Maverick Philosopher

Moral Phenomena in the Vicinity of Hypocrisy

 When is one a hypocrite?  Let's consider some cases.

C1. A man sincerely advocates a high standard of moral behavior, and in the main he practices what he preaches.  But on occasion he succumbs to temptation, repents, and resolves to do better next time.  Is such a person a hypocrite?  Clearly not.  If he were, then we would all be hypocrites, and the term 'hypocrite,' failing of contrast, would become useless.  A hypocrite cannot be defined as one who fails to practice what he preaches since we all, at some time or other, fail to practice what we preach.  An adequate definition must allow for moral failure.

C2. A man sincerely advocates a high standard of behavior, but, for whatever reason, he makes no attempt to live in accordance with his advocacy.  Here we have a clear case of a hypocrite.

C3. Let the high standard be sexual purity in thought, word, and deed.  Consider now the case of a person, call him Lenny, who does not accept this standard.  He has no objection to impure thoughts or pornography or to the sort of locker-room braggadocio in which men like Donald Trump boast of their sexual escapades.  But Lenny  knows that his neighbor, a Trump supporter, does advocate the high standard that he, Lenny, does not acknowledge.  

In an attempt to persuade his neighbor to withdraw his support from Trump, Lenny says to the neighbor, "Look, man, you are appalled by Trump's sexual morality, or lack thereof; how then can you support him?"  This is an example of a non-fallacious ad hominem argument.  The argument is 'to the man,' in this case the neighbor.  It starts with a premise that the neighbor accepts but Lenny does not; the argumentative aim is to expose an inconsistency among the neighbor's beliefs.  

Is Lenny a hypocrite?  No.  He does not accept the neighbor's stringent sexual morality.  He thinks it is 'puritanical.'  He may even think that it sets the bar so high that no one can attain it, the end result being that people who try to live by the standard are driven to hypocrisy.  But Lenny himself is not a hypocrite.  For it is not the case that he makes no attempt to live by a moral standard that he sincerely advocates. He does not accept the standard. 

C4. Now we come to the most interesting case, that of 'Saul.'   Lenny made it clear that he does not accept as objectively morally binding the demand to be pure in thought, word, and deed.  Like Lenny, Saul does not accept the moral standard in question. Unlike Lenny, Saul feigns a commitment to it in his interactions with conservatives. Suppose Saul tries to convince Lenny's neighbor to withdraw his support from Trump. Saul uses the same argument that Lenny used. "Look, man, you are appalled by Trump's sexual morality, or lack thereof; how then can you support him?"

Is Saul a hypocrite or not?  Not by one definition that suggests itself and that I endorse.  On this definition there are two conditions one must satisfy to be a hypocrite: (i) one sincerely advocates a moral standard he believes to be morally obligatory; (ii) one makes little or no attempt to live by the standard.  In other words, a hypocrite is a person who makes no attempt to practice what he sincerely preaches and believes to be morally obligatory.  Saul does not satisfy condition (i); so, on this definition, Saul is not a hypocrite.

What then is the difference between Saul and Lenny? I have just argued that neither are hypocrites. The difference is that Saul mendaciously feigns a commitment to the moral standard in question. Saul is your typical hard leftist. Such leftists  use our morality against us when they themselves have nothing but contempt for it.

It is a mistake to call them hypocrites. They are worse than hypocrites. 

I'll leave it to the reader to apply this to the case of Sarah Jeong. See Get Whitey for details.

The Higher Hypocrisy

A man is only a man. If he tries to live like an angel, he may end up a hypocrite attempting the impossible.  A man ought to live up to his highest possibilities. But what they are and where they lie is unknown until he seeks them out, risking hypocrisy as he does so. There is the hypocrisy of those who make no attempt to practice what they preach. And there is the hypocrisy of those who have the will to practice what they preach but cannot practice it because their ideals are too lofty for them. 

For the Left, the Issue is Never the Issue

David Horowitz (2013):

Here is another statement from [Saul Alinsky's] Rules for Radicals: “We are always moral and our enemies always immoral.” The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the immorality of the opposition, of conservatives and Republicans. If they are perceived as immoral and indecent, their policies and arguments can be dismissed, and even those constituencies that are non-political or “low-information” can be mobilized to do battle against an evil party.

In 1996 Senator Bob Dole — a moderate Republican and deal-maker — ran for president against the incumbent, Bill Clinton. At the time, Dick Morris was Clinton’s political adviser. As they were heading into the election campaign, Clinton — a centrist Democrat — told Morris, “You have to understand, Dick, Bob Dole is evil.” That is how even centrist Democrats view the political battle.

Because Democrats and progressives regard politics as a battle of good versus evil, their focus is not on policies that work and ideas that make sense, but on what will make their party win. Demonizing the opposition is one answer; unity is another. If we are divided, we will fail, and that means evil will triumph. (emphasis added)

A good recent example of how, for the Left, the issue is never the issue is the furor over the separation of the children of illegal immigrants from their parents.  Why are 'liberals' apoplectically concerned about the separation of the children of criminals from their parents? Because the issue is not the issue. That is, the issue is merely a means to the end of more power. They have no objection to the use of State power in separating children from criminal parents when the ones affected are citizens.

This meme bears the title 'Hypocrisy.' But it is worse than hypocrisy. And it is not correctly called a double standard. Leftists, liberals, progressives -- whatever you want to call them -- don't share our values and standards. They use them against us in the approved Alinskyite manner.  

Virtue and its Exhortation

Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, tr. Ryan Bloom, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010, p. 72:

Virtue is not hateful. But speeches on virtue are. Without a doubt, no mouth in the world, much less mine, can utter them. Likewise, every time somebody interjects to speak of my honesty . . . there is someone who quivers inside me.

This entry betrays something of the mind of the leftist. Leftists are deeply suspicious of anything that smacks of 'preaching.'  Theirs is the hermeneutics of suspicion. Nothing is what it manifestly is; there is always something nefarious at work below the surface. Too much enamored of the insights of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, leftists failed to achieve a critical stance toward them where a critical stance allows for a separation (krinein) of the true from the false, the coherent from the incoherent.

Surely Camus goes entirely too far in the above entry. If speeches are hateful, then so are sermons and exhortations. Civilization and its transmission are impossible, however, without appeals to our higher natures.

To a leftist, preaching can only be 'moralizing' and 'being judgmental.'  It can only be the phony posturing of someone who judges others only to elevate himself.   The very fact of preaching  shows one to be a hypocrite.  Of course, leftists have no problem with being judgmental and moralizing about the evil of hypocrisy.  When they make moral judgments, however, it is, magically, not hypocritical.  

And therein lies the contradiction.  They would morally condemn all moral condemnation as hypocritical.  But in so doing they condemn themselves as hypocrites.

We cannot jettison the moral point of view. Marx tried, putting forth his theories as 'science.'  But if you have  read him you know that he moralized like an Old Testament prophet.

"No Man is a Hypocrite in His Pleasures"

Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, tr. Ryan Bloom, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010, p. 95:

Johnson: "No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures."

The Johnson in question is Samuel Johnson. Translator Bloom informs us that James Boswell's Vie de Samuel Johnson (Life of Samuel Johnson) was published in France in 1954. So it looks as if Camus was mining it for ideas. 

In a second footnote we read:

Camus adapted this quote into [his novel] The Fall: "No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures; have I read that or did I think it, my dear compatriot?"

Camus knew the answer, but that didn't stop him from passing on both the thought and its formulation as his own. Is that unseemly for a novelist? Can one plagiarize in a work of fiction? An interesting question.

What the Johnsonian saying means interests me more.  Does it mean that no man preaches a  pleasure he does not practice? An example would be a high school teacher who preaches the pleasures of the life of the mind to his students but spends his leisure hours at the racetrack.  But on this reading the saying comes out false.

Or does it mean that no man indulges in a pleasure that he does not enjoy? This is true, and so this is what I take Johnson to be saying. Consider the pleasure of smoking a fine cigar, a La Gloria Cubana, say. No one indulges in this pleasure if he does not like cigars.

A hypocrite in his pleasures would then be a man who indulged in pleasures he did not enjoy.  But this is much closer to algolagnia than it is to hypocrisy.

Should we say that Johnson's aphorism is flawed? Well, it got me thinking and is insofar forth good.

It got me enjoying the pleasures of the life of the mind which I both preach and indulge in.

Moral Phenomena in the Vicinity of Hypocrisy

When is one a hypocrite?  Let's consider some cases.

C1. A man sincerely advocates a high standard of moral behavior, and in the main he practices what he preaches.  But on occasion he succumbs to temptation, repents, and resolves to do better next time.  Is such a person a hypocrite?  Clearly not.  If he were, then we would all be hypocrites, and the term 'hypocrite,' failing of contrast, would become useless.  A hypocrite cannot be defined as one who fails to practice what he preaches since we all, at some time or other, fail to practice what we preach.  An adequate definition must allow for moral failure.

C2. A man sincerely advocates a high standard of behavior, but, for whatever reason, he makes no attempt to live in accordance with his advocacy.  Here we have a clear case of a hypocrite.

C3. Let the high standard be sexual purity in thought, word, and deed.  Consider now the case of a person, call him Lenny, who does not accept this standard.  He has no objection to impure thoughts or pornography or to the sort of locker-room braggadocio in which men like Donald Trump boast of their sexual escapades.  But Lenny  knows that his neighbor, a Trump supporter, does advocate the high standard that he, Lenny, does not acknowledge.  

In an attempt to persuade his neighbor to withdraw his support from Trump, Lenny says to the neighbor, "Look, man, you are appalled by Trump's sexual morality, or lack thereof; how then can you vote for him?"  This is an example of a non-fallacious ad hominem argument.  The argument is 'to the man,' in this case the neighbor.  It starts with a premise that the neighbor accepts but Lenny does not; the argumentative aim is to expose an inconsistency among the neighbor's beliefs.  

Is Lenny a hypocrite?  No.  He does not accept the neighbor's stringent sexual morality.  He thinks it is 'puritanical.'  He may even think that it sets the bar so high that no one can attain it, the end result being that people who try to live by the standard are driven to hypocrisy.  But Lenny himself is not a hypocrite.  For it is not the case that he makes no attempt to live by a moral standard that he sincerely advocates. He does not accept the standard. 

C4. Now we come to the most interesting case, that of 'Saul.'   Lenny made it clear that he does not accept as objectively morally binding the demand to be pure in thought, word, and deed.  Like Lenny, Saul does not accept the moral standard in question. Unlike Lenny, Saul feigns a commitment to it in his interactions with conservatives. Suppose Saul tries to convince Lenny's neighbor to withdraw his support from Trump. Saul uses the same argument that Lenny used.

Is Saul a hypocrite or not?  Not by one definition that suggests itself.  On this definition there are two conditions one must satisfy to be a hypocrite: (i) one sincerely advocates a moral standard he believes to be morally obligatory; (ii) one makes little or no attempt to live by the standard.  In other words, a hypocrite is a person who makes no attempt to practice what he sincerely preaches and believes to be morally obligatory.  Saul does not satisfy condition (i); so, on this definition, Saul is not a hypocrite.

Or is he?

It depends on whether (i) is a necessary condition of being a hypocrite.  Suppose we say that a hypocrite is one who makes little or no attempt at practicing what he preaches, whether what he preaches is sincerely or insincerely advocated as morally obligatory. Then Saul would count as a hypocrite along with all the other Alinskyite leftists who condemn Trump for his sexual excesses.

Whether or not we call these leftist scum hypocrites, they use our morality against us when they themselves have nothing but contempt for it.

Related articles

Hypocrites in Reverse: Those Who Do Not Preach What They Practice

Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, and Hypocrisy

Leftists and Civility

Flannery O'Connor on Pious Language

Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1979), p. 227 in a letter to Maryat Lee dated 28 June 1957:

I doubtless hate pious language worse than you because I believe the realities it hides.

To the unbeliever, pious language is just so much cant and hypocrisy and offensive for these reasons.  At funerals for worldly persons one sometimes hears pious claptrap about the dearly departed going off to be with the Lord.  This may prove sickening to the unbeliever.  Here is someone who spent his whole life on the make.  And now you portray him as eager to meet his Maker?  Or a nominal Catholic who never prayed the rosary in his life is set  in an open casket with a rosary interlaced between his fingers.  Disgusting!

The conventional lukewarm believer, for whom there is a tendency to conflate formulas and usages with the underlying realities, will not be offended.  He does not take religion all that seriously in any case.  It is a matter of habit and acculturation and respectability together with a vague sense that it might be a good idea to attend services as a sort of insurance  lest any of the stuff about heaven and hell turn out to be true.

And then there is the person of genuine faith, for whom faith is not a convenience or a crutch or cheap consolation or an insurance policy or a mere matter of habit or acculturation or respectability.  Such a person aims to penetrate through the formulas and usages to the transcendent realities and is offended by conventional piety for the right reason.

Related:  Afterlife Again

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Being Itself: Continuing the Discussion with Dale Tuggy

A Note on a Common Misunderstanding 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.

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. 

This accusation shows a failure on Paul's part to grasp the concept of hypocrisy.

Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, and Hypocrisy

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 in Reverse: Those Who Do Not Preach What They Practice

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.

Preacher and Slacker

There is someone worse than the preacher who falls into hypocrisy, namely, the moral slacker who is not even to the point where hypocrisy is possible.

Logic, Hypocrisy, and Tobacco-Wackery

Ruth Marcus begins her piece, The Perils of Legalized Marijuana, as follows:

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.

Related:  On Diachronic or 'Emersonian' Consistency.  (An outstanding entry!)

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.

Companion post: Hypocrisy

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?

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Cigarette, Cigar, Pipe

On 'Socially Conscious' Investing: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

 

Seeds of Hypocrisy

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.

Hypocrisy, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Left

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. 

Kant's Paean to Sincerity

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.

Dissembling in the Barber's Chair

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?

Hypocrisy and Other Vices of Self-Presentation

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.

Seneca: Omnis Vita Servitium Est

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.

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.)

Liberal Hypocrisy

Bruce Thornton reviews Peter Schweitzer’s Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, (Doubleday, 2005, 272 pp.) Excerpts:

Hypocrisy in Reverse

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.

Hypocrisy and Pope Benedict

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.

Two Ways to Avoid Being a Hypocrite

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.

Gore a Hypocrite, So No Global Warming?

This is another in a series on hypocrisy.  To understand this concept one must appreciate that the credibility of a person is not to be confused with the credibility of a proposition.

On Hannity and Colmes on the evening of 19 March 2007,  Al Gore was castigated for having an environmentally unfriendly zinc mine on some land he owns, the implication being that this makes him a hypocrite and undermines — pun intended — his credibility. Well, to some extent it does lessen his credibility. Why should we take seriously the bloviations of a rich liberal who consumes prodigious quantities of jet fuel and other resources in order to impose on others an environmental austerity from which he exempts himself?

But the credibility (in plain English, believability) of a person ought to be distinguished from the credibility of a proposition. The issue is whether or not there is global warming; the isssue is not Gore's hypocrisy, if hypocrite he be. He is not someone I wish to defend, and on the issue of global warming I take no stand at the moment.

My point is a logical one and a very simple one at that. If Gore's views have merit they have merit independently of any connection to his febrile psyche. And the same holds in the more likely case of their demerit. They cannot be refuted by tracing their origin from said psyche. If a hypocrite affirms that p, it may still be the case that p.

And if a hypocrite prescribes a course of action, it does not follow that the course prescribed is not well prescribed. Suppose a fat slob of an M.D. advises a couch potato to stop smoking, cut back on fatty foods, and exercise regularly.  The advice is excellent, and its quality is logically independent of whether or not its purveyor follows it.  Is that not self-evident?  The point extends, mutatis mutandis, to all manner of teachers and preachers.

Is the Scamp Worse Than the Hypocrite? Right and Left Perspectives

Distinguishing among saints, strivers, hypocrites, and scamps, I implied that the hypocrite is morally superior to the scamp:

Hypocrites espouse high and choice-worthy ideals, but make little or no attempt to live up to them. Scamps, being bereft of moral sense, do not even recognize high and choice-worthy ideals, let alone make an effort to live up to them. 

An astute correspondent writes:

 Are we sure that we find scamps worse than hypocrites?  Suppose a public figure, a man of the cloth, openly extols and professes the virtue of martial [marital] fidelity, but on his out-of-town junkets arranges for high-priced call girls to provide some “companionship”.  Remember Jimmy Swaggart?  Isn’t he a more offensive character than a husband who admits that he does as he pleases? Doesn’t Swaggart both commit adultery but also maintain a lying pretense of not doing so and being virtuous? I think Swaggart deserves a much lower Circle in Hell than the mere adulterer.

Remember Sartre’s bio of the thief and pimp Genet? In “defense” of Genet, Sartre notes that Genet is at least is no hypocrite. He’s a bad man, but a man who pretended to no virtues and owned his (many) vices. “I am a thief.” Certainly he’s a reprehensible character, but aren’t we even more offended by public figures who embezzle and steal, all the while making pious speeches about maintaining honesty in public office?

 

Addendum on 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.

Companion post: Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy

People like to accuse each other of hypocrisy, but I find that few bother to ask themselves what they mean by the word. The main point that needs to be made is that a hypocrite cannot be defined as a person who espouses high moral standards but fails to live up to them. For on that definition, all who espouse high moral standards would be hypocrites. Since to fall short is human, defining a hypocrite as one who fails to live up to the high standards he espouses implies that the only way to avoid hypocrisy is to renounce high moral standards, a course of action seemingly pursued by many nowadays. No one can call you a hypocrite if you have no standards, or standards that are easily satisfied.

No, a hypocrite is not one who espouses high standards and falls short of them: your humble correspondent espouses high standards, falls short of them on a daily basis, but is no hypocrite. A hypocrite is one who espouses high moral standards, but makes little or no attempt to live in accordance with them. He is one who pays ‘lip service’ to high ideals, by ‘talking the talk,’ but without ‘walking the walk.’ Someone who talks the talk, walks the walk, but stumbles a lot cannot be justly accused of hypocrisy. That’s my main point.

A second point is that there is something worse that hypocrisy, namely, having no choice-worthy ideals. One who pays ‘lip service’ to ideals is at least recognizing their legitimacy, their oughtness-to-be-realized. Such a person is morally superior to the one who avoids the accusation of hypocrisy by having no ideals.

Notice, I said 'choice-worthy ideals.'  Better to have no ideals than the wrong ones.  It is a mistake to think that it is good to be idealistic sans phrase. 

Perhaps we need four categories. Saints espouse high and choice-worthy ideals and never fail to live in accordance with them. Strivers espouse high and choice-worthy ideals, make an honest effort to live up to them, but are subject to lapses. Hypocrites espouse high and choice-worthy ideals, but make little or no attempt to live up to them. Scamps, being bereft of moral sense, do not even recognize high and choice-worthy ideals, let alone make an effort to live up to them.