“There ought to be a law.”  How often have we heard that, usually in response to some perceived misdeed that turns out not to be illegal?  There follows a political push to pass legislation criminalizing or regulating the conduct. Laws are manmade rules that govern the behavior and relationships of people in civil society.  People are expected to conform to the standard of the law and punished if they do not.

The combination of “law” and “ought” is an interesting one. Ought is a moral statement that people are ethically obligated to adhere to a particular standard.  Any time we use the word “ought” we imply that there is some standard that we are morally obligated to meet.  Making it a law is just the practical application of the standard.  Now, it’s official. 

This raises some interesting questions.  Standards mean that we as people are accountable for our actions.  They are like plumb lines.  Just as the building must conform to the plumb line and not the other way around, we must conform to the standard.  Where do standards come from and how are they enforced?

Standards have to come from something.  They can’t exist in and of themselves, because they do not have the attributes of self-existence and they don’t do anything affirmatively.  Standards are ideas, not substances.  They don’t think, know, discern, make decisions or act. 

A standard implies that there is a standard maker.  This maker brings to mind something that thinks, makes judgments and decisions.  A standard must also have the system of accountability.  If we can violate a standard with impunity, the standard might as well not exist.  The standard has to be administered and enforced, which tells us much about this maker and enforcer.  It must be a) powerful enough to see to it that the standard is enforced and not simply ignored, b) eternal and present everywhere to make sure the standard is enforced in all places and at all times, so nothing slips through the cracks, c) all-wise and knowing so that the determination about creating and enforcing the standard are true and correct, and d) just and righteous so the decisions and actions in enforcement are good and righteous.

Standards can’t originate with impersonal physical matter.  Even though physical matter is a substance and exists, that’s all it does.  A rock is just there.  Windstorms happen, but they are just the result of physical forces.  Impersonal matter and physical forces do not do anything affirmatively.  They neither judge me nor hold me morally accountable for what I do.  Judging requires that something think, discern, decide and then act to administer and enforce the determination.  At the same time, physical matter and forces are not ethically accountable for what they do.  A storm or a fire are not culpable because they destroy my house or kill me.  We don’t take trees to court for not doing what trees are supposed to do, such as growing fruit.

Everything about the standard making and administering process speaks to a personal being.  All of the attributes needed in the concept of standards involve discerning, determining, acting and enforcing, which exist only in beings that possess personality and consciousness.  We can’t stop here.  We need to go further in determining what this living personal standard maker is like.  In order to achieve all of aspects of standard making and administration, our creator must be quite extraordinary.  Perhaps the perfect ultimate reality is the best way to describe this being.  Nothing can get by or thwart him and everything he does is righteous and just.  That’s a pretty tall order, so nothing in the universe can be greater than our perfect ultimate being.  If he were not ultimate he would not be perfect.  Conversely, if he were not perfect he would not be ultimate.  The perfect and the ultimate imply and need each other.  If we can conceive of something greater than our ultimate being, then the first thing we were thinking of can’t be the perfect ultimate being.  The perfect and the ultimate must be the greatest.

So, we arrive at the place where, if there is a law, there has to be a personal being who is the perfect ultimate reality.  This is a religious conclusion that eliminates atheism as an option, because the atheist says that the physical universe is all that exists.  There is not anything beyond the physical.  To speak of a law as an application of a principle of justice, truth and virtue, the atheist must develop a system where standards are created, administered and enforced in a universe that is ultimately impersonal and unconscious.  The problem is that there is not any coherent system that can come out of atheism. 

I believe that self-respecting individuals are not given to bitterness. 

Bitterness is as corrosive to the human psyche as rust is to metal.  It is characteristically irrational in the way that blind jealousy is.  Typically, bitterness is occasioned by an egregious wrong that one has suffered—a wrong that either sets one back in some fundamental way or that results in one not receiving a much-coveted prize. 

Being unjustly accused publicly often occasions bitterness because the individual’s reputation is sullied in ways that give rise to one major obstacle after another.  Being unjustly passed over for a major promotion is another example of something that often occasions bitterness, because it seems as if certain significant opportunities or benefits are forever lost.  As a concrete example, divorce often occasions bitterness when it happens that one side or the other makes spurious accusations in order to obtain an advantage over the other.  In this regard, consider the case of a husband who must nonetheless pay large sums of child support but who end up with very limited access to their children owing to have been false accused, by the wife, of having sexually abused their children, to say nothing of his reputation in the community.  This phenomenon (which, of course, can go in either direction) even has an acronym: SAID (link 1), which stands for "Sexual allegation in Divorce" (link 2). 

Thus, what is particularly striking about bitterness is that it appears to admit of justification.  In fact, when criticized people who are bitter often point out, “You would be bitter too if what happened to me had happened to you”.  And the truth of the matter is that this is more likely to be true than false. 

What I find particularly significant is that there is very clear sense in which bitterness can seem to flow from self-respect.  A person with self-respect is one who is rightly angry and resentful over having been wronged.  It is not possible to have self-respect and be in different to having been wrong.  If anything is true, to be bitter is not to be indifferent to having been wrong.  Quite the contrary, it might be said that the bitter person shows an acute sensitivity to having been wrong.  With great imagination, the individual grasps how this wrong has or is playing itself out in her or his life.  Whatever problem the bitter person has, recognizing that she or he has been wronged is not one of them. 

If bitterness flows from having self-respect, then it would seem that there could not be a better justification for it.  It is, I believe, the fact that bitterness seems to flow from self-respect—understood to entail a proper appreciation for the wrongs that one has suffered—that inclines so many to think of bitterness as an actual entitlement. 

The coin of self-respect, if you will, has two sides.  To be sure, one must never be indifferent to the wrongs that one has suffered.  No less important, however, is that one should not fail to have a proper appreciation for the gifts that one has and the good that one can do.  The problem with bitterness lies in the fact that the pre-occupation with one the wrongs that one has suffered over shadows one’s appreciation for the gifts one has and the good that one can do. 

It is not uncommon for bitter people to miss golden opportunities precisely because they would rather wallow in their angst over the wrong they have suffered than to enjoy the uplift that would come from exercising this or that excellence.  In fact, one of the clear signs of a bitter person is that she or manages to forgo things that will bring about uplift.  The bitter person mistakenly thinks that the only way not to be indifferent to the wrong that she or has suffered is to constantly dwell upon it.  But this, of course, is silly.  No one who has ever suffered an egregious wrong will ever forget it—at least no so long as she or he remains psychologically healthy.  Nor is there any chance that she or he will downgrade the wrong.  I think that rape is absolutely horrendous.  And if I should be raped, there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that I will downgrade the wrong of this deed, whatever wonderful things I might go on to achieve. 

What is more, with a wrong that one has suffered only one course of opportunities has been lost.  It rare, perhaps even impossible, that every course of opportunities has been lost.  And while the door to some levels of success may be forever closed, life typically leaves more than enough opportunities for significant success, if only would avail ourselves of them.  Self-respect requires us to be as attentive to this truth.  If this is right, then whether we are bitter or not is typically more a matter of choice than most of us would imagine.  The key to our psychic healing lies primarily in our own hands. 

Self-respect would be a liability, rather than the asset that it is, if it were the psychological precursor to bitterness.  If, however, there are any axioms in moral philosophy, surely one of them is that self-respect is an asset rather than a liability.  The self-respecting person never allows a loss of opportunity to prevent her or him from seeing, and acting upon, the good that remains within her or his reach.  If this is right, then the surprise is that those who go on relentlessly about having been wronged, as if that wrong were the measure of all things, may have far less self-respect than is commonly supposed.  In the inimitable words of Shakespeare: They protest too much!

_____

In writing this essay, I have profited enormously from Lynne McFall's important essay "What's Wrong with Bitterness?" in Feminist Ethics (University Kansas Press), edited by Claudia Card.

I cannot think of anything more futile than trying to prove the existence of God.  I also think it equally silly for people to think that they have an argument that conclusively shows that God does not exist.  You know the kind: If God were omniscient and omnipotent, then he could create a rock that he couldn’t lift.  But if he can’t left that rock, then he isn’t omnipotent.  Clearly, the problem of evil is a very serious issue.  But to treat it as a slam-dunk against the idea that God cannot at once be omni benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent strikes me as really foolish. 

But what intrigues me more than anything is that those who find the idea of God utterly untenable seem to have no trouble whatsoever believing in romantic love.  There is nothing on the face of this earth more transcendent and intangible than romantic love.  Not only that: the truth of the matter is that for any piece of behavior attributed to romantic love, there is always an alternative explanation available.  Self-serving motives are always available as an explanation for actions attributed to romantic love.  In general, there is absolutely no way to rule out conclusively self-serving motives.  In this regard, consider the marvelous play on words by Shakespeare in Sonnet 138, the concluding line of which reads as follows:

 Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.

Moreover, there is the undeniable reality that gestures of kindness are very often a wonderful strategy for getting our way with a person or diffusing even justified criticism from the individual.  Why, it can seem downright nasty to criticism someone who has just presented one with a very spectacular gift.  As I have said: being nice can be wonderfully self-serving.

So it seems to me that people whose demand for rigor and ever so solid evidence prevents them from believing in God should have just as much trouble believing in romantic love as they do believing in God. 

Romantic love is a profoundly mystical experience in that there is no well-defined set of physical features or personality traits that determine whom we love.  In fact, a most extraordinary feature about romantic love is that we can often fall in love with a person who widely misses the mark in terms of what we have, as it were, fantasized about.  And if that were not enough, most explanations for why we love so-and-so go something like this: “Oh, there is just something about her/him that makes me feel so go about myself”.  Needless to say that statement does not win any awards for being illuminating.  Just so, we all understand that love is like that. 

Of course, if a person has never been in love, all of this can seem utterly ridiculous.  But, alas, there is no way whatsoever to grasp the power of romantic love from afar.  Love is not like a proof for a theorem, where the intricate steps are seized one by one thereby enabling us to grasp the whole of the theorem.  Indeed, love at its best is not grasped intellectually.  Rather, it is quintessentially an experiential phenomenon. 

In her on-line essay, “The Definition of Love,” Sarah Gibson concludes her remarks on romantic love by implying that romantic love is that glorious intersection of all the other forms of love that a person has experienced.  I do not wish to either defend or criticize her account.  Instead, I merely want to point out that insofar as her view resonates with us, it is because we have had the right sorts of experiences.  There is no argument that can be adduced that delivers Gibson’s very intriguing and powerful conclusion.  Sometimes lovers act like children with one another.  Sometimes they act like gardeners on a stroll, surveying the landscape.  Sometimes they are the most wonderful conversationalists.  Just how love can be all of these things, no one has ever explained. 

Many non-believers talk as if those who believe in God suffer from some sort of intellectual and emotional short-circuiting.  But I wonder who is more intellectually and emotionally estranged.   

To believe in God is to believe that an intangible being whose nature is ineffable can make a dramatic difference for the better in one’s life in ways that are typically inexplicable.  But let’s see, to believe in love is to believe that an intangible good the nature of which is ineffable can make a dramatic difference for the better in one’s life n ways that are typically inexplicable.  So who is more consistent both intellectually and emotionally?  Is it those who believe both in God and in love?  Or, is it those who believe in love but who have ever so much trouble believing in God?

(Note: While I have used the case of romantic love, it goes without saying that I could just as easily have spoken about love in general.  I focused upon romantic love because of the obvious role that it plays in the human psyche which, in turn, is manifested most vividly in literature and film.) 

“Well, I am just telling the truth”.  From this utterance it is supposed to follow that one is justified in saying what one says.  Hence, one cannot be morally criticized for saying it.  In response, I say that this line of reasoning is surely delusional.  The simple fact of the matter is that truth can be down right hurtful.  A person who indiscriminately says what is true is not a moral exemplar.  Quite the contrary, such a person is, instead, utterly vicious in her or his truth telling.   Moral maturity and decency entails the wisdom to know when not to say something. 

I have just said what might seem surprising at first blush, namely that one can be vicious in one’s truth telling.  But numerous examples can be advanced in support this claim.  Here is one.  Suppose that a couple was very upset over having conceived a child, having taken every reasonable precaution not to short of refraining from sexual relations.  Indeed, the couple thought to abort the child.  But for all sorts of reasons, the abortion did not happen.  Nor did they put the child up for adoption, as they had also contemplated. 

Now is this a truth that needs to be told to the child when he is, say, 11 years old?  I ask you: What motivation, other than sheer meanness, could two parents possibly have for telling their 11 year old child that initially they did not want him and, moreover, had considered putting him up for adoption?  Telling the 11 year old this truth would be mean because it would be utterly devastating to him—tantamount to a kind of emotional disembowelment. 

Indiscriminate truth telling is simply a matter of masking callous indifference at best or displaying outright cruelty at worse, whilst claiming to be virtuous.  Indiscriminate truth telling may be a weapon for diminishing the other’s moral or social standing.  Or it may even be a way of settling a score. 

Consider the following case.  John is now 46 years old, and he stupidly did an amateur pornographic film when he was 18.  It was a one-time affair.  In fact, John’s moral life all these many years has been impeccable.  He married at 28, has two children, and things are going marvelously well for him.  His public service record with helping delinquent youth is second to none.  But, alas, you know that John did this stupid thing at 18.  How is that?  You happen to be the owner of the only copy left, because you broke into the makeshift studio and made a copy the one and only tape of the scene before it was destroyed.  Now, what reason could you have for telling John’s wife’s this truth today—some 28 years later?  Or, supposing that she already knows, what reason could you have for telling anybody today—some 28 years later?  The answer is simple: the only reason one could have would be to hurt John by embarrassing or shaming him. 

Your aim could not be to bring about some good that would otherwise not be attainable.  You might be justified in causing John some pain if a clear and extraordinary good would flow from your disclosure of John’s moral misdeed at the age of 18.  But that is not so in this case.  Moreover, since no one has this information but you, it is not possible to pretend that you are helping John by making public information about him that is bound to become public sooner or later.  In fact, you could insure that the issue never arises by destroying your copy of the sex scene. 

Evil is masterful at exploiting ambiguity.  Honesty is no doubt a virtue.  Indiscriminate truth telling, on the other hand, is a vice.  Minimally, honesty is a matter of responding truthfully to a question asked of one.  Indiscriminate truth telling is not at all about responding to a question raised.  Rather, it is about seizing the opportunity to volunteer the truth in order to achieve no other goal than that of hurting someone.  As an aside, I am struck by the fact that those who insist upon indiscriminately telling the truth about others are masterfully discriminate when it comes to telling the truth about themselves. 

Causing gratuitous pain is meanness by any other name.  And quite often truth can serve the aim of being mean better than sticks and stones. 

________________

*These remarks draw upon my lecture given in Durham England at the Royal Institute of Philosophy, Wednesday, 24 November 2004.  The lecture was entitled "To Lie or Not to Lie: Why Honesty is Sometimes a Vice".  A version was also delivered at the Uniiversity of San Franciso in October of 2004 and at Union College in February 2005.