Looking at the two moral syndromes again and some of the reaction here and elsewhere it strikes me that there is a very important detail that needs to be clarified.
Jane Jacobs is not proposing this two sets of moral values as something new which will make business more ethical. The goal of her book is to find out ways to counter what she saw as an explosion in unethical behaviour in business and politics but the two syndromes are pure anthropology. Look at any culture you want and you can find both operating in different spheres.
Most critics missed this but, if you read the book, she makes it very clear that she found these syndromes already existing in the world. She read hundreds of articles and books about morality and she found these two syndromes already there. (And it's not just her, the existence of the two sets of virtues is a common place discovery in anthropology.)
Her conclusion, by the way, is that things go wrong when people try and synthesize the syndromes. That produces what she calls monstrous hybrids, and you could sum up the book by saying, we need both syndromes and they need to be kept separate.
So, while the problem is particular, the virtues are found everywhere. including in the novel Rob Roy and all through the Bible.
That there are sets of virtues that are appropriate in some contexts and not in another one is, I'll grant you, an idea our liberal culture finds appalling. But, appalling or not, it is the way the world works.
I think what I object to most strongly is your use of the word "virtues." What Jacobs is describing are characteristics or attributes of two different systems. I do not disagree that they both exist and have always existed throughout human history and, as she says, both are valid and necessary. And I have no beef with her battle with Robert Moses and urban renewal and how neighborhoods were destroyed. That happened here in CT when they built I95, and it cost John Davis Lodge his re-election as Governor because he supported the project. However, I do take issue with her attempt to equate efficacy with ethics or moral values, its apples and oranges. Virtue is its own reward, and that might not be very efficacious, at least in the short-term. And this is neither a liberal nor a conservative issue either.
ReplyDeleteThey are characteristics of people operating in those moral contexts. Some of them are unquestionably virtues: honesty, efficiency, industry, loyalty.
ReplyDeleteOthers will not appear like virtues to us, and maybe even the opposite, but explained in terms of the social context they apply to they are virtues.
I agree with Alasdair MacIntyre that any system of virtues presupposes a sociology. Consider humility, for example. Fora Christian, humility is a virtue but in the context of classical Greece it was a vice. Aristotle singles it out as one of the most heinous vices of all.
Well, I thought we were operating in a Christian context here, but maybe that was presumptuous of me. Nonetheless, I don't disagree with MacIntyre, but if he stopped there he didn't go far enough. Its not only the social context but also the ends which those "virtues" serve that must also be considered. Efficiency, industry, and loyalty were certainly virtues under the Third Reich, but look at the ends to which they were put.
ReplyDeleteGoing back to Jacobs, I read Caro's book about Moses, and heard Caro interviewed on C-Span after it came out. Moses was an SOB, no question about it. But maybe she allowed her personal dislike of Moses, and the corruption that was going on to cloud her judgement about urban renewal, and romanticize "the old neighborhoods." Further, you can't talk about this without bringing in the issue of eminent domain, about which the USSC issued a controversial decision only a few years ago in a case involving the City of New London, CT and homeowners there. I'm not in favor of neighborhoods being destroyed, but when I was 5 yrs old we had to move because our house was in the way of the planned construction of I-95. So we moved a few blocks away, no big deal. I wasn't traumatized, my family wasn't broken up, I went to the same school. The only down side was that I had to take a different path to walk to the beach. Small price to pay for a highway that allowed me, when I got older, to drive into NYC in a half hour, and Boston in 2 hrs.