My question for this thread is “what is the relation between individual ethics and group ethics?”
Can we, as individuals, choose the correct ethical action to join a group that is acting unethically?
What actions can be imputed to an individual, when the groups actions are immoral?
If a group action is immoral, can a member in that group still act morally? If so, under what conditions?
In my mind, this is one of the most complicated realms of ethics. I’m not sure of all the work that has been done on this, Western ethics tends to focus on the individual.
I think that an individual is responsible in relation to the extent they are free.
For instance, it is more condmenable to voluntarily fight an immoral war than it is to fight because one is compelled by threat of jail time.
I also think that we must account for how conscious the individual is of the immorality of the group’s actions.
We must also account for the role of the individual within the group. Any decision making role in the group would be more responsible for the group’s actions. Unless of course there was not central leadership, as in the case of the crowd.
“In my mind, this is one of the most complicated realms of ethics.”
Now that is an understatement, and I think you touch on some very interesting points, (the Western emphasis of ethics upon the individual and the moral responsibility of groups). I fear to step too deep into this because we just start repeating the old Nuremberg Trail arguments, (which perhaps need repeating). But what comes to mind was something I read by social analyst S. Zizek, which I paraphrase, which really struck me. He said that what binds people together is not agreement on what is prohibited, for instance the Ten Commandments, but rather the shared agreement that what is agreed to be prohibited, should be done in a special case. The shared violation of commonly ethics is what binds groups together. The exception to morality. For instance he cites “Thou shalt not kill.” While agreement on this would bring people in a loose union, when we then agree that it is okay to kill in circumstances of war, or to execute a prisoner, the violation of our own law is what really will bind groups together. This may explain in part why wars unite peoples, and the same for executions. Groups are most powerfully formed by the shared violations of agreed upon laws. As he put it once. When “Freedom to all” becomes “Death to the enemies of freedom”, it is then that people have been bound. It doesn’t say much for the moral status of groups.
I would think that in these cases, where one’s values clash with the group, one must be willing to bear the consequences for defying the majority. Or one’s values mean nothing.
(yes, that means prison or death over participation)
The human species really is a desperate one. We have so many wants and needs, that we would do anything to achieve them, even going against our own beliefs.
Acceptance is big for us. We just want to be accepted and be praised for it. This is what leads to ‘group think’. Although something superficially sounds like a good idea (such as fighting for your country), when you boil down the facts behind a war, they aren’t always the most appealing. However, when someone becomes focused on a goal, it can be very difficult to discerp them from what they originally viewed to be right. This is usually always backed up by “it’s for the greater good”, when perhaps it is only for the greater good of the side who is acting.
Unfortunately, the human species generally suffers from Ethnocentricity. We have difficulty in understanding that, “just because we see the world one way, everyone must see the world that way too”, when in fact, every culture has a different way of viewing the world.
Very compelling idea, I decided to try to find an article with some reference to this but I couldn’t. Could you help me out?
I think that the idea of war is a perfect illustration of what you said. When people go to war, their morality often enters into a state of exception. There is murder, rape, stealing, and other types of immoral behavior that is excused.
In many ways, the divisions in America reflect these lines. Many saw the horrible pictures of Abu Ghraib and excused those actions, other became more angry at the Iraq war.
I think everyone says they are against torture but their unity was in what is permitted not prohibited.
I’m sorry but I read this in a book by him a very long time ago. Perhaps his The Sublime Object of Ideology. I surfed the net for a while trying to locate the principle in an essay of his, but he has moved onto more complex post-modern analysis. The concept though is basically a Freudian one, where shared guilt holds a community together, but the guilt is not always experienced as such, but rather more as a permission to exceed the law. The necessary evil. Abu Ghraib is a very good example because the situation did not merit the violation, though one can imagine a situation where torture would be condoned by the average American. What embarrassed America was that the pleasure in trespass was revealed. Notice that those that did come the defense of the soldiers did so in one of two ways. These were just young soldiers without proper supervision, so as “children” were innocent of knowing that they crossed a line, or the more hard-line defense that suggested that compared to what had gone on before in that prison by the evil Sadaam made this not a trespass at all, often a defense that was coupled with fantasies about how far one should go to terms of torture to protect one’s own, something like “yes these are violations, but nothing compared to the violations we should commit if a nuclear bomb’s whereabouts had to be discovered”. An interesting case in terms of public reaction was the shooting of the wounded prisoner in the mosque who was irresponsive and then moved. Here the fine line between violation and permission was being tread.
Good question. The answers we are seeing are philosophical. In the ‘real world’ (alas, it exists), one has to be practical.
I cannot see myself resisting a blood-thirsty tyranny, for example, if the price to pay in resisting it is too high to me: I am not very courageous and cannot face the prospect of torture.
I therefore find it difficult to blame anyone who goes with the flow in a tyranny. In effect, can I blame anyone for doing what I, myself, would have done in their place?
I do not know what the limits are though. Can I blame someone for paying his taxes under Hitler? No. For remaining in Germany in the thirties? No. For not resigning when Jewish colleagues were being dismissed? No.
For joining the Wehrmacht when called up? Err, no.
And so on. I do not know how far down the line I’d go before I start saying yes, quite honestly.
I can only say that people who do act according to their ethics and take action which is costly to them have more courage than me. I offer my sincere congratulations. But there aren’t many around.
Line 1: True. Line 2: True. Line 3: True, I guess.
Line 4: I disagree. Something can be right even though cannot impose it. I can’t make a husband love his wife, even though he should. And I take very little risk by trying. I’d hate to have to convince Pol Pot…
The question is pertinent. The starting point of this thread mentioned morals: “If a group action is immoral, can a member in that group still act morally?”
Implicit in that question is the fact that one means one’s own morals.
Whilst it is true that not everyone lives by the same moral code, there comes a time when one’s moral code is so shocked or outraged that the dictum of ‘live and let live’ (which I generally apply) no longer applies.
I’d be quite happy to let my neighbour watch Jerry Springer all day long and have him cheat on his wife, but I may feel compelled to intervene if I hear him beating him.
Wouldn’t you? Is there anything that would make you go up to the chap and say ‘Look here, …’?
Your latest post is very pragmatic (“… but if I go down there and demand they stop selling it, bang…”), and I’d go along with you (hey, we’re not idiots, and they are SO big, let’s watch a little more Jerry Springer).
I can go along with a pragmatic action, and, yet, nonetheless, say that it is not moral. I confess to having acted immorally a few times.
You, on the other hand, seem to be saying that pragmatics = morality. Is that what you are saying? Might is right?
If so, then why give that philospohy the grand term of ‘morality’? Why not simply say ‘practicality’?
one could say it is right to pray to this god, another demands prayer for another god, and a third for a third, and a fourth for no god… which of these moral actions/right behaviours will be followed?
the priest with the biggest gun
practicality has little to do with it actually… unless you think it is practical to obey the guy with the gun… then again, when you have the gun, you think it is practical for everyone else to do as you say…
but then practicality becomes relative doesn’t it?
It very interesting to see how guilt operates on many levels at Abu Ghraib. Humiliation techniques are only effective in relation to their ability to cause guilt and shame. Humiliation is largely given a pass in US pop culture as a method of interrogation.
I really need to read more Zizek. I’m writing a paper on Kant right now and I came across Zizek’s essay about Kant and de Sade. It is a great read. The idea was originally Lacan’s, which reminds me, I need to read a lot more psychoanalysis.
If we understand that the exception links groups together, it shows the specific role of critique in society. The social critic often plays a role of condmening what a group allows itself to do without guilt. I’m very excited about this general notion. It gives me a whole new level of understanding when people accuse me of hating America.
I will tell you that Zizek is the most penetrating, lucid, living thinker I have encountered. I even went to a lecture of his and questioned him, I was so impressed. He takes on the most difficult subjects, Lacan, Kant, Spinoza and then somehow finds the wherewithall to illustrate their truths through Alfred Hitchcock and media-culture examples. I recommend his books in particular, for in them he is allowed to develope his ideas in relation to each other.
As to the role of the critic in society, it has always seemed to me that ideology is most vulnerable to critique when held to its own ideals because it is the condoned violation of these ideals that produces the binding mechanism. It is not the invasion of an outside principle, but core values taken too literally that is always the threat to the system. Literalizing ideology, subverts its performance it seems.
In a strange way, the social critic operates much like a psychotherapist in exposing social order to its own excess, its own enjoyment, its own repressed, and for that reason, if effective. risks much of the same that a therapist risks, to be projected on in tranference, either with a golden light, or more often with the shadow of social consciousness itself, or an alteration of both.
I personally believe this is true of any universalizing and absolute principle. I think that life, history and the Other do not let any universal Truth remain unchanged.
What is interesting about this if it is true, is that Kant’s Imperative that grants the ethical act as one that acts solely with the intent of fulfilling (or universalizing) the law, would turn out to be the ultimate subversive act. By taking the Law literally and fulfilling it, the socially binding power of the Law (assented transgression) would then be removed. A very interesting result to Kant’s “ethical” behavior, and certainly not one he intended.
That is an interesting notion. I wonder if, in some ways, Kant did intend it though. There is many aspects of Kant’s morality that disregard the social are merely emperical.
One problem with this is that I think someone could twist “assented transgression” into a particular maxim that would still assume to reinforce the law.
I think that once people enter a natural state of war, Kant allowed for certain transgressions, specifically spoils of war.
There may be a Kantian explanation to this, specifically that the social happens in the phenomenal realm and that any cohesion between them would also occur according to phenomenal principles.
I think the disruption occurs because of change of registers. For instance, taking a relatively modern interpersonal example. Honesty in friendship or love. If one is honest, one of the hallmarks of intimacy, regardless of consequence, the relationship becomes threatened. In many cases it is the unspoken transgression of honesty, lying for the sake of the relationship itself, that preserves the circulation of everyday honesty between two people. In most cases, to follow Kant’s imperative and to tell the truth at all costs removes the bond of the noble lie. I suspect that this is due to the transgressive nature of law itself. As Benjamin reasoned, the law is an act of violence. The subject is imbricated into the law through his shared violation and not his strict obedience to it. The zealous follower is always seen with suspicion. And perhaps with good reason. I do not think that Kant imagined fully the absolute contradiction of ethical behavior. But as I do not know Kant inside and out, it is possible that this too may be accounted for by him elsewhere.
