Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind is well intentioned
(or seems to be) and is getting much talk here, there and everywhere. The
purpose of The Righteous Mind is ostensibly to help the American political left and right
understand each other better. I don’t know if the book will achieve this. But
more ominously, this book is one of a rash of modern tomes that ask us to look charitably
on the views of the extreme religious right. I certainly don’t think Jonathan
Haidt is a fascist, but I do think his book (like Nietzche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra) could easily
become the bible of a fascist regime. Haidt’s methodology is pretty
straightforward; he is a psychologist who applies mostly Darwinian science to
morality. What is typical of this kind of approach is that it ends up quite
often being an apology for conservative right wing views.
I don’t know what Jonathan
Haidt’s personal moral ideas are. He certainly makes a valiant attempt to
keep them out of his book, and mostly succeeds. However he speaks briefly of a
young woman overheard at a university cafeteria saying to another woman -- “Oh
my God! If you were a guy I’d be so on your dick right now!” Haidt responds to her remark like this:
“I felt a mixture of amusement and revulsion.” Hm. Revulsion. I don’t get it. If I overheard a
young woman speak like that I would be nothing but happy. First of all it’s
nice to see someone -- indeed anyone – speak in a sex-positive manner. Secondly,
it takes a great deal of bravery for a young woman to talk in such a manner when there
have been historically, so many pressures on young women to appear not to be sexual (the danger being they will
be demonized as ‘whores’.)
So I don’t think Haidt likes sex
much, or that he understands the oppression of women.
But more importantly, let’s look
at his observation in the context of his central argument. Haidt uses it to
prove a very important point about morality. He says, speaking of the same girl
“how could I criticize her from the ethic of autonomy?” The ‘ethic of autonomy’
refers to John Stuart Mill’s notion that people should be free individuals, and
judgments about right or wrong should only be related to hurt. In other words if
we believe that ethics is all about weighing the harm that one person does to
another, then a girl who talks in this manner cannot be morally criticized because she is hurting no one. The only reason we
would be allowed to criticize the poor girl morally (and the more I think about
Haidt’s book, the sorrier I feel for this young woman!) would be if we believe
morality has to do with ‘instinctive’ reactions to the sanctity of the body.
Haidt wants us to know that ideas of fairness, hurt and harm are quite
particular to modern western morality, and that ideas of bodily sanctity and
degradation are an integral part of the morality of many ancient western and
non-western religions. Haidt is ostensibly
saying both types of morality are in their own way right, or at least
should be accepted as equal. This is despite the fact that fairness is
something that we can justify through rational argument, while ‘sanctity’ is
something we cannot.
I
take issue with this. The problem
with Haidt’s argument is that he is yet another ‘scientist’ (although as much
as I think psychology is important, I still don’t know if it can yet be considered a
science) using biological theories to bolster conservative views. His final conclusion
is very revealing. The left and right are divided in the U.S.A. because “our minds were designed for
groupish righteousness. We are deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings
drive our strategic reasoning. This makes it difficult – but not impossible –
to connect with those who live in other matrices, which are often build on
different configurations of available moral foundations.” Haidt’s findings are
not the least bit surprising. He is definitely not the first person to suggest
that we are creatures of feeling easily swayed by group sentiments. What is
‘new’ -- only in the sense that people are speaking from this position more and
more these days -- is to suggest that because humans are biologically
constructed in a certain way, we must therefore be tolerant of their ignorance
or prejudice and perhaps not challenge them (after all, challenging them can be
‘difficult’ and we are ‘hardwired’ to be like that). This is the same argument that many are use to justify
heterosexism -- i.e. women have different brains than men, so they are
programmed to act differently, so we must treat them differently. But of course
no one would dare use this argument to justify racism (although that is a logically
corollary of Haidt’s argument).
Are
we not rational beings? Isn’t it pretty evident that we are animals, with
irrational feelings and desires, but also (thank God) with
brains that can reason (yes with
difficulty) to help us to control, understand, and weigh, our impulses,
tastes and prejudices? One would hope so. But a new breed of scientists (mostly
Darwinians) would have us tolerate the most irrational aspects of ourselves
because they are after all, part of what we inherit from the animals.
It’s
ironic that a Darwinian psychologist’s arguments could be so potently used to
prop up the views of the religious right. Haidt argues essentially that we are
animals programmed to have innate motions of sanctity. He makes a complex, paradoxical
connection between logic and illogic.
If I were paranoid, I would say it’s
all part of an elaborate plot to make some very antiquated, scary and fundamentally
anti-human ideas seem modern, scientific and palatable.
Thank
goodness I’m not.
