When senator John McCain died last year, there was an outpouring of appreciation for his career from across the political spectrum. The praise was just as strong, if not stronger, from those who had been on the opposite side of politics from McCain as from those on his own.
There is a superficial puzzle about this. Why should people who put so much effort into preventing McCain from achieving various political goals now praise his wonderful and admirable career?
But that’s an easy puzzle. Democracy isn’t war. Though it can be shot through with martial language and metaphors, democracy ultimately requires a high level of respect between the “warring” sides. Without that, the peaceful exchange of power that characterises democracy becomes impossible. In fact, if one’s view of democracy doesn’t distinguish between electoral campaigns and artillery campaigns, that democracy will be an inherently fragile project.
I’m not sure whether John McCain was principled. For that matter, I’m not sure if there is any good explanation of why he deserved this kind of cross-party praise. But some people do, and it is good to think about what makes them deserving. And the suggestion that we should admire our principled opponents is interesting.
At first glance, this looks like a plausible solution to the puzzle over when we should admire an opponent. An opponent may be admirable because they are principled, because they work hard to advance their sincerely held moral principles. But they are nevertheless an opponent, because we don’t share their principles, and we do not think their principles should be advanced.
But at second glance, this story can’t be right. It is too easy to be principled. Fanatics, terrorists and racists can all have sincerely and deeply held moral principles, and they can make enormous sacrifices to advance those principles. Yet that doesn’t make them worthy of admiration and respect...
So, if we admire our opponents, it shouldn’t be because they are principled. They may well be principled, but it doesn’t matter. It’s too easy to be principled. And since being principled is neither a redeeming feature among the wicked nor what we admire in the virtuous, we have to ask again: what makes some of our adversaries more admirable?
Some political fights come about because others do not share our values, or because they value things that we think lack value. Perhaps they in fact positively value racial segregation, or they positively value having power concentrated in the hands of rich, white men. Few people nowadays would express such values this bluntly, or even acknowledge to themselves that this is what they value, but still their actions can reveal such disrespectable values. And there are certainly people fighting against such actions and values today.
But, crucially, not all fights are like that. Other fights arise when a plurality of values come into conflict. And in those cases, very different trade-offs can occur. Some people who really share our values make very different choices about which to prioritise, and to what degree, when those values come into conflict. And these choices might not be one-off; the people in question might systematically make different choices when there is a trade-off to be made.
Weatherson's interesting essay raises issues that I have reflected on, prompted by an important essay by Jason Brennan, obliquely while struggling to articulate the idea that terrorists have genuine courage (and, perhaps, can be heroes). Before I get to that, three quick comments: first, the outpouring for the senator John McCain was primarily due to him not being Donald Trump (and an occasional critic of Trump, even denying Trump crucial legislative victory on his deathbed). That's compatible with people also admiring and liking other features of McCain's character. Second, I assume Weatherson was not responsible for the headline above his piece--after all, he denies one could get on with one's real political enemies (the ones he would call "fanatics, terrorists" etc.) Third, his piece tacitly assumes a distinction, familiar (recall) from Chantal Mouffe's work, between a political adversary (or in Weatherson's terminology an "opponent") -- one that, if Weatherson is right, one is capable of praising -- and a political enemy ("fanatics, terrorism," etc.) that one that one could never praise. In what follows I assume the distinction, but what follows does not require it (because I don't want to be unfair to Weatherson).
I mention Mouffe's distinction because I want to note that the potential adversary is, on Weatherson's account, somebody whose ends one can endorse even if one cannot endorse the priority one gives to them. (This is reminiscent of, but distinct from, (recall) the twentieth century technocratic fiction that the only genuinely political disagreements were over means not ends.) I think it is undoubtedly true that it is psychologically easier to admire somebody whose ends one can endorse than somebody whose ends one must disagree with. So far so good.
But Weatherson makes things a bit easy for himself by leaving a conceptual gap between those (enemies) whose ends one cannot endorse and those (adversaries) whose ends one can endorse. I think there are political adversaries whose ends one rejects, but who one does not come to see as an enemy. For, there can be a huge difference between a fanatic and a terrorist, who, let's stipulate, is willing to blow up innocent people for a cause. By contrast, a fanatic can respect innocent lives, etc. My view is that most moral struggles require some fanatics to get off the ground and to be sustained against great adversity. These are people who go against public opinion, are unwilling to accept election or legal outcomes as a final word, and keep up mobilizing and struggling. A democracy worth having -- Thoreau is, I think, the first to make this point, but it also resonates with thoughts in J.S. Mill -- needs to find a place for the moral fanatics.
Weatherson could agree with this last point, by suggesting that the moral fanatics whose ends we endorse are not really enemies (nor really fanatics) but adversaries. Surely such moral fanatics exist. But there are plenty of political struggles informed by visions he/we may find immoral (Weatherson helpfully suggests 'racists').
Now, to get to my major disagreements with Weatherson: I think democracy will be an inherently fragile project if one treats those whose moral ends one disagrees with as (Mouffian) enemies or fanatics (or irrational).* This does turn any major moral disagreement over ends into possible war, indeed.
As regular readers know I think the institutions of the states we call liberal democracies make best sense because they presuppose that a reliably moral citizenry is impossible;+ that the conditions under which political leaders will act reliable on the demand of morality are fragile; and that (recall) when citizens vote they are quite likely to favor interest over morality (in cases where these conflict). Note that the previous sentence is compatible with plenty of leaders and citizens being moral most of the time. When I write that "a moral citizenry is impossible," I mean to entail also that citizens can disagree over moral ends, fanatically so.
Now moral fanatics may accept some democratic values (e.g., non-violence, etc.), but reject others (e.g., compromise). But it does not follow they need to be treated as enemies even if one finds their ends truly misguided. Democracy as a whole benefits from the non-conforming moral fanatics. They hold sometimes very unpleasant mirrors to our lives and make us confront what values we may embrace and come to embrace. That is to say, democracy does not presuppose agreement over moral ends, but it may well come to be a means to teach us (some of) our moral ends. For this function to work it has to be possible, genuinely possible, for the would-be-moral-fanatic to be in genuine moral error and that what we take to be the bounds of acceptable opinion can shift. Obviously there are some tough cases, but where to draw the line is not my present concern.
If it is possible that the unity of virtues does not hold -- and (recall) it very likely does not -- then one can express many virtues, steadfastness, courage in following one's conscience, in the service of what may turn out to be bad ends. From the perspective of a democratic society, such steadfastness may well be a major irritant even a contribution to making the wold worse off, but it can still be admirable in some respects, including providing a contribution to our political life (by undermining lazy conformism, ensuring vibrant exchange of ideas, etc).
I think Weatherson and I disagree here. But there is a way to reconcile our differences: I treat the indirect promotion of a vibrant political community -- as potentially immoral fanatics are capable of doing -- as a genuine good thing. And even if the would-be-immoral fanatic has no desire to promote a vibrant political community, I can admire her contribution to it, and even praise her principled stand (while rejecting her principles). Perhaps, Weatherson will agree that one can praise the unintended, but foreseaable promotion of good things?
*One source of my deviation from public reason liberalism (and variants thereof) is precisely due to the fact that from its vantage point it is too easy to treat those one disagrees morally with as irrational.
+I sometimes call my own position (recall) skeptical liberalism.
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