Moral Toddlerhood
I did a podcast recently with the guys at Secular Foxhole, covering two of my recent essays on populism and on the “illiberal synthesis” of European conservatism. Check it out.
I also have a new piece up at Quillette on the moral toddlerhood of the latest round of global warming protests. It’s an analogy that was just begging to be made.
In a recent attack, members of a group that calls itself Just Stop Oil threw mashed potatoes at a Monet painting hanging in a Potsdam, Germany museum. Other members of the group threw tomato soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, and before that it was cake at the Mona Lisa. In the UK, activists have been pouring milk on supermarket floors to protest the supposedly dire environmental impact of the dairy industry, and to agitate for a “plant-based future.” Others have blocked traffic on major British and US roads by sitting down in front of traffic and, in some cases, gluing their hands to the roadway. Earlier this month, a protester sprayed paint over the walls of a car dealership. And in an especially hilarious episode—well, I’m just going to quote the news report, because otherwise you won’t believe me: “Climate protesters who glued themselves to the floor of a Volkswagen showroom in Germany need to use the toilet—but now complain the company has refused to provide the group with ‘a bowl to urinate and defecate’ in.”
Anyone who’s ever been a parent will recognize these actions: throwing food, spilling milk, smearing paint on the walls, sitting on the ground and refusing to move. Add in the inability to properly dispose of one’s bodily waste, and the pattern is complete. This is the behavior of toddlers.
This is more than just a complaint about tactics, though. It’s about an entire approach to morality that encourages this kind of moral toddlerhood. I go on to explain what moral adolescence looks like and what is required for moral adulthood.
Along the way, I discuss our old enemy Immanuel Kant.
Possibly the most damaging idea in the history of moral philosophy is expressed in the very first sentence of Immanuel Kant’s 1785 Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals: “There is nothing that can be conceived, in this world or out of it, that is good without qualification except the good will.” As it came to be interpreted, this made morality primarily a matter of having the rightintentions. If you mean well, or if you are perceived by others as meaning well, then you are regarded as moral. Kantian ethics banished from morality the consideration of the real-world consequences of one’s intentions.
The significance of that first sentence is something I borrowed from the best college course on philosophy I ever took. It was taught by Leon Kass, a conservative intellectual whose ideas I deeply disagree with, but who taught a terrific graduate seminar on Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics.
What I remember most vividly is that he opened the class by putting up on the blackboard that opening sentence from Kant and the opening sentence from Aristotle’s ethics. Compare and contrast.
Here’s Kant again:
There is nothing that can be conceived, in this world or out of it, that is good without qualification except the good will.
And here’s Aristotle:
Every art and every investigation, and likewise every practical pursuit or undertaking, seems to aim at some good; hence it has been well said that the good is that at which all things aim.
Kant is inward-focused, lost in a world of theory and “conception,” which leads him toward a morality that is also oriented inward, focused on questioning and obsessing over one’s own intentions. Aristotle is outward-focused and observational, taking in the whole sweep of human activity in the world, which leads to an ethics that is action-oriented and goal-directed.
This is an interesting reminder that specific philosophical questions often do not come on their own but are influenced by a whole approach to how we think about big ideas in the first place.
While you’re at Quillette, check out an article on “Bridge Man” and a new wave of anti-government protest in China.
For Beijingers whose morning commute takes them under the Sitong overpass on the hectic north section of the city’s Third Ring Road, October 13th, 2022, will live long in the memory. That was the day that plumes of smoke from a bridge fire drew their attention to two large crimson-daubed banners. One read: “Food, not nucleic acid tests. Freedom, not lockdown. Dignity, not lies. Reform, not Cultural Revolution. Votes, not leaders. Be citizens, not slaves.” The other was an exhortation: “Students and workers, strike and depose the dictatorial traitor [literally: “country thief”] Xi Jinping! Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves! Oppose dictatorship! Save China! One person one vote to elect the Chairman!” The man responsible for both banners and fire stood alone on the bridge, decked out in the garb of a construction worker. As if his actions had left any room for ambiguity, he blasted a pre-recorded message through a loudspeaker, instructing astonished citizens to “Strike and depose the dictatorial traitor Xi Jinping!”…
Many have now heard of the “Sitong Bridge Warrior,” also referred to as “Bridge Man”—an echo of 1989’s iconic Tank Man—even if they don’t know his name. (It is Peng Lifa.)
This is a good follow-up to my piece last week on the possible end of the Freedom Recession. The value of freedom is so great that people will risk their lives for it in the most desperate circumstances. The question is not whether it is going to make a comeback globally; it’s just a matter of when.
"Toddlers"?
I don't think so. They are fully matured mau-mau Marcusians.