History teems with instances of “man’s inhumanity to man.” Some acts are the work of isolated individuals, like serial killer Andrei Chikatilo or con man Bernie Madoff. Many especially ghastly evils were perpetrated by nations or groups: the Holocaust, the Stalinist’s purges, and the slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda. Other horrific acts like slavery were established and sustained by legal systems and supported for centuries by cultural mores. Then there’s politics. I find comments by many candidates and policy advocates alternately maddening and depressing. I am aghast at claims people utter with a straight face—assertions I assume they have to know are false. Finally, there are the everyday actions towards and comments to strangers, colleagues, family, or friends—things that hurt them deeply. When we survey the history of humankind, we have to wonder: how can so many of us act so callously—and occasionally savagely—toward others? Is there some feature or trait of us that explains our misbehavior?
People occasionally attribute wrong-doing to agents’ defective mental states; more commonly they cite the agents’ morally tainted characters. Ethicists may intellectually embrace more sophisticated explanations. However, in my experience many of us resort to the same explanations proffered by the person on the street: we reflexively cite what I dub “the explanations of first call.” I describe four variations on these. Although these are not devoid of explanatory merit, none adequately explains many moral wrongs. We need a different and more robust explanation.
The search for that explanation begins by isolating more mundane—and psychologically informed—explanations of prudentially and morally misguided behavior. I show how eastyl understanding these factors points to a more general trait which, if acknowledged, would equip us to better understand, diagnose, respond to, and prevent many ordinary and serious moral wrongs. The vice I identify is a common and partly controllable human tendency that causes or undergirds numerous wrong-doings, in part by amplifying the injurious effects of those mundane factors as well as behaviors explained by the explanations of first call.
Understanding My Claim
The trait I specify near the end of this essay does not fit standard ways of ranking vices. Let me explain why I deviate from common approaches. Someone might humorously propose that we identify the greatest vice Cartesian style: the greatest vice is the one greater than which none can be conceived. This proposal does no work. Others might rate vices by the degree to which they expose the “darkness” of their possessors’ hearts (whatever precisely that means). This approach likely includes Milo’s notion of “preferential wickedness” (Milo, R. D. 1984: Chapter 3): the desire to do what it is wrong because it is wrong. Others might follow Judith Shklar (who followed Hume) in asserting that cruelty is the most despicable vice. “Cruelty,” as she defines it, is the “deliberate and persistent humiliation [of others] so that the victim can eventually trust neither himself not anyone else” (Shklar, J. N. 1984: 37; Hume, D. 1978/1740: 459). As loathsome as these traits are, I argue that they are not as common as we suppose and that people having such traits are unlikely to shed or alter them. Finally, we could rank vices aesthetically, so that the greatest vice is the one we find morally the ugliest. I understand the appeal of this approach; however, it has peculiar consequences. Pervasive hypocrisy is profoundly ugly. However, I doubt that it is the source of significant swaths of wrong-doing.
The fact that there are so many diverse characterizations shows that there is no single metric for ranking vices. (That is why my title ends with a question mark.) I have no doubt that these familiar categorizations are serviceable. Each isolates distinctive reasons why people sometimes morally misbehave. However, all overlook or obscure a propensity I find more salient. We can see the vice’s importance if we focus not on its bare character—its ugliness or darkness—but on the myriad ways in which it functions in our lives. The vice I identify is serious because it is one to which we are all susceptible; it is frequently overlooked in ethical debate; it produces, permits, or sustains mountains of moral wrongs, and it is amenable to some control. While we have little chance of purging ourselves of preferential wickedness or extreme cruelty, many of us can corral the excesses of the vice I identify.
However, I am getting ahead of myself. Before reaching the argument’s climax, I must engage in some academic foreplay. I must explore the explanations of first call and show why they will not do much heavy moral lifting. Although they do explain some wrong-doing, they explain less than many people suppose. Perhaps more importantly, most afflicted with these commonly cited vices are either unable or unwilling to change.