Accusations of Hypocrisy as Themselves Hypocritical

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.)

Roughly, then, a hypocrite is a dissembler: he puts on a false or misleading appearance thereby concealing rather than revealing his true nature.  One way is by preaching what one has no intention of practicing.  Picture the corpulent Schopenhauer seated at a table laden with delectables holding forth with a show of vast erudition on the moral worth of dietary abstemiousness and asceticism in general all the while availing himself without restraint of the table's bounty.  It is not merely the discrepancy between profession and actual behavior that makes the hypocrite.  For not everyone in whom there is this discrepancy is a hypocrite.  What makes the hypocrite is the absence of the intention to live in accordance with the moral demand that he enunciates.  If I sincerely intend to live in accordance with a moral standard, then my inevitable lapses, even if frequent, do not make me a hypocrite.  If everyone who exhibits weakness of the will in some or all respects were a hypocrite, then we would all be hypocrites, with the consequent 'semantic drainage' rendering 'hypocrite' a useless term.

So I lay down the following necessary but insufficient condition for a person P's exhibiting hypocrisy at a time t in respect of standard S: P exhibits hypocrisy in respect of S at t only if P sincerely intends to satisfy the demands of S at or around t.  I should think that this is a condition of adequacy for any theory of hypocrisy. It lays down a condition for the correct use of the term regardless of how people misuse it in ordinary language.  Ordinary language is but a point of departure in philosophical inquiry: we start from it but are not tied to it and often must deviate from it.

(It is worth noting that to exhibit hypocrisy at a time with respect to a standard or ideal or demand is not to be a hypocrite: a hypocrite is a person who typically or rather habitually exhibits hypocrisy with respect to many standards or ideals or demands.  Don't ask me how many.) 

Now I come to my double-barreled point.  First, if I must know your intentions if I am to accuse you of hypocrisy justly, then it would appear that just imputations of hypocrisy are difficult if not impossible.  Given my temporal and linguistic and cultural distance from the Roman Stoic Seneca, how can I, with any show of justice, accuse him of hypocrisy?  Historians and classicists may perhaps have good evidence of a yawning chasm between what he preached in his writings and certain facts of his life such as his amassing of wealth.  But without access to his intentions no just accusation of hypocrisy can be made.

Second, if I do accuse someone of hypocrisy do I not, by this very accusation, evince hypocrisy in myself? For do I not, in levelling an accusation of hypocrisy, pretend to be other than I am, namely, a person with the power to discern the intentions of others?  Do I not pretend to be better than I am, more discerning than I am, more en rapport with the demands of morality than I am? We noted at the outset that a hypocrite is an actor, a phony, a pretender, a dissembler: he makes himself appear to be what he is not.  But the critic of the hypocrite does the same: he postures as one who can peer into the soul of another to ferret out the other's insincerity.

Consider the liberals who jumped all over Bill Bennett, he of The Book of Virtues, when he was discovered wasting money on Las Vegas slot machines.  Whether or not Bennett was a hypocrite in respect of his slot playing -- and I would argue that he was not -- it seems clear that some of the liberals who accused him were.  For they could not have known whether it had been his intention to adhere to some stringent and indeed supererogatory demand regarding gambling.  They were pretending to judge where they could not judge.

There is a related point that needs to be explored in a separate post, namely, whether one can be a hypocrite in respect of the supererogatory.  There is no reasonable moral duty that one refrain from drinking and gambling as such.  There is certainly nothing wrong with taking a drink and shaking hands with a one-armed bandit.  Now suppose a man recommends abstention from gambling on the ground that the time and money spent could be put to better use.  If he lives in accordance with his recommendation, then his doing so is supererogatory: meritorious, but above and beyond the call of duty.  But suppose he recommends abstention from gambling, but has no intention of refraining from occasional, moderate, legal gambling with his own money that he can afford to spend.  Is he then a hypocrite when he gambles?  I incline to a negative answer.  There is no hypocrisy in respect of the supererogatory.  I concede that this is not obvious and needs further examination.

One more observation.  What was it that so incensed so many liberals and leftists about Bennett's behavior?  It is not that he failed to practice what he preached, but that he, an imperfect man, made moral judgments of others.  But if a hypocrite is a morally imperfect person who makes negative moral judgments of others, then by the same token, some of Bennett's critics were themselves hypocrites:  for they, imperfect to a man, made negative moral judgments about Bennett.

This raises some further questions.  Must one be morally perfect for one's moral judgments of others to be free of hypocrisy?  Is that the meaning of the NT "Judge not lest ye be judged?"  Could a case be made that all moral judgments of human beings by human beings are hypocritical?  I rather doubt it, but the question is worth exploring.  It is also worth exploring whether some libs and lefties think this and whether this is what fuels their outrage at the 'hypocrisy' of conservatives.

Furthermore, can you legitimately skewer another for failing to do what you yourself think there is no moral obligation to do, e.g., refrain from adultery?  Suppose that Lenny the Leftist waxes gleeful over some televangelist's getting caught with a Lost Wages hooker.  Now Lenny has no objection to any and all sexual acts among consenting adults.  So what fuels his gleeful outrage at Telly's adultery?  Is it not a fake outrage?  A hypocritical outrage?  If the demands you place on yourself are ridiculous, then what am I doing when I criticize you for not living up to what I think there is no obligation to live up to?

The plot thickens.

Comments

[Richard the Disambiguated]

The following is excerpted from Neal Stephenson's /The Diamond Age/, one of the best science fiction novels I have ever read, set about 40 years in the future. This particular section is a rather amazing discussion of our culture's current views of hypocrisy: http://fukamachi.org/wp/2006/04/18/hypocrisy/

[Philoponus]

What do you all think about this HIGHLY fictionalized case?
I too live in Gold Canyon, and one Wednesday I go into my local Circle K to buy my weekly Lotto ticket. The clerk says “sorry, your friend Dr Vallicella just cleaned us out. 100 tickets. He’s been buying 50 per week for a long time, but now he’s really stepping up. He tells people on his blog, you know, not to buy Lottos. I think he just wants to discourage competition!” Later that day I see Dr Vallicella and, without telling him I know, ask him if he has had a long-standing gambling addiction. He denies it, and from my experience of the man, I believe he has no problem with compulsions or addictions. His Lotto purchases are not akratic or neurotic behaviour. Have I then unmasked a hypocrite?

[Philoponus]

Sometimes etymology is helpful and exerts a force in controlling the present meaning, sometimes not (e.g., "egregious"). HYPOCRITES in Plato means a stage actor, and it continues with this meaning into Roman Imperial times, though by the first century AD it had also acquired the pejorative sense of a poseur. So in the NT.

An actor is someone who impersonates another on the stage. A stage impersonation is necessarily intentional or deliberate. A hypocrite is someone who in real life impersonates or poses as someone else who has (moral) excellences the hypocrite lacks. Hence, we say his impersonation is a deliberate and mendacious pretense, in word and deed, to be better than he is in some morally significant way.

The case of Seneca is instructive. The facts, as Bill says, are not certain, but here they are (from memory). Seneca serves as Nero’s tutor and then secretary/advisor until he resigns late in Nero’s reign. During this period Seneca amasses great wealth. In fact, he earns the reputation of being one of the richest and most money-hungry men in Rome. Making money and advising the murderous Nero are his day jobs. At night he writes all these famous letters and essays pushing a hard Stoic line: externals like wealth and power aren’t goods, we would do much better spurning them and pursuing virtue, etc. I can’t recall a letter where he actually claims he is doing his best to live a virtuous life, but he certainly implies it in many places. He poses as at least a Stoic proficient in the letters, wile in fact he is living in a way completely foreign to the one he commends. Is he hopelessly akratic and neurotic, or just a big hypocrite?

[Bill Vallicella]

The Lottery Player (http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2009/03/the-lottery-player.html) is but one of my posts in which I fulminate against state-run lotteries. I have never purchased a lottery ticket in my life and never will. But suppose I do what Phil fantasizes me doing. In these counterfactual circumstances, I do what I advise others not to do. This is exactly similar to the Bill Bennett case except that Las Vegas gambling is not state-sponsored though it is state-sanctioned. The question is whether one can be a hypocrite with respect to the supererogatory. Note that there is nothing immoral or illegal about gambling/buying lottery tickets assuming that one can afford them. We can also assume with Phil that there is nothing akratic or compulsive or neurotic about the behavior.

Now was Bennett's behavior hypocritical or not? Well, it depends on one's theory of hypocrisy. This is one of the points I am trying to drive home. It's a *theoretical* question, a question that can be answered properly and definitively only within the context of an adequate comprehensive theory of moral phenomena, one that covers not just hypocrisy but related phenomena such as self-deception, bad faith, insincerity, lying, exaggerating, bullshitting, and so on. One cannot go simply by 'what one is inclined to say.'

Phil is inclined to say that Bennett is a hypocrite. But what is his basis for saying that?

Bullshitting bears some relation to hypocrisy. Harry Frankfurt has given us a theory of bullshit. Without such a 'regimentation' all manner of things could be called bullshit.

So I would challenge Phil to tell us what his method is.

[Bill Vallicella]

Richard,

Thanks for the link. That is a good piece of writing and does bring out some of the issues I have been discussing. I had to laugh, though, at the utter stupidity of the one comment appended to the piece.

[Bill Vallicella]

Phil,

I note that you did not address one of my central points, namely, that to judge whether a man is a hypocrite one would have to know his intentions, and how could you know that without pretending to be something you are not?

[Mike]

"What makes the hypocrite is the absence of the intention to live in accordance with the moral demand that he enunciates. If I sincerely intend to live in accordance with a moral standard, then my inevitable lapses, even if frequent, do not make me a hypocrite."

Just quick points. Suppose I've lost my legs in a terrible accident. I can sincerely hold forth on the value of running, never intend to run, tell you that I never intend to run, and be no hypocrite. It seems necessary that the hypocrite be able to perform the actions he recommends. On the other hand, suppose I do sincerely intend to perform what I claim is valuable. I might still be a hypocrite, since my motive for performing the action might not be the reasons I offer for it's value. For instance, suppose I urge you to do logic exercises because it improves logical acumen, and such acumen is valuable. Suppose now that I do such exercises, but only to impress Sue and her friends, and never pursue it for it real value. I'm still a hyocrite, despite the fact that I am sincerely pursuing what I claim is valuable. The problem is that, despite appearences, I'm not pursuing what I claim is valuable. I'm pursuing Sue.

[Mike]

Better. I'm pursing what I claim is valuable, but only as a means to impressing Sue.

[Quinn]

At the end of the second paragraph you say,

"If everyone who exhibits weakness of the will in some or all respects were a hypocrite, then we would all be hypocrites, with the consequent 'semantic drainage' rendering 'hypocrite' a useless term."

Well, assuming you mean the term 'hypocrite' becomes useless because it becomes meaningless, I would have to risk being hypocritical myself by pointing out the blatant hypocrisy in your use of a contrast argument after having gone on at length in recent weeks about how bad they are.

By the way, I love your blog. I've been reading for a while but this is my first comment.

[Bill Vallicella]

Quinn,

Glad you like the blog and thanks for the comment. I was hoping someone would make your objection which I saw coming. True, I rejected contrast arguments earlier, arguments of the form:

1. If a term T is meaningful, then there are items to which T does not apply.
2. There are no items to which T does not apply.
Ergo
3. T is not meaningful.

I reject as false (1). For example, 'self-identical' is a meaningful term, but there are no items to which 'self-identical' does not apply. So I reject as unsound the following contrast argument:

1* If 'hypocrite' is meaningful, then there are people to whom 'hypocrite' does not apply.
2* There are no people to whom 'hypocrite' does not apply.
Ergo
3* 'Hypocrite' is not meaningful.

I reject as unsound this last argument because I reject as false both premises.

But note the difference between 'hypocrite' and 'self-identical.' We know that everything is self-identical and nothing self-diverse. We also know that some people are hypocrites and some are not even given the fact that we disagree as to the correct definition of 'hypocrite.' Given the fact that some but not all of us are hypocrites, we cannot so define 'hypocrite' that it applies to everyone. If we did that we would drain the term of its specific meaning and render it useless. It would still have a meaning, but a meaning so broad as to be useless.

Consider 'morally defective.' The phrase applies to all of us, but this fact does not render it meaningless. To think otherwise is to make the mistake embodied in the major premise of contrast arguments. By contrast, 'hypocrite' does not apply to all of us. Therefore, to use it is such a way that it does is to renbder it useless for the specific purpose that we need it for.

I sum, I didn't give a contrast argument; I didn't contradict what I said earlier; and I didn't fail to practive what I preach. You, however, confused uselessness with meaninglessness.

[Bill Vallicella]

Mike,

Your point seems correct. Suppose X is morally required and I publically enjoin the doing of X. I am able to do X. I sincerely intend to do X. Your point is that I might still be a hypocrite if my intending to do X is not for the right reason. That sounds right. But if all these conditions are met, including the one about intending for the right reason, and I fail to do X out of weakness then I am not a hypocrite.

[Philoponus]

Bill,

You've misjudged me on the Bennett Case. I did not presume to judge. I don’t have a copy of the Book of Virtues, and I don’t know what he says and what he personally professes regarding gambling. While I don’t see the attraction myself, I understand that some people (including my mother-in-law!) find it a highly enjoyable recreation. Where’s the harm, unless you lie about it or spend more than you can afford? A wealthy man who drop a few hundred playing slots is not irrational, or immoral, or hypocritical.

I didn’t pass over your point about intentions in my two exempla. I took pains to make it clear that both Bill the Gambler and Seneca were perpetrating deliberate or intentional deceptions. When a behaviour goes on for a long time and can even be called chronic—Seneca was about his daily money-grubbing in Rome for a dozen years or so—then it’s impossible to dismiss it an impulsive lapse. (Bennett was seen at the slots once, I asume.) Unless there is some hidden psycho-pathology, we see Bill the Gamble and Seneca engage ,but try to conceal, behaviours they habitually want and choose to perform. Where I’m not sure I agree with you, is the requirement that we need to know what exactly are their motives or intentions are. We can know, I’m suggesting, that actions are intentional or deliberate without knowing what the intentions are.

Most cases of hypocrisy confirm the banality of evil. The hypocritical politicians and business people and tele-preachers that are unmasked every day are hypocrites because they really love money and power and illicit pleasures, but know that their public positions required them to hide their vices. Nothing mysterious or very interesting there, but there are some cases, like the two exempla I tried to construct, which are different because we don’t so easily understand why that man would subject himself to living like a hypocrite. I don’t pretend to understand why Seneca was a grand hypocrite, but it seems to me that he was. Likewise, I don’t understand why Bill the Gambler wastes much of his income on Lottos.

[Wm Tingley]

Bill,

You wrote: “[I]f I must know your intentions if I am to accuse you of hypocrisy justly, then it would appear that just imputations of hypocrisy are difficult if not impossible. … [W]ithout access to his intentions no just accusation of hypocrisy can be made.”

I’m not sure of your purpose in making this point, Bill, because I doubt you actually believe it is impossible for us to assess another’s intention. (Unless it was the Maverick Provocateur who wrote this. ;)

We do have access to the intentions of others. That’s how we judge their words and deeds. That’s how we determine whether a homicide is self-defense, manslaughter, or murder. However, that access is indirect. We rely upon our knowledge of what is essential in human nature to put the directly observable particulars of an act in a context from which we can reasonably infer the actor’s intention. I don’t think this is controversial pace the die-hard nominalist.

Granted, we may not always learn enough from the particulars to determine intention, so judgment must be reserved in many cases. Even so, I don’t see how the critic of a hypocrite is necessarily a hypocrite himself – at least, if he is not posing as a mind-reader.

Regards,
Bill T

[Wm Tingley]

Phil,

You wrote: "We can know, I’m suggesting, that actions are intentional or deliberate without knowing what the intentions are."

This strikes me as self-contradictory. If I judge an act as intentional, then I am claiming to know the intention of the actor -- namely, to willfully commit the act he did. Now, if by intention you mean motive, I will grant your point. Indeed, the criminal justice system agrees with you. While intent is often an element of a crime that must be proven, I do not believe motive ever is.

Regards,
Bill T