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The Moral Theme in Political Division

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Aurel Kolnai
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Extract

In this paper, I am trying to show that antithetic political positions appear to imply different moral attitudes not only accidentally but essentially, yet in a peculiar, limited and ambiguous fashion; and that political relativism or pluralism is far from implying moral relativism or pluralism in a corresponding and co-extensive sense. In other words, the gist of my contention is that men may be agreed about the basic universal laws of morality and none the less (or, indeed, all the more significantly) differ in their response to various moral requirements and points of view as emerging in specified contexts of human practice. Political positions are not as such derived from moral demands, nor consequent upon moral errors; nor do they, as such, determine the moral convictions of those who hold them; but they tend to be associated with distinct kinds of dominant moral emphases rather than simply to respect or to disregard morality.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 35 , Issue 134 , July 1960 , pp. 234 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1960

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References

page 235 note 1 For the partly non-relativist character of Marxist ethics and its having some points in common with ordinary morality, see H. B. Acton, The Illusion of the Epoch (1955). P. 195 f.

page 237 note 1 The distinction roughly corresponds to that between teleological and deontological concepts; cf. yuNowell-Smith, P. H., Ethics (Penguin Books, 1954), p. 224 f. I hold that “ideals”, however great their moral significance may be, are as essentially distinct from universal moral obligations as are “interests” or “tastes”; but the point cannot be further argued here.Google Scholar

page 239 note 1 Cf. W. B. Gallie, “Liberal Morality and Socialist Morality” in the volume Philosophy, Politics and Society (ed. by Peter Laslett, 1956), pp. 116–33. In this most penetrating essay, the author's opinion—with which I disagree—that political ideologies with a partly antithetic moral emphasis mean “different moralities” is not unequivocally sustained.

page 240 note 1 Contrast, in classic political literature, such authors as Filmer (or even Aquinas and Hooker) with the aristocratic and libertarian rightism of Tocqueville or, to-day, B. de Jouvenel in Power (English ed. 1948).

page 241 note 1 Cf. de Jouvenel's conception of liberty as being primarily a possession, a position, and a personal character (op. dt., “Liberty' Aristocratic Roots”, pp. 270–87).

page 242 note 1 For research of this kind, see see H. J. Eysenck, The Psychology of Politics (1954), passim, especially as regards statistical enquiries into possible connections between political attitudes and types of temperament.

page 242 note 2 The formula was coined by G. K. Chesterton, writing, in that context, as an equalitarian social reformer in opposition to the cult of success and strength.

page 242 note 3 Often emphasized by Charles Maurras; see, e.g., Mes idées politiques (1937), p.55.

page 244 note 1 Cf. Karl Mannheim, Conservative Thought, in Essays on Sociology and Social Psychology (1953), p. 88, and his distinction between direct, spontaneous “psychological” traditionalism and modern “ideological” conservatism, p. 94 ff.

page 244 note 2 See Raymond Aron's distinction of realistic, critical conservatism, nostalgic traditionalism, and Fascism, in Part I, “De la Droite”, of Espoir et peur du siécle (1957), P- 38 and passim. Cf. also his logical refutation of traditionalism, p. 98, and his demarcation of realistic conservatism not only from the socialist faith in planning but also from the rightist liberal dogma of the market economy, p. 72.

page 245 note 1 Cf. the theory of a Christian Toryism, affirming the social necessity of class and status but reluctant to interpret social in terms of intrinsic superiority, as set out by Christopher Hollis in Dr. Johnson (1928), p. 9 f.

page 245 note 2 For the morally positive effect that may be produced by State compulsion, see J. D. Mabbott, The State and the Citizen (1948), pp. 66–70.

page 247 note 1 The Marxian prophecy, writes Michael Polanyi in The Logic of Liberty (1951), p. 105 f., “required from its disciples no other belief than that in the force of bodily appetites and yet at the same time satisfied their most extravagant moral hopes”.

page 247 note 2 On “rights” in the strong and in the weak sense, see D. Daiches Raphael, Moral Judgment (1955). p. 47.

page 248 note 1 See Daiches Raphael, loc. tit.

page 250 note 1 Bentham's idea of the “Panopticon” (cf. Elie Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, English ed. 1928, pp. 82 ff.), the architectural symbol of a completely perspicuous society, expresses the vision of all human affairs lying open to one governmental Reason. Given a society so ordered that the self-interest of everybody coincides with the general interest (op. cit., pp. 404–9), public Reason and Will are to represent the reason and wills of all. This is expressed in the postulate (loc. cit.) that the legislature, the representative organ of all adult citizens, shall be “omnicompetent” any checks or restraints on its competence would “contradict the Greatest Happiness Principle” by disrupting the all-embracing conspectus and calculation of utility.

page 251 note 1 For a peculiarly incisive criticism of this conception and of all ideals of a single “ethos” informing Society, see Claude Sutton, Farewell to Rousseau (1936); e.g. on p. 213: “We assert … that a man cannot be a good citizen if he only feels himself obliged to do what everyone else feels to be obligatory for everyone.”

page 252 note 1 “Il faut que la clarté du dedans et la clarté du dehors se confondent et pénètrent et que l'homme … ne discerne plus dans la re'alité nouvelle ce que jadis il appelait de noms en apparence contraires I'idéal et le réel.” From a speech by Jean Jaurés, quoted in Almanach Hachette, 1908 (my italics).

page 252 note 2 As a “non-millenarian” leftist, distrustful of human perfectibility, Raymond Aron (op. cit., p. 97 f.) names “Alain”, who in the ' twenties and' thirties was the outstanding philosopher of French radicalism. He might have added the name of Julien Benda. We might further instance the rationalist K. R. Popper in this country, and the Lutheran divine Reinhold Niebuhr in the U.S.A.

page 253 note 1 Cf. in Ulysses' speech on the destruction of “degree” and its consequences (Troilus and Cressida, I, iii), the lines (my italics): Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong, Between whose endless jar justice resides, Should lose their names, and so should justice too

page 253 note 2 Cf. in the famous passage: “But the age of chivalry is gone …” in Burke' Reflections on the Revolution in France, the actual use of “illusion” as a pro-word (a usage current in Spanish): “All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle and obedience liberal… are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratines, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity... are to be exploded…. On this new scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman …” (Everyman's ed., p. 74).

page 254 note 1 The logical impossibility of finding “a formula of overall distributive justice”—this presumption necessarily involving “indifference to the immediate obligations of commutative justice” (p. 163)—is exposed with unparalleled clearness and cogency in Ch. 9 of B. de Jouvenel, Sovereignty (English ed. 1958). At the same time, the author devotes to the problem of “social justice” a very much more positive, painstaking, sincere and intelligent attention than is usual with rightist thinkers.