Was my grandmother a morally worse person than I am? Am I the better person for, for example, accepting gay marriage? The latter entails the former, or so it seems, as my grandmother was firmly opposed to homosexuality, let alone gay marriage. When we want our grandmother off the hook, moral relativism seems to be out of the closet again. And this might well scare far too many into it, again. This book is about loving our grandmother and having our moral progress too.
Philosophers will find this conundrum far too crudely put. All kinds of qualifications would need to be considered. The truth is such conundra haunted me in adolescence. Full disclosure, being by now old enough to be a grandfather, in my childhood I could not even conceive of gay marriage, let alone accept it. Fuller disclosure still: when, in my adolescence, I could conceive of it, I at first vehemently opposed it. And here’s the thing: I am the morally better person for changing my mind, as an adult now fully and unequivocally accepting gay marriage.
As a late philosophy convert, I too want to impress with conundra like: why would my grandmother deserve a free pass on this whilst I do not? Rest assured my grandmother would simply solve my conundrum by giving her free pass to me. This just shows that: a) she was (all in all) a good person and b) she was not (at all) a philosopher. Indeed, for a philosopher there are no such things as free passes. Except, maybe, for philosophers like Aristotle (on slavery), Kant (on both racism and sexism) and the list goes on.
Seen from this side of the Enlightenment our grandmothers just tend to be on the bad side of history and professional philosophers (of the Enlightened Western traditions, I need to qualify, on their behalf) on its good side. Because that is progress! Too bad for grandmothers whose social contract was not yet as sophisticated as ours (in the West, Enlightened philosophers will - mostly silently - add). Maybe I am not yet enough of a philosopher but I refuse to disclaim my adolescent self. I simply can’t be hypocritical about needing to change my mind on such serious matters. That would be morally bad. Nor will I accept any harshness towards our grandmothers for not having been able to change their minds in (their) time.
This brings me back to philosophers who could have been great great grandfathers of my grandmother, and lifetime professional philosophers of the Western tradition who give them a free pass. This is a subtle problem also, since as grandfathers they deserve our love, but, as philosophers, they simply can’t claim a free pass. The subtlety of this problem stands in contrast to the crude assertions of many a professional philosopher in all Western traditions (henceforth: “Euro-canonical” philosophers): philosophically we are to disregard the backwardness of Aristotle, Kant et al. but, as grandfathers, we should condemn them for those very same opinions, being, as my grandmother, on the bad side of history.
Charles Mills argued the latter simply is a ‘Get out of jail free card’ for Enlightenment philosophy. It gets to boast about timeless, universal truths - in short: the supremacy - of their own thinking and Enlightened culture without needing to own up in any way to the wrongs of their own history and tradition. Colonization, sexism, racism and so on are just temporary, provincial calculation errors on something timelessly as well as universally true. The problem is that, as philosophers, they had and have only one job: to think critically. They fail(ed) miserably in it by uncritically accepting their privilege born from exploitation, patriarchy and whiteness as a literally God given merit1.
This, their professional failure, is what I try to bring into focus by contrasting it with the non-failure of grandmothers and grandfathers of not living up to an anachronistic standard they simply could not have been aware of. It’s far too easy for Euro-canonical philosophers to claim progress at their expense (and, more importantly, at the expense of anybody who is not versed in the European philosophical canon). This adds to their material privilege the arrogance of being born into moral progress. This is a clear case of wishful thinking fortifying prejudices by progressively finding excuses for why you have to take no action about others’ misery. I contend this is the regress - the threat of moral degradation - that is part and parcel of the Western idea(l) of (moral) progress. It is not very far from a conspiracy theory in believing that we need to be forever vigilant about protecting our progress from their external threat.
Euro-canonical philosophers are like the priest in the Parable of the Good Samaritan: they ignore the misery of the unfortunate stranger because they’re a nuisance to them. Ignoring the beaten down stranger and ignoring the ideas of those who are miserably oppressed come down to the same thing. In both cases you want to keep (it) clean and still occupy the moral high ground. In the case of the philosophers they shrug off the philosophy of minorities because what they say is a nuisance to the canonical ideas in which they enshrine their privilege (yes, the Enlightened canon is a QAnonic shrine). I used the image of our unconditionally loving grandmothers as being Good Samaritans through and true to their grandchildren2 to cannonball this idea of moral progress: that one is a morally better person in the here and now by the mere virtue of existing here and now. Gadamer said morality is to be judged in context. Such context is - for instance - the priest, philosopher or scientist holding on to their privilege in the face of misery. Davidson declared the principle of charity as the one timeless and universal constant in communication. If our grandmothers talked openly and honestly, they are morally good even if they lacked some morally excellent concepts like gay marriage.
What I will try to do in this book is to talk openly and honestly, admitting that I am a morally better person for changing my mind after listening to the outcry of those gay people wanting to marry. And paying homage to the grandmothers of now who accept their queer grandchildren who finally mustered the courage to come out of the closet. Because I do believe in moral progress. Moral progress in a sense of becoming aware of differences by listening to what the oppressed other tries to tell us against societal odds. Philosophers need to add precision to language such that it allows the different to articulate their differences showing none of these differences make a difference as to being human. Progress is a progressive zooming in that allows us to become better persons by becoming less deaf to the voices of others. This is where Euro-canonical philosophy fails us: in defining human beings more and more narrowly as those who have won out. If we don’t address philosophy’s failure in rigidly denoting humans as essentially this or that, we risk the regress that, inter alia, makes our grandchildren a generation that simply cannot be grandparents anymore. Luckily philosophy’s failure can be always easily corrected simply listening to those who are not readily admitted in philosophy’s canon. The only ‘right side of history’ is the side of cultural optimism where grandparents accept their grandchildren no matter how much their conduct is challenging the common in common sense. They put their action where their ear is3.
PS: This is a series of prefaces of books that I will not write. If Derrida is right then it is the prefaces and footnotes that are truly telling, so why bother to try tell the truth? There will be 26 of them in all - and if you are good readers I might even tell you why (good readers, by the way, are readers that make comments).
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I am here making specific claims supported by specific research on specific philosophers of the Eurocentric canon, not a rushed generalization like equating Enlightenment philosophy with secular thought.
I do apologize to those whose grandmother was vicious, for instance vehemently opposing their choice of romantic partner, or simply their theirness. I have consciously tapped into a positive grandmother stereotype of moral innocence and unconditional love. There are all kinds of issues with that, but mainly that there is no tapping into anything without making contact with individual sensitivities. Something one will do well to remember if one wants to avoid being reminded your truth can trigger another’s miseryl.
Let me challenge the idea that it is poor taste to end a preface with a footnote. Humanity, I say, is that which grows, both extensively and intensively, by subtracting essential features from it. “But where does this end?”, I hear some Euro-canonical philosophers protesting, adding with that smirky smile of theirs: “With animals, rivers, mountains or” (Ha-Ha-Ha!) “electrons?” And the answer simply is: it does not end, that is the whole point of listening: that it never ends. This idea is clear: if humanity really is distinct, it will soon be extinct.