This is a pretty contentious topic, and I will confess that the view to follow is probably not a “politically correct” opinion. Nowadays this admittedly is not the most popular view to argue for, but I hope to stir up some good debate, especially with those who disagree.
The issue here is that of the obligation to uphold certain positive rights, and in particular for this post, the right to be free from hunger; perhaps it does not even warrant the title “right,” but giving it that higher station helps the opponent and, in good faith, I will give them the best argument they can muster. On a Google search, including quotation marks, the “right to be free from hunger" yields 573,000 results, and similarly, the “right to food” gets 642,000 hits. By clicking on any of these links, your heart will undoubtedly be moved by the pictures of terribly skinny children and touching appeals to save the world from starvation. Resources are scarce there, but very abundant for you here. So give a small donation and do your part to help out a little. Have a heart; it’s your duty as a human being – you owe it to those less fortunate than yourself.
And they are absolutely right in this regard. Do not yet misunderstand me: starvation is bad, and giving to charity is good. I’m not advocating complete solipsistic selfishness. Where the argument fails is after all of that. In the more extreme realms, some people and organizations out to do good call for the upholding of the right to be free from hunger by redistributing wealth, especially in the wealthy United States. The problem is that this makes the free choice of giving however much to who or what an individual decides and takes that liberty from them, now forcing whoever has an excess to share the wealth with those who have a deficit. Opponents may argue that force (or bribery with tax breaks, for that matter) is needed, for otherwise most people would not logically choose to part with their earnings. How cynical a view of humanity this is indeed! I do not believe altruism to be so foreign and unnatural an idea to many people. Though there is merit to the idea that people will give more when encouraged, governmental force is not the right way, either by our own country’s taxation or by even more remote demands placed upon the country as a whole by global organizations like the UN. (What is the right way, you may be asking? I’ll leave that for you to decide, or perhaps address it in a later post)
The extremists like to say that all lives are equal, that I’m not any more valuable or worthy to eat and have prosperity than someone over in Africa just because I was born here. We can’t really be about justice and equality if we think otherwise, right? We’re all equally deserving of the goods that any person or nature produce; it’s a small world and we’re all the same after all. I do not believe that all the do-gooders are really wishing for such total equality out of great desires of personal self-sacrifice or good will. Some (I’ll call them the Lip-Service Extremists) say such magnanimous things, self-deprecating and diminishing themselves by denying their extra-special worth. In their better-than-thou way, Lip-Service Extremists want to argue that, of course, I’m awesome, and you’re awesome, and everyone else in the whole world is just equally awesome human beings, aren’t we great? Because we’re all so awesome, we should not deny material things to those just as awesome as us. We’re not just accidents living between two abysses; we are capable of doing good for all humanity and we can have a wonderful utopia where everyone is worth the same and no one will be too wealthy and no one will starve or be bothered by thinking about pesky things like the rights to property and prosperity. But, really, our Lip-Service Extremists want to feel important themselves. By claiming that everyone is significant, they’re claiming that they too are significant. The more value they give all others, the more they attribute greater and greater worth to the whole human species, including more value for themselves. By saying that he is just as worthy as I am to live in equal prosperity, you’re implying that you yourself are really something special. Yet extreme equality does nothing to bolster the value of humanity as a whole. Quite the opposite, in fact, all redistributing the wealth does is work to equally devalue the individual. The irreducible, irreplaceable individual is not really unique anymore, he is no longer irreplaceable; his worth is no longer dependent on what he does or who he is.
People are not equal. You are (presumably) a better, more valuable human than, say, your average serial killer. It is simply a detrimental lie to revert to equalizing, and thus devaluing, everyone (Orwellians will attest to this). Your worth doesn’t depend on making another or all others equally awesome! There is, in fact, quite a contradiction with the very notion of equal awesomeness. You can still be important, caring, and unique without valuing all others as equally deserving of all things. Your worth is not contingent on anyone else, and you shouldn’t make it so – such dependence only works to devalue the distinctiveness of your individuality.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Self-Interest Rightly Understood
Posted by Andrea Lowry at 3:32 PM
Labels: equality, prosperity, rights
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8 comments:
Greetings,
Great post, as always! I think that there's definitely some merit to your broad claims, although I do have two questions (and a few "subquestions") about some specifics:
Question 1: You justify the claim that "People are not equal" by arguing that "You are (presumably) a better, more valuable human than, say, your average serial killer". However, is that right? Consider...
Subquestion 1: Doesn't it devalue your own self-worth by attributing a value to it? If I believe that the value of a human life can have a discrete numerical figure attached to it, that implies that your own value is limited. If you hold a religious faith (or some other body of belief, such as classical Platonism, as I understand it) that holds to the immortality of the soul, this seems to be problematic-- how does one delineate a value to something that is eternal, and thus is never complete? Doesn't that yield a problem in assigning a discrete value? If you don't hold to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, wouldn't this serve as a justification of slavery in its cruelest sense-- dehumanizing individuals due to what is perceived as their lack of intrinsic value, and using them for all they are perceived to be good for?
Subquestion 2: If value is derived, as you imply in your second and third paragraphs, from moral goodness, does one have less of a moral obligation to help those who are less "valuable" than others? If not, and value is created from helping others, wouldn't value be contingent upon others?
I enjoyed reading your post, and look forward to your response, if you have time!
Ms. Lowry,
We can read this post charitably without affirming it as a "great post" (as does Mr. Sherwin) thereby equalizing and thus devaluing all of Lowry's posts.
Let us introduce a simple distinction that would enable Lowry to say what she wants to say without resorting to the Fox news strategy of calling people like me names ("extremists" or, worse, "Lip-Service extremists"). As philosopher Stephen Darwall argued twenty something years ago, we can distinguish between two kinds of respect.
"Recognition respect" is extended to any and all we consider objects of moral regard or moral concern. It would be a grave mistake to extend recognition respect equally to Lowry and to the ants that are currently crawling all over my house. But it would not, I would argue, be a mistake to extend the same respect of Ms. Lowry and a hungry adult in New Orleans or a hungry child in Haiti. They are all human beings (dare I say, equally created in God's image) and by virtue of that, I would argue, worthy of equal regard/consideration/respect (though it doesn't follow from this that we should treat them identically).
"Appraisal respect" by contrast, tracks the moral differences between human beings. In this sense, we are not all equal. People who call other people names are not, all things being equal, as worthy of admiration and positive appraisal as those who don't, and so on.
So Lowry can have it both ways, and she can have it both ways without resorting to the rather--what would be charitable?--let's say confused view of Mr. Sherwin that all value is reducible to some sort of economic value. Are all people equally worthy of respect? Yes and no. Yes, all are equally worthy of recognition respect or regard (and so no one should go hungry). No, all are not worthy of equal appraisal regard or respect. Perhaps Ms. Lowry is more admirable than I. That is irrelevant if I and my family are hungry.
Zach, thank you for your comment! For subquestion 1, I do not believe one's self-worth is the same as the immortal soul - I consider them to be different. One's value is just that, an estimatable, measurable value and not devalued because we can ascribe higher and lower values of worth.
As for the second part of that subquestion, I can see where you'd get that, but that's not really what I was getting at. My theory needs tweaking. Or some "fleshing out." No human being can be deemed unvaluable in a way that subjects them to slavery or starvation.
In addressing your second subquestion, let me clarify the intent of this post. It was not really meant to address or to question the dignity of individuals. There of course exist rights that are inextricable from and inherent to all human beings; and they exist apart from whatever some person or even a majority of wrong people in power may say. Rights are not mere liberties - they are not man-made and they cannot be granted by or eliminated by any human hands. One's rightful value as a human being does justify an obligation on our part to keep others from starving when we can. I did not mean to imply a human being may be more or less eligible to starve than another because of his estimated worth. As DunceScotus writes at the end, worth does not exaclty correlate to how much or little food one's entitled to. Our human dignity is so much more than just production or how much we contribute to society - even your garden-variety serial killer ought not be subjected to something as inhumane as starvation, and neither would your local lazy deatbeat who does not work for society's benefit at all. (Neither though is everyone entitled to an equal amount of everything...look at how the right to personal property, unequal by its nature, has benefited society... equal entitlement to all products is, as contradictory as it may sound, an unjust society.)
But this is off track a bit. What I am more concerned with here is whether or not to call the positive right to be free from hunger a true "right" in the same sense that the right to trial by jury or the right to hold property or the right of representation or self-rule are all rights. It may be better classified as something else.
Secondly, and more primarily what I meant to be the focus of the post, is that the redistribution of wealth is not and cannot be the solution to the starvation problem, whether it's defined as a right or not. You cannot trample on the right to property and prosperity to try to counteract the, perhaps, right to food. There must be a way that does not conflict with any other rights.
And to DunceScotus,
only the very insidious select few do-gooders are the not-so-genuine Lip-Service Extremists who have the ulterior motives. They are the rotten apples in a bunch of truly selfless individuals - I am sure you undoubtedly are not of this rotten clique, but are of those who seek to serve othres in a noble, heartfelt way... I would not deign to cynically cluster all the good altrusits together with the rotten minority; I have no intent to impugn such good honor like that.
Andrea,
Thanks for the clarifying comments; clears up a good bit. The last two paragraphs in your comment addressed to me were particularly useful.
So, although the title of the blog is "Self-Interest Rightly Understood" and a reading of the post is that, whatever the title, it is really about the implications of recognizing a right to be free from hunger, now we learn that the post was really about whether it is permissible to override some rights--to property and, hear this, the right to prosperity!-- in order to satisfy other rights (the right to be hunger free).
OK. Give us an argument. Why not think the "right" to what is required to live adequately trumps/overrides property (and prosperity!) rights. Others, e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas, have thought so. Why do you think not?
(But you may want to start by distinguishing between legal/positivie rights, to which the right to a trial by jury may belong but to which I would be most surprised were you to say the right to property belongs.)
I do, at any rate, appreciate your excepting me (I think) from the ranks of rotten apples!
As the Non-rotton Apple/basketball playing philosopher suggests I begin, let me define what I mean by rights.
The rights I have mentioned, including indeed the right to prosperity and property, fall under a more broad category than legal and positive, as the dichotomy DunceScotus has made.
As I understand, there are 2 subcategoires: positive and negative rights, liberal democracies like the US having fewer positive rights in our Constitution than social democracies and other forms of non-popular governments. We have more emphasis on what government cannot do, what is prohibited rather than necessitating or obligating the government to do things (positive rights). And legal rights like due process and right to trial by jury and things are in that subcategory of negative rights because it says what is prohibited by law from the government taking away from us.
I think, however, that when you make it an obligation for the government to provide food, shelter, medicine, etc., it is better suited as defined as a liberty, just like the freedom of speech is a liberty, but not a right. Notice that it wouldn't mean that it is justified in excluding (very, very few people argue against the need for the liberty of free speech). Liberties are obligatory upon the government to either uphold or not interfere with. But I may just be dabbling too much or needlessly in semantics. Maybe its definition is really beside the point in the matter. Or perhaps you like semantical arguments. But either way it's an open question for us to discuss - that is why it is here. Maybe it is a bona fide positive right to be provided for by the government, and I should go with Aquinas.
And the title, I'm sure you're all well aware, is a nod to an idea of the good Alexis de Tocqueville. It is right (a different kind of meaning of "right") to be self-interested in your human individual dignity and not to let your rights (back to the prior meaning) be trampled upon. Perfect equality (by redistributing the wealth) only devalues you and limits your rights, even if it is said to be justified by upholding the right to food - rights must always be argued for, and you can't take any away for any reason whatsoever, and so there it is, self-interest rightly understood. If there is a right to be from hunger, there must be an alternate way to ensure its own upholding as well of course, but just not this way.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with Democracy in America (and I highly recommend it!) here is the section of Tocqueville that discusses the idea behind the title of this post:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/DETOC/ch2_08.htm
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