This Fundamental Idea Proves Political Debates Futile

As two of the most famous elderly men in the world stood on stage last night demeaning and insulting one another for 90 minutes, the 2020 US presidential election season moved into its stretch run. The next five weeks will feature some of the most extreme, polarizing, and enraged comments we have heard since the fall of 2016.

But why is it that Republicans and Democrats (in living rooms around the country and in elected offices in Washington D.C.) seem to make no advancement in their moral understanding of one another? Surprisingly, there is an answer to this question. Even more surprisingly, it is a lot simpler than you might think.

Like many of you, I have engaged in my share of political debates this year. As infuriating as they have felt, each one affords the opportunity to reflect on my opinions and ask myself, “What is my stance?” Here’s what I’ve come up with: if we are going to bridge our national divide, we must fundamentally change the direction of our discourse. We must stop building up our arguments and instead break them down, examine their roots, and recognize them as fundamental questions.

In a fortuitous encounter with the work of political philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre last week, I discovered a level-headed — anthropological, even — analysis that helped me understand why so many of our political debates seem futile. As I read After Virtue (originally published in 1981 with a third edition printed in 2007), I arrived at an insight profound enough to bring me a moment of silent calm. Then a question arose, why don’t more of us know about this? Why aren’t more American citizens aware of the discontinuity that infects the root of our political debates?

MacIntyre’s writing is laborious, but don’t let it stir up too many stale classroom memories from high school or college; the rest of this article is dedicated to stripping it down to its (very) simple foundation. Direct quotes from MacIntyre’s book are in italics, and my interpretations are in plain text.

Logic is the Basis of Western Society

MacIntyre: It is only possible to understand the dominant moral culture of advanced modernity adequately from a standpoint external to that culture.

Modernity is the period of human history generally considered to have begun toward the end of the 16th century. The early portion of Modernity is also referred to as The Age of Reason, because scientists like René Descartes, Isaac Newton, and others based their world-changing theories in “reason” and “logic”. As the subsequent Scientific Revolution emerged, the idea of Kings and Queens as gatekeepers to the spiritual realm who passed omnipotence down along bloodlines became strikingly illogical. The American Colonies revolted against the British crown. The French revolted against their own monarchy, and, as they did, Haitian slaves rose up and overthrew French colonial rulers in the Caribbean. As monarchies fell, new styles of government arose. To this day, The United States remains governed by a document written during The Age of Reason. In 21st century America, when a concept is deemed illogical, it is, by popular standards, stripped of legitimacy.

When MacIntyre writes “It’s only possible to understand the dominant moral culture of advanced modernity (the 20th and 21st centuries) adequately from a standpoint external to that culture,” he is encouraging us to recognize logic as one way of thinking and not as the only way of thinking. The study of neurology informs us that logic is a function of thought occurring in the left side of the human brain. Once we recognize that modern western culture is rooted in the brain’s left hemisphere, we have succeeded in gaining what MacIntyre refers to as “a standpoint external to [our] culture.”

So let’s take a closer look at logic, both its capabilities and its limitations.

Our Moral Disagreements are Rooted in Virtues

MacIntyre: That [dominant] culture has continued to be one of unresolved and apparently unresolvable moral and other disagreements in which the evaluative and normative utterances of the contending parties present a problem of interpretation.

The first part of that sentence is indisputable. Moral disagreements in the United States are unresolved (we know this because Republicans and Democrats are still actively insulting each other). The phrase “evaluative and normative utterances” is a technical way of saying that the arguments both for and against today’s most morally controversial laws are rooted in entirely separate virtues. This, as it turns out, is a major problem when trying to solve moral disagreements.

MacIntyre illustrates this point later in the book by supporting and opposing what he refers to as “well-known moral arguments” of our era.

1) War

2) Abortion

3) Equal access to healthcare and education

People who argue against war may claim that war kills innocent people. Whether they are soldiers forced into battle or civilians pillaged in combat, war claims innocent lives and is thus immoral.

Those who support war claim that “justice” is the reason we must fight. World War II killed innocent people, but it also eliminated the Nazi regime. Certainly the Allied Powers could not have stood by as the Nazis exterminated groups of people who looked different and worshiped differently. Wars are fought in the name of justice.

Both arguments are logical. However, when we boil them down to their base contents, we are left to debate innocence vs. justice. At this point, according to logic, we can go no further. Logic provides no basis for valuing one virtue ahead of the other. Once we recognize this logical standoff, it becomes increasingly easier to identify it at the root of other political disagreements.

Supporters of abortion, for example, claim an embryo is part of a woman’s body; she thus retains the right to decide how it will be treated (this is a conversation of rights). Those who oppose abortion will claim that an embryo is an identifiable human being, differing from an infant only in being at a different stage along the road to adulthood. If adults claim the right to life, how can they morally deny that right to someone who is at a different stage in their development? This is a question of universality. So, at the core, the abortion debate comes down to rights vs. universality.

One more example (education and healthcare).

Justice demands that every citizen be afforded the opportunity to develop a lifestyle of their choosing (the pursuit of happiness). In practice, this calls for equal access to education and healthcare. Yet liberty entitles each citizen freedom to incur only the obligations they choose. Physicians and teachers, therefore, must be free to practice on their own terms, treating and teaching whom they choose and where they choose. Private education and private healthcare are therefore requirements of a liberated society. When stripped down, this debate becomes justice vs. liberty.

What is more important to a society, justice or liberty? As it turns out, humans have been carrying out such debates for millennia. In Plato’s most renowned works, written more than 2,500 years ago, we find Socrates traveling ancient Greece engaging in these same core debates. Rights vs. universality. Innocence vs. justice.

Moral Debates Are Not Logically Solvable

MacIntyre: For on the one hand [these moral disagreements] seem to presuppose a reference to some shared impersonal standard in virtue of which at most one of those contending parties can be in the right, and yet on the other the poverty of the arguments adduced in support of their assertions and the characteristically shrill, and assertive and expressive mode in which they are uttered suggest strongly that there is not such standard.

That was a 72-word sentence! Yet what he presents is relatively basic. At the center of our political debates lies a paradox that so many of us choose to ignore. By its very nature, logic is an inadequate tool for solving questions of morality. Logic is a thought process that solves binary questions. This is why it has proved so powerful at the root of computer science. No matter how complex computer technology becomes, we can always trace the machine back to its 1s and 0s — on or off, electricity or no electricity. Questions of morality are not traceable to a binary root. Justice, rights, universality, innocence, liberty, and equality are not solvable in the way equations are solvable. To argue questions of morality with logic is to feed a centuries-old paradox.

We need to strip down our arguments, not build them up. Yet our debates (professional and unprofessional) quickly grow into emotional opinion contests that examine a candidate’s personal background, statements made years prior, or whether he contradicted himself on record at some point during his adult life. MacIntyre refers to these as a “poverty of arguments,” because they are flimsy and distract voters from the logical and moral root of the laws at stake. When we see Republicans and Democrats yell at each other in what MacIntyre calls “the characteristically shrill, and assertive and expressive mode” we are witnessing a mirage of accusations, opinions, and emotions that distract us from the fact that the nature of our debates is incongruous.

We No Longer Live in Tribes

MacIntyre: My explanation was and is that the precepts of that are thus uttered were once at home in, and intelligible in terms of, a context of practical beliefs and of supporting habits of thought, feeling, and actions, a context that has since been lost, a context in which moral judgements were understood as governed by impersonal standards justified by a shared conception of the human good.

Thousands of years ago, before Plato even, when humans lived in small tribes, morals may have been logically agreed upon. Religions have long-attempted to bring such regulation to morality, applying a binary, right/wrong basis to moral questions. Yet many centuries — millennia even — have passed since civilizations lived inside such narrow moral walls. It was likely the mixture of tribes and traditions that allowed the Greeks to stretch their moral discourse beyond the binary nature of right vs. wrong.

Conclusion

The logical side of the human brain has freed humans from the vice grip of Kings and Queens. It has led us to develop electricity, machines, and computer science. Yet just as the Greeks named logic and just as the scientists of early Modernity leveraged it to bring democracy to the west, we are being called to again evolve. We must stop trying to use logic to solve problems that are logically unsolvable. Like a child growing into self awareness, we must recognize logic not as a wrong way of thinking but as an incomplete way of thinking. If we are to transcend the mounting tension of our era, we must extend into other regions of the brain and awaken the mind more fully.