Marriage is not like voting or drinking. In some circles, it plays better to tell ourselves that we are doing nothing more than taking an existing institution and making it more fair. Deep down, though, we know that this is not accurate. The old institution of marriage does not treat people equally and with respect. That is why we as a society are replacing it with a new and more equal institution. This is a good thing, whatever Moore says. Progressives should be honest about this fact, and embrace it.—Brian Epstein, “What Alabama’s Roy Moore Got Right,” The New York Times, February 16, 2015.
I read Brian Epstein’s wise piece, which he sent me, with pleasure, not the least of which is found on my admiration for his analysis (sketch) of the nature of social institutions, which he treats as rather complicated social facts. I also like his methodological willingness to take the insights of reactionary critics of the new institutions of marriage seriously. In fact, such reactionaries often discern more clearly what is genuinely at stake in a social change than often the most noble and able defenders of progress. (This is why when one does history of philosophy it always pays to look at the most uncompromising critics of a doctrine/author/text.)
Epstein writes, correctly, about marriage that “we are well underway in discarding the old institution and building a new one.” It is worth reminding ourselves how fast things have developed. A generation ago – say when I was a politically active student – this new institution was if not inconceivable (undoubtedly there were some prophetic visionaries), extremely remote.[1] I mention this not to emphasize the malleability of institutions, but to emphasize how significant it is that there are circumstances in which even very deeply entrenched institutions,[2] which do not treat “people equally and with respect,” can be transformed into better institutions.
Even so, there is a tension in Epstein’s position in the passage that I have quoted above. The tension involves these three claims:
- In some circles, it plays better to tell ourselves that we are doing nothing more than taking an existing institution and making it more fair.
- Deep down, though, we know that this is not accurate.
- Progressives should be honest about this fact.
In what follows nothing hangs on Brian’s exact wording, and I do not disambiguate all the possible (flatfooted) meanings these claims can have. The first two claims suggests that there has been some deception in the political rhetoric surrounding same-sex marriage. When I first read his essay, I assumed that the deception in (1.) was capturing the way in which (progressive) activists sold a dramatic institutional change to a larger somewhat unsuspecting public by clothing it in the language of bourgeois family values. And in that light I understood (3.) as suggesting that rather than deploy deception, progressives should embrace the winning, moral high ground they happen to occupy in this instance. It is a nice instance where Kant’s publicity constraint also produces good outcomes.
But the reading of the previous paragraph goes against the wording of (1.) and also against the spirit of the piece as such. (It probably only reveals my elitism about politics.) In fact, in (1.) Brian comes close to suggesting that this deception is primarily, if not wholly, self-deception. For, Epstein emphasizes throughout that social institutions are collective enterprises involving all of us (“it is society as a whole that builds institutions”). This is why he speaks of ‘us’ and ‘we’ throughout. On his view we do not farm out institution building and institution existence wholly to experts and other privileged political actors. (To put it in jargon: there are constraints on the extent of the division of labor when it comes to the generation and maintenance/transformation of social facts.)
But, if the previous paragraph is correct, why, then, would we have to adopt a misleading, self-deceiving rhetoric (which -- note (2.) -- deep down we know is not accurate)? Brian is quiet on the nature and extent of this self-deception, so the next sentence is speculation: if he is right (and let’s stipulate it) about the fact that the old marriage institution treated people unequally and without respect (and as he also suggests, reinforced bad gender norms) then it means that all of us, who at one point or another helped maintain the old institution, are complicit in a pretty bad arrangement. (One can note this while recognizing that such complicity comes in degrees.) So, we improved a bad situation by adopting a rhetoric whereby we fooled ourselves about the extent of the prior bad practices and by pretending away our complicity with it, and, in so doing, we ended up pretending that the proposed changes are modest.
I think the previous paragraph has made sense of (1-2) and captures something very important about the nature of big changes in social institutions that are also occasions of moral progress. (It does not follow they are only moral progress or that the change cannot have bad unanticipated consequences, etc.) But does (3.) follow? Well, yes, if you are a strict Kantian about publicity come what may.
Upon further reflection it strikes me that if a social institution is indeed maintained by the collective community (and not just by a powerful or clever minority), then some such self-deception may well be more efficacious than following Epstein’s (3.). Note, first, that such self-deception is not immoral – we’re not in the realm of Noble Lies or Government-house Utilitarianism; nobody is being misled by another. Of course, we are, perhaps, understating the hurt and injustice we are causing others, and this may well generate further harms. But, second, by ending the less respectful and less moral practice, we are, in fact, improving the world. It strikes me that this is a case where the good consequences justify the (fairly innocent) means. It does not follow we should never opt for (3.) even in cases of collective social institutions, but it is by no means obvious that we should always advocate such honesty—we may be more likely to change for the better if we think well enough of ourselves anyway.
In fact, the mystery is how such collective, tacit-not-entirely-deliberate-self-deception is really possible, but that is for another occasion.
[1] I am not a scholar on these matters so I hesitate in writing the following sentence. I suspect that the AIDS epidemic killed many of those gay activists that would have resisted the more recent focus on identifying gay-emancipation with marriage equality.
[2] In the legal code, the tax code, religious practices, property relations, etc.
This is such an interesting post. Eric is, of course, being much too generous – coming up with a fascinating new idea, and crediting it to me. I think he’s absolutely right to have noted an ambiguity in my own thinking about this.
At times I do think Eric’s first interpretation is actually what’s going on – I think that we’re afraid of how people will react, and try to couch moral imperatives as nonthreateningly as possible. And I think this fear can be counterproductive. But I also think Eric is right that his second interpretation is more to the point: it is likely that we are not entirely honest with ourselves about the very social changes we hope to bring about. I’m not sure about the deep reason for the self-deception, but I think Eric’s hypothesis is plausible. As he suggests, it may be to repress our own complicity in an unjust institution. Or to cast the same point a little more optimistically, it may be that we hope that our societies and institutions are fundamentally just, even when we know they are not. So we tell ourselves that they need tweaking, not replacing, where they fall short.
Eric may be right that continuing this self-deception can be effective in moral progress. And he’s surely right that if so, that probably trumps whatever moral downside there is (if any) to that self-deception.
However, it isn’t so clear to me that this deception – either the outward deception of interpretation 1 or the self-deception of interpretation 2 – really is more effective than honesty, at least in this case. People are smart, and they know when something doesn’t quite ring true. So it can be alienating to be told (either by someone else or by ourselves) that an institution is only being tweaked. I think that replacing the broken historical institution is the paramount goal. If a little deception were the price, that wouldn’t be a big deal. But in this case, I think it’s much more politically effective to be straightforward.
Posted by: Brian Epstein | 02/19/2015 at 05:24 AM
I have little to add right now, Brian, except that I agree that "it can be alienating to be told (either by someone else or by ourselves) that an institution is only being tweaked" when you know otherwise. This is probably a non-trivial feature of the alienation with politics we encounter in democracies.
Posted by: Eric Schliesser | 02/19/2015 at 07:36 AM