Ordinary Vices
I was born just before the first of the Baby Boomers generation. They emerged when the Second World War was over, Europe had almost been torn apart, but at last there was peace. Industries began to grow again, not just those that had been producing war supplies but across the board, and entertainment flourished with radio and television reaching into homes. In England, it was a time of recovery, followed by the ‘Elizabethan Era’, as a young queen took the throne, culture flourished, job opportunities grew, incomes rose. Almost forgotten, this was achieved on the backs of dead soldiers, whose huge cemeteries could be seen across Europe. The Boomers were the fortunate and very confident recipients of a new world.
It would have been easy to have believed that people had changed in this new era. As she considered this, Judith Shklar tells us that back in the late 16th Century Michel de Montaigne published a series of essays, and number 30, ‘On Cannibals’ appeared in 1580. In it he discusses “treachery, disloyalty, cruelty, tyranny which are our ordinary vices”. This is the introduction to her book Ordinary Vices, which explores how little changed. “Ordinary vices are the sort of conduct we all expect, nothing spectacular or unusual. Dishonesty should be added to the list Montaigne made because, like him, we are so familiar with it.”
Given they are so commonplace, she wonders if philosophers think they aren’t worth discussing. However, in her introduction she also notes that philosophers are the exception, as these are matters are given considerable attention by historians, dramatists, and poets, let alone novelists. Finally, she observes they have both personal and public dimensions. Her enquiry on these vices is compelling, and while much of the discussion draws on past writers, and historians her observations are just as relevant to today as they were in earlier times. In relation to these ordinary vices, events since 1945 show they remain as virulent as ever.
Judith Shklar was a professor of government at Harvard University when she published Ordinary Vices in 1984. It covers cruelty, hypocrisy, snobbery, betrayal, and misanthropy. Unsurprisingly, as a Jewish refugee from Latvia, her analysis begins with cruelty, in a chapter on Putting Cruelty First. Why put cruelty first? Shklar’s answer is revealing. Most writers in the past have put sin first, and particularly sin against god. However, at a time when religious affiliations are weaker and less critical in shaping relationships, she suggests that sin is only part of the problem. Cruelty is a socially recognised and condoned behaviour: if princes were cruel in the past, today we still allow a wide variety of categories of people to exercise cruelty. They range from schoolteachers to prison warders, from military officers through to medical practitioners. Cruelty for your (longer-term?) benefit?
I suspect we are uncomfortable with describing actions as cruel. The current wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip make this clear. Is it cruel to kill civilians, to torture them, in order to achieve miliary gains, to subdue disquiet, to free hostages? From the aggressors viewpoint, such behaviour is necessary in order to achieve important objectives. People are killed in the pursuit of ‘returning territory’ to the nation, or in order to ‘free captives’. Obviously, the aggressors point out they would prefer to only kill or harm the aggressors on the other side, members of their opponents’ military forces, but they find the opposing force uses non-military personnel as civilian ‘shields’. Perhaps they are the ones being cruel by using civilians in that way, not us by killing them. Surely, we would agree negotiation is better than killing. What did Churchill say? – ‘jaw, jaw is better than war, war’. Apparently, he actually said ‘meeting jaw to jaw is better that war’. Either way, talk is better than cruelty.
As Shklar point out, it is easy to focus on the horrors of physical cruelty, whether it is inflicted on people or on animals. It is an unquestionably dreadful vice. However, there is also moral cruelty, which she describes as ‘persistent humiliation’, humiliation to the point that the victim loses self-esteem and certainty. Once that happens, the humiliated either lose any confidence to the point they commit suicide, or they replace their previous beliefs and become like those who had been humiliating them. Often such ‘converts’ are crueller than those who had initially humiliated them.
In looking next at hypocrisy, Shklar asks us to confront a puzzle: among her catalogue of ordinary vices, for many hypocrisy is the only unforgiveable sin, or, as she puts it, one that is inexcusable in today’s world. Why is this so? Shklar explains that the word hypocrisy originally referred to acting a part on a stage, and later “assuming a false appearance of virtue or goodness, dissimulation of real character or inclination, especially in respect of religious life or belief”. In previous centuries the religious hypocrite was seen as the worst of all, trying, as she puts it to ‘hoodwink the Almighty’ (a quote she takes from Hazlitt). In fact, hypocrites cover so many areas, from religious beliefs to moral inauthenticity right through to insincerity in everyday dealing with others. Hypocrites are actors, deliberately playing a part that does not reflect their ‘true character’.
Hypocrisy is firmly on the table today, as this seems to be part and parcel of politics. We hear leading party representatives making claims, representing their views and those of others, and even referring to the authorities of history and science while quite clearly aware that what they are saying is untrue. If it is fashionable right now to label Donald Trump as the epitome of hypocrisy, but to do so runs the danger of ignoring how deeply embedded this ordinary vice is. It isn’t just a problem in the world of politics. We find businesspeople, academics, and, sadly, religious authorities all quite happily making bold assertions, statements about the way things are, which they know aren’t true. It is as if the game of one-upmanship has reached the point that scoring points is all that matters, while honesty certainly doesn’t.
However, as her analysis makes clear, it is easy to point to hypocrisy in relation to interactions between people, but it is also a personal challenge. In addition to lying and tricking others, we can also fall foul of ourselves, become self-deceiving , allowing ourselves to believe that what we are saying is true, even though at some level we know it is not. How does an individual rationalise their internal hypocrisy? In the same way they rationalise lying to others, of course, justifying what they have been saying against some higher or otherwise pressing need. Hypocrisy is deeply embedded in public life today. Some politicians still claim to advocate democracy, although that seems to be going out of fashion: however, to claim adhere to ‘democracy’ is often as hypocritical as are the claims of many seeking to promote ‘good government’. Slogans are meat and potatoes for hypocrites.
For example, it is legitimate to ask whether or not Benjamin Netanyahu is a hypocrite. He might claim he is articulating concerns about Hamas, Palestine, and religious war to frame how Israel sees the current conflict. However, it is hard to believe he is unaware of the dishonesty that sits in his remarks. Over in Ukraine, we see two leaders, Putin and Zelenskyy, both offering deliberate misinformation and misinterpretations. We are more aware of Putin’s failings, because the so-called ‘free’ press is busily exposing his claims and assertions. It is harder to see the same is true of Zelenskyy because Western media tends to support Ukraine. However, some commentators do manage to break through the layers of dissimulation. Even so, when they do, we are reassured that ‘all’s fair in love and war’, and he has to offer hope. Hypocrisy thrives on all sides.
Shklar’s analysis is unrelenting. Having given some examples of hypocrisy at the government and national level, she quickly moves to the mundane, and what she calls the ‘hypocrisy of the complacent’. This is by claiming compassion and sincerity, words appearing to offer understanding and sympathy, but used as a cloak for continuing exploitation and obfuscating on matters far from home. It is easy to be concerned about the Rohingya in Myanmar, and protest the actions of the military there, while at the same time insist on keeping minimum wage rates at the minimum, or lower, to ensure competitive success at home. Such issues are of concern, but we manage skate past the complexity in this by advocating hypocritical approaches as necessary compromises in achieving ‘balance’.
Uncomfortably, Shklar takes the issue of hypocrisy right into the bedroom, and arguments between staid monogamists on one side and the sexually liberated on the other. As she makes clear, there are hypocrites on both sides of the sexual liberation debate (it’s probably a many-sided debate). In doing so, she illuminates another aspect of the issue, which is the protectiveness of denying uncomfortable issues, as hypocrisy offers protection by saving the individual from even have to listen to what another person is saying or doing. Given the pervasiveness of hypocrisy, if someone does unmask a person or group as hypocritical, they are likely to have the same form of criticism launched back at them.
After to such major topics, it might seem that Shklar’s third ordinary vice, snobbery, will be easier going. After all, it sounds more like a weakness than a vice. So, you feel you are better than another person. Like hypocrisy, Shklar points out, it is another false claim to merit, to being better than another. Hypocrisy is sneaky, masked, and a basis for all sorts of devious practices; snobbery is open, obvious, and surely less insidious. We can laugh off another’s snobbery, and snobs have been the butts of novels, plays and jokes for centuries. Nasty, silly, essentially trivial, but is it really a vice?
To write it off as unpleasant is to miss the crucial point Shklar is making. Snobbery is the reinforcement of class, of intrinsic difference, and so it worms its way into how we see others. Snobbery is a way to remind us that we are different, not in skills and appearance, but fundamentally different, different in the sense that some are better and superior to others. In fact snobbery is a far from subtle way to do more than just suggest difference. It is a way to undermine democracy. If snobbery in England is the perpetuation of class, in the United States, Shklar’s eventual home, it is the way to help sustain privilege in the face of any claims to adopt democracy: some are better than others, better to be elected, better to rule.
It reaches its most familiar impact with the idea of the ‘gentleman’ (and gentlewoman?). There are two sorts of people, those who are good, courteous, learned, refined, and even considerate, and then there’s ‘the rest’. This is a kind of snobbery that is so easy to adopt without noticing. While we might like to believe we live in an egalitarian society, some people are clearly cleverer, more skilled, more proficient than others. You don’t need a class system to establish a hierarchy, or to pay more for people who have skills in demand. And once you have a hierarchy, almost without noticing, snobbery slips in.
We see another side of snobbery in adulation: today’s examples are sporting heroes and film stars. These key figures in popular culture are not necessarily snobs themselves (though we often suspect they are), but we treat them as if they are in some way better than we are. This is a reverse form of snobbery, as we look up to our ‘betters’ and admiring them as being more admirable than we are, even as we are aspiring to join their ranks. America society also reveals another feature of snobbery, Shklar points out, as it is a culture where there is a willingness to tear down some forms of hierarchy, only to replace these with new ones. Aristocracies in the traditional sense have been cast aside, but the new snobs are the ultra-rich ‘entrepreneurs’. Social ranking by birth has been replaced by commercial success. If this is the longest chapter in Ordinary Vices, there’s a good reason: it is because snobbery is alive and well in America, just continuing under different criteria than in previous decades.
Two final vices remain, betrayal and misanthropy. I find betrayal the less compelling of the two, as it tricky today to distinguish between betrayal – violations of trust or faith – and the legitimate uncovering of deceit, cheating and falsity. At the extremes, the difference is clear. A friend or family member tells you something in confidence, perhaps because of a need to escape from feeling alone with a critical piece of information. To have received such intelligence from a friend and been asked that it be kept confidential is tricky. To use that information with others without your friend’s agreement is certainly a betrayal. At the other extreme, to be drawn into a plan to use lies and false information and to fail to admit or expose the real situation is less like betrayal than a rejection of honesty and truth.
This is a challenging area. I have used examples before to illustrate the difficulties of truth and betrayal. To repeat a familiar story, suppose you are sheltering a Jewish family in Germany in the Second World War. Nazi soldiers question you: is there anyone other than your family in your house? You choose not to betray the Jewish group sheltering upstairs, but that means you lie. To lie and not to betray we would say was right. Tell the truth and betray the hostages we would say was wrong. Either way there is a cost, and while this example is at the extreme, it is too simple to say that not telling the truth can be justified to prevent betrayal. Shklar is alert to all of this, of course. Indeed, that is the challenge with her ‘ordinary vices’: these are actions that sometimes, and sometimes only in small ways, represent choices about how to act that push against other equally demanding requirements. Values aren’t necessarily consistent or complementary. They can even be contradictory.
As for misanthropy, concern over inhumane behaviour, especially by leaders, heads of organisations, kings and princes, is scarcely surprising. If the term includes a broad distrust of humanity, misanthropy has a long history, evidence from as far back in time as the beginning of written records. If it’s an actual hatred of humanity, then that has been less common, but also an ever-present characteristic. Most jaundiced writers of human affairs tend to be misanthropes, and for me a paradigm example has to be Machiavelli. What he wrote offers a distinctly negative view of his fellow human beings, not just of princes, but of the population as a whole. Perhaps it is hard to treat misanthropy as a vice all of the time: after all, we know members of the human race often display characteristics that encourage us to doubt humanity’s good character and the positive quality of many common actions.
Judith Shklar was a clever writer. She used surveys of earlier writers to illuminate issues and expose the vices she was addressing. In doing so, she established the groundwork necessary to point to current foibles and failings. Commentary based on outstanding past and contemporary philosophers combined with often tricky examples was an ingenious way to help us through her topic. The result is a very accessible, readable and often enjoyable account of the vices we are prey to today. I suspect she wrote with an audience of philosophers, academic and enthusiastic amateurs, in mind. Unfortunately, that’s not enough. If only we could get politicians and business readers to read books like Ordinary Vices. Actually, if only we could get them not just to read books like Ordinary Vices but then to debate and address the issues at stake with a desire to do better. If only.
