Authoritarian Ethics
“Because I said so” is an answer I occasionally give to my son when he asks why he has to do something I’ve instructed him to do. It’s not a bad answer, although it begs for further explanation. As a father, I’m a legitimate authority figure (whether I’m mature we’ll just put to the side), and my son has an obligation to obey me. However, this obligation of obedience doesn’t arise from the orders I give; it comes more from the nature of our relationship. I could conceivably order my son to do something immoral, like listen to Justin Bieber or wear a “Sarah Palin for President” pin; the legitimacy of my authority doesn’t make whatever I say morally right. Were I to claim the authority to define right and wrong, I would cease to be authoritative and become authoritarian.
I previously made use of the term authoritarian ethics, and I’d like to explain a little more about what I mean by this category. Authoritarian ethics places the origin of moral obligation in the command of the authority figure; it is the authority’s command itself that establishes the rightness or wrongness of an action. Furthermore, authoritarian ethics permits no questioning of or moral disagreement with the command. A community that accepts the legitimacy of the authority may debate the meaning of the command, but, if the community’s guiding ethics is authoritarian, the community has no basis on which to deliberate the rightness or wrongness of the command. The command itself is the origin and basis of any rightness or wrongness, whether the authority commands arbitrarily or in keeping with some sense of good or evil. Indeed, under the rule of authoritarian ethics, the authority has power over the ultimate meanings of good and evil. If the authority commands an act that typically would be called evil, the fact that he commands it means that it is not evil, but is actually morally obligatory.
“Because I said so” isn’t necessarily a statement of ethical authoritarianism, but it could be. The question is what is meant by the word “because.” If it means that I am the “cause” of rightness and wrongness, then we’re in the realm of authoritarian ethics, but the word can mean something else, of course. In sum, if the ethical basis of an action can be explained only by an authority’s say so, then what we have before us is an authoritarian ethics.
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One of the surprises I’ve found being married to a Korean woman is that she finds my use of “because I said so” with the kids to be lacking. It seems Confucians have to come up with better reasons, even with kids.
One of the most interesting aspects of the Catholic Church having been in charge of Western culture for so long is that it encouraged a de facto use of power that was rather diffuse. There were rulers around everywhere, and aristocracies of course. But you had an organization in the Church, the ultimate high-position of which was in fact reachable by many men who were born rather “low”. In addition, the waxing and waning of the “conciliar” impulse in the Church led to a practically — if I may put it colorfully –harem-scarem exercise of power. The convening of a Council was a complicated and messy process and the events themselves, often even messier. So this is how Western culture was guided for a long time, no wonder that it left considerable room for commerce and lots of other things. So when we think of the “authority” and its exercise in the Catholic context that is how we should think of it. Not, decidedly not, in the rather anomalous character it has had since the 19th Century. Centralized and unbending. If history is any guide, the original ethos will win out again.
In the meantime I marvel that so many Catholics have so little sense of all these things. You could walk into any Catholic parish and ask people what a “benefice” was and they would have no idea. I bet 99.99999% percent would have no clue. Even though that is how the Catholic Church was run for the vast majority of its history. And if there was a system that could have diffused power more than the benefice system, it is hard to conceive. The lack of perspective has pretty hard results. Catholics seem to think that their identity is somehow involved in either defending or at least resonating with the current attitudes and activities of their Church. When for most of the Church’s history ordinary adherents would have made no such assumption, and in fact often took the opposing position. And still considered themselves, and were considered by others, as loyal Catholics. This is why a more perspicacious understanding of Church history could help Catholics live their faith in consonance with its tenets, but not feel they have to coddle the Church for its mistakes. By history’s lights is there any doubt that the Catholic Church engaged in many mistaken policies and adventures in the past?? I think its current history could be read similarly, without questioning the seriousness of the faith for adherents. But the very centralized tack that it has been taking for the last little while (a mere hundred or so years) discourages that more sane approach, and encourages fanciful conception of its past and even its present. So, when they say that the authority of the Church is in matters of faith and morals alone, that should be taken for the really quite circumscribed realm it really is.
Two things strike me, moving from the practical to the more abstract:
- Sometimes authoritarian approaches to ethics are a stand-in for lack of understanding. So, for example, my son (at two and a half) displays a complete lack of understanding of the idea that one may not simply eat whenever one wishes and whatever one wishes. The idea of eating only at meal times is foreign, and he’ll happily grab an apple or banana when he’s hungry, eat two bites, realize he’s not hungry anymore, and then abandon the rest in some dark corner of the house. My enforcement of the rule “only eat at meal times” ends up being based on authoritarian principles “Because I said so — and you’ll be punished if you disobey” simply because he’s unable to understand the reasons for the rule within his frame of reference.
Thus, I think, one of the questions when talking about authoritarian ethics generally is: Is there really no reason other than “because I said so” or is there some reason outside our understanding or frame of reference. This would seem to apply particularly when, say, dealing with God, who famously is somewhat beyond our full understanding.
- When we start talking about the ultimate source of morality (in Christian terms, God; in Platonic terms The Good) I’m not sure how much difference there is between what you’re terming authoritarian ethics and just plain ethics. It’s one thing to say that it’s an insufficient answer for me to tell you, in answer to question as to why you should do something, “Because I said so,” but if we believe that God is “The Good” then saying, “Because God said so,” is analogous to saying “Because that’s the right thing to do.” I suppose the difference would be whether one follows that with a further “because” or not that involves an argument or principle of sorts, but as one quickly learns in conversation with young children, any rational explanation can (and sometimes is) answered with “Why?”
To an extent, the idea that commands as to the good can be based on rational precepts is based on our willingness to grant that the principles expressed are in fact rational or explicable.
What you call authoritarian ethics as a stand-in for lack of understanding I would classify as authoritative ethics. Here there is a ground beyond simple say so, even though that ground isn’t perceived or understood.
Unlike what I’m calling authoritarian ethics, non-authoritarian ethics, so to speak, places the basis of right and wrong beyond the mere say so of an authority. That basis may be a rational conception of the Good, or a religious conception of God’s goodness, but wherever the basis, there’s room for deliberation about it and dissenting views concerning it and its application. Authoritarian ethics leaves no such room. X is right because authority says X is right. There’s nothing on which one can make the case that X is not right because the question is absolutely settled by the authority’s say so.
Hmmm. So would you say that we see authoritative ethics at play when the authority has a reason for the command, but that reason is not given or understood by the one receiving it, while authoritarian ethics are at play when the giver the command does not himself and a reason for it?
Perhaps part of my problem here is that, rightly or wrongly, I’m picturing this in relation to the “divinely commanded genocide” discussion, and so I’m sitting here trying to picture this distinction working out in a situation in which God is the authority, and in that context I’m having a very hard time distinguishing between God’s will and the moral principle that one might appeal to as the non-authoritarian reason for a command. However, as I think about this more, it occurs to me that a lot of your hang-up appears to be in human-authority issues. As in, someone comes to you and says, “Hey, God told me that I need to do X. Therefore, X is right. You should do it.”
In this sense, it seems to me that the authoritarian/non-authoritarian ethics issue comes into play in determining:
a) Whether to listen to the person who tells you that God has told him to do X
b) If you are that person, whether to believe that some urge or message that you have is in fact form God
However, it doesn’t seem to me that one could complain that (assuming accuracy of transmission) the claim, “God wills X, therefore it is right to do X” is authoritarian because God’s will is in fact a principle on which matters of right and wrong can be based. God isn’t a transmission authority, and so obeying his will can’t be indulging in authoritarian ethics any more than “doing the good” can be engaging in authoritarian ethics.
I assume God has his reasons. My issue is with us finite people.
In answer to your initial question, my answer is generally “Yes,” though I can imagine subtle forms of being authoritarian that involve hiding or deceiving others about one’s reasons.
Were I to claim the authority to define right and wrong, I would cease to be authoritative and become authoritarian.
Yes, but this is obviously because you don’t have universal authority, just authority over things like bedtimes and the order chores have to be done, etc. (matters in which parents do, in fact, define what is right and wrong). Your authority can’t overrule more fundamental authority. Likewise, if the legitimate authority at the local level defines a no-parking zone, they’ve made it wrong to park there, just on their say-so.
It seems to me that a more important distinction than that between authoritarian and non-authoritarian ethics (which seems to me to be more a matter of style of law than substance) is that between ethical positivism, in which all obligation is a matter of positive law, and ethical naturalism (as it is usually, and somewhat misleadingly, called), in which there is an obligating non-positive law without which no positive law has authority. The former has the advantage that it’s a simpler theory, based on a phenomenon we all know in political life, requiring little appeal to metaphysics; the latter mostly only has the advantage of being more right.
It strikes me that the argument you’ve been trying to build is probably in the vicinity of the kind of argument Plato makes against the sophists and rhetoricians in the Gorgias and the Republic.
I agree that there are particular matters over which parents or other authorities have authoritative say and basically determine the rules of right and wrong, but this area isn’t what I meant to describe.
I would think that in the case of God, “because I said so” would have to suffice, since he is the source of all things, which must include right and wrong. What standard is there outside of God by which to judge what God says? If, then, God tells the Church that such-and-such is the case, then the Church has to accept it based on God’s say-so. And if God has authorized the Church to speak in his name, then the Church will be in a position of having to say, “Because God said so.” And in obeying the Church we would be obeying God because God said so.
If this is how you define “authoritarian”, then so be it, though I hesitate to apply a word with such negative connotations to God.
From where I stand, I cannot see that God actually tells the Church or anyone else that such and such is the case. I either believe it or I don’t. What I can see are human being who may or may not have heard God’s voice telling me that have and that what they say is what God says. Could be that’s the case, but I can’t observe or demonstrate that. It’s a matter of faith. Given this, I think it behooves those who claim to speak for God to supply reasons for doing what God supposedly says, reasons that can be analyzed, debated, and then accepted or not. If they don’t, if “trust me” is the only reason they can or do give, then I call them authoritarian.
I’m a little confused by your response. All of Catholic theology relies ultimately on the “given” of Revelation. The “deposit of faith”. Even in the most rationalist Catholic approaches, like Thomism, the ultimate deference is always to the “trust me” of Revelation. In this regard, truly, Catholic theology would seem to have little room for questioning per se, except in prescribed parameters of Revelation. Thence comes all authority, even if explained with considerable intellectual deft.
The deference makes sense if the premise of authority is accepted, and in the case of the Church I accept it; however, I remain open to the possibility that my acceptance here is wrong. Hence my wanting reasons beyond “trust me.”
Kyle,
Well I sort of like your answer personally, in terms of general attitude. But I must point out to you, that put in slow-motion, as it were, it is essentially the same as all conservative Catholic positions throughout the centuries. I really understand this may not be a bad thing, from your perspective. Yet is speaks to how the Catholic Church can, after changing again and again on major issues, forcefully hold that it has essentially not changed. In your life the attitude is “I am comfortable essentially with the Church’s authority” even against a background of many questions and contradictions posed by the world. But as an intellectual matter you maintain: “Maybe in theory this trust is wrong.” This intellectual stance — or I may use a descriptive word which I do not mean as an insult, pose — allows a certain self-respect in the contradicted world of ideas. In theory you are “open” to other possibilities. Again, in slow-motion across centuries with many smart people holding probably some variation of this views, it allows smart people to both accept an unquestioning position, and yet believe they are questioning. Look, my basic position in life is that whatever allows people to live good lives is a good thing, so I am not making any existential criticisms here. But as a purely intellectual matter, what you have described is pure sleight-of-hand. It is magical thinking, and I say this believing the world is somewhat magical. I just feel that a little light shone on these factors would help the Catholic world, which after all is huge in terms of population, to finally come to grips with what its tradition actually is. And in this light, its storied intellectual character is amenable to a very different interpretation.
Hmm. Not sure I’d describe myself as comfortable with Church authority. I accept it, as I said, and believe that its authority comes from God. But as neither I nor the Church can prove this, it is a belief, not something I know, and very much something that keeps me unhinged and in fear and trembling.
I’m not following you on the sleight-of-hand description.
Let me answer with a meta-answer. It seems that the cleavage started by the Jansenist controversy never really healed. And it seems many have been picking at the scab now for centuries, and down to the present.
FWIW, I’d agree with your approach to analyzing the claim of someone who said that he or she had received a divine command to do some particular action. Indeed, I tend to be highly skeptical of any claim of personal revelation.
That said, I’m curious how you’d apply this approach to considering divine commands relayed through another to some event other than OT genocide (granting for the sake of argument that those are literal anyway).
For instance, how would we look at Joan of Arc’s claimed divine command to save the kingdom of France? Would we ask what broader principles which we know from nature to be moral the actions she was advocating aligned with, and then accept or reject her mission based on whether winning the 100 Year War for France appeared to fit with those general precepts?
It’s been too long a time since I’ve brushed up on my history of Joan of Arc to comment on her case intelligently, but, yes, as a general rule, I would approach any and all claims of personal revelation, even by the saints, in light of non-religious knowledge so to speak.
Kyle writes, “… if ‘trust me’” is the only reason they can or do give, then I call them authoritarian.”
Is there an actual instance of the Church doing that?
I agree that whether the Church is Christ’s Kingdom and whether the Pope is Christ’s Vicar, are matters of faith. And I agree that one either believes it or he doesn’t. But if one decides he believes the Church is what it claims to be, then it follows that the Church speaks for Christ, who is God. If he decides he doesn’t believe it, then the Church is an enormous fraud or a mass delusion.
In the latter case I can see doubting and questioning everything it teaches, and evaluating its teachings solely in terms of science and reason, omitting the question of trust or authority. But in the former case, there are certainly things which God has revealed to the Church, and which the Church in turn teaches as having been taught by God.
And yes, there are other things which the Church teaches “on her own steam”, so to speak; taking revealed truths and reasoning out their logical conclusions, and proceeding to teach those conclusions authoritatively. True, this is not the same as teaching something that was directly taught by God. Nevertheless, the Church is the Body which has been given the authority to do this. So again, it comes down to whether or not you believe the Church is what it claims to be. If you do then you will submit to its authority, whereas if you don’t you may question every jot and tittle.
All that being said, I am personally unaware of the Church teaching things without giving reasons, though the reason may sometimes be simply that “God says so”. Whether it behooves the Church to give “reasons that can be analyzed, debated, and then accepted or not”, depends on whom it is talking to.
It behooves me to give my kids reasons for my dictates, because I want them to know that I act reasonably and not arbitrarily, which I hope will teach them to do the same. But it doesn’t follow that I should give them the option of accepting my dictates or not. Since I am responsible for them, I must be able to compel them; lacking that authority I cannot be held responsible. By the same token it does behoove the Church to give reasons for her teachings and commands, if for no other reason than to persuade those who are not of the flock to join her. But it doesn’t follow that those who are of the flock have the option of “accepting [her teachings] or not”.
This all follows by simple logic from the decision whether to accept the authority she claims. You are perfectly free to examine the evidence for and against the claim, before deciding whether to submit to it. But having decided to submit, the authority alone, logically speaking, should suffice.
Having as a Catholic accepted the premise that the Church speaks for God, I don’t tend to question this authority at every turn or with every new statement it makes. However, I remain open to the possibility that the Church doesn’t actually speak for God and would be willing to consider reasons why this could be the case. So, yes, generally speaking, my decision to accept the premise of the Church’s divine-given authority suffices for my day-to-day faith life, but I’m open to alternatives and to hearing plausible reasons for why the premise I hold is in error or misguided.
If you want to be open to having your faith that the Church speaks for God (the “basic premise”) challenged, that’s fine (for purposes of this discussion at least). But the point is, until you have made a decision to withdraw your assent to the basic premise, there is no logical basis for questioning or doubting the authoritative teachings of the Church. If you do question or doubt them, then logically, your assent to the basic premise cannot be a genuine assent.
Faith is not mere opinion, but, as an infused Virtue from God, permits me to have more certainty about its contents than any merely human knowledge. So, I can’t see why you say or imply that what you know by Faith, such as that the Catholic Church speaks for God, might not be true, or that you are open to it’s not being true?! That doesn’t seem like Faith to me, but mere belief. One can always question whether one grasps the truths of Faith as they are meant to be grasped, in conformity with the mind of the Church, but this is not what you appear to be saying. Faith gives me absolute certainty that the Church is the Church. If I am uncertain of this, it means my Faith is very weak or nonexistent. None of this necessarily entails religious fanaticism or fundamentalism, of course (just to preempt that).
Socrates doubted many propositions, but one thing he NEVER doubted was that his daemon was wrong, or that he had a daemon, or that truth existed, or that there was a GOOD, that argument was never to be rejected (misology). These propositions were known by something like a pre-Christian, graced Faith, I think, and that’s why he never really scrutinzed them for himself, though he did so for the sake of others without faith in these truths.
Thinking on this further, it strikes me that certain claims it would pretty clearly be problematic to assert on a “say so” basis, while others could hardly be asserted on any basis other than “say so”.
So, for example, the Church’s teaching on the evil of using torture is an ethical principle which can be argued for not only on the basis of “because we say so, and God guides us” but also on the basis of a more general understanding of human dignity. This understanding can be derived from natural law, not merely from revelation (assuming one is willing to grant the truth of certain claims about nature), which makes sense given our understanding that the nature of things reflects God’s creative will for how the world should function. God’s will can thus be discerned from something other than someone saying, “God says X”.
However, other types of claims cannot really be reasoned about using nature or some other non-revelation source as a guide. If my brother comes to me and says, “God is calling me to be a priest,” I can’t consult some other source and reason with him as to whether this appears to be God’s will. I could suggest that certain characteristics which I think I see in him would or would not be good fits with the vocation he says he’s called to, but I can’t speak to whether God is in fact calling him to be a priest.
Similarly, if Juan Diego comes to you and says, “I saw the Virgin Mary on the top of a hill, and she wants you to build a church there,” or Joan of Arc comes to you and says, “I have been called to save France,” it’s not possible for us to use natural law or some other source for us to argue whether this is really the case or not — though external signs that come with these claims might be useful to us to an extent.
Now, having strong skeptical tendencies, I’m a lot more comfortable with the first category of claims than the second — and it may only be those which you’re thinking of as ethical claims anyway, while the others are claims that some specific action is willed rather than some general principle that all must live by. However, given that tendency, it should at least be fairly comforting that the Church holds that all which is essential to salvation is known via the deposit of faith, and that private revelations (even ones which are approved as worthy of belief by the Church) are not required to be held. So one could, if one wanted, hold that Juan Diego and Joan of Arc were piously delusional, so long as one didn’t actually question that they are in heaven as their sainthood makes clear.
This sounds right. I’ll put it this way: if my brother comes to me and says he believes God is calling him to the priesthood, I’ll most likely say “Go for it.” But if he comes and says that God has told him to tell me that I have to pay all the seminary costs, he’ll be sure to get a quizzical look.
The natural response of your 2 year old to ask “why” seems to be the foundational question of human existence. To disallow and dismiss this question with “because I said so” takes away the freedom we are given to explore the “why” of our existence and the freedom to question the validity of the authority. An authority who allows such questioning creates an atmosphere of openness, safety and belonging; while one who disallows such questioning creates an atmosphere of isolation,fear and suspicion.
Kyle:
Faith is not mere opinion, but, as an infused Virtue from God, permits me to have more certainty about its contents than any merely human knowledge. So, I can’t see why you say or imply that what you know by Faith, such as that the Catholic Church speaks for God, might not be true, or that you are open to it’s not being true?! That doesn’t seem like Faith to me, but mere belief. One can always question whether one grasps the truths of Faith as they are meant to be grasped, in conformity with the mind of the Church, but this is not what you appear to be saying. Faith gives me absolutely certainty that the Church is the Church. If I am uncertain of this, it means my Faith is very weak or nonexistent. None of this necessarily entails religious fanaticism or fundamentalism, of course (just to preempt that).
Socrates doubted many propositions, but one thing he NEVER doubted was that his daemon was wrong, or that he had a daemon, or that truth existed, or that there was a GOOD, that argument was never to be rejected (misology). These propositions were known by something like a pre-Christian, graced Faith, I think, and that’s why he never really scrutinzed them for himself, though he did so for the sake of others without faith in these truth.
Thaddeus,
I plan to formulate a more complete answer in a separate post, as the issue you raise is an important one. For now, let me say two things:
1. I’m open to hearing and seriously considering evidence that what my faith tells me is true is in fact not true, and that therefore what I take to be an infused virtue is rather something else (e.g., group think, an opiate, a means of dealing with neurosis, etc.).
2. We only speak about “infused virtues” because a self-described religious and moral authority tells us that they exist. I could invent a religion and also talk about them in reference to my creation. How is one to know which authority’s say so (if any) is true? More than the say so is needed.