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Dr. Adler's Briefing Room - 3 |
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Many of Dr. Adler's books are available through The Radical Academy Bookstore. Books
by Mortimer J.
Adler
The Center for the Study of The Great Ideas Click Here for New & Used College Textbooks at Discount Prices Click
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Index:
Question: I know that it is wrong to steal, to lie, to murder. What does it add to my sense of right and wrong to say that acts are sins? It just seems to give me an unwholesome sense of guilt and dread. Is "sin" an obsolete term in this day and age? Dr. Adler: SIN IS ESSENTIALLY NOT A LEGAL OR MORAL TERM. It is a religious term and refers to man's offense against God. It has no meaning apart from the awareness of God's holiness and majesty. Where this awareness is lacking, there is no sense of sin, no matter what a person may do or fail to do. The state of sin is essentially man's separation from God. The act of sin is one of disobedience and rebellion in which man turns away from God. Man opposes God's will with his own. Elements of perverse will and pride are present as man puts himself and his desires at the center of things, instead of God. These essential elements of sin are brought out dramatically in the Biblical story of Adam's sin. Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit not only because it looks so good, but because the serpent has promised that eating it will make them equal to God. Perverse pride and desire motivate this original act of disobedience and rebellion against the divine command. Augustine reveals further the inner motivations behind sin. He tells us in his Confessions how he stole pears when he was a boy simply for the joy of stealing. It was not the taste of the pears but the taste of the sin -- "the thrill of acting against God's law" -- that delighted him. This is a good example of the perverse desire that underlies the act of sin. But sin is not only manifested in certain acts that are forbidden by divine command. Sin also appears in attitudes and dispositions and feelings. Lust and hate are sins, as well as adultery and murder. And in the traditional Christian view, despair and chronic boredom-unaccompanied by any vicious act-are serious sins. They are expressions of man's separation from God, as the ultimate good, meaning, and end of human existence. Obviously, then, religious wrong-sin-is not the same as legal wrong-crime. The civil law deals only with offenses against men or society. It is concerned only with overt acts, not with inner attitudes or the direction of a person's whole life. Although the content of some sins is the same as that of some crimes (murder, adultery, and theft, for instance), many sins are not crimes at all (idolatry, for instance). The reason we associate crime and sin is that both religion and law involve precepts of morality. But moral wrong is not exactly the same as sin. Moral knowledge and responsibility are possible apart from religious belief and the sense of sin. From a purely natural viewpoint, when man transgresses the moral law -- in murder, theft, etc. -- he is doing wrong and he is departing from the natural order of things. In Judaism and Christianity, however, the breaking of the moral law is also a sin. The transgression of the moral law is also a transgression of the divine law. The offense against man is an offense against God. It is a demonstration of irreverence, apostasy, and disobedience to God. "I have sinned against heaven and before thee," says the prodigal son to his father. This expresses perfectly the attitude of the religious man toward his own wrongdoing. We may say, then, that all violations of the moral law are sins, but they are so only as expressions of man's turning away from God. Sin comprises more than moral offenses, for despair and boredom are sins apart from any evil deed. And holiness consists in something more than the perfect observance of the moral law. Pascal observes that the more righteous a religious man is the more he considers himself a sinner. He is the one who is most keenly aware of how far away he is from perfect holiness. A vivid instance of this is presented in the Book of Isaiah, where the prophet feels himself utterly unworthy and unclean in the presence of the divine holiness. This is a deeper meaning of sin than that ascribed to individual acts and attitudes. We may call it the sin of human status, of man's worthlessness when compared with God.
That people differ in their tastes is itself an indisputable fact. It is also true that there is no point in arguing with a man about what he likes or dislikes. But it is still quite possible to tell a man that he has poor taste and that what he likes is in itself not excellent or beautiful. Here there is plenty of room for argument. Those who say that there is no disputing about tastes usually mean more than they say. In my judgment they are wrong not in what they say but in what they mean. They start from the fact that people differ in taste, in what they like and dislike, and conclude that that is all there is to it. They conclude, in other words, that in talking about works of art or things of beauty, the only opinions which people can express must take the familiar form of "I don't know whether it's beautiful or not, but I know what I like." This conclusion makes beauty entirely subjective or, as the saying goes, entirely a matter of individual taste. People sometimes take the same position about truth and goodness. The truth, they say, is merely what seems true to me. The good is merely what I regard as desirable. They thus reduce truth and goodness to matters of taste about which there can be no argument. Let me illustrate the mistake they make. If a man says to you, "That object looks red to me," you would be foolish to argue with him about how it looks. The fact that it looks gray to you has no bearing on how it looks to him. Nevertheless, you may be able to show him that he is deceived by the reddish glow from a light shining on the object and that, in fact, the object is gray, not red. Even after you have proved this to him by physical tests, the object may still look red to him, but he will be able to recognize the difference between the appearance and the reality. This simple illustration shows that while there is no point in arguing about how things look, there is good reason to argue about what things are. Similarly, if a person insists upon telling you what he likes or dislikes in works of art, he is expressing purely subjective opinions which cannot be disputed. But good critics try to express objective judgments about the excellences or defects of a work itself. They are talking about the object, not about themselves. Most of us know the difference between good and bad workmanship. If we hire a carpenter to make a table for us and he does a bad job, we point out to him that the table is unsteady. What is true of carpentry is true of all the other arts. Like tables, works of fine art can be well made or poorly made. Well-made things have certain objective qualities which can be recognized by those who know what is involved in good or bad workmanship in the particular field of art. To recognize excellence in a piece of music, one must have some knowledge of the art of composing music. If a man lacks such knowledge, of course, all he can say is that he likes or dislikes the music. The man who insists that that is all he or anyone else can say is simply confessing his own ignorance about music. He should not, in his ignorance, deny others the right to make objective judgments. The question to ask anyone who insists that the beauty in works of art is entirely a matter of personal taste is whether some people have better taste than others. Is it possible for a person to improve his taste? An affirmative answer to these questions amounts to an admission that there are objective standards for making critical judgments about works of art. Having good taste consists in preferring that which is objectively more excellent. Acquiring good taste in some field of art depends on acquiring knowledge about that art and learning to recognize excellence in workmanship. If there were no objective differences which made works of art more or less beautiful, it would be impossible to say that anyone has good or bad taste or that it is worth making a great effort to improve one's taste.
Let me begin by explaining Aristotle's famous statement that habit is second nature. Habits are additions to the nature with which we are born. We are born with the power or ability to act in certain ways and also with certain innate patterns of action, which are called instinct or reflexes. Our innate tendencies to action can be developed and formed by what we actually do in the course of living. Such developments or formations are habits. For example, we have an innate capacity for a great many different kinds of action in which skill can be acquired by practice. We learn to talk grammatically; we learn to think logically; we learn to cook or drive a car; we learn to ice skate or play tennis. In each case the learning results in an acquired skill which is a habit. In each case the habit actually gives us an ability which was only potential in us at birth. That is why Aristotle calls habit second nature. Our original nature consists of capacities which can be developed or perfected by learning or experience. The development or perfection of those capacities supplements our original nature and thus constitutes a "second" -- an added or acquired-nature. Our need to form habits arises from the fact that, unlike the lower animals, we are not born with instinctive patterns of behavior adequate for the conduct of life. What certain animals can do instinctively, we have to learn to do. Instincts are, in a sense, innate or natural habits, just as human habits are acquired or second nature. Our original nature-our innate equipment-is fixed for life, though it is subject to modifications of all sorts. The habits we form, which modify our original nature, also have a certain stability, though they, too, are subject to alteration. We can strengthen our habits, weaken them, or break them entirely and supplant them by others. Like our original nature, our second nature-our repertoire of habits-gives each of us the particular character he has at a given stage of life. If you know a man's habits, you can predict with some assurance what he is likely to do. So far we have been talking about the individual. Common habits of thought and action in a community, the "ways" of a people, are usually called customs. Custom keeps things on an even keel in a society. It enables the common life to go on harmoniously. It smoothes the way for interchange between individuals and holds them together. We never feel at home in a new place until we've become accustomed to its customs and made them our own. That is what William James means in calling habit "the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent." (A flywheel by its inertia keeps the engine going at a uniform speed and compensates for variations of torque.) James applies this insight to social status as well as to personal habits. He says that our occupational mannerisms become so set by the time we are thirty that most of us become perfectly satisfied with our place in life and our function in the social machine. James also insists that our personal tastes, and our habits of speech, thought, and social behavior, are relatively fixed by the time we are twenty, so that we are kept in our social orbit by a law as strong as gravitation. However, it is important to remember that it is never impossible to shake off an old habit and form a new one. Once a habit has been acquired, it has almost compulsive power over us. But human habits are freely acquired by the choices we make, and can be got rid of and replaced by making other choices. No habit, no matter how strong, ever abolishes our freedom to change it. This is the lesson of Shaw's Pygmalion (or My Fair Lady), a delightful dramatization of the power to change habits. Liza Doolittle can and does learn to speak like a lady.
Question: We praise people for being responsible and blame them for being irresponsible. A sense of responsibility is supposed to be a sign of good character. What is the nature of moral responsibility, and what is the source of its claim upon us? Is a man responsible only for what he does to other persons, or is he also responsible for what he does to himself? Dr. Adler: Responsibility involves personal obligation to others. To be "responsible" means literally to be "answerable" for the things we do or fail to do. This basic notion of responsibility lies at the heart of our ethical codes and legal systems. We are confronted with responsibilities in every phase of our daily life -- in the family, in our work or business, and in the political community. The major disagreements about moral responsibility center in its source and scope -- the question of to whom and for what we are accountable. Some thinkers place the source of moral obligation in the command of a superior power -- the law of God or the state. Others contend that it is the inner voice of conscience, not merely superior power, which obliges us to obey the law laid down for us. Still others maintain that responsibility derives simply from rules of conduct dictated by our own reason. For example, a man's obligation to support his family, to care for his wife and children, is usually commanded by the law of the state. He is held accountable under the law, and may be punished if he fails to discharge this responsibility. But most men obey this law not because they are afraid of being punished, but because they feel an inner sense of duty to support their families. Even where there is no explicit law, the moral person fulfills his responsibilities. So far we have talked about our obligations to other persons. Does our moral responsibility also extend to ourselves? Aristotle holds that it relates "only" to others; for, in his opinion, all our obligations flow from the principle of justice, which "concerns the relation of a man to his neighbor." At first sight this seems a matter of plain common sense, for our promises and contracts always relate to other persons. But Plato points out that to do injustice to others is to render oneself unjust, and thus corrupt and undermine the very core of moral personality. Other thinkers assert that we are morally responsible to seek the truth as well as to tell it to others. Nietzsche says that lying to oneself, not to others, is the greatest dishonesty of all. The sphere of moral responsibility may be broadened to include the use and abuse of a man's own mind and body. He is responsible for what he does to himself. What is the basis of responsibility when it is thus broadly conceived? Kant answers that our duties to ourselves and to others are equally under the jurisdiction of the moral law. He holds that we are obliged in conscience to do whatever reason declares to be right, whether or not others are involved. We stand in the same relation to ourselves and to others under the universal moral law. Hence, Kant advocates that we should never do anything that we would not want to be come a universal law for all persons, places, and times. In actual life, of course, conflicts arise between our responsibilities to ourselves and our responsibilities to others. In the classic case of two men lost at sea with a one-man raft between them, the conflict between duty to others and duty to self reaches the tragic extreme. It poses the question of whether a man is required to save his own life at the cost of another's, or to save another's life at the loss of his own. We have less dramatic examples every day in which we must decide between our obligation to others and to our selves. Of all the moral problems a man faces, none is more difficult than that raised by a conflict of duties.
Most Americans, I fear, do not know or appreciate the fact that citizenship is the primary political office under a constitutional government. In a republic, the citizens are the ruling class. They are the permanent and principal rulers. All other offices that are set up by the constitution are secondary. The first and indispensable qualification for holding political office in any of the branches of government is to be a citizen. Officeholders, moreover, whether elected or selected, are citizens in office for a period of time, but all citizens are citizens for life. Officeholders, from the President down, are transient and instrumental rulers, unlike citizens in general who are permanent and principal rulers. The distinction between the permanent status of citizenship and the transient or temporary character of government officials is obvious. But it may not be so obvious why I refer to citizens as the principal and call government officials instrumental rulers. To understand this point it is necessary to realize that the government of the United States is not in Washington, not in the White House, not in the Capitol, which houses the Congress, nor in any or all the public office buildings in the District of Columbia. The government of the United States resides in us--we, the people. What resides in Washington is the administration of our government. We recognize this, at least verbally, when we say, after a Presidential election, that we have changed one administration for another. That change leaves the government of the United States unchanged, because its principal rulers are also its permanent rulers, whereas its instrumental rulers, its administrative officials--are transient and temporary. Administrative officials, from the President down, are the instruments by which we, the people, govern ourselves. They serve us in our capacity as self-governing citizens of the Republic. Lincoln never tired of saying that he conceived his role to be that of a servant of the people who elected him. The word "servant" in this connection does not carry any invidious connotations of inferiority or menial status. Rather, it signifies the performance of an important function, one carrying great responsibility, a responsibility officials are called upon to discharge while they are serving a term in public office. I am sorry to say that most Americans think of themselves as the subjects of government and regard the administrators in public office as their rulers, instead of thinking of themselves as the ruling class and public officials as their servants--the instrumentalities for carrying out their will. It is of the utmost importance to persuade the citizens of the United States, both young and old, that they have misconceived their role in the political life of this country. If they can be persuaded to overcome this misconception, and come to view themselves in the right light, they will understand that their high responsibility as citizens carries with it the obligation to understand the ideas and ideals of our constitutional government.
Education? The word is used so loosely that to talk about "education" without qualifying adjectives attached to it is not informative; or worse, it is misleading. The qualifying adjectives I suggest are "general" and "special," "preparatory" and "continuing," "terminal" and "unending." Most people think of education as something that goes on in educational institutions, schools, colleges, and universities. They regard persons who have earned a diploma, a certificate, or a degree as individuals who, to some extent, have been educated. They forget that individuals learn a great deal with little or no schooling. They forget that experience teaches, and that learning by any means is part of a lifelong educational process. Schools of all grades and kinds are only one group of means in the pursuit of education. A much better question to ask is: Who is a generally educated human being? The negative answer is easy; certainly not any person who has just earned a diploma: a degree, or some other sort of certification. Youth itself is the greatest obstacle to becoming a generally educated human being. Schooling at its best is preparatory. In addition, it is often specialized, preparing individuals for some forms of skilled work or for professional expertise. Finally, it is terminal: it can be completed in a relatively few years. When the school is liberal, when it trains individuals in the liberal arts that are the arts of learning, it is preparatory. Those who are liberally trained to read and write, speak and listen, measure and calculate, have acquired the skills to go on learning after they have graduated, but unless they continue to learn year after year, they are likely never to become generally educated human beings. If the liberal training they receive in school includes a taste of all the major disciplines they will have some awareness of what there is to learn in order to become generally educated by the end of their lives. Becoming a generally educated person is a lifelong process. It is an unending pursuit of learning, concluded by death but never finished or terminated by death. In my judgement, sixty is the age at which one can begin to become generally educated, on condition, of course, that the process has been continuing after all schooling has been finished. After age sixty, one is fully mature and experienced, has been challenged by all the intricate problems of living, has done a great deal of conversing, and is finally ready to make and defend solutions to life's major problems, or to acknowledge the existence of problems to which one can find no satisfactory solutions. Individuals whose schooling was specialized rather than liberal and who do not continue learning when they leave schooling behind, or do so only to improve their specialized expertise, never become generally educated human beings. This statement holds for most physicians, lawyers, and engineers, as well as for most who getting a Ph.D. merely indicated the field of specialization they would cultivate thereafter.
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The Adler Archive Index |
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