A Crucial Element of Democracy

This is a blog by Robert Gutierrez ...
While often taken for granted, civics education plays a crucial role in a democracy like ours. This Blog is dedicated to enticing its readers into taking an active role in the formulation of the civics curriculum found in their local schools. In order to do this, the Blog is offering a newer way to look at civics education, a newer construct - liberated federalism or federation theory. Daniel Elazar defines federalism as "the mode of political organization that unites separate polities within an overarching political system by distributing power among general and constituent governments in a manner designed to protect the existence and authority of both." It depends on its citizens acting in certain ways which Elazar calls federalism's processes. Federation theory, as applied to civics curriculum, has a set of aims. They are:
*Teach a view of government as a supra federated institution of society in which collective interests of the commonwealth are protected and advanced.
*Teach the philosophical basis of government's role as guardian of the grand partnership of citizens at both levels of individuals and associations of political and social intercourse.
*Convey the need of government to engender levels of support promoting a general sense of obligation and duty toward agreed upon goals and processes aimed at advancing the common betterment.
*Establish and justify a political morality which includes a process to assess whether that morality meets the needs of changing times while holding true to federalist values.
*Emphasize the integrity of the individual both in terms of liberty and equity in which each citizen is a member of a compacted arrangement and whose role is legally, politically, and socially congruent with the spirit of the Bill of Rights.
*Find a balance between a respect for national expertise and an encouragement of local, unsophisticated participation in policy decision-making and implementation.
Your input, as to the content of this Blog, is encouraged through this Blog directly or the Blog's email address: gravitascivics@gmail.com .
NOTE: This blog has led to the publication of a book. The title of that book is TOWARD A FEDERATED NATION: IMPLEMENTING NATIONAL CIVICS STANDARDS and it is available through Amazon in both ebook and paperback versions.

Friday, February 1, 2019

JEFFERSON’S SENSE OF A MORAL SENSE


Can this writer not succumb to the temptation to state:  “I’m baaack.”  He obviously cannot.  With this posting, this blog ends the respite its writer enjoyed.  To provide some sort of context, this is, by the writer’s counting, the 801st posting of this blog.  So, here goes another 400 entries before the next rest; at least that’s the plan. 
To begin, a question is offered, one that civics teachers should consider:  Is one a good person because it makes sense to be good – goodness leads to being liked, gaining cooperation, enjoying heart-enriching company, etc. – or because it is part of one’s nature?  Thomas Reid wrote the following:
Man was destined for society.  His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object.  He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong, merely relative to this.  This sense is as much a part of his nature as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality, and not the kalon, truth, etc., as fanciful writers have imagined.  The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm.  It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree.  It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body.  This sense is submitted, indeed, in some degree, to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this; even a less one than what we call common sense.  State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor.  The former will decide it as well and often better than the latter because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.[1]
Reid, in other words, argues that people have, beyond a moral reason, a moral sense.  Being moral is just part of being human.
          But is this not just another way a person seeks pleasure, which a la John Locke is universal?  Writers like Reid make the observation that when a person does something good to others, it feels good; it’s pleasurable.  So, as Locke might have said, this seeking goodness is just another expression of the pleasure drive; a drive people are born to pursue. 
Further, this drive, at times, competes with other drives.  Like what?  The drives to secure material comforts, to secure physical pleasures, to satisfy ego-induced feelings, and the like.  These drives seem to vie for a person’s commitment. 
And these drives often lead to immoral behaviors.  After all, moralists of the past have thought of categories of immorality, such as the seven deadly sins.[2]  And the word deadly is used to indicate that placating these associated drives lead to unhappy endings. 
Why?  Because they often rely on doing harm to others.  There are even arguments that when no one else is involved, possibly as with gluttony, and the harm is on oneself, one has a moral obligation to take care of oneself.  This last position does engender some controversy, but such self-harm is seldom not injurious to others. 
Potential harm can be directed toward loving family members or fellow-insured people who, through their premiums, pay extra due to unnecessary self-abuse among the populous.  “No man is an island” and this trope applies most stridently to the effects of immoral behavior.  This can get complicated.
Be that as it may, Thomas Jefferson saw morality as purely a social concern.[3]  This writer, in describing the morality associated with federation theory, has also described morality in this way.  But by so doing, one does need to be careful.  The possibility of affecting others by one’s behavior at times is quite clear and visible, but at other times, not so much. 
One needs to be honest here and not rationalize away with cheap mental gymnastics the responsibility for the harm one does to others.  This can be tricky as the just mentioned example indicate.  Actually, at times, it is quite easy to hurt others when that is not the intent.  If one wants to avoid such incidences, one has the responsibility to think before one acts.
Given this competition between drives, one can still make the claim that to be moral is part of being human.  It is also a factor – an interest – as one calculates one’s situation when it comes time to decide what one will do.  Jefferson saw the moral sense as man’s highest source of happiness:  “the brightest gem with which the human character is studded.”[4]  And, further, if one accepts this designation, this is the basis of equality.
As described in previous postings – when this blog reviewed federation theory’s case for equality – even though people might vary in their levels of talent and other assets, they are equal in their consent.  Jefferson adds some clarification regarding this more general claim.  He sees all are essentially equal because having a moral sense opens a person accountable to him/herself and to others. 
This permits the creation of a polity based on self-governance since the ability to consent, to be accountable, allows the common man, the ploughman as well as the professor, to meet the inherent social obligations such a polity demands.  Or, as this blog has referred to federal liberty:  the freedom to do what one should do.
And what of the faculty of reason?  Well, reason, according to another writer of Jefferson’s time, Francis Hutcheson, functions as a targeting agent; it decides in what direction and in what style a person decides to be moral.  Conditions present moral challenges or events in a variety of situations. 
Mere intuition or emotionally spurred reaction(s) often lead to less than harmless results.  The use of reason helps to minimize such eventualities.  Some call this type of distinction as being the difference between ends and means.  But while reason can play a helpful role – assuming the end goal is to be moral – it can also be used to manipulate the factors involved. 
Mentally, one strongly wants a given end – perhaps one that causes harm or causes more harm than other alternatives – and self-deception takes place or, if not self-deception, the concern is in how resulting behavior might be judged by others, and that person rationalizes by choosing an immoral option. 
Reason is a tool for good or evil; but long-term, reason points to morality.  It is also subject to faulty performance – it errs.  Or it is subject of varying forces like those emanating from the culture with its biases or erroneous bits of “common” knowledge that is not knowledge at all.  They are instead prejudices, that have become accepted without question. 
All of these hinder the function of reason.  They are often inordinately driven by emotions and resulting rationalization can take on a reasoned appearance that everyone needs to be on guard against in order to be truly reasonable.  The use of logos, in appearance, can be false logos.
People dealing with these issues – back in the days of Jefferson and even today – should consider reasoning that directs a person to be altruistic or in any way directs his/her behaviors to assist others should not counter a basic insight Locke points out. 
That is, “man automatically and infallibly pursues pleasure.”[5]  A person might err in his/her calculations, but the aim is always to induce pleasure.  As it turns out, helping, assisting, coming to the aid of others induces pleasurable sensations within the person so acting.  Whether one agrees with that or not, Jefferson seemed to have agreed with it.
The next posting will pick up on this theme and proceed to further develop this notion of pleasure seeking, reason, moral sense and how they affected Jefferson’s use of the term, “inalienable.”  Turns out, how most students are led to understand this term is not exactly right.



[1] As quoted in Gary Wills, Inventing America:  Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York, NY:  Vintage Books, 1978/2018), 202-203.  The argument here is described and explained by Wills in this cited work.  To bolster this message, there are current writers, albeit a bit nuanced, do seem to agree with Reid. See Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave:  The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (New York, NY:  Penguin Press, 2017.  Of interest are human’s potential to opt anti-cheating reactive behaviors and the role of the frontal cingulate cortex (ACC) in empathic reactions to the misfortunes of others.  Also, Sapolsky writes of the role oxytocin play in humans pairing and bonding, making them more charitable, more sensitive parents or parenting, more prosocial, more concerned with social approval, and more responsive to social approval or reinforcement.  So, the moral sense does seem to have a basis in human biology.

[2] Reminder:  they are envy, gluttony, greed or avarice, lust, pride, sloth, and wrath.

[3] Gary Wills, Inventing America:  Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.

[4] Ibid., 211.

[5] Ibid., 212.

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