing a lesser good rather than a greater one" (Adler 93).

Is Augustine's premise that there is no evil substance in the world correct?  Are mosquitoes, dirt, and cancer "good"?  Mosquitoes surely (or perhaps arguably) play some important role in nature, from dirt comes food, and cancer is merely an excess of cells (as I understand it correctly).  What about the Christian conception of Satan?  Is his fall from grace the result of will, or is this being inherently evil?  Augustine (at least) gives a principled, logical, and interesting argument to help him reconcile the problem of evil with his belief in the divinity of God.  While I do not find it completely satisfying, I do not pretend to have the intellect to refute this notion of free will as the cause of evil.  I will have to revisit this issue.