Confronting the Impossible

I love the way we tied the problem of slavery in the mid-nineteenth century – the abolition of which can seem like an obvious moral necessity from our modern standpoint – to present day issues such as global warming.  I think it’s helpful (for understanding Lincoln) to acknowledge the existence of problems that clearly have obvious and immediate moral imperatives, yet are frustratingly entrenched, and are seemingly impossible to solve from a practical point of view.  In this way, a study of Lincoln becomes highly relevant to the most pressing issue of our own time.  We can see the same types of movements emerging.  There are those in favor of immediate and drastic change - who are often denounced as radical and impractical, even though they are undoubtedly right as the severity of the problem – as well as those that simply deny the existence of a problem altogether, and a whole assortment of positions in between.  I’m not sure Lincoln gives us any clear insight into the present crisis, but perhaps by understanding the reality of such overwhelming problems we can better appreciate Lincoln. 

John Brown and the Necessity of Violence

            I thought Dominick’s suggestion in class today that John Brown was confronting his enemy (slavery) on its own terms was interesting.  I mentioned that I had read W. E. B. Du Bois’ biography of Brown, and I remember him suggesting essentially the same thing.  He argued that Brown recognized that the “language” of slavery was the language of violence.  And that this was the only language that slavery would understand.  Brown did not believe that slavery could be abolished through reasonable and convincing argument, and he was utterly convinced that bloodshed was not only inevitable, but necessary.   

Du Bois was a great writer, and I recommend the book to anyone who is interested, as it offers a unique and unusually sympathetic look into John Brown’s life.  But there is no doubt that Du Bois was writing with a certain amount of bias, hoping to counteract what he saw as a smear campaign against Brown’s sanity and character.  I’m by no means wholeheartedly agreeing with either Brown or Du Bois, but I do think that the comparison between Brown and Lincoln raises some very interesting issues.

            For instance, in the end it did prove necessary that the bloodiest war in history, up until that point, be fought in order to bring about an end to slavery in this country.  And, by the end of the war, Lincoln seems to have accepted that the violence of the war must continue until the ending of slavery was guaranteed.  In fact, Lincoln’s passage in his Second Inaugural Address sounds very much like the type of language that John Brown might have used:

            “Yet, if God wills that [the war] continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’”     

Preach Not!

Today in class we noted an aspect of Lincoln’s character that I find particularly interesting and admirable.  The fact that he completely refrained from drinking alcohol, and yet did not engage in moralistic condemnations of those who did, is highly significant in coming to better understand his moral character.  It is curious that someone can be capable of such strong moral convictions in regards to their own actions, and at the same time be highly understanding of the shortcomings of others.  By that I don’t mean that it does not make sense.  I only mean that it is remarkable.  What is particularly interesting to me is that Lincoln also seemed to have an ability to, in a sense, prioritize his tolerances.  Whereas he did not seem particularly interested in criticizing other people’s drinking habits, he took a slightly different approach to more important issues such as slavery.  Although he clearly made an effort to refrain from being overly moralistic, he nonetheless did make strong arguments in public in defense of his moral reasoning.  He seemed to not only have genuine respect for views and circumstances of others, but also had a keen awareness that “preaching” was not an effective way of convincing people to change.  

Dignity for Utility's Sake

The more we read and discuss Mill and his interestingly nuanced version of utilitarianism, the more I cannot help but wonder if he secretly (or subconsciously) harbored deontological views regarding the dignity and inherent value of all human beings.  Not only did he use words like dignity fairly often, but he also seemed to work very hard to bend and tweak the principle of utility so as to incorporate such ideas.  Both his attempt to distinguish higher pleasures from lower pleasures and his incorporation of rule utilitarianism seem to suggest that he wanted a utilitarian basis for ideas like dignity.  Even if it is (and it probably is) wrong to suggest that Mill was a closet Kantian, though, I find it interesting that we could almost take his brand of utilitarianism to an extreme, where we would find ourselves knee-deep in deontology.  For instance, if we were to use rule utilitarianism to suggest that, in the long run, utility would be maximized if all people respected the dignity of others, and treated all other people as ends in themselves, couldn’t we essentially justify deontology for utilitarian reasons?  The convenient byproduct of this would be that, since Kantian-type dignity has not actually been established, it gives us a way out of extreme scenarios such as runaway trolleys and Nazis at the door; scenarios in which a strict adherence to Kantian principles seems unreasonable.  This is no doubt full of holes, but I find it intriguing nonetheless.

In Defense of Higher and Lower Pleasures

            Although I acknowledge that Mill has serious issues in terms of clarity, and how exactly to distinguish between higher and lower pleasures, I do believe that he is making a very good and important point.  In attempting to save utilitarianism from those that criticize it as crude and degrading, Mill argues that it is actually those critics who “represent human nature in a degrading light” by supposing that human beings are “capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable” (Utilitarianism, p. 913).  He goes on to point out that “human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification” (p. 914).

            Despite its lack of exactness, I think we should bear with Mill on this one.  He is trying to establish that his idea of maximizing “pleasure” is much deeper and more profound than Bentham’s.  To illustrate this, perhaps it would better, rather than trying to compare Madonna to Beethoven or the WWE to Shakespeare, to instead focus on some of the greatest possible human pleasures.  For instance, couldn’t it be argued that having a sense of dignity and self-respect is one of the highest pleasures a person can feel?  Or, similarly, we all like to acknowledge (when refuting Kant) that doing the right thing or being kind makes us feel good about ourselves.  Further, most people would agree that these types of “pleasures” are qualitatively different than the pleasure we get from, say, eating chocolate.  And as a result, we would not trade the former for the latter, even if it meant less pleasure (of the lower kind) in the short run.  Of course, people do make these trade offs, but usually feel bad about it.  Take as another example, the difference between how a healthy lifestyle can genuinely make us feel good, and how eating really bad food can be temporarily pleasurable.  Essentially, Mill is saying that humans can “feel good” in ways that make physical gratification seem irrelevant, and a proper utilitarian calculus should take that into account.