Friday, October 28, 2022

CONTINUING WITH MY PROJECT

I am not sure when this paper was written but the internal evidence suggests that it must have been perhaps 55 years ago more.


THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL INJUSTICE

Robert Paul Wolff

1,.       

In recent years, two issues of social policy and morality have come to the fore in the United States, each of which poses in a vexing and controversial way the question whether it makes any sense to speak of a social as opposed to an individual injustice. The first issue is the disadvantaged position of American Blacks; the second is the disadvantaged position of women. No one, of course, disputes the claim that Blacks have been systematically oppressed in the past, and I do not think one needs to prove that significant discrimination operates against Blacks today. It is equally obvious that white women have been, and still are, discriminated against both in law and in fact, though for rather complicated emotional reasons it seems more difficult to get certain white men to acknowledge that fact, Black women, needless to say, have suffered, and continue to suffer, a double discrimination.

There is a very broad moral consensus in America that discrimination on the basis of color or sex is wrong. But there is no consensus at all on the nature of the legal or political steps that ought to be taken to eliminate such discrimination and to correct or counteract its effects, Several years ago, the disagreement focused on the emotionally charged demand by certain Black groups ·for "reparations" from white society, reparations to compensate Blacks for past wrongs, Today., the policy of "affirmative action" in employment and advancement triggers the same powerful feelings and raises the same difficult questions of principles and policy.

I propose to explore what I see as the central conceptual or philosophical problem in these disputes over reparations and affirmative action. I am not by philosophical persuasion a utopian optimist. I do not believe that all or even most genuine social conflicts arise out of conceptual misunderstandings, or that once the philosophical unclarities have been removed, men and women of good will must naturally settle upon a single harmonious social policy, Quite to the contrary, I suspect that social harmony is often achieved only by concealing from some segment of society the true shape of conflicting interests and that social progress often requires an intensification of conflict rather than its resolution. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that there is some value in clarifying the principles to which we appeal in making our judgments of social morality. If we cannot thereby win over our opponents, we may at least be able to strengthen our allies.

I begin, then, with a very common sort of philosophical difficulty, namely that a certain way of talking about social problems seems to me both perfectly appropriate and oddly confused. We are all familiar, particularly since the second world war, with attributions of collective guilt, assertions of collective suffering, claims of collective rights or collective duties. Whether we agree with any particular statement of this sort, at least we think we understand what it means. It is said, for example, that the Jews as a people have suffered greatly throughout history, particularly in this century. It is said, too, that the Germans as a nation are morally responsible for the Holocaust. So also, American whites are collectively accused of the sufferings of the Afro-Americans, and American society is described as racist. Western society generally is condemned as sexist, and some institutions, such as corporate .business and education, are said to support and condone sexism.

Does this way of talking make any sense? Never mind whether each particular charge is true -- do any of the charges mean anything? What can it possibly mean to say that an entire nation, or people, or sex, or race is responsible for, or has suffered, or deserves reparations for an injustice?

Traditionally, two totally opposed answers have been given to these and related questions. The taglines usually associated with the two positions are methodological collectivism, or idealism, and methodological individualism. The collectivist or idealist answer is that human groups-- ethnic collectivities, or religious groups, or states -- can develop a unity and being which is more than the sum of the individuals in the group. Properties can then be attributed to the group, which may not be attributable to any individual in the group or to the individuals taken merely in the aggregate. So we can speak of such a true or real group as suffering, acting, bearing responsibility, having rights or duties, and so forth. A classic statement of this view is found in Emile Durkheim's defense of Sociology as a science distinct from the psychology of the individual. "Indubitably for sociology to be possible," Durkheim wrote, "it must above- all have an object all its own. It must take cognizance of a reality which is not in the domain of the other sciences. But if no reality exists outside of individual consciousness, it wholly lacks any material of its own. In that case, the only possible subject of observation is the mental states of the individual, since nothing else exists... There can be no sociology unless societies exist, and ... societies cannot exist if there are only individuals."[1] Durkheim then
launches on a three-hundred page exploration of the social statistics of suicide in order to demonstrate that "collective tendencies" are at work in society, manifesting a regularity as strict as that of natural phenomena and governed by laws which cannot be reduced to the laws of individual consciousness. Here is the summary of his argument:

Collective tendencies have an existence of their own; they are forces as real as cosmic forces, though of another sort; they, likewise, affect the individual from without, though through other channels. The proof that the reality of collective tendencies is no less; than that of cosmic forces is that this reality is demonstrated in the same way, by the uniformity of effect .. , When we find that the number of deaths varies little from rear to year, we explain this regularity by saying that mortality depends on the climate, the temperature, the nature of the soil, in brief on a certain number of material forces which remain constant through changing generations because independent of individuals. Since, therefore, moral acts such as suicide are reproduced not merely with an equal but with a greater uniformity, we must likewise admit that they depend on forces external to individuals. Only, since these forces must be of a moral order and since, except for individual men, there is no other moral order of existence in the world but society, they must be social.[2]

This position is anathema to the methodological individualist, who insists that collective tendencies cannot have an existence of their own. To the individualist, Durkheim's position is a metaphysical absurdity. Since society is merely an aggregate of individuals, all acts of justice and injustice, all rights and duties, all sufferings and enjoyments, are individual acts, rights, duties, sufferings, or enjoyments. If an action is unjust, then it must be unjust to someone in particular -- and if it is an action, then it must have been done by someone in particular. Manifestly, all suffering is someone’s suffering, all joy someone's joy and only an individual agent can have a right or a duty.

To be sure, groups or aggregates of individuals can act, suffer, exercise rights and fulfill duties. But all collective action is a mere aggregation of individual actions, all suffering a summation of private miseries, all collective responsibility in the end the responsibility of particular individuals for things they have individually done, refrained from doing, or failed to do.

Therefore, those who speak of Black suffering are merely using a shorthand way of referring to this Black woman's suffering, that Black man's suffering, and so forth. There is no such thing as The Black, nor is the injustice suffered by Blacks different in kind from that suffered by any person who is deprived of his rights, or treated unequally, or denied the opportunity to satisfy his human needs and realize his human potential. By the same token, assertions of white racism in America are merely summary ways of asserting that this white American is a racist, that that white American is a racist, and so forth. On the methodologically individualist view, than, all injustices are individual injustices. There is no such thing as a social injustice per se.

I am not by nature a mugwump, but on this issue, I find myself evenly balanced on the fence between the two sides. More precisely, my moral and political sympathies are with those who charge collective responsibility and claim collective suffering, but my philosophical reason tells me that the individualist is right. Durkheim's "collective tendencies" seem to me no better than superstitions. Still, the collectivist has his finger on an important truth, however badly he may have expressed it. We need not accept Durkheim's "collective tendencies" governed by "cosmic forces" to agree that in some sense talk about society, about collective guilt or suffering, and about social injustice is meaningful. What we must do is to analyze such judgments more carefully, in order to discover exactly what it is that we mean to say when we employ them.

Despite my unwillingness to endorse Durkheim's philosophical position, I shall nonetheless follow his lead by reflecting for a bit on the use and meaning of the social statistics by which we so often strive to describe our collective condition.

2.       

             In small, face-to-face situations, our conception of social reality is grounded in the immediate data of perception and feeling. I know each of the persons in my family directly, and I know too the relationship of each to each, and of each to all. As I enlarge the scope of my attention, individuals begin to blur into a mass. Because I am unable to hold in my mind the burgeoning complexity of human interrelationships, I begin to categorize individuals, to interact with them in their character as occupiers of social roles or as possessors of social characteristics. The particularizing individuality of each person drains away, and the complicated network of relationships becomes opaque. Eventually, I am forced in my thinking about the countless individuals who comprise my social world either to rely upon a scattering of isolated examples which may be quite atypical of the whole, or else to organize my comprehension of social reality by the use of some different system of concepts. It is at this point that students of society appeal to numerical representations of the social world. Gradually, I find myself developing a conception of society which may be literally impossible for me to grasp in any way other than through the use of social statistics.

            I am aware of the United States as a nation of 210 million persons in which the birth rate is declining to the replacement level. And yet, among my friends, there has been this past year a brisk increase in births. No collection of individual experiences, however distributed, could suffice to tell me that the birth rate was falling rather than rising, and it goes without saying that I could never form a reasonable estimate of its actual numerical level merely by aggregating my personal observations. The facts of the distribution of wealth and income, the relations between income and race or income and sex, the average level of educational attainment for members of different religious groups, the connection between the stability of the family and the incidence of juvenile delinquency -- virtually everything one would want to know about a society can be cognized only statistically.

As our statistical grasp of society improves, we turn our attention to second-order facts which are totally devoid of affective or perceptual content, such as changes in rates of change of statistical indicators (an accelerating balance of payments gap, or a declining gap between the mean income of Black and white heads of families). Once we have learned to comprehend social reality in this manner, we begin to form moral judgments about the statistical facts -- judgments which are independent of our moral evaluations of the individual cases that go to make up those statistical facts.

For example: In addition to judging that it is bad for people to be out of work or hungry or illiterate, we consider it a distinct social evil -- and an indication of a special sort of social injustice -- that a disproportionately large percentage of Black Americans are poor or hungry or uneducated. When social statistics reveal a skew along racial or sexual lines in employment or income, we judge that skew in and of itself to constitute a social injustice. Many of us begin to argue that the pattern of social statistics constitutes some justification for a reallocation of social resources so as to eliminate the imbalance, quite independently of any grounds for eliminating differences in income in general.

The methodological individualist rejects all such reasonings. He argues that a sexual or racial skew in the social statistics must be a consequence of widespread racial or sexual discrimination of the individual sort. That is to say, it must be a consequence of the fact that this employer here, that landlord there, in hiring or promoting or renting discriminated against this particular Black or that particular woman. The statistics are no more than summary numerical representations of large numbers of distinct, individual cases. If discrimination is stamped out, the figures will reflect the fact, either by disclosing no skew at all along racial or sexual lines, or else by exhibiting only such patterns as cannot be attributed to discrimination and treated as evidence of the existence of injustice.

A great deal of injustice can of course be eliminated in this way. When my wife was a graduate student at Harvard, the English Department did not give teaching assistantships to women. Not until many years later did she discover that it was that simple policy of discrimination, and not any failing on her part, that explained why she was never offered an assistantship.  But our experience in education, employment, and other fields suggests that the mere elimination of any further acts of discrimination may not, by itself, be enough to wipe out the effects of past injustices, Men and women may suffer today the burdens of discrimination practiced in the past against themselves, against their parents, or even against their more distant ancestors.

It would seem that complete social justice requires positive measures to eliminate these derivative or indirect consequences of injustice , Surely it is unfair to .ignore the historical conditions which give a middle-class white child so great an advantage over a Black slum child, The social statistics would seem to reveal two sorts of genuine injustices: those committed in the present against individuals, and those committed in the past, whose consequences appear in the statistics now. Thus, in addition to the elimination of further discrimination and the correction of particular acts of injustice committed in the recent past, we would appear to have an obligation to make some sort of restitution or reparation for the generations of past injustices whose consequences reveal themselves in the present. In short, the statistics reveal that entire groups in America have suffered injustices, and it is natural to conclude that policies of affirmative action or reparation be adopted, going beyond the mere correction of individual abuses, to adjust the social reality -- to eliminate the skew in the statistics, as it were.

But now a very curious problem arises to complicate our analysis and cast doubt on the conclusion to which I have just rather tentatively come. We have been talking as though America were easily and obviously decomposable into a small number of readily recognizable social groups, the identities of which are reflected in our social statistics. But in a nation of more than two hundred million people, there is an enormous number of different ways in which we may divide the population for purposes of collecting statistics. We are accustomed to using indices of sex, race, age, income, occupation, and religion to define social groups, but in fact, any finite group of entities has an indefinitely large number of characteristics in common, and there is
no end to the ways in which we may subdivide the population.

This fact would make no difference if there were only a small number of traits which could be correlated significantly with low income, or unemployment, or poor educational attainment. But there is no reason to assume that such is the case. If we adopt a sociological perspective, so to speak, rather than a moral perspective, then we must suppose that social or physical causes can be found for every social fact, not merely for those about which we have special moral concerns. To make this point clearer, let us compare two hypothetical cases: on the one hand, a young Black school drop-out from Harlem who shuns such social welfare programs as are offered in his community, shuttling back and forth between relief and low-paid unskilled jobs -- and on the other hand, a white middle-class boy from a stable home and neighborhood whose lack of ambition and college-orientation consign him to a postman's job at a salary far below that of his lawyer father. The white youth ends up much better than the Black youth, of course. But he has suffered -- if that is the correct word -- a significant downward mobility. We are all accustomed to say that such a Black youth is a victim of his history, of his neighborhood, even of a culture of poverty and despair into which he was born. And so he probably was. We suspect that the same youth, born into a different family with much greater opportunities, both material and cultural, would seize the chances available to him and become instead a much higher-paid member of the professional middle class. And so indeed he might. But exactly the same sorts of assertions and suspicions are justified in regard to the middle-class white youth. His attitude toward education, work, and status can also be traced to the influence of his family, his neighborhood, and his cultural background. He is no more responsible for the aspects of his environment that caused him to underuse his opportunities than the Black youth is for the totality of conditions that blocked him from seizing even such chances as society offered. And yet, though I and many other people consider the Black youth's career to be a clear case of social injustice, very rarely if ever do we form the analogous judgment about the countless cases or failed opportunities or downward mobility which resemble that of our young white lawyer's son.

We may conclude that the white youth is not to be blamed for what happened to him economically. We may also conclude that his fate is in some sense unfair. But it would be very strange indeed to indict society for what happened to him -- to demand that laws be passed to compensate him for the burdens imposed upon him by his parents or his grandparents. Even if we could collect social statistics showing that young middle-class whites of a certain religion, or geographical area, or family style and pattern of child-rearing showed a markedly higher rate of downward social mobility than the national average, it would seem very odd to label that fact a social injustice, and to call for a policy of affirmative action for children from families with ego-diffused mothers and sado-masochist1c fathers. And yet, it does not seem strange at all to indict society for what happened to the Black youth, and to the thousands like him whose separate lives make up the familiarly skewed social statistics. Wherein lies the difference?

One obvious difference, I suppose, is that the threads of social causation in the case of Blacks lead back to the actual, overt acts of brutality and injustice visited upon their fore-fathers by slave traders, slave owners, employers, and governments. The downward mobility of the white youth may very well be traceable to no such instances of injustice, but merely to factors over which he has no control, and for which he should not be made to suffer.

But that distinction is relevant only to the question of who should pay for the damages, not to the question of who has a right to such payment. The real reason, I think, for the difference in our moral evaluations of the two cases, is that Blacks form a social group which appears to have real, rather than merely nominal or statistical, existence. What is more, Blacks (and women) have been treated unjustly as a group in American society, whereas no such group injustice has operated in the statistically isolatable case of "children of ego-diffused mothers and sado-masochistic fathers''. In short, we come back to Durkheim's notion of the objective reality of social groups. We shall have to probe into the nature of social groups and collective tendencies.

3.       

            Let us begin with the familiar facts about relative rates of unemployment among Black and white workers. We assume that the especially high rate of Black unemployment is unjust. But to whom is it unjust? An absurd question; it is obviously unjust to Blacks. But to which Blacks? Presumably not to those Blacks who have jobs. They may very well be suffering on-the-job discrimination in salary or promotion, but they are by hypothesis not suffering an unjust deprivation of the right to work. Obviously, the injustice reflected in the unemployment figures is suffered by unemployed Blacks. But does that statement make any sense? Suppose that an able young Black man with a good high school education is refused membership in a building trades union because he is Black, while another young man, white, with the same qualifications is admitted to the union. Clearly, the Black has been treated unfairly. The union has failed to obey
the fundamental principle of formal or procedural justice, which is to treat as identical all cases which are identical in the relevant respect. Since color of skin is not relevant to the activities of
the union and its members, the admissions procedures of the union should be colorblind.

So we may agree that this Black man has suffered an injustice. But the injustice he has suffered is not the injustice we were originally discussing. What he has suffered is the denial of a job, not the disparity in unemployment between Blacks and whites in America. To be sure, the. single incident in which he was the victim is one of a great number of incidents whose cumulative effect is that statistical gap, but a state of affairs may be the consequence of a number of injustices without being in and of itself an injustice. It would, .after all, be very peculiar to· say that an American woman who lost her baby through inadequate obstetrical care had experienced a disparity between the rates of infant mortality in America and Sweden, or that a flourishing new business was experiencing a rise in the Gross National Product.

Suppose that the white applicant next in line after the Black at the union office is the son of an old personal enemy of the union official, who, out of spite, refuses to accept the young man's application. This too is an injustice, formally indistinguishable from the previous case. An individual has been treated as different from the general run of applicants although he is, in the relevant respects, identical. If anyone took the trouble to collect statistics on admission to unions of sons of enemies of admitting secretaries (as in fact people collected statistics on admission to unions of sons of union members), we would presumably discover a significant disparity between the percentage of admissions in that class as compared to the percentage of admissions among other applicants. How then, if at all, does the case of the Black man differ from the case of the white man who suffers the consequences of his father's feuds?

The white man, we have supposed, is treated unjustly because of his particular relationship to the admitting secretary, He thereby becomes an instance of the general category, "Men denied admission to unions because of personal differences between their fathers and members of the union." But the admitting secretary is not motivated by that fact. He is motivated merely by his personal feelings for the applicant's father. The Black man, on the other hand, is denied admission solely because he possesses a certain characteristic which the admitting secretary thinks of as defining a social group. In that sense, the motive for the· unjust act is general rather than particular, and the injustice is visited on the victim qua instance of -- rather than qua individual. The secretary, we might say, is not rejecting this Black man; he is rejecting a Black man. Now, the nation-wide statistics for Black and white employment, and the disparity between the percentage of Blacks in the work force and the percentage of Blacks in the union, are both summary representations (we may for the moment suppose) of the consequences of large numbers of individual acts, all of which were initiated by the same generalized motive. Over and over again, an admitting secretary rejects applicants merely because they are Black. Since he makes no distinction in his action between one Black man and another, he is in effect rejecting the entire group of Black men. In this sense, he and the union might be said to be inflicting an injustice on Blacks as a group, rather than merely on a group of Blacks.

We begin to see that the reality of a social group inheres in men’s beliefs and attitudes rather than in the characteristics which define the group. In this respect, there is a fundamental difference between natural and social reality.

Nature consists of objects and events which we classify and categorize in keeping with our various purposes. Aristotle to the contrary notwithstanding, there are no real kinds, no objective distinctions between essential and accidental attributes on which one could base a theory of real as opposed to merely nominal species. Matters are quite different and a good deal more complicated when we come to the social world. There the groups or types of categories into which we imagine things to fall are both more real and less real than in the physical world. In order to see how this is so, we must remind ourselves that society is not really an independent entity at all, though we all think of it as though it were.

Society is a collective human product, or perhaps more accurately, a collective human projection. It is a mutual illusion, a folie a tous. Men conceive of their social world as a system of objectively existing roles (lawyer, fireman, mother) and institutions (church, corporation, government) and patterns of inter-personal behavior (deference, domination, intimacy) into which they fit themselves and in terms of which they live their lives. In reality, these roles and institutions and patterns are merely the summation of their own expectations and habits.

In one sense, social roles and groups are even less real than natural species, for they are mere human projections, while at least in the natural world the individual members which we group together are real enough. But in another sense, those same social roles are more real than natural species, for we consciously adjust our behavior to them, and thus make them real. This objectification of subjective categories takes place in two ways: first of all, we treat as similar a number of individuals among whom we might otherwise differentiate -- so I adopt standardized forms of behavior toward all students, or bus drivers, or policemen; and secondly, we adjust our behavior to conform to the categories into which the rest of society classifies us. Adults treat all teen-agers as alike, and teen-agers begin to think of themselves as united by their age. Employers treat all Black workers as identical -- .and Black workers define themselves as socially united by their color. There is, in principle, no set of characteristics that must be construed as defining a real social group, nor any set of characteristics that cannot become the basis for such a definition. In our society, skin color serves as the basis for social grouping, though as with all social classifications based on physical traits, the socially accepted criteria for applying the so-called color terms differ wildly from natural perceptual criteria. Whether a person is "Black" or "white", that is to say, has very little to do with the actual color of his skin. But there have been societies in which skin color, while nonetheless a fact of nature, was not taken up into the collective social conception of reality as a defining mark of membership in a socially significant group.

Sex, like skin color, is an objective natural fact, but it too does not define objectively necessary social groupings. Just as a color-blind society could function in which skin color differences existed but were not made the basis of social classification, so too societies could exist in which differences of sex, age, or size, of athletic ability, of strength, or of intelligence, either did or did not form the basis of social classification.

It is not my purpose to argue against all social classification -- an impossibility, in my judgment -- nor to propose that some bases be rejected and others adopted. I wish only to emphasize that social grouping is a collective human act, based perhaps on some objective physical distinction, but never reducible to or deducible from that distinction. To a very considerable extent, each of us construes himself as others define him, so that my answer to the question, "Who am I?" is itself very much a social, rather than an individual, product.

When a great many individual acts of injustice originate in what I have called a generalized motive -- that is to say, when individuals are treated unjustly again and again because of their membership in some social group rather than because of anything peculiar to them as individuals·-- the result is more than merely an aggregate of particular injustices. The victims come to think of themselves in the way that they have been thought of by others. A disadvantageous definition of social identity is inflicted on them, and they internalize it, adjusting their behavior and their self-images to fit. In the academic world, for example, women
are encouraged to believe that they will be rewarded, with jobs, raises, or promotions, entirely on the basis of merit. When they encounter rejection as a consequence of what is after all blatant discrimination, they often find it extremely difficult to reject this negative judgment on themselves as a true measure of their worth. Thus, at Harvard University, Radcliffe students are completely docile in the presence of Harvard's massive, overt, and unchanging sexual discrimination, despite the fact that the selection procedures for women at Radcliffe produce an undergraduate population more talented, on average, than its Harvard counterpart.

The patterns of unjust treatment crystallize into institutions, sometimes even into legal statuses. The injustices of one time or place are felt indirectly at other times and places, so that we can after all speak of a social group as having a continuing identity over generations.

When such a state of affairs exists -- as it does, for example, in the United States with regard to Black men and women -- then it is both meaningful and true to say that the injustices inflicted in one century continue to be suffered in another century. Individual Blacks may be said to participate in the suffering inflicted upon Blacks collectively by the institutionalized practices of white society. In this sense, there is something which we may speak of as a distinctively social injustice, independently of the many individual injustices suffered in a society.

Three observations need to be made about social injustice:

[l] Not all injustice is of this collective nature. Hence, even a society which eliminated social injustices might still have a problem of other sorts of injustice.


[2] Once the processes of social injustice become institutionalized, they may be perpetuated despite the fact that many particular individuals feel nothing like a generalized motive of discrimination. But this point should not be made too much of -- social injustice arises out of collective or generalized discriminatory motives, and it flourishes on such motives. Where they genuinely disappear, it becomes a great deal easier to eliminate the injustice itself.

[3] Active participation in an institution which embodies or fosters social injustice imposes upon the participant a share of the responsibility for the injustice, whether he· desires that injustice or not. For example, academic communities cooperate in the widespread discrimination against women in our society. The negative self-image internalized by women academics subjectively complements the objective impediments to their careers. Male academics frequently keep the pattern of discrimination alive by their contemptuous and dismissive attitude toward female candidates or colleagues, but even those men who do not share the attitudes share some of the responsibility insofar. as they cooperate in the institutional arrangements which create and maintain the injustices.

Thus, the answer to our question about the reality of social groups, to paraphrase Pirandello, is: Real you are if you think you are. Or, somewhat more prosaically, a group of persons are a genuine social group if they are treated as such by the rest of society -- through the-adoption of "generalized motives" -- and if they perceive themselves as such and adjust their behavior accordingly.

4.       

            We now are in a position to attempt an answer to our original question: What is social injustice, and in what way does it differ from a mere aggregate of individual injustices?

I suggest that social injustice is injustice visited upon a real social group because of its group characteristics. Such injustice strengthens the social definition of the group as a group, and leads thereby very frequently to such destructive consequences as the internalization of negative self-images by members of the victim group. Insofar as the group identity is rooted in a common position in the social relationships of production and distribution, it will be powerfully reinforced by institutional arrangements which serve the interests of the dominant groups.

The elimination of social injustices is a task that cannot be reduced to the elimination of large numbers of individual injustices. Some way must be found to alter the social definition
of reality itself, so that negative and destructive group identities cease to be elements in the psychic self-determination of members of the victim groups. This is one of the principal purposes of what is now called affirmative action. But collective acts may be required to alter collectively oppressive practices. An individual's identification with a group must not be a means either of his oppression by others nor of his oppression of others.

We can see a certain paradox, or dialectical truth, in this analysis. One of the social injustices visited upon Blacks and women in America is society's definition of them as an inferior group. Ideally, Black men and women, and women in general, ought to be able to think of themselves as persons, not in the first instance as Black or female. But the first step in the destruction of that socially-imposed self-definition may be a reversal of it -- what Nietzsche called a transvaluation of values -- through an increased consciousness of. blackness or womanhood, through a positive concentration on the myths, history, and defining characteristics of group identity, through an intensification of the group identity. Perhaps, only through a voluntary acceptance, reversal, and celebration of the group identity can it finally be overcome and allowed to dissolve.

As a philosopher, my concerns are always partly methodological, so I shall conclude, by returning to my opening remarks about the dispute between the collectivist, or idealist, conception of social reality and the individualist insistence on the unreality of anything save individuals. If my analysis is correct, then in this case, as in so many others, the liberal individualist undermines

 

(At this point the rest of the original manuscript seems to have been lost)

 



[1] Emile Durkheim, Suicide, transl. by John A. Spaulding and George Simpson, 1951 (Glencoe, I11. Free Press). P. 38. Italics in the original.

[2] Ibid., p. 309


45 comments:

  1. Prof. Wolff,

    You write:

    “No one, of course, disputes the claim that Blacks have been systematically oppressed in the past, and I do not think one needs to prove that significant discrimination operates against Blacks today. It is equally obvious that white women have been, and still are, discriminated against, both in law and in fact, though for rather complicated emotional reasons it seems more difficult to get certain white men to acknowledge that fact, Black women, needless to say, have suffered, and continue to suffer, a double discrimination.”

    At the risk of appearing cheeky, I feel compelled to ask the following question: On what basis do you maintain that discrimination by homo sapiens against other members of the same species based on their race and/or their gender is wrong, unfair, immoral, etc.? I share your views, of course, but, as you may know, I have had an ongoing debate with Prof. Zimmerman, LFC and others regarding the rational justification for this view, that this view amounts to being arbitrary, as arbitrary as the views of those who reject this position. That these views have no per se validity and are relative to the culture or society in which one was raised. Why is discrimination based on aspects of another human’s physical traits over which they have no control wrong, and not just wrong, but morally wrong? You obviously believe that your position is correct. And, as a philosopher, and professor of philosophy, if one believes his/her position is correct, they must be prepared to defend their position. A white supremacist, or a member of some religious group, might disagree with you, say that discriminating based on race or on gender is not wrong; it is perfectly alright. I know that you do not defend the position by appealing to any religious text. You also do not believe that your position can be proved syllogistically. So, on what is it based?

    I believe it is based on the moral fact that this and other moral precepts are true without proof, that they are intuited. I have gotten push-back from others who comment on this blog that this position is arbitrary, is not persuasive, has no claim to be able to convince others who disagree with these precepts that the precepts are valid. I say, so what? Why does the validity of these precepts depend on whether others who reject them can be persuaded that they are valid? Such an effort is doomed to fail. The fact that it fails does not detract from the fact that it is morally wrong to discriminate against other human beings based on their race, ethnicity, gender, age, etc. – period. Why do we have to prove it to those whose instincts or intuitions tell them otherwise?

    ReplyDelete
  2. "The Concept of Social Injustice" in F. R. Dallmayr (ed.), From Contract to Community: Political Theory at the Crossroads, 1978.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good grief! Quite correct, the paper was in fact published, and only 44 years ago which is not that much. I am obviously losing it. Sigh…

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  4. Prof., these are extremely high-quality pieces, and I hope the lack of feedback isn't taken as a sign of apathy. It'd just take a huge amount of time and thought to process them to the point where one could to justice to them with a blog comment (unless one already happened to be well-studied on the issues).

    Also, Marc, sorry to scold, but it borders on uncomfortable to see these repeated (quite possibly unwanted) interjections with the metaethics stuff. Sure, it's "relevant," but only in the sense that e.g. solipsism and hard determinism are, IMO. From a super-abstract and impracticably "lofty" point of view, I guess social-political philosophy can't get off the ground until we prove that there are people, that people have the ability to make free choices, and that indeed it's possible and appropriate to ethically evaluate those choices... But surely it's okay to provisionally bracket these difficult items and proceed with some more "flesh-and-blood" ones, as in the OP?

    For additional insight and perspective on your topic, my recommendation would be to go to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online, free, no account required), search out the article on e.g. "Moral Realism," look it over, and consult whatever additional titles grab your interest from the article's Bibliography and Related Entries.

    EDITED TO ADD: As soon as I previewed this comment, Prof. Wolff had posted a new entry acknowledging the question as a good and important one. Okay, carry on... :)

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  5. Michael,

    I of course disagree with you. If one is going to make value statements about what members of society should/must do in order to make society “better,” one cannot avoid the question, “On what basis do you make these value judgments?” Otherwise, your social edifice is built on sand. All I am stating is that it suffices to state forthrightly, for example, my values regarding discrimination based on race, gender, ethnicity, age, etc. are based on my moral intuitions, which are correct – period. Your supposed moral intuitions to the contrary are incorrect and invalid, period.

    The issue of solipsism is different. We all act as if solipsism is not an accurate statement of reality. Whether I can prove that there are other minds is irrelevant. I act – and you act – as if there are. If we are wrong, so what?

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  6. Marc,

    Our concern about black people or women or anyone else suffering discrimination is not based on sand or on some abstract rational principle, but on our capacity for caring about others.

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  7. s. wallerstein,

    We have been to this rodeo before. If your opposition to discrimination is only based on the fact that you "care for others." then it has no moral basis for expecting others to care as you do. Stating it is based on a moral intuition, and is therefore valid and infallible, it moral force. The fact that others, like David Dukes, do not have the same moral intuition, and you cannot persuade them that your moral intuition is valid, whereas theirs is not, is irrelevant. Otherwise, we are reduced to preferring one preference based on "caring" over another's preference not to care, and it all becomes relative. These basic rights should not be based on moral relativism.

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  8. One more thing.

    I assume you, and others reading this blog, are opposed to lynching Black people. Is this based on the fact that you "care" about the rights of Black people, rather than that it is morally, irrefutably wrong? If so, then you are admitting you could be mistaken or wrong? Can you be mistaken about this? The same argument applies to other forms of discrimination. Saying your position is based on your empathy and caring, rather than on a moral intuition, is acknowledging that you could be wrong.

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  9. Marc,

    Sorry, but you're inventing a God(moral realism) when God is dead.

    No, I have absolutely no way of convincing a racist fanatic that he or she should stop being racist. That's why we're in the mess we're in.

    The traditional move is to claim that God wants us to stop discriminating or hating other races. That position was very eloquently expressed by Martin Luther King, but unfortunately, God is dead. The moral arc of the universe does not bend towards justice because the universe has no moral arc.

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  10. No, Marc, I can't be wrong about my moral views because morality is not right or wrong in the sense that math equations are right or wrong.

    But obviously over the course of my life-time I've held moral positions that I later change for various reasons.

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  11. Just some rushed armchair moral psychologizing, but I think most people have a broadly similar collection of basic moral intuitions. It covers a lot to list these ones (sort of in the spirit of W.D. Ross):

    -It's generally obligatory to be impartial. (See e.g. the Golden Rule and its cousins.)
    -It's generally obligatory to respect other people's autonomy.
    -It's generally obligatory to be honest, to honor one's word.
    -It's generally wrong to be indifferent to, much less desire, other people's suffering (especially insofar as one's own choices contribute to it).
    -It's generally obligatory to acknowledge and redress one's wrongs.

    The "generally" is meant as a gesture toward the fact that many moral conflicts are complex and uncertain and without perfect solution, thus allowing for debate and reasonable disagreement.

    These seem to me about as close as people normally get to ground-level principles. Deeper inquiries into their meaning, character, and justification belong to metaethics, I think, and can reasonably be "left to the philosophers."

    Also, there's a difference between basic intuitions, or ground-level principles, and their specific, concrete applications. "Slavery is wrong" is not a ground-level principle, but an application of (or inference from) several such principles. Someone who "thinks" (or acts as if) slavery isn't wrong might, we hope, be corrected and persuaded by the observation that slavery obviously violates these principles; perhaps the bulk of real-life moral debate takes place at or around this level. And if someone refuses to be persuaded that slavery is wrong, or of similarly important ethical truths, then the normal and reasonable response is to diagnose that person as dangerous, as not-to-be-reasoned-with; we simply hope and act to minimize the threat such people pose to the moral community.

    Such is how it looks to me in rough outline; I'm not sure how to make much headway beyond that. Is this at all helpful or pertinent to your concerns, Marc?

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  12. Marc,

    Rawls refers to "considered convictions" (in ToJ, 1st ed.), which I take to mean matters we have thought about and come to a considered conclusion on, making an effort to be as "impartial" as possible.

    p. 19ff.: "There are questions which we feel sure must be answered in a certain way. For example, we are confident that religious intolerance and racial discrimination are unjust. We think that we have examined these things with care and have reached what we believe is an impartial judgment not likely to be distorted by an excessive attention to our own interests. These convictions are provisional fixed points which we presume any conception of justice must fit." (emphasis added)

    In other words: one considers the matter and reaches a conclusion trying not to give an "excessive attention to our own interests," and that's that.

    Whether it's "true" in the way that 2 + 2 = 4 is true makes no practical difference, because you're not going to persuade a dyed-in-the-wool racist no matter what you say.

    Obviously people have moral intuitions, as Michael says. This is a fact of moral psychology. But intuitions can sometimes be flawed. As I think D Zimmerman suggested earlier, one way you can perhaps check on whether intuitions seem sound is to look at (1) the empirical consequences of their being implemented, and (2) whether they stand up to, and result from, an effort to bracket, or at least not to give undue weight to, one's own immediate material interests.

    It's not necessarily as cut-and-dried as 2 + 2 = 4. But it's also not as arbitrary as one's preference for chocolate over vanilla ice cream.

    Your preoccupation with this bogeyman you've labeled "moral relativism" is baffling to me. For example, we both believe in the principle of one-person one-vote. You think it's an eternal "truth without proof" handed down with a lightning bolt from some equivalent of Mt. Olympus (or Mt. Sinai or whatever) and valid for all time in the way that the truths of math are valid for all time, and I think it's a considered moral conviction anchored in a commitment to certain (transhistorical) values having to do w the equal worth of all human beings. We end up in the same place, so I don't understand why you are so preoccupied, indeed I would go so far as to say obsessed, with how we get there.

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  13. On reflection the above comment comes across as somewhat harsher than I intended. It was written kind of quickly. (Not retracting it , just a p.s.)

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  14. LFC, Michael and s. wallerstein,

    I will attempt to address the comments of each of you in the above order.

    First, regarding Rawls. LFC refers to Rawls’s concept of “considered convictions” which he takes to mean “we have thought about and come to a considered conclusion on, making an effort to be as ‘impartial’ as possible.” This notion that, before we conclude that one should not do unto others as we would not have them do unto us, we evaluate the pros and cons of the proposition and then reach a “considered conviction” is arm-chair sophistry. That’s not how it works. Our conviction that this moral precept is correct is immediate, and does not require reflection. It is based on our instinctive belief in fairness, a belief that we do not arrive at via reflection, a belief which studies of infants has demonstrated is already incorporated into our belief system before we are even able to contemplate pros and cons. See, e.g., Young Children’s Development of Fairness Preference, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01274/full and Do infants have a sense of fairness?, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3357325/. The latter article describes experiments which researchers have conducted with 19-month-old and 21- month-old infants. The researchers based their conclusions on the time differentials of how long the infants looked at different experiment scenarios. “In Experiment 1, 19-month-olds expected an experimenter to distribute two items equally between two individuals; in Experiment 2, 21-month-olds expected an experimenter to distribute rewards equally between two individuals when both had worked, but not when one had worked while the other had chosen not to. The same behavior on the pat of the experimenter – giving one item to each individual – was thus viewed as expected in the first context, but not in the second. Together, these results suggest that, by 19-21 months, infants show context-sensitive expectations about the allocation of resources and the dispensation of rewards, at least in simple situations.” I don’t think that the infants went through thought processes about the situations, and then came to considered conclusions, as Rawls hypothesized.

    So, no, LFC, I do not believe these moral precepts have been handed down from Mt. Olympus or Mt. Sinai. They constitute the “unalienable rights” of homo sapiens. Why does this matter, if “we end up in the same place”? Because how we get to that place is extremely important. Why am I obsessed with “moral relativism”? Because moral relativism finds reasons to bend the rules in favor of not recognizing the applicability of a mora precept depending on the circumstances. If these precepts are no more than “considered moral conviction anchored in a commitment to certain (transhistorical) values having to do with equal worth,” then their application can change if the transhistorical values change, like, for example, regarding the peaceful transition of power from one President to the next elected President, requiring that the one man one vote moral precept based on human equality be respected in Presidential elections.


    (Continued)

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  15. Here is an example from my own profession. According to our inherent notions of fairness, all individuals should be treated equally regardless of status – no one is above the law, we are repeatedly told. This should also apply to judges, themselves, no? The federal court system has a Code of Conduct for United States Judges. It sets forth the Canons of Ethics which apply to federal judges, and which proscribes even “the appearance” of impropriety or bias. If there is even “the appearance” of bias with respect to a particular case, the judge is required to recuse him/herself. But the Code only applies to District Court and Circuit Court of Appeals judges. It does not apply to Justices of the Supreme Court. Were Clarence Thomas a District Court or Circuit Court judge, there is no question that he would be required to recuse himself from cases in which his wife has played any role. Yet, because the Code does not apply to Justice Thomas, he is not required to recuse himself from considering cases in which his wife clearly has played a role prior to the appeal. If all people are equal, and no one is above the law, is a moral precept which has inherent moral validity, with no exceptions, then Justice Thomas should be required to recuse himself. But if the precept is based on “transhistorical values,” then the precept can be adapted and changed with time, allowing Justice Thomas not to recuse himself.

    The same analysis applies to Michael’s list of generally obligatory moral precepts. Do any of them really require reflection in order to reach the status of a “considered conviction”? Take, “It’s generally obligatory to respect other people’s autonomy.” This moral precept is typically accepted without proof. And what proof could one offer? Prof. Wolff, in his In Defense of Anarchism takes it as a given. What requires thought and reflection is justifying the exceptions to the precept, i.e., incarceration for committing a crime or institutionalization for mental illness.

    Regarding s. wallerstein’s point that “the moral arc of the universe does not bend towards justice because the universe has no moral arc” It is of course true that the universe – with God in absentia – does not adhere to any moral code which favors the existence and perpetuation of the species homo sapiens. No moral principle prevents an asteroid from crashing into Earth and exterminating all humankind. But Dr. King was not referring to the entire universe. He was referring to the subset of the universe occupied by homo sapiens, among whom certain unalienable moral precepts, true without proof, must prevail, by virtue of which the arc within that subset of homo sapiens bends towards justice, as long as those moral precepts are adhered to.

    (Continued)

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  16. Why is it that many liberals reject the notion of moral objectivism, and prefer moral relativism? I have a theory about this: That liberals are so committed to their concept of fairness – a moral precept they accept without a requirement of proof – that they feel obliged to reject anything which strikes them as being dogmatic, because dogmatism allows of no exceptions and is therefore unfair – and moral objectivism strikes them as being dogmatic. Therefore, there are no ineluctable, unassailable objective moral precepts which are true without proof, because this equates to dogmatism, and we are not dogmatic people. Their own commitment to “fairness,” the validity of which they do not question, requires that they question the validity of anything which purports to be an objective moral precept. So, they say about slavery, for example, well, after considered reflection I believe that the enslavement of other human beings is morally wrong. But I cannot prove that it is objectively morally wrong. And I don’t believe that there are any moral precepts that are true for human beings unless they can be proved. My belief is no more than a conviction anchored in a commitment to certain transhistorical values. Therefore, while I disagree with those who thought – and perhaps still think - that slavery was perfectly alright, this is just a matter of personal preference based on evolving transhistorical values, and personal preferences can differ. On what basis can I claim that my dogmatic view is superior to, or more correct than, the bigot’s dogmatic views?”

    And where does this all lead?

    “Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    And what beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

    W.B. Yeats

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  17. My use of the word "transhistorical" was my effort to suggest that these values do apply in different historical eras; for example, it's legitimate to say that slavery in ancient Greece (or elsewhere in the ancient world) was wrong even if almost no one at the time might have thought so. So the word "transhistorical" has the opposite meaning than the one you attribute to it.

    I do not think moral "objectivism" is necessarily "dogmatic." The opening passages of the Declaration of Independence refer to self-evident truths and to the "laws of nature." I've never thought of it as a dogmatic document particularly.

    The notion that infants may have a (somewhat primitive) sense of justice does not conflict with the notion that non-infants engage in reflection. The suggestion that a "considered conviction" is something we've weighed pros and cons about -- no, that's a misunderstanding. If you re-read the sentences from Rawls that I quoted, you will not find there any reference to weighing pros and cons.

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  18. Also, the view that slavery is wrong is not a "personal preference" whether one takes it to be something self-evidently true or something arrived at in another way.

    Convictions are not preferences; they're convictions. I think you'll find that the dictionary does not treat the two words as synonyms.

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  19. Marc,

    You ask, given my rejection of objective morality, what can I say to a bigot.

    David Zimmerman helps us there. Remember that he pointed out that in that case at least we can recur to empirical facts which show that blacks are not inferior to whites in any sense and thus, there is no empirical justification for discriminating against them.

    If the bigot persists in his or her bigotry, as he or she probably will, then no, there nothing we can say. There's a level of stupidity which is impossible to reason with and there are a lot of stupid people around.

    As to your theory that I and others reject moral objectivism because we are "liberals", first of all, I don't see myself as a liberal, but as a leftist. Biden is a liberal;
    I'm not a member of Biden's political tribe.

    Second, that's just not true in my biography. As a fairly young teenager, say, 12 or 13, I already perceived that people's moral beliefs are not objective, but rather reflect their personalities, their social role, their conscious and unconscious interests and hang-ups, etc. I became a leftist a bit later, maybe at age 17, chiefly because leftism in suburban New Jersey in 1963 provided a critical alternative to the moral values around me which I no longer accepted. I didn't believe that I had "seen the light" or that I had perceived the Good or Moral Truth, but rather that I was joining another tribe, a tribe which I perceived as saner, more authentic and less hypocritical.

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  20. Marc writes:

    Therefore, there are no ineluctable, unassailable objective moral precepts which are true without proof, because this equates to dogmatism, and we [liberals] are not dogmatic people. Their [liberals'] own commitment to "fairness," the validity of which they do not question, requires that they question the validity of anything which purports to be an objective moral precept.

    I think there's probably something to this, but it doesn't seem to acknowledge the sort of liberal (like Rorty's "ironist" - s. wallerstein can explain this) who accepts this self-description but with a tinge of maybe self-effacement and resignation, or modest fallibilism in any case: Like, "Our worldview is merely the least objectionable one there is, pending something better." (I'm just pointing this out because such phrases as "accepts without question" suggest, maybe unintentionally, that liberals must be mindless hypocrites.)

    It seems an unusual thing, BTW, for an atheist like Marc to be so distressed by this "moral relativism" stuff. Maybe you (Marc) have some under-explored sympathy with, or curiosity about, religion which you would do well for yourself to nourish and clarify. Not that that'd be weird or bad - it's where I happen to be myself.

    OTOH, atheism can in some cases coexist with moral realism; they just have a messy and complicated relationship.

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  21. Michael,

    I would say that Rorty is an ironist and a liberal.

    That is, his being a liberal does not necessitate that he be an ironist nor vice versa.

    One could be a liberal in Rorty's sense of the term (someone who rejects cruelty toward others) without being an ironist and one can certainly be an ironist in Rorty's sense without being a liberal.

    How about Martin Luther King as a liberal (in Rorty's sense) who was not an ironist and Nietzsche as an ironist in Rorty's sense who was not a liberal?



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  22. Marc "Luther: SusselmanOctober 29, 2022 at 4:16 PM

    Here I stand. I can do no other.

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  23. A Passover anecdote:

    About 25 years ago I attended a Passover seder at our synagogue. Now, I had been attending Passovers seders every year for as long as I could remember, but this time, as I was reading the Passover Haggadah (the liturgy for the seder), something struck me. The significance of Passover is to recognize not just the Exodus of the Hebrew from Egypt and their escape from slavery, but the recognition of the right of human freedom generally. So, as I am reading the English translation of the Haggaddah (juxtaposed next to the Hebrew), there was a passage about how many slaves escaped with their Hebrew owners. This had never caught my eye before, and my lawyer antennae, every on the prowl for contradictions, went up. Wait a minute. This holiday is supposed to celebrate the Hebrews’ escape from slavery, and they left with slaves???

    The next day I was in the local grocery store shopping for Passover fare – matzoh, gefilte fish, etc. – and I saw a man dressed in Hasidic garb. This was before the internet and the availability of Google. As is my wont to engage strangers in conversation, I thought I have to clear this up here and now. Are my people just a bunch of hypocrites, like many anti-Semites claim? So, I approached the gentleman in the Hasidic garb, and said, “Pardon me, I am Jewish and would like to ask you a question about Passover.” He graciously said, sure, what’s your question. And I told him about the contradiction which I believed I had found in the Passover liturgy. He smiled (thinking, I suspect, this mishugganah guy calls himself a Jew?) and responded, “You don’t understand. Slavery in Hebrew society at that time was not the same as slavery in the American South before the Civil War. Slaves were more like indentured servants, and by Jewish law had to be freed after seven years.” I thanked him for his explanation and continued my shopping, feeling relieved that what appeared to be a moral contradiction had been put to rest. So now that I can in fact Google the question, I have found a more scholarly explanation:

    “[S]lavery among Hebrews was not intended as a permanent condition, but a voluntary, temporary refuge for people suffering what would otherwise be desperate poverty. ‘When you buy a male Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, but in the seventh he shall go out a free person, without debt’ (Exod. 21:2). Cruelty on the part of the owner resulted in immediate freedom for the slave (Exod. 21:26-27). This made male Hebrew slavery more like a kind of long-term labor contract among individuals, and less like the kind of permanent exploitation that has characterized slavery in modern times.”

    Nonetheless, the practice was marked by a different form of discrimination – sexism, and treatment of foreigners caught in battle was not lenient:

    “Female Hebrew slavery was in one sense even more protective. The chief purpose contemplated for buying a female slave was so that she could become the wife of either the buyer or the buyer’s son (Exod. 21:8-9). As wife, she became the social equal of the slaveholder, and the purchase functioned much like the giving of a dowry. Indeed, she is even called a “wife” by the regulation (Exod. 21:10). Moreover, if the buyer failed to treat the female slave with all the rights due an ordinary wife, he was required to set her free. “She shall go out without debt, without payment of money” (Exod. 21:11). Yet in another sense, women had far less protection than men. Potentially, every unmarried woman faced the possibility of being sold into a marriage against her will. Although this made her a "wife" rather than a "slave," would forced marriage be any less objectionable than forced labor?”

    So, does this vitiate my contention that slavery is objectively morally wrong without proof? No, it just proves that people are imperfect and sometimes have erroneous views, like that the world is flat.

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  24. People may wonder why the Civil War was so bloody? I believe it was because the Christians & Jews in the south didn't want to free their slaves after seven years labor. They tried to justify their slaveholding through the words of the Torah, but they didn't want to follow the true love of the Torah to one's fellow man regarding the institution of slavery. There is an example in the Old Testament (or Tanakh) of God's wrath when people don't want to release their slaves after seven years. Here:

    Jeremiah 34:8-17
    King James Version

    8 This is the word that came unto Jeremiah from the Lord, after that the king Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people which were at Jerusalem, to proclaim liberty unto them;

    9 That every man should let his manservant, and every man his maidservant, being an Hebrew or an Hebrewess, go free; that none should serve himself of them, to wit, of a Jew his brother.

    10 Now when all the princes, and all the people, which had entered into the covenant, heard that every one should let his manservant, and every one his maidservant, go free, that none should serve themselves of them any more, then they obeyed, and let them go.

    11 But afterward they turned, and caused the servants and the handmaids, whom they had let go free, to return, and brought them into subjection for servants and for handmaids.

    12 Therefore the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying,

    13 Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel; I made a covenant with your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondmen, saying,

    14 At the end of seven years let ye go every man his brother an Hebrew, which hath been sold unto thee; and when he hath served thee six years, thou shalt let him go free from thee: but your fathers hearkened not unto me, neither inclined their ear.

    15 And ye were now turned, and had done right in my sight, in proclaiming liberty every man to his neighbour; and ye had made a covenant before me in the house which is called by my name:

    16 But ye turned and polluted my name, and caused every man his servant, and every man his handmaid, whom he had set at liberty at their pleasure, to return, and brought them into subjection, to be unto you for servants and for handmaids.

    17 Therefore thus saith the Lord; Ye have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbour: behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine; and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.

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  25. The South didn't want to give up its "peculiar institution," but the motives were a mixture of economics and (racist) ideology. The religious justifications, such as they were, followed along like the caboose of a train. That wd be my take at any rate.

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  26. Michael is unfortunately correct that there were Jewish slave-owners in the Confederate South, though on a per capita basis their slave ownership was less than the number of slaves owned by Christian slave-owners. See Slavery and the Jews, The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1995/09/slavery-and-the-jews/376462/ This of course is not an excuse for their participation. Slavery is morally wrong regardless the religion or ethnicity of the slave-owner or the enslaved. Whether the Book of Jeremiah was written by humans (as biblical scholars generally believe), or divinely inspired, the fact that it was written is, to my mind, an indication that the practice of slavery is objectively morally wrong, and not just a matter of personal conviction.

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  27. I don't know- don't face to face societies have categories too?
    I think it's not size but social density that matters most

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  28. Hi Marc

    My understanding is that the ancient Israelites agitated for freedom to worship Yah in the Desert- if you remember Exodus. Yah is a war God and the slaves in ancient Israel likely were war captives.
    HaShem is a fascist- a loving fasist-you must obey him- your whole life is micromanaged to the smallest detail by the Torah- freedom to worship Yah is freedom to obey Yah.
    I'd ask how did we compare to the Assyrians as far as slavery and freedom? The Assyrians had an ark that was captured I think by the Babylonians- they had their exile too- but maybe they were more warlike than the Israelites
    I think the Hasidim don't mind oppressing the Palestinians who are our war booty- they are Helots

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  29. Howie,

    I just want to go on the record to state that I do not agree with a word that you have written.

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  30. Dear Marc:

    I acknowledge your dissent and I feel the same way too sometimes, but all people and religions tell themselves sometimes necessary lies
    Bertrand Russell agrees with me or me with him.
    There may have been small differences between us and the other Near East tribes.
    I think there was a sense of social justice- don't know if that's home grown or from the Greek Philosophers or from say the Sumerians who invented the Sabbath
    I think being destroyed by the Romans did something to the Jewish People, made us less warlike and more philosophical
    The Israelis today are more like the Israelites of ancient days than the Jews of the Diaspora.
    I don't think the ancient Israelites had Yiddishkeit and I think it is an open historical and literary question.
    There is a lot of carnage in the Bible- just look at Joshua and I think Neusner agreed though his opinion counts more than ours and Professor Bloom with whom I corresponded called Rabbinical Judaism a strong misinterpretation of the Bible and said the canonical Bible is a misinterpretation of J
    I doubt we were the only people who only understood God and wished to live in peace- it's a lot more complicated- we were warlike until the Romans broke us

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  31. Marc

    You're a mensch and care.
    People back then were different, even Jews- Moses violated the constitutional rights of the man he slew in Exodus, Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac, David was a conniving and violent man-
    let's hope that the world and America and Israel stay true to their better selves- lying about our past won't save us

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  32. As a Jew, I don't have the least interest in the ancient Hebrews and their religion.

    What's interesting about the Jews for me is their encounter with Western culture, which may begin with Spinoza, the first Jew who interests me, continues with people like Marx, Freud, Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Bob Dylan, Groucho Marx, Allan Ginsberg, Noam Chomsky Woody Allen, Dario Sztajnszrajber (Argentinian philosopher whom I listen to in Youtube) and many others.

    I identify with them, not with a patriarchal ancient religion.

    As for the state of Israel, it embarasses me.

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  33. Howie and s. wallerstein,

    I just came back to this thread out of curiosity and found your comments. You both sell Judaism and the Tanakh short. The story of Abraham and Isaac is a condemnation of human sacrifice, which was pretty common in ancient cultures. There are unique aspects of the Tanakh which your are ignoring. For example, in Genesis, Abraham argues with Hashem about Hashem’s decision to annihilate Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham argues that there are innocent people there, who do not deserve to die. What if I can find 50 moral people, will you spare the cities. Hashem agrees. When Abraham cannot find 50 moral people, he continues to negotiate with Hashem, until he cannot find even 5 moral people. In how many religious texts do you find the protagonist arguing with God over a moral issue? The same is true of the Book of Jonah, which is read every Yom Kippur. Hashem orders Jonah to go to Ninevah, the capital of the Assyrians, to warn them that if they do not repent, they will be destroyed. Jonah refuses, because he hates the Assyrians for having conquered the Northern kingdom of Israel, resulting in the dispersion of the 10 lost tribes. Jonah seeks to escape from Hashem, is thrown into the sea by sailors, is swallowed by a giant fish. Finally, he goes to Ninevah issues the warning, and the king of the Assyrians repents and orders his people to also repent, and are spared.

    The Book of Joshua, and the ruthless conquest of Canaan is apocryphal. It never happened. The story was written by scribes during the Babylonian exile, to give the exiled Hebrews hope that they would be allowed to return to rebuild the Temple, which happened after the Persians, under king Cyrus, defeated the Babylonians. I have to say, for Jews, you know very little about your heritage. Regarding Israel, I will not even go there; I have already expressed my views on that issue on this blog, except to say that the Palestinians are not the innocent victims that many liberal Jews make them out to be.

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  34. Marc,

    I've read the entire Old Testament, if only because I took a course on it in college, so I'm fairly aware of its contents. The only book that holds the least interest for me is Ecclesiastes.

    I don't even consider the Old Testament to be my "heritage", to use your term. As I said above, my Jewish heritage is that of Spinoza, both Karl and Groucho Marx, Kafka, Freud, Noam Chomsky, Bob Dylan (who Leiter says is an unpleasant person, who cares?) and Hannah Arendt, among others.

    The part you value (and you have every right to value it) means nothing to me and has never meant anything to me, not even as a small child.

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  35. s. wallerstein,

    There is more to your Jewish heritage than just the contents of the Old Testament. There is the history of the Jewish people, spanning over 2,500 years, a history you appear to know very little about, a history which informs the Jewish culture up to the present day.

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  36. Marc,

    We live in 2022, in a post post modern society. There is not one "Jewish heritage", if there ever was one.

    Being Jewish by now is a multi-cultural phenomenon and there are as many ways of being Jewish as of being of the male gender.

    You chose yours, fine. Others chose other ways of being Jewish.

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  37. s. wallerstein,

    What constitutes Jewish heritage and Jewish culture is an extremely complicated subject, and not amenable to a definitive, or even an intelligent, analysis in the limited space available on Prof. Wolff’s blog. Whether even such a thing as “culture” exists has been the subject of prior postings on this blog. But you appear to believe that such a thing as Jewish culture exists, which distinguishes it from Italian, Hungarian, Hindu, Christian and other religious/ethnic “cultures,” since you refer to “being Jewish” as if there is some amalgam of characteristics which constitutes “being Jewish” that goes beyond matrilineal descent, religious observance, and individual variability. I submit that your assertion that there is not a Jewish heritage, at the same time that you refer to “being Jewish” as a culture, is internally inconsistent. That said, I will leave it at that.

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  38. Marc,

    I accept your correction.

    There are Jewish cultures, not a Jewish culture. Judith Butler exemplifies a form of Jewish culture in 2022 just as Orthodox Hassidim do. However, on most issues and as to their life styles, Butler and the Hassidim have little in common.

    I feel closer to Judith Butler.

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  39. s. wallerstein,

    I regard anyone who refers to themselves using plural pronouns, as Judith Butler does to reflect her binary sexuality, as a bit confused. We all have different aspects of our personalities, so should we all refer to ourselves using plural, rather than singular, pronouns when referring to ourselves, and what possible linguistic or analytical purpose could that possibly serve? Does Judith Butler’s binary sexuality make her more interesting than the rest of us.? Her use of plural self-referential pronouns is a bit pretentious, don’t you think?

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  40. Marc,

    I don't claim to be in agreement with Butler on everything nor do I know much about her work besides having listened to a couple of interviews with her in Youtube.

    I simply used her as an example of someone Jewish and who identifies publicly as a Jew as opposed as one can imagine to Orthodox Jews.

    And before you claim that I know nothing about Orthodox Jews, I will explain that about 50 years ago being jobless and crashing on the floor of different friends in Berkeley, California and seeing that their patience with my presence was running out, I learned that the Orthodox Jews of the Chabad tendency let any Jew in need crash in their center.

    So I spent about a month sleeping on the floor of their center, helping out with the chores such as sweeping and taking out the garbage and being awakened every morning to participate in their rites. At times I chatted with the two rabbis, nice decent guys, but with whom I didn't share much besides the fact that Hitler would have gassed
    all of us together. There was an Israeli guy who was also crashing there and he was as non-religious as I was and am. We used to smuggle in small bottles of cheap liquor to drink together at night.

    Anyway, given the above, I identify more with Butler, whether or not she is pretentious, than with Orthodox Jews.

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  41. Michael,

    The song, Turn, turn, turn, was written by Pete Singer and then made popular by the Byrds.

    https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Turn!_Turn!_Turn!

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  42. ^Is that intended for Michael Llenos? I think I'm not seeing the comment it's in response to.

    Speaking of Pete Singer (Seeger?)... I want to sympathize more with Prof. Leiter's recent critique of Peter Singer (the ethicist), but it feels a bit evasive to me.

    Singer basically draws an analogy - and tempers it over time* - between (a) the well-dressed pedestrian who passes a drowning child, but refuses to enter the pond for fear of ruining their clothes, and (b) the movie-goer or fancy restaurant patron who could've donated their money to famine relief instead. And as I read him, Leiter argues that (b)'s decision does not warrant moral criticism because extreme poverty is ultimately an outcome of the economic system we live under, rather than any single individual's lifestyle decisions; our energies should be directed toward replacing the economic system with something humane, rather than on revising our daily priorities at the individual level.

    Am I misreading the argument, or does it invite the obvious rejoinder: "Yes, capitalism is terrible, but does that really get us off the hook when we actually have the opportunity to help save lives today by spending our surplus income just a bit differently? Can't we be more charitable in our daily lives while simultaneously doing something to effect the hoped-for transition to socialism?"

    *IIRC, when Singer initially advanced the argument, he concluded that (b) acts just as immorally as (a); but over time, Singer figured it'd be more helpful to real-life victims of extreme poverty if he softened the condemnation, suggesting instead that the sufficiently well-off individual should regularly donate a certain small percentage of their surplus income (rather than fret over the utility and disutility of every single purchase).

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  43. Michael,

    Yes, the comment was intended for Michael Llenos. I received a comment about the song in my email feed from this post, but it's not here. I have no idea why.

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  44. Michael,

    As to Leiter and Peter Singer, in this video as I recall (my memory is increasingly weak)
    Leiter talks a bit about Singer and effective altruism.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PwM18UrGqo

    Leiter says that any substantial progress towards bettering the lives of ordinary people comes and will come from supporting the welfare state and eventually, from socialism (which may be a long time coming).

    Thus, instead of donating money to the charities Singer promotes, Leiter advocates
    donating money to candidates who support the welfare state or social democracy, and he says that he donated money to Bernie Sanders in that light. He does not say if he donated money to Biden or to other mainstream Democrats.

    In addition, let me point out that rightwing conmen like Trump and Bolsonaro deny climate change and climate change seems to me to be the foremost problem facing humanity. Thus,
    real "effective altruism" in 2022 would involve donating money and voting for candidates
    who back action to combat climate change and to keeping people like Trump far away from public office.

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  45. s. wallerstein
    Sorry for the confusion and thank you for responding. I don't know why it didn't post here. I tried it twice.

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