normblog

The meaning of moral authority

Discussing the global attention now fixed on the person of Nelson Mandela as he lies in hospital - 'a man whose name alone carries a unique moral weight in any language' - Jonathan Freedland poses the following question:

[M]oral authority is a strange, elusive quality. We feel we know it when we see it, but what exactly does it amount to?

His answer centres on suffering. This is, Jonathan says, the 'usual prerequisite'. Most of those who are seen as possessing moral authority have 'experienced an ordeal that commands our sympathy and therefore our respect'. Suffering isn't sufficient on its own, he goes on to say. Usually, those with moral authority have also 'channeled their experience into a struggle, whether for justice, peace or an end to violence'.

That Jonathan has focused here on a common background circumstance of moral authority is not in doubt, and it is also true that, where it does apply, the earlier suffering of an individual thought to have moral authority is central to the way we think about why they have it. Roughly: this man or woman went through much - made great sacrifices and/or had to endure harsh deprivations - for the (good) cause they championed; they deserve to be listened to.

At one point in his column, however, Jonathan comes close to saying that the various constituents of moral authority he is discussing are not merely its 'usual prerequisites' but preconditions of it without qualification; he says:

If these are the essential ingredients [my italics] of moral authority it's not hard to see why Mandela is the uber-example. His suffering, his response to it and his wider campaign for justice are all of a scale and import without parallel.

But, important as it may be when it is relevant, suffering is not only not a sufficient condition of moral authority, it is not a necessary condition of it either. Suffering is not a sufficient condition because out of suffering some people fashion dreams of violent revenge, not even always aimed against the perpetrators of the original suffering, and such dreams mostly do not encourage in others moral respect for those who nurture them.

And suffering is not a necessary condition of moral authority because a person can also come to be seen as having moral authority on the model, roughly speaking, of the sage - someone who is wise not through personal suffering but through some combination of humility, thoughtfulness, long study, having a proven record of giving good advice over an extended period, enjoying intellectual authority in an area thought to be pertinent to the advice they give, and so on. Think about Primo Levi. He, of course, did suffer, having been a prisoner at Auschwitz, and the moral authority he was widely seen as possessing was importantly due to that. But his voice enjoyed a special authority even among Holocaust survivors and that has to be due to the wisdom so many found in what he wrote.

In principle, the two things are separable, the suffering and the wisdom. And it is possible to think of figures seen as commanding moral authority but not because their own lives have been lives of suffering. It's harder to cite uncontroversial examples, since - to put it crudely - your sage and mine may not be the same ones. For many people today Noam Chomsky is a man of moral authority. Not for me. I think of Michael Walzer in the way they do of Chomsky. The abstract figure is clear, in any case. Not someone who is always right, since no one is that; but someone whose view you want to know, because they think deeply about moral questions and have an admirable record of careful deliberation on difficult questions.

Pictures from out of the dark

If you missed the Beeb's programme about Vivian Maier, you can still watch it for a while. She left 150,000 photographs, most of them not seen in her lifetime. Read about her here:

She left thousands not even developed, and most as negatives from which she never made prints.

It was sheer accident that her life's work was discovered.

Two years before she died in 2009, Vivian Maier stopped paying the rent on five storage lockers in Chicago. Without her knowledge the contents were sold.

Or sample some of her pictures: from New York, and Chicago, and round and about.

Faces of courage

Being portraits of some of those recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous among the Nations - people in Europe during the Nazi period who 'believed that the Jews belonged to their universe of obligation' and took risks to honour that obligation. See also the photographs of rescuers and those they rescued, together.

Images of the Tour

Tomorrow 'will mark a difficult anniversary to truly celebrate. On June 29, the 100th running of the Tour de France - the world[']s most gruelling, most important and most popular bicycle race - will begin. The race, however, has also become synonymous with the plague of performance enhancing drugs... [O]n the eve of the 100th running of what was once among the single greatest athletic endeavors the world had to offer, SPIEGEL ONLINE has assembled some of the event's most iconic images.'

Justice Scalia enemy of the human race?

Yesterday's ruling by the US Supreme Court that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, discriminating against gay couples, is a most welcome one indeed. Andrew Sullivan has some pertinent observations about it here. As someone who has been highlighting the feebleness of arguments against gay marriage regularly since 2005, I suppose I should have expected an extreme response to the Supreme Court's decision in some quarters. But I must say I'm rather surprised by one element of the reaction to it contained in Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinion. As is said here, Scalia 'deploys the cries of victimhood'. He does so, in particular, in the following paragraph:

But to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution. In the majority's judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to "disparage," "injure," "degrade," "demean," and "humiliate" our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homosexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence - indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race.

First of all, it is not only the purpose of the statute but the effect of it that matters, but let that pass. Not everyone will be familiar with the full legal resonance of the phrase hostes humani generis (enemies of the human race), though Justice Scalia himself ought to be. In international law, having been applied initially to those guilty of the crime of piracy, it later came to be extended to those involved in the slave trade, and in due course to individuals responsible for crimes against humanity more generally. So, whether wittingly or not, Scalia is taking on by association here the victimhood burden of a charge of that gravity - that he and the others in the minority on the Court are being treated as if they were criminals against humanity. Which would be severe on them if it were true, but it isn't.

The vilest book I've read

I think I've found it: the worst book I've ever read. (I'm only talking about novels here, by the way.) In general, there are books one likes or loves, others one dislikes, and then many that are ranged across the space in between; but a single best-loved book or a single least-liked - those are harder to fix on. My own best? Maybe Anna Karenina or Crime and Punishment or Jane Eyre or Emma. To settle for just one is a challenge.

Yet I now have just one most detested novel. The odd thing is that it's by a writer I really like: Tom Franklin. He's the author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, which I recommended here. Because I liked it so much, I went on to read Franklin's Hell at the Breech and his collection of stories Poachers; the latter has behind it the word of Philip Roth, no less, but anyway I was disappointed by neither.

Then, however, I read Smonk. Far be it from me to be too categorical about this, but Smonk is a relentless catalogue - and by 'relentless' I mean page by page by page - of graphic violence, incest, murder, rape, cruelty, faecal episodes of one kind and another, one's guy's glass eye carried around in someone else's mouth, and on and on and on. Normally I would have abandoned a book I was disliking so much, but I had to see if it added up to something that made this all worthwhile. It doesn't. It's the vilest book I've read.

Socialism like a camping trip?

I have learned from the publishers of Contemporary Politics, in which my paper on Jerry Cohen's camping-trip argument appears, that the paper can now be freely accessed for a period. I have put the link under 'Garage' on my sidebar at 'Socialism like a camping trip?'

The great man Robert Mugabe

I can't imagine what has come over Matthew Parris, a journalist I generally enjoy reading. After a visit to the grave of Cecil John Rhodes (a place I know well, incidentally, its location in the Matopos - as was - being not far from the several sites of picnics taken by my family when I was a boy), Parris indulges the conceit that in due course Robert Mugabe might come to be buried next to Rhodes (£):

When the time comes, even as a sort-of white Rhodesian, I should like to see Mugabe's memorial alongside Rhodes in that sacred place. I know the President is from the Mashona people, historic foes of the Matabele. I know Rhodes did many cruel things, dispossessed and killed many people and cheated Chief Lobengula unforgivably. But still, for his restless and unbounded energy, for his vast achievements and for his almost limitless vision, I would call Rhodes's a great life.

Exit half my readers. Now to alienate the other half. I know Robert Mugabe has made some terrible mistakes, brought his country for a while close to ruin and been associated with the murder of many Matabele people. But still, for his tremendous ambition, his long fight against overwhelming odds, and his deliverance of his people from submission to another race, he deserves the name of both warrior and leader, and I would call his a great life.

Great men may do brutal things. History is shaped by complicated people, their greatness seldom uncompromised, their nobility tangled with infamy, their wisdom with folly. For good or ill and usually both, they stamp indelibly their age and their country, and we can respect without always approving. I should one day like to see Cecil John Rhodes and Robert Gabriel Mugabe side by side in that awesome place.

In Rhodes's case, the man is beyond the reach of justice, and one may, I suppose, form whatever view one wants of his stature and his life. Mugabe, however, is still with us, and some of the things he has presided over were not just 'mistakes'. In the Gukurahundi in the early 1980s Zimbabwe's North-Korean-trained Fifth Brigade massacred some 20,000 civilians. That is a plain crime against humanity and even if one does think, as Parris appears to, that Mugabe is a 'great man', it is no longer legally permitted to great men to 'do brutal things' on such a scale. Then, more recently, there's the open violence, as well as various other electoral malpractices, used by Mugabe's supporters to maintain Mugabe and ZANU-PF in power.

I find it one-sided, to put it no more strongly, that Parris should be wondering about how to honour this man on his death, without any complementary reflection on whether he shouldn't first be made to stand up in some court somewhere for his crimes.

America from Europe

My goodness, I did enjoy this. You might too:

"Stupid, stupid. Americans are stupid. America is stupid. A stupid, stupid country made stupid by stupid, stupid people." I particularly remember that because of the nine stupids. It was said over a dinner table by a professional woman, a clever, clever, clever woman. Hardback-educated, bespokely traveled, liberally humane, worked in the arts. I can't remember specifically why she said it, what evidence of New World idiocy triggered the trope. Nor do I remember what the reaction was, but I don't need to remember. It would have been a nodded and muttered agreement. Even from me. I've heard this cock crow so often I don't even feel guilt for not wringing its neck.

Among the educated, enlightened, expensive middle classes of Europe, this is a received wisdom. A given. Stronger in some countries like France, less so somewhere like Germany, but overall the Old World patronizes America for being a big, dumb, fat, belligerent child. The intellectuals, the movers and the makers and the creators, the dinner-party establishments of people who count, are united in the belief - no, the knowledge - that Americans are stupid, crass, ignorant, soul-less, naïve oafs without attention, irony, or intellect. These same people will use every comforting, clever, and ingenious American invention, will demand America's medicine, wear its clothes, eat its food, drink its drink, go to its cinema, love its music, thank God for its expertise in a hundred disciplines, and will all adore New York. More than that, more shaming and hypocritical than that, these are people who collectively owe their nations' and their personal freedom to American intervention and protection in wars, both hot and cold. Who, whether they credit it or not, also owe their concepts of freedom, equality, and civil rights in no small part to America. Of course, they will also sign collective letters accusing America of being a Fascist, totalitarian, racist state.

Enough. Enough, enough, enough of this convivial rant, this collectively confirming bigotry. The nasty laugh of little togetherness, or Euro-liberal insecurity. It's embarrassing, infectious, and belittling. Look at that European snapshot of America. It is so unlike the country I have known for 30 years. Not just a caricature but a travesty, an invention. Even on the most cursory observation, the intellectual European view of the New World is a homemade, Old World effigy that suits some internal purpose. The belittling, the discounting, the mocking of Americans is not about them at all. It's about us, back here on the ancient, classical, civilized Continent. Well, how stupid can America actually be? On the international list of the world's best universities, 14 of the top 20 are American. Four are British. Of the top 100, only 4 are French, and Heidelberg is one of 4 that creeps in for the Germans. America has won 338 Nobel Prizes. The U.K., 119. France, 59. America has more Nobel Prizes than Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia combined. Of course, Nobel Prizes aren't everything, and America's aren't all for inventing Prozac or refining oil. It has 22 Peace Prizes, 12 for literature. (T. S. Eliot is shared with the Brits.)

And are Americans emotionally dim, naïve, irony-free? Do you imagine the society that produced Dorothy Parker and Lenny Bruce doesn't understand irony? It was an American who said that political satire died when they awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger. It's not irony that America lacks; it's cynicism. In Europe, that arid sneer out of which nothing is grown or made is often mistaken for the creative scalpel of irony.

This is A.A. Gill on 'America the Marvelous' - and there's more. I particularly commend to your attention the anecdote involving Salman Rushdie in the third-last paragraph. It's a beauty; it drives home the point in the best way possible.

Syria's agony

Two excerpts from a long piece by Robert Worth in the New York Times on the sectarian dynamic unfolding in that country powerfully convey it:

[T]here is another reason for the unpolished face of the Syrian rebellion, a crueler one. One night in Damascus, I met a 33-year-old computer programmer named Amir who had been part of the nonviolent protest movement from the beginning. "We started the protests with three principles: nonviolence, no foreign interference and no sectarianism," Amir said in English as we strolled in the cool night air. "The regime targeted the protesters until they were forced to abandon all three of them."

I asked if he was still active in the rebellion. "They put me in prison for two days," he said. "I was not tortured, no one even said a bad word to me. But for me it was - " He stumbled for words, then turned toward me. "You know how Dante went to hell and was allowed to return? This cell was 10 meters square, with 152 people in it. It was two stories underground. There is no air, you feel constantly that you will choke. They had an undeclared system: for the first week, you stand, all day and all night. Then you get to lean against the wall for a few days. Then you get to sit. When you are standing, you are terrified to fall asleep, because you may never get up. Some people were there for only a few hours, some for days or weeks, and some had been tortured in ways I never imagined. For food, you get a bit of bread and some water, but that does not matter. You get about 30 seconds, once a day, in the bathroom, but trust me, you are not even worried about that. Because there are people in there who are literally asking for death." He stopped talking, and after a pause, I asked him why he had been arrested.

"I lit a candle at a funeral vigil," he said.

And:

Amer Ali had gathered them to tell their stories of relatives or spouses lost to the war. I listened to them, one by one. They were working-class people: soldiers, construction workers, police officers. All were Alawites, as far as I could tell. Some were probably shabiha, though none of them would have used that word. One of them, a middle-aged construction worker named Adib Sulayman, pulled out his cellphone and showed me the message he received after his son Yamin was kidnapped by rebels: "We have executed God's will and killed your son. If you are still fighting with Bashar, we will come to your houses and cut you into pieces. Never fight against us."

A 20-year-old man who had been shot twice in the head and had lost some of his memory and half his hearing told me he would go back to the front as soon as his wounds healed. His father stared at me and said: "I would be proud to have my son become a martyr. I am in my 50s, but I am ready to sacrifice my life, too. They thought we would be weak in this crisis, but we are strong."

After lunch, Aliaa's uncle showed me around the house. On the wall was a Sword of Ali, an important symbol for Alawites, with verses engraved on the blade. There were old farming tools, a stick for catching snakes, hunting knives and a century-old carbine - a kind of visual history of the Alawite people. There were ancient Phoenician amphorae and a framed photograph of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah.

Later, Amer Ali led me to the roof, where we gazed out at the town where his family has lived for hundreds of years. The hills were lovely in the golden afternoon sunlight. You could see an ancient spring with a stone arch over it, and a mosque that was built by one of his ancestors 240 years ago. Aliaa stood next to me on the terrace, looking out at the town with an expression of rapturous pride. I asked her how it made her feel to know that Western human rights groups had documented repeated atrocities by the Syrian regime - some, perhaps, by people like the ones we had just talked to. Aliaa glanced downward. "Yes, there have been atrocities," she said. "You can never deny that there have been atrocities. But you have to ask yourself: What will happen if Bashar falls? That's why I believe victory is the only option. If Bashar falls, Syria falls. And then we, here, will all be in the niqab" - the full veil worn in conservative Muslim societies - "or we will be dead."

(Via Jeff.)