You Are What You Do
By Marusya Chaika/Shutterstock.com
Par Marusya Chaika/Shutterstock.com
Mishel Alexandrovsky
(FR) Dans son livre Responsabilité et jugement, Arendt soutient que les bienfaits de l’orientation socratiques surpassent ceux établis par la chrétienté. En temps de crise, lorsque des valeurs religieuses ne sont pas en mesure de réguler le bien et le mal, la méthode socratique permet à certains individus de rester fidèles à leurs croyances, contrairement à l’opinion publique. Arendt met un point d’honneur sur l’importance d’avoir un dialogue avec soi-même, notamment lorsque les valeurs et mœurs autour de soi n’encouragent pas les bonnes actions. Il n’est pas juste d’assumer que la conscience — la faculté de discerner le bien du mal, et de déterminer comment agir envers les autres — et la moralité sont des qualités inhérentes à l’humain. Un esprit critique est la meilleure arme en temps de crise : elle seule peut nous permettre d’examiner la moralité de nos valeurs, et de nous entourer de gens de mêmes sensibilités. Ainsi, garder un esprit critique nous aide à discerner entre le bien et le mal.
In Some Questions of Moral Philosophy, Arendt argues the benefits of the Socratic orientation over the Christian one. In times of crisis, when religious values fail to regulate evil, the Socratic method allows individuals to remain true to their beliefs. Arendt stresses the importance of having a dialogue with oneself, especially at times when commonly held moral customs fail to encourage the masses to be good. Consciousness – the faculty to judge right from wrong and to determine the way we should treat others – and morality cannot be assumed to exist in everyone. A thoughtful and critical mind is the most important thing one can have in times of crisis: it is what one must use to examine morality and the values one holds dear, while also surrounding oneself with like-minded individuals to help remain steadfast on the path towards an improved understanding of good and evil.
1. What Is and What Should Never Be
In the Christian view, a deed that cannot be appropriately punished and forgiven is evil, focusing on consequences. In the Socratic view, a deed that one simply cannot live with after committing is evil, focusing on one’s identity. Therefore, according to the Socratic view, the judgment of a deed as evil requires people to be able to engage in a dialogue with themselves, to reflect on right and wrong, and to reach a conclusion which guides them in their actions independent of external moral values. It is when people lose this relationship with themselves, and, by extension, their ability to accurately judge right from wrong, that evil emerges. Thoughtlessness makes the masses easy to manipulate – if everyone were to follow rules, right and wrong would have no meaning, since no one would bear any responsibility for their actions and have no confidence in their abilities as moral agents.
Christianity, like other religions, prescribes its followers with a fixed set of guiding rules and principles that are unquestionable and undeniable, focusing on the other rather than on oneself. These principles habituate people to rely on an outside source for morality. While at times it is necessary to rely on the other (whether for comparison’s sake, keeping oneself in check, or facilitating discussion), over-reliance on an outside source of morality can become dangerous. Traditions, with values posed as universals, prevent the potential for people to develop their own consciousness – the inner voice of critical questioning – which prevents them from thinking through their beliefs, from questioning them, and from making sure that their actions and intentions are aligned with the good. This loss of one’s internal critical faculty increases one’s susceptibility to common customs, even when they are evil. Evil is thoughtlessness where there is the potential and ability to be thoughtful, especially in the case of the extreme evil prevalent in times of crisis. While evil individuals may always exist due to emotional or moral deficiencies or incompetencies, many people do not realize their full potential as moral agents and as thinking beings, perhaps as a result of their dependency on external morality.
2. Possible Solutions
The only way to combat the ever-existing possibility of falling to the worst of evils is to encourage self-reflection, critical thought, and to require the development of a dialogue with oneself. Individuals must rely on themselves and themselves alone to carry the burden of their actions, and to reason through the moral ideas behind them. If individuals have free will and the possibility of choice that it entails, then is it not plausible that individuals choose their own morals as well, and that there is not one universal truth? People must force themselves to think, even when faced with the discomfort of uncertainty. It may seem easier to let religion guide you through many of the questions that exist — and may always exist — about morality, but in doing so, individuals deny themselves the agency to be as good as they can be and to avoid being evil.
While everyone must do some of their thinking in solitude – to engage in silent dialogue with oneself, as Arendt notes – individuals must also think by surrounding themselves with people as thoughtful and conscious as they are. Individuals can choose the company they keep and can ensure to the best of their abilities that the people they confide in are good examples of what they determine to be moral behaviour.
Arendt equates the love of doing good deeds to the Socratic love of wisdom, as no man can be truly wise or genuinely good, but the goal that those abstract concepts set for individuals can guide them even when they do not understand what they are doing. People must put their beliefs under the examining mind and when the customs they hold dear inevitably fail the test of reason, they must not give in to the desperation and hopelessness that come with the loss of direction but seek out new ideas of good and evil. Individuals must hold themselves to a certain standard, determined by using their own thinking and that of the people they trust, and remain true to their self-thought values to avoid committing banal, thoughtless acts of evil.
Thoughtlessness and indifference are the surest ways to do evil even when individuals do not purposely intend to do so. The only way to avoid falling into common customs, which may fail individuals in their mission to do what they deem good, is to keep thinking, reflecting upon those moral ideas, and abiding by their conclusions.