The Specter of Hypocrisy: Testing the Limits of Moral Discourse [1st ed.] 9783030605728, 9783030605735

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xviii
Degrees of Truth (Raphael Sassower)....Pages 1-40
Greek Masks and Hebrew Chameleons (Raphael Sassower)....Pages 41-90
Complicity and Compromise (Raphael Sassower)....Pages 91-126
In Search of the Self (Raphael Sassower)....Pages 127-160
Misrecognition and Passing (Raphael Sassower)....Pages 161-213
Back Matter ....Pages 215-238

Citation preview

The Specter of Hypocrisy Testing the Limits of Moral Discourse Raphael Sassower

The Specter of Hypocrisy “When Mark Twain proposed that ‘[a] lie can travel half-way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes,’ he could never have contemplated the internet age that has rendered discourse unmediated and unrestricted by the boundaries of space and time. Raphael Sassower’s timely reflection on the manifold complexity of hypocrisy could not be more necessary. This carefully constructed argument’s consideration of the implication of falsehoods across multiple registers of life is required reading.” —Michael E. Sawyer, Colorado College, USA, and author of Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X (2020) “In our age of ‘phony news’ and of the ‘post-factual’, Raphael Sassower’s new intervention is timely. In this book, he takes on the notion of hypocrisy as a way not only to challenge the current political scene, but more importantly and with more long-lasting reverberations, he challenges the borders of moral philosophy themselves. The relationship between the moral and the hypocritical are here explored, most interestingly between the Greek actor and the Hebrew chameleon.” —Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, Director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women and Professor of Italian Studies and Comparative Literature, Brown University, USA “Professor Sassower’s The Specter of Hypocrisy invites the reader to an intellectual celebration. It presents the triumph of humane reasoning over its cynic pretender. It is the most incisive study of one of the most disturbing psychosocial phenomena of our post-truth Trumpian times. Sassower portrays the sad picture of our current human condition as it appears on a global canvas writ large by the American colossal failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A wake up call it should be, Sassower says, or else. A society that has lost its compass, one that mixes truth and fallacy, hypocrisy and integrity, irrevocably loses touch with reality and destroys its own social matrix. The remedy he offers is a strong and hard one to swallow. It cuts through all intellectual polarities serving the cultural myths that populate our social, psychological, religious and political theories and practices. Sassower’s analysis of the problem situation is a tour de force. His mastery and depth of research into psychological, psychoanalytic, social, moral, philosophical, and religious theories that pertain to his subject matter is breathtaking. Sassower’s style verges, at times, on the poetic and exceptionally transpires both humane compassion and philosophical modesty. To mend our world, he says,

it is all about truth and truth telling—of friends to one another out of caring about integrity and social bonds. No more posturing as friends, but owning up to one’s friendship. Sassower offers us a new intellectual framework allowing degrees of hypocrisy and their empathic truthful discussion. This way we may go on searching for socially astute manipulative self-presentations without giving up on our commitment to the honest quest for ever-improving levels of personal and social integrity. The book is a must-read.” —Nathaniel Laor, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Philosophy, Tel Aviv University, and Clinical Professor, Child Study Center, Yale University, USA “If hypocrisy is the horse that has bolted from the barn in our post-truth condition, Raphael Sassower is the ‘horse whisperer’, trying to coax the creature back to its paddock. While Trump has clearly galvanized Sassower into action, his approach to hypocrisy is characteristically very wide-ranging and nuanced—and not entirely unsympathetic. Regardless of what one ultimately makes of the pervasiveness of hypocrisy in today’s society, this is the one book that takes it with the seriousness it deserves.” —Steve Fuller, University of Warwick, author of Post Truth: Knowledge as a Power Game (2018)

Raphael Sassower

The Specter of Hypocrisy Testing the Limits of Moral Discourse

Raphael Sassower Department of Philosophy University of Colorado Colorado Springs, CO, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-60572-8 ISBN 978-3-030-60573-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60573-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Kevin Schafer/the Image Bank/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Denise Davis of Brown University whose contribution to my critical thinking about this topic has been profound; her careful reading of the manuscript helped me clarify my points and avoid some scholarly pitfalls. I am responsible for the remaining flaws. My friends and colleagues, Natti Laor, Jonathan Lee, Adi Ophir, and Michael Sawyer, offered feedback and valuable insights on earlier drafts as well as moral support during the project. I should like to thank as well the two anonymous reviewers who read my original proposal and offered useful advice. I am grateful to Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg who welcomed me to her seminar on Critique at the Pembroke Center at Brown University; this was a source of inspiration in the spring of 2020, a time when I was on sabbatical leave from my university. In the past, I have thanked my university tongue-in-cheek for staying out of my intellectual way; now I wish to thank it for still honoring its tenure and sabbatical leave policies. I sincerely hope this tradition of supporting faculty research will continue in future generations despite neoliberal pressures.

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A specter is haunting America, the specter of hypocrisy. This is not a pious lamentation over the loss of civil decorum associated with conduct that fails to meet moral standards or a blithe avowal of the inevitability of messy human interactions. Instead, the specter of hypocrisy haunts in the form of the charge of hypocrisy in the social and political domains. Calling someone a hypocrite is at once a charge and a judgment with presumptions about the criteria that inform this charge. The person who makes the charge appeals to moral values and virtues even when the contexts are social and political. Of course, the charging person can be charged in turn for their hypocrisy in an infinite regress. Being charged, a person is expected to reflect on values and virtues undergirding the community to which they belong, admitting failure if that is the case and a promise of correction. The charge of hypocrisy, when it is answered, can only be answered in a moral register, bringing to light and perhaps demanding a response even from the likes of President Trump, who may shrug with indifference, a register that appeals to moral norms rather than to social or political expediency. This appeal transcends contractual relationships, the rules of the legal system, or good manners and civility. As much as we distinguish between the spirit and the letter of the law, so must we distinguish between the social contract writ large and the moral commitments that underlie it and without which such a contract remains procedural and instrumental. Neither social relations nor political systems and institutions can refrain from acknowledging their reliance on moral principles.

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The charge of hypocrisy directs attention to these principles without ceding the social or political stage to religious zealots or moralizing fundamentalists. The conversations about the charge hypocrisy examined here recall Nietzsche’s genealogy of morals that considers moral conventions and norms in terms of their historical power relations rather than in terms of transcendental appeals to absolutes. As an interrogation of the moral dimension of the social and political, the charge of hypocrisy reframes established canons of adjudication, such as prudence, efficacy, efficiency, and timeliness in moral terms. This charge toggles between an appeal to transcendent moral principles, such as fairness and honesty, and a recognition of the specific social and political contexts within which they appear. As problematic as an appeal to transcendent principles may be, it is inevitable, perhaps necessary under certain conditions. Without it, the danger of cynical relativism and outright nihilism looms large. Focusing on the discursive power of the charge of hypocrisy might separate the moralizing tendencies that so often accompany this charge and deeper moral layers that deserve close study. Here, too, there is a difference between using morality for political purposes, to dismiss rival positions or mock reasonable disagreements, and insisting that political choices are inescapably moral as well: do they stand the test of fairness and justice? The charge of hypocrisy encourages critical self-reflection of both the charging party and those being charged, thereby avoiding the risk of nihilism or cynicism, the Trumpian dismissal of any appeal to ethics and virtues, or the belief that such an appeal is inherently in bad faith. Hypocrisy is fascinating partially because it is seen by some to mean lying, by others to exemplify bad faith, and still by others as the disconnection between professed ideals and actual conduct. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that hypocrisy is the “practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform; pretense.” And a hypocrite is someone who is “assuming of a false appearance of virtue or goodness, with dissimulation of real character or inclinations, especially in respect of religious life or beliefs; hence in a general sense, dissimulation, pretence, sham.” To speak about hypocrisy in moral terms, as most critics and commentators do, is to test not only the usefulness of the term but also the limits of moral discourse insofar as it cannot account for the different contexts within which the term is applied. If moral philosophy offers a set of transcendental principles and theories according to which virtue and vice are codified

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and a set of criteria with which to judge human conduct, then it seems that only some kinds of hypocrisy would fit into this discourse. This book explores which kinds of hypocrisy or what degrees of hypocrisy do not fit neatly into the analytic moral discourse. These would not be the more obvious ones treated by moral discourse that analyzes outright lying, deception and self-deception, acting in bad faith, and pretending to be “better” in some sense than one truly is. The present focus is on the Greek etymology of stage actors masking and unmasking themselves and the modern Hebrew etymology of coloring and camouflage associated with chameleons. This focus complicates a simple approach to the term, hoping to accomplish at least these interrelated objectives: to appreciate the moral dimension of the term in its various instantiations without reverting to the moralizing tendencies associated with moral philosophy, to offer a nuanced endorsement of some degree of hypocrisy in political life and as a form of passing, and to problematize the tendency by moral and political philosophers to analyze the term in terms of individual conduct. The common use of “hypocrisy” as a disapproving shorthand for behavior that might rankle some observers is both misguided and shortsighted: it fails to account for the complexity of human psyches and for the social dynamics that bring about and at times warrant such conduct. The present analysis does not shy away from moral considerations as they pertain to social, political, and economic institutions, but when doing so it attempts to avoid setting moralizing criteria or hierarchies with which to adjudicate degrees of hypocritical conduct. Instead, it is an attempt to answer the cavalier and dangerous mindset of post-truth promoters on the one hand, and the narrow and moralizing analyses of some analytic moral philosophers on the other. A critical philosophical approach that encompasses political, sociological, and psychological perspectives and insights might prove to be a potent tool with which to ward off cynicism and sanctimonious preaching. I am writing this amid the coronavirus crisis, more specifically, the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Almost four years into the Trump presidency and some 20,000 public lies and misrepresentations later, a sense of urgency to think about hypocrisy remains as evident as it was when I began working on this book three years ago. The Trump Administration’s performance throughout the crisis catapults its blindness to its moral responsibility to unthinkable heights. Questions about the fairness of health care provision across the nation are subverted and at times

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completely ignored for the sake of rhetorical grandstanding, partisan politics, and the right to absolute and capricious choice. Individual liberty is taken up as a political category that upends the safety of and care for the health of the community. The false binary of public health and economic well-being is meant to escape critical engagement. I argue that the masking and unmasking of actors on the social and political stage in the hope of finding behind the mask an authentic self are relevant when people are masked to avoid spreading the virus, fearful of dying. When the threat of death saturates the public imagination, critical commentary on the difference between the Greek and Hebrew etymologies of hypocrisy, one about masking and the other about chameleon-like coloring, though somewhat esoteric may turn out to be informative. Who would care about hypocrisy in times of crisis? To some extent, there is never a “proper” time for critique. (Brown 2005) Perhaps the present critique of hypocrisy, one that glosses over the obvious cases and delves into deeper philosophical, sociological, and psychological regions, may appear untimely. But because the Greek etymology of critique is about conditions of crisis, there may be no better time to engage this with some moral standards against which human speech and conduct are assessed. In times of crisis, every word and gesture counts, especially if undertaken by political leaders hungry for attention. American hypocrisy dates at least to the beginning of the republic, its “founding fathers” having promoted independence and autonomy, liberty and equality, while importing and enslaving human beings from the African continent or, in the case of Thomas Jefferson, “breeding” slaves for sale. The language of the European Enlightenment notwithstanding, the founding documents of the republic exemplify the hypocrisy that permeates the Enlightenment in promoting ideals that are blind to the realities of racism, sexism, and settler colonialism. Parallels to this kind of national hypocrisy can be found as well in the discrepancy between the French Revolution and its documents about egalitarian principles and the realities of inequalities and colonialism, exemplified in the case of the Haitian slave rebellion in 1791 and its repercussion. (Piketty 2020) The Trumpian age’s numerous cases of political hypocrisy are more unapologetically systemic than has been the case for some time. With the global pandemic still in full force, the ongoing discrimination of people of color, leading to their disproportionate susceptibility to contagion but also to their elevated death toll, is manifest. The double standards facing people of color that should have long ago been exposed and overcome, perhaps

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denounced as hypocritical, continue to permeate the long history of discrimination despite claims of equality, criminalization despite claims of fairness, and disproportionate incarceration rates despite claims of liberty. Wealth and income inequalities have affected them and other poor people more drastically in this crisis as in every crisis before; continuous institutional discrimination exacts its toll from one generation to the next. Even when governors require facemasks, Black citizens are suspected as potential criminals while their white counterparts are congratulated for behaving responsibly. It never ends. The annual celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday is no substitute for any real political will. The specter of hypocrisy and its contemporary effects spans from race relations in America to class warfare waged in the age of Trump through immigration policies and tax reforms. As the pandemic is tearing through the hypercapitalist structure of the American landscape, food supply chains are weakened and we fear some of them might come to a halt. To ensure the supply of California produce, for example, some undocumented Mexican immigrant farmworkers are being designated “essential” while the threat of deportation is temporarily lifted. In U.S. House Representative Veronica Escobar’s words: “The hypocrisy within America is that we want the fruits of their undocumented labor, but we want to give them nothing in return.” (Corchado 2020) The Trumpian mantra of the danger of illegal immigrants in our midst has been replaced with their essential contribution to the American diet and well-being in this time of crisis. Hypocrisy is a rhetorical shorthand for the malleability of policies in complete disregard of an espoused ideology. Across the Atlantic, Scotland’s chief medical officer, Dr. Catherine Calderwood, resigned on April 4, 2020, because she failed to obey her own lockdown orders during the pandemic and drove twice within ten days to visit her second home on the east coast of the country. In her press conference, she explicitly used the word hypocrisy to describe behavior for which she apologized and then resigned her post. However random this example, since so many others are readily available, it is clear that hypocrisy, unlike some other slurs or denunciations, has a certain moral gravitas that once expressed in public cannot be ignored (unless you are a sociopath like President Trump). It is unlike other accusations, such as liar or thief that can be explained away or countered, with evidence about the truth in the first case or bookkeeping in the second. Once labeled a hypocrite, one must marshal all the moral arsenal at one’s disposal to refute the claim without doubling down and suffering even further humiliation. Dr. Calderwood resigned, as

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might have been expected retrospectively of all the signers of the American Constitution, because she recognized her moral failing in violating the covenant she swore to uphold with her community. When the moral texture is highlighted in social and political contexts, it reminds participants of their shared and contested beliefs about morality and commitments that are neglected and others that deserve attention. One of the problems with the reflexive turn to rights language heard in the age of Trump—the right to defy official orders to wear a mask or stay at home, or the right to open one’s business regardless of health concerns—is that it has the veneer of principled argumentation but in fact is undertaken in bad faith; it is in this sense hypocritical more often than not. The so-called right not to wear masks in public loses its credibility when the risk of contagion is scientifically verifiable. What is left unsaid is the moral claim for individuality over community, personal tastes and preferences over the health and well-being of the community. In short, the charge of hypocrisy is not limited to the loss of sincerity and the integrity of the subject on any stage; rather it is about flagging different modes of constructing, affirming, dismissing, and wrecking social and political relationships, or about disappointed expectations, falling short of ideals and not wanting to accept our and others’ shortcomings. As will become clear by the end of this book, the social bonds exemplified in friendships are guided by shared moral convictions. These moral convictions are not ancillary but essential for bringing and keeping communities together. Perhaps the charge of hypocrisy can play the role of guiding community members to tend to these moral principles, however abstract they may seem at first. Without critical analysis, any hope for community building may fade in the face of a cynical acquiescence that hypocrisy is ubiquitous and that we are all hypocrites some of the time. I have divided my analyses about hypocrisy into five chapters, each with its own focus; their imbrication is deliberate and moves from the philosophical to the political and the social all the way through the psychosocial to the religious and personal. Chapter 1 examines the classical philosophical binaries of truths and lies, philosophy and sophistry. These binaries overstate their case for the radical and easily demarcated difference between the terms they hold as opposites. In their stead, thinking about degrees of truth rather than truths and lies or truth and post-truth may obviate potential misunderstanding or judgments based on idealized conceptions of their distinctions. This way of thinking parallels the notion of degrees of civility, from brutal

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honesty to compassionate honesty to decency and manners among friends and strangers. At stake in this reading is the sensitivity required in any context. Two interrelated presuppositions undergird the points of this chapter. The first assumes that if binary oppositions are the poles of a spectrum of possibilities, anyone at any time is bound to be somewhere along this spectrum and never fully on one extreme or the other. The second incorporates the dialectical and postmodern notion of post-truth as including truths and lies rather than an admission that the quest for truth, however problematic, is altogether relinquished. To think of degrees of hypocrisy in light of degrees of truth refuses the simple and perhaps simple-minded rush to label this or that trivial manifestation of hypocrisy, and demands a more nuanced approach to the conditions that may or may not warrant the label of hypocrisy. Chapter 2 examines the Greek and Hebrew etymologies of hypocrisy, the former related to stage acting and the wearing of masks, while the latter concerns blending into one’s environment in chameleon-like behavior. Using five case studies that on their face exhibit the characteristics of deception and pretense, manipulation and gaining advantage over others, the two different etymologies are deployed to sharpen the contrast between their applicability. Stage actors openly wear their masks and alert their audiences that they are not accountable for their stage performance outside the theater. Chameleons use camouflage to remain undetected and have greater latitude in adapting to different environments. Though both represent hypocrisy, when politicians don masks like actors they are more readily vilified than when they adjust themselves to their stage like chameleons, whose evolutionary strategies are deemed morally neutral, perhaps even ingenious. Alternatively, the camouflage of the chameleon may introduce gradations of moral justifications for survival under certain circumstances, while judgments about the masking and unmasking of hypocrites remain rigid across contexts. These interpretations need not tip the scales of judgment to one direction of the etymology of the term hypocrisy or the other, but they could supplement each other. Keeping in mind a variety of interpretations might thwart snap judgments and encourage more considered, perhaps messier ones. Chapter 3 delves into the political realm where hypocrisy is most likely to be detected and publicly condemned. In this register, at stake are policy choices and coalition building that require the art of persuasion. Whether the deliberations are domestic or international, their purpose is to yield political results that at times require compromises. Here, too,

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different kinds of compromise warrant different moral judgments. Hypocritical conduct in this context may be understood on a spectrum of possibilities, some acceptable and others contemptible. Political realities highlight not only different kinds of hypocrisy but underscore some of their positive implementations. Some hypocrisies are justifiable, even essential for political purposes, and therefore they deserve to be critically examined. Political realities also reveal the discursive limitations of hypocrisy as a blunt moral weapon with which to dissect the intricacies of statecraft. When politicians appear hypocritical, they may be performing well and treating their constituents and political allies and rivals much better than if they remained steadfast in their consistent adherence to principles. And when citizens appear to conform to the social and cultural conventions and norms of their communities, they cannot help but fall into the alluring trap of civilized hypocrisy, where their instincts and desires are repressed, where social and moral demands cannot always be fulfilled. Sociality may necessitate compromise, but it does not demand hypocrisy. Chapter 4 moves from the political discourse of state actors to the psychological discourse that inquires about individuals and their capacity to participate in affairs of state. Not only must they reconcile the civilized hypocrisy of conformity and professional role playing assigned to them by the community, they are also presumed to fit some Cartesian– Kantian model of the self as a unified and consistent subject or agent whose conduct can be judged against a standard of hypocrisy. This model is contrasted with the psychoanalytic and neuroscientific models that question the uniformity of the self. If the self cannot be known, and if there is no ontological self prior to its unfolding in language, how is it possible to claim the absence of authenticity in the name of hypocrisy? Similarly, if the mind has multiple modules with different functionalities that respond in evolutionary terms to different survival threats and needs and therefore is at times inconsistent, is the charge of inconsistency the most relevant or salient for accusations of hypocrisy? Even if hypocrisy seems too blunt a term to be affixed to individuals, it might still serve as a deterrent for immoral and antisocial behavior. Chapter 5 begins with a brief mention of the religious denunciation of hypocrisy as behavior sinful toward the divine and injurious to fellow humans. This seems a relevant brief detour insofar as moral condemnations rely on fixed moral ideals, some of which are traceable to religious sacred texts. Questions of passing and code-switching are essential strategies for survival available to oppressed minorities. Victim hypocrisy as a

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response to threatening and discriminatory treatment has been morally justified for centuries. The moral register is never far removed from discussions of human conduct and when historically studied calls for rethinking such judgments. If the fear of being labeled a hypocrite fosters trust, it might be necessary for human relations and interactions. Barring an appeal to the divine or some nebulous appeal to solidarity and empathy, perhaps what remains is the appeal to virtues and the virtue of friendship. Virtuous friends might be in a position to critically challenge the conduct of their friends with honesty and goodwill. No matter the judgment, such a challenge is a useful lifeline that has the potential to ensure the well-being of a community. In conclusion, it seems that the concept of hypocrisy is suspended between irrelevance because of misguided charges and idealized aspirations that cannot be actualized. This suspension is important in the present age because it bespeaks of the persistence of the charge of hypocrisy. The ubiquity and cavalier dismissal of the charge of hypocrisy in the age of Trump has not completely erased the fear associated with this charge, the fear that as hard as one tries, there is always the prospect that something could be characterized as hypocritical even when the best effort is made to remain mindful and aware of social perceptions. Unlike Jacques Derrida’s specters of Jacques Derrida (1994) and Karl Marx’s specter of communism (1848), the first in the temporal sense of ghostly retrieval of the past as disturbing the present and the second as promising a revolutionary moment in the future, my use of specter is intended in a more limited sense of a moral haunting of an invisible but omnipresent (perhaps “impartial” in Adam Smith’s (1759) sense) spectator who is lurking around everywhere. As overused a term as hypocrisy may seem now, its specter is “an apparition, phantom, or ghost, especially one of a terrifying nature or aspect,” the kind that terrifies perhaps most profoundly insofar as it is “produced by reflection.” (OED) The specter of hypocrisy terrifies when we reflect on what we have done, how we have done it, and for what purpose. The terror accompanying hypocritical conduct depends on the potency of the charge of hypocrisy to prevent harm and ensure sociality. The endurance of this specter deserves reflection, especially in an age when hypocrisy is often simply ignored or taken for granted as a vice. In different contexts, the charge of hypocrisy not only changes its meaning but also makes it clear that it appeals to different standards. The reflective mode that is being called forth in this book reminds those who charge some conduct to be hypocritical that

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this charge engages moral principles that ought to be made explicit and critically evaluated rather than presumed as incontestable. As I complete this book, I am painfully aware that most of my arguments are partial and require elaboration, relying as they are on the insights of others and overlooking many more sources that deserve more attention than accorded here. I readily admit that the obligations to read more, to read more carefully, and to spend more time elucidating the ideas of others while synthesizing them as clearly as possible have not been fully realized here. The exercise, I must admit, has been therapeutic and humbling, appreciating along the way not to judge too harshly or quickly, but to be as generous as one can be with friends and strangers who live in especially precarious times.

References Wendy Brown (2005), “Untimeliness and Punctuality: Critical Theory in Dark Times,” in Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, Ch. 1. Alfredo Corchado (2020), “A Former Farmworker on American Hypocrisy,” New York Times (5/6/20). Available at: https://www. nytimes.com/2020/05/06/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-essentialworkers.html. Accessed (8/24/20). Jacques Derrida (1994), The Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, The Work of Mourning and the New International [1993]. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. New York and London: Routledge. Thomas Piketty (2020), Capital and Ideology [2019]. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Adam Smith (1976), The Theory of Moral Sentiments [1759]. London: Penguin.

Contents

1

Degrees of Truth 1.1 The Context of Post-Truth: The Trumpian Age 1.2 Critiques of Scientific Truths 1.3 The Politics of Post-Truth 1.4 Perspectival Truths References

1 1 17 24 29 38

2

Greek Masks and Hebrew Chameleons 2.1 Greek and Hebrew Etymologies of Hypocrisy 2.2 Five Examples 2.3 Some Standard Views and Their Limitations 2.4 Alternative Readings References

41 41 48 60 81 89

3

Complicity and Compromise 3.1 Political Economy 3.2 Individuals and Communities 3.3 Organized Hypocrisy on the Political Economic Stage 3.4 The Price of National Security: Loss of Identity References

91 91 97 109 118 125

4

In Search of the Self 4.1 Acting, Reacting, and Posing

127 127 xvii

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4.2 Group Psychology 4.3 Krasner on the Modular Mind 4.4 Caillois and Nietzsche on Mimicry References

137 142 153 159

Misrecognition and Passing 5.1 Religious Precedence 5.2 Passing and Code-Switching 5.3 Visibility, Invisibility, and Identity 5.4 Morality at Work References

161 161 166 186 199 211

Conclusion

215

Bibliography

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Index

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CHAPTER 1

Degrees of Truth

Abstract This chapter examines the classical philosophical binaries of truths and lies, philosophy and sophistry. These binaries overstate their case and in their stead, thinking about degrees of truth rather than truths and lies or truth and post-truth obviates potential misunderstanding or judgments. At stake in this reading is the sensitivity required of judging within contexts. This sensitivity incorporates the dialectical and postmodern notion of post-truth as including truths and lies rather than an admission that the quest for truth, however problematic, is altogether relinquished. To think of degrees of hypocrisy in light of degrees of truth refuses the simple and perhaps simple-minded rush to label trivial manifestation of hypocrisy and demands a more nuanced approach to the conditions that may or may not warrant the label of hypocrisy.

1.1

The Context of Post-Truth: The Trumpian Age

George Orwell reminds us in Nineteen Eighty-Four that the regime of Big Brother and its use of doublethink “means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” (1981/1949, 176) If logic was supposed to preserve some modicum of clarity and ascertain truth claims, under fascism and totalitarianism it loses its power. This is the case in Orwell’s dystopian novel because the party controls the historical record, erasing inconvenient facts and adding others, so that the distinction between truths and lies becomes blurred. As Orwell says, the “past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, © The Author(s) 2020 R. Sassower, The Specter of Hypocrisy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60573-5_1

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the lie became truth.” (ibid., 64) If official assertions are deemed truthful only because they are sanctioned by those who authored them, what is the point of quibbling over logical nuances and empirical evidence and testimonies? Any challenge in Orwell’s fictive world is bound to end in either dismissal or persecution, gulags established by the likes of Stalin and his henchmen or concentration camps set up by Hitler and the Gestapo. President Trump has relegated anything he fears or disagrees with as “fake news” to discredit it as unworthy of the traditional critical examination accorded to public claims and statements of fact, following the slippery slope that turns democracies into totalitarian regimes. Herein lies the concern of this book: it is not that the Trump Administration will ignore dissent and send dissenters to the gulags or concentration camps, but that it will empty public discourse of the richness of debate and deliberation, where conventional reference to evidence and truth telling are sacrosanct. In other words, without some basic agreement about the boundary conditions that inform communication as a starting point, agreements and disagreements are reduced to personal preferences and power moves. Becoming popular with Brexit and continuing into the Trump era, “post-truth” was dubbed by the Oxford English Dictionary its word of the year in 2016. Post-truth must be taken seriously not only by journalists who cover current political development but also by philosophers. On one level, this term takes us back to the classical Socratic distinction between sophistry and philosophy, and on another, there is something more insidious and frightening akin to the dystopia envisioned by Orwell. The specter of truth haunts the contemporary political stage, relentlessly being dismissed while never quite leaving the stage, demanding, as it were, to remain at the center of every debate, whether about the scientific data informing the fight against coronavirus contagion or foreign relations with adversaries. On another level, this point of obfuscation about the truth and perhaps relativism run amok was an unintended consequence of the challenges to every scientific claim for its hold on truth and certainty. To speak of hypocrisy in the moral register requires speaking about truth telling and the conditions under which a statement is deemed true. Philosophers have traditionally played a central role in investigating the conditions that distinguish true statements from false ones, both on logical and empirical grounds. Their investigations established the ground rules for communication so that misrepresentations could be corrected rather than, in the Orwellian fictive world, become part of a fabricated historical record. In this sense, epistemological questions become moral

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questions as well: statements that cannot be critically examined and refuse rectification can turn into deliberate deceptions. The post-truth condition requires the kind of epistemological and moral vigilance that would undergird the engagement with the specter of hypocrisy. The community of science studies has traditionally scrutinized the privilege accorded the natural sciences as the explorers of knowledge and the guardians of its truth claims. This critical scrutiny linked epistemological concerns with social and moral ones as they apprise public policy. As one of its leaders, Bruno Latour reminds the community of science studies writ large (sociologists, philosophers, and anthropologists who endorse some version of deconstruction, poststructuralism, or postmodernism) that it may be indirectly responsible for the current misunderstanding of how to deal with critical engagements, but not for the perniciousness of our post-truth predicament. To someone unfamiliar with the critiques of scientific certainty, these critiques may seem to legitimate the dismissal of empirical data, evidence-based statements, and the means by which scientific claims are deemed to be credible or true. Is this “gullible criticism,” indeed, “a case of radicalism gone mad”? (Latour 2004, 231) Latour’s lament suggests that the “question was never to get away from facts but closer to them, not fighting empiricism but, on the contrary, renewing empiricism.” (ibid.; italics in the original) There is a difference between bad critique contesting the facticity of scientific “facts” and good science studies wanting to “get closer” to facts. For science studies scholars, the facticity of facts and the grounds on which they are established (epistemology) is only one part of the story; the other, even more crucial part is concerned with the horrors inflicted on people, animals, and the planet when facts are deliberately or accidentally misconstrued and are uncritically accepted (morality). In this rendering, an earlier concern with the “two dogmas of empiricism,” introduced two generations earlier by the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine comes to mind. The first “dogma” or belief suggests that there is “some fundamental cleavage” between truths that are analytic (“grounded in meanings independent of matters of fact”) and those that are synthetic (“grounded in fact”). (1961, 20) The second dogma is reductionism: “the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience.” (ibid.) In questioning the validity of these two sets of belief, the one about the meanings that depend on facts and the other about the logical structure of language, Quine deliberately blurs the boundary between “speculative metaphysics

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and natural science.” (ibid.) His own pragmatic approach argues for the inherent interpretive dimension of every statement about human experience and thereby problematizes the epistemological conditions under which a community of inquirers reaches an agreement about truth claims. As Quine concedes, the “myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior” to myths about gods and fairies that control nature because it has “proven more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.” (ibid., 44) The efficacy in question here differs from an appeal to a direct and unencumbered perception and knowledge of facts; instead, it relies on the continuous interpretation and inscription of meaning to statements about matters of fact, allowing for the changing truth status of statements (given new evidence). Quine’s concession to degrees of truth about knowledge claims and Latour’s concern to get “closer” to facts in order to ascertain their truth-value are supposed to reassure the scientific community and the public that the truth about our knowledge claims is still worthy of pursuit. There are others, like Steve Fuller, who seem to have given up on the quest for truth altogether and give credence to the Orwellian nightmare we observe in the Trumpian age. As a leading British sociologist of science and advocate of social epistemology (all knowledge is socially constructed), Fuller offers academic legitimacy to a dismissive way of thinking about truth claims and the conditions under which they ought to be scrutinized. His promotion of post-truth circumvents the critical analysis of truth conditions in favor of a plurality of opinions that in turn need not defend themselves in any epistemological court. (2018, Chapter 1) This approach exploits Quine’s analysis of the dogmas of empiricism and Latour’s lament over losing touch with empirical facts and cynically presents itself as the guardian of populist common sense. With a Trump-like glee, the likes of Fuller present themselves as rebellious mavericks and iconoclasts fighting against the privileged elites whose insular scientific discourse is deployed by experts to pontificate over authoritative consensus claims. At stake is no longer an internal debate among scientists and philosophers over knowledge claims and their truth-value, but the very possibility of coherent deliberations over public policies. Given that what has been taken for granted about public communication can no longer be relied on, it is worthwhile to revisit the classic philosophical concerns with ontology and epistemology. These concerns point to the danger of critical engagement deteriorating into skepticism and relativism. To avoid ending

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with outright cynicism about the possibility of knowing anything at all, it would behoove us to agree, however tentatively and by convention, that in order to pursue the truth about empirical data (for personal reasons or policy purposes) a community (of inquirers) must share a common ground or some ground rules of communication. Revisiting the question of what counts as truth telling takes us back to Socrates’ ongoing battle with the sophists of his day. Some have argued that the line of demarcation between philosophy and sophistry is clear, almost sacrosanct. The standard argument goes like this: “philosophy” (ϕιλoσ oϕ´ια filosofía) claims as its end the love of wisdom and therefore of knowledge and truth, while “sophistry” (σ oϕισ τ ε´ια sofisteía) uses fallacious arguments and deceptive techniques to win debates. It is interesting that the Latin sophista (and sophists ) refers to someone who makes use of fallacious arguments and to “a master of one’s craft; a wise or prudent man, one clever in matters of daily life,” the first with negative and the second with positive connotations. The addition of “clever” in the second could have a negative connotation as well if it were meant to contrast with the “wise” of wisdom. In any case, sophistry becomes in Socrates’ hands a contemptuous and pejorative label to distinguish those clever (even if wise) craftsmen from the philosophers whose love of wisdom has no pecuniary rewards. (Century Dictionary) Socrates’ derisive comments about sophistry are usually presented as part of his unwavering commitment to the truth, the love of wisdom at all costs, and his famous claim that sophists are paid to twist meanings to suit their paying masters (Gorgias ). Aristotle continues in this vein to define sophistry as “wisdom in appearance only” (Metaphysics ). In Socrates’ denunciation of sophistry in general and the sophists as his sworn enemies there is a subtle acknowledgment of the knotty relationship between the seeker of truth and wisdom and the one who claims to have gained it. During his trial, Socrates suggests he is the wisest man alive because he knows what he does not know, admitting to the limitations of his knowledge (Apology). The sophists, by contrast, are pretentious: they pretend to know what they, by definition, cannot know, that is, the truth. They may know something, as Socrates admits he does as well, but their knowledge consists of the tricks of the game of learning and the rhetorical skills with which to persuade their listeners. Philosophers and sophists alike use rhetorical devices and are therefore rhetoricians and orators, attempting to persuade their audiences. The difference between philosophers and the sophists, then, lies in

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their respective intentions: some seek truth, the others seek to win arguments. The rhetorical skills will not get one to the truth, though they will help win arguments. The lawyer as sophist thus seeks to argue the case as persuasively as possible, even when this results in exonerating the guilty and indicting the innocent. My reading of Socrates detects a certain concern with hypocrisy— deception and pretense, self-deception, and the deliberate manipulation of an audience (even of one)—conveniently leveled against sophists but exempting philosophers. (see some of this in Dupriez 1991) But is the charge of hypocrisy applicable in a case where sophists openly declare their intent to argue as powerfully as possible to win the hearts of their audience and win cases when paid to do so? In this sense, sophists are as honest about their trade as philosophers are, though their goals differ. Perhaps there is a confusion here between sophistry and rhetoric, a confusion that begins already with Socrates. As Edward Schiappa (1995) suggests (following Gorgias 465C), Socrates’ sense of the mixture of the two relies on his observations about the methods used by the sophists. In selling their credentials and their expertise, sophists used rhetorical devices and the flourishes of logical argumentations to persuade their interlocutors, and in doing so, they had no interest in philosophical pursuits. If the name of the game is victory at all costs and if the game is political brinksmanship for the sake of amassing power, then any philosophical illusion about knowledge for knowledge’s sake or the quest for the truth is beside the point. The genealogy of this recognition dates back to Roman emperors and later to Machiavelli (in the sixteenth century), Marx and Nietzsche (in the nineteenth century), Foucault and Lyotard (in the twentieth century), and reaches the advocates of the “playfulness” of post-truth games in the age of Trump and Brexit (in the twentyfirst century). New discursive games may endanger the ones we have historically perceived insofar as they seem to refuse to engage at all with their interlocutors and critics. Cynical dismissal of different viewpoints by means of rhetorical entertainment violates the premise of critical deliberation established by philosophers. It is no longer the Socratic distinction between philosophy and sophistry that holds, but a distinction between deliberation and entertainment. Sophistry in the service of distraction needs no rules and evades the detection of falsehoods, since the truth is no longer at issue. The Trumpian age warrants a philosophical engagement not because philosophers can hold up truth criteria that would bring the 45th US president’s fans to their senses, but because only within a

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framework that respects truth seeking and truth telling, however problematic both remain, can a society hope to minimize the perils envisioned by Orwell’s fictional dystopia and Hannah Arendt’s scholarly treatise on totalitarianism (1951), as we shall see below. Barbara Cassin, an important interpreter of the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s work, moves the discussion of truths and lies to meaning production, which is exemplified within the psychoanalytic process. (2020, 25) As she does this, she explains that where truth was on the side of philosophy, now it is on the side of psychoanalysis (and sophistry, reconsidered). In her words, “from Freud to Lacan, we have moved decisively from the love of truth to the discourse of truth.” (ibid., 27) This move modifies the quest for and love of truth as a hidden treasure to be uncovered. The search for and dialogic exposition of truth is taken out of the hands of philosophers and shifted to the interpretive mode of looking for meaning in the “discourse of truth” that is undertaken in the therapeutic context of psychoanalysis. The emphasis on the discursive process also announces the potential for the unconscious to show itself through speech and construct meaning whose discursive truth is announced as well. Unlike the Socratic dialogue that keeps the speakers teleologically focused, on track to find out what a concept means, in this case, speech produces meaning in its enfolding. Philosophers like Socrates seem to have an agenda and a dialogic method by which to accomplish it (even if it may be the case that Socrates himself really just enjoyed conversations and arguments for their own sake), in the psychoanalytic context, says Cassin, the “most splendid, original truths” emerge organically. Cassin argues that, according to Lacan, “discourse creates being, and this is why its meaning can only be grasped after the fact, in view of the world it has produced.” (ibid., 35) In this sense, then, the truth is constructed and not uncovered. Without continuing to engage the intricacies of the psychoanalytic discourse and logic within clinical settings, it suffices here to say that it is clear that speech does not reveal or disclose or unveil the façade of the subject; it brings into being one’s being. In short, there are “only interpretations and interpretations of interpretations.” (ibid.) In other words, there is no philosophical essence or truth to be discovered or unmasked. Socrates himself had to admit that philosophy and sophistry were similar enough in order to insist on a difference, to formulate a difference and hope it would stick, even at his trial and even with an audience that was skeptical of anything he had to say in his own defense. Cassin’s interrogation, by contrast, breaks down the Socratic

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difference when it gets to constructing meaning (and truth) rather than searching for the Truth. There is a radical difference between the Trumpian-like refusal to engage the criteria according to which to measure the truth-value of empirical or any other claims within the framework of public discourse and the debates over these criteria and their efficacy, whether they are constructed or transcendent. The rhetorical misappropriation of some of the more flamboyant rhetorical moves of self-proclaimed postmodernists, for example, does a grave disservice to public deliberation over worthwhile disagreements. Perhaps the most accessible, least nuanced work that carried the day at the time to discredit the privileged scientific discourse was written by Jean Baudrillard (1995) who suggested the Gulf War was nothing but a media hoax. After pronouncing this outlandish claim, it became difficult to defend the poststructuralists and deconstructionists who were making careful arguments about the effects of epistemological overreaching. The analytic wing of the philosophical community reacted with vehemence to Baudrillard’s rhetorical (sophistic) maneuvers and found easy pickings. As one of their leading advocates, Harry Frankfurt, noted: “These shameless antagonists of common sense— members of a certain emblematic subgroup of them call themselves ‘postmodernists’—rebelliously and self-righteously deny that truth has any genuinely objective reality at all. They therefore go on to deny that truth is worthy of any obligatory deference or respect.” (2006, 18–19) Name calling (“shameless antagonists of common sense”) as a substitute for an argument reeks of fallacious reasoning (ad hominem). Shifting from the descriptive (“rebellious”) to the normative (“self-righteous”) is the maneuver of someone trying to discredit an argument without fully laying it out. And confusing the legitimate critique of objectivity with a wholesale dismissal of truth as such is itself a shameless overstatement (similar in kind to Latour’s own critique of critique), one anchored not in textual evidence but in speculation at best and plain aversion at worst to the point that intellectual “respect” is abandoned. Had Frankfurt read the works of postmodernists or deconstructionists, he might have avoided committing logical fallacies in his judgment of their work. He would have learned that it is exactly their commitment to honesty (scientific and other) that motivates their scrutiny, that their interest in understanding and interpreting facts and evidence is both epistemological and ontological (in Quine’s sense), and that when Jacques Derrida, for example, speaks of the limits of metaphysical language, he

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does not thereby mean to negate the existence of objective reality. Rather, he pleads for some humility on the part of those savants making claims to know, objectively, the nature of reality. For example, he says: “what is called ‘objectivity,’ scientific for instance (in which I firmly believe, in a given situation), imposes itself only within a context which is extremely vast, old, powerfully established, stabilized or rooted in a network of conventions (for instance, those of language) and yet which still remains a context. . . That does not in the slightest discredit them. In the name of what, of which other ‘truth,’ moreover, would it?” (1988, 136) This is neither a claim to an alternative truth nor a renunciation of the scientific project; it is, on the contrary, a plea for care and self-awareness in our knowledge production endeavors, the kind already announced in the Socratic dialogues and the psychoanalytic practice. Would this qualification suffice for Frankfurt? Does such a call for context within which statements about objectivity and truth are tested undermine a commitment to reality, facts, and objectivity as such? As Latour has insisted in his rebuke to bad critique, this kind of careful, critical inquiry would bring the investigator “closer” to reality, facts, and truth. Closer in the sense of recognizing human fallibility and the mediating effects of linguistic pronouncements, closer in the sense of pursuing knowledge and truth even while we know that claims are always bound by the limitations of what Donna Haraway (1988) has called our “situatedness.” Yet insistently closer nonetheless. Perhaps like John Searle before him (1983), Frankfurt has a fundamental mistrust of continental philosophers in general and the French postmodernists and deconstructionists in particular. It may be their allegedly difficult writing style or their critical posture vis-à-vis logocentrism that upsets him; it may be their failure to venerate the “truth” as he understands it. Rather than build bridges and find common ground, he suggests drawing on the Socratic distinction between philosophy and sophistry, which for him suggests that only he and his fellow analytic philosophers “care primarily about the discrete facts, and about inferences that these facts may support.” (2006, 95) As fanciful as the language of postmodernists and deconstructionists may sometimes be, they do not recoil from this “common sense” approach to inference making. Rather, their linguistic maneuvering formally illustrates the very limits of linguistic expression that they thematize, and attests to their own struggle to be careful and sensitive to nuanced meanings. Frankfurt’s conclusion that

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“It is only through our recognition of a world of stubbornly independent reality, fact, and truth that we come both to recognize ourselves as beings distinct from others and to articulate the specific nature of our own identities” (ibid., 101) sounds reasonable but is contestable. Perhaps the likes of Frankfurt fail to appreciate the early efforts of Baudrillard, for example, who worried about the impact of the “discourse of simulation,” one that “threatens the difference between ‘true’ and ‘false,’ between ‘real ‘and ‘imaginary’.” (1983, 5) Baudrillard’s concern with “hyperreality” was neither shameless nor antagonistic, neither rebellious nor self-righteous; instead, it warned of the conditions under which reality might be mistaken for its simulacra, facts lost in the shuffle of their duplication, and the truth never fully revealed even when searched for. (ibid., 7) Had he read these lines, Frankfurt might have been less dismissive of the French thinkers he holds in contempt. It is one thing to argue about the methods by which truth is ascertained, as Socrates did, and quite another to suggest that truth has been abandoned, or worse, mocked, as Socrates claimed was the case with the sophists of his day. And to suggest that only one method should dominate the intellectual landscape is tantamount to intellectual dogmatism reminiscent of religious clerics and fascist dictators. But not all truths are equal. As we recall from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, there are differences between historical, mathematical, scientific, and philosophical truths. Referring to philosophy as the ultimate arbiter of the truth-value of knowledge claims, it becomes clear, for Hegel, that “what counts as truth can only deserve the name of truth when philosophy has had a hand in its production. Other sciences may try to get by without philosophy and to rely merely on clever argumentation, but without philosophy, they are unable to possess any life, spirit, or truth in themselves.” (2018, 42 #67) Whether empirically verified or supported by “clever argumentation,” scientific truths lack the “life” and “spirit” that turns them into philosophical truths. Philosophy, for Hegel, is essential to the production and legitimation of truths. Hegel’s warning differs from Frankfurt’s and Latour’s because he does not advocate that in the search of truth philosophers must get closer to the facts, but comes closer instead to Quine’s, Baudrillard’s, and Cassin’s respective concerns with interpretation and meaning. Philosophical deliberations, according to Hegel, guarantee a deeper understanding of the conditions under which truths are produced. Hegel never discredited scientific knowledge, but unlike some contemporary analytic philosophers, he insisted that it was only a

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means for and not the end of discovering truths. The collection of empirical data may yield useful information; organized methodologically, this information can be transformed into knowledge; examined critically, this knowledge can reveal truths. Lacan’s reading of this Hegelian move from knowledge to truth points to the “sensitive frontier” between them. For Hegel, “an ideal solution” is the one in which “truth is in the state of constant reabsorption in its own disturbing element, being in itself no more than that which is lacking for the realization of knowledge.” In Hegel’s Phenomenology, this means, in Lacan’s reading, that “Truth is nothing other than that which knowledge can apprehend as knowledge only by setting its ignorance to work.” (1977, 296) A dialectical aufhebung is needed so that knowledge can eventually, after a logically unfolding process, fully contain “Truth” but also perceive its own development as being “true.” The Hegelian progress toward a future truth establishes a temporal horizon toward which knowledge aims. The ongoing accumulation of scientific knowledge evolves and is philosophically transformed over time into truths, and these truths, in turn, continue a dialectic movement that acknowledges “ignorance” and overcomes it from a higher plateau of understanding. Lacan compares the striving toward the unknown that becomes partially known with each step to Sigmund Freud’s understanding of the perils of truth seeking. In Lacan’s words, “Freud’s dramatism” suggests “the re-entry of truth into the field of science at the same time as it gains recognition in the field of its praxis: repressed, it appears.” (ibid., 297) For Freud, as we shall see in some detail later, the insertion of the “repressed” truth is an attempt for the truth to be recognized as such, to have a chance to be recognized at all. This differs from the celebratory or perhaps simply the matter-of-factness of Hegel’s elevation of truth as an indispensable feature of knowledge, which would be revealed with every step of the dialectical movement. Freud’s hidden truth may be so “repressed” that it might not be brought to light, and if revealed, denied as truth and cast as only partial and lacking rigorous empirical support. Though Hegel and Freud search for the truth in the process of knowledge acquisition, in Lacan’s reading, the Hegelian optimism about the final revelation of truth is questioned by Freud’s concern over truth’s “constant re-absorption in its own disturbing element.” The Hegelian aufhebung is forward and upward, with the potential of getting ever closer to the ultimate Truth; the Freudian inward movement is as committed to progress toward the truth but perhaps more realistic about its self-imposed limits. Either way, summarizes Lacan,

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Hegel’s “unhappy consciousness” meets Freud’s “discontents of civilization” (ibid.) in their shared lamentation about the limitations shared by knowledge, self-knowledge, and any claim for apprehending the truth. What is at stake is not truth and knowledge, truth and reality, or even self-knowledge, but instead Michel Foucault’s linkage of truth and power along Socratic and Nietzschean lines. This nexus might frighten away the self-proclaimed connoisseurs of truth whose daily fare is limited to examining its decontextualized state, its neutral and universal domain of meaning. According to analytic philosophers, the self-proclaimed custodians of truth’s technical apparatus, power has nothing to do with the truth. They remain oblivious to critiques, standard since Socrates, that have shown the intimate relations truth has with its promoters and guardians, whose expertise is to remain unchallenged so that politically expedient “noble lies” can be morally justified. (Republic 414b-c) In Foucault’s discussion of the “specific intellectual” (whose expertise displaces the “universal intellectual” of the nineteenth century), he recognizes the “political responsibilities” associated with this public role. (1980, 130–1) In light of these responsibilities, Foucault reminds his readers that “truth isn’t the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves.” (ibid., 131) The romantic imaginary that saw great canonical thinkers as shielded from the politics of their day is called into question. Foucault places the seekers of truth within the boundaries of the tumultuous world of politics, explaining along the way that “truth isn’t outside power, or lacking in power.” (ibid.) That truth claims are powerful especially when contextualized within power relations (of the academy or the state or capitalism or the church or all of them in varying degrees) was already admitted by Socrates. But should Frankfurt and his cohorts seize on these statements to bolster their argument about postmodern antagonism toward the pristine status of truth, Foucault is quick to aver that “truth is a thing of this world,” namely, it cannot escape objective reality because “it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint.” (ibid.) Read critically, the second statement about truth production and its constraints explains the first about truth being “of this world” on three interrelated registers. First, truth is a human production; it is not given to humans by the gods (contrary to Greek mythology and biblical lore). Second, truth production has constraints (logical, factual, linguistic, and cultural) that precede it. Third, multiple “forms of constraint” may

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conflict with each other and at times depict the truth as a compromised and conventional production. These concerns over the production of knowledge and truth were not new with Foucault. The history of philosophy is a history of truth seekers no matter the method or approach and no matter the imperfect results. Some, like Socrates and Spinoza, exhibited modesty, others, like Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, organized knowledge and presented comprehensive worldviews, while still others, like Rousseau and Nietzsche, problematized the project of modernity and the faith in knowledge production exhibited by promoters of the Enlightenment. Though sensitive to the corrupting influence of power over the quest for knowledge and the search for truth, philosophers traditionally sought to wrest truth from the clutches of power and reveal its universality despite its manifestation within particular contexts. After Marx, and despite his own claims for universal truths, it is difficult to accept decontextualized truth claims. Does this mean that, according to Foucault, anything goes when it comes to truth production? Is Foucault’s apprehension about truth production an indication of relativism, as some have charged? Being aware of the pitfalls awaiting the seekers of truth need not (logically or even practically) lead one to consternation or cynicism; on the contrary, the same intellectual vigilance claimed by analytic philosophers seems to be at work here. Even when, or perhaps especially because, “each society has its régime of truth,” Foucault advises his readers to notice that each community “accepts and makes function as true” specific “types of discourse.” Likewise, there are “mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements,” “the means by which each is sanctioned,” and the “techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth.” These statements would as likely come from an analytic academic as from a French radical who has been said to care nothing for the truth. This shared concern with truth may diffuse the epistemic tension between the analytic and continental schools of thought. Foucault refers to “the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.” (ibid.) Who are “those who are charged”? Who authorizes them? Who are the intellectual gatekeepers? For Socrates, philosophers held the line against the sophists; for Hegel, philosophers had to critically engage the scientists; for Frankfurt, he and his analytic friends will fend off the French nihilists (who, to no one’s surprise, invoke Nietzsche).

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Once truth is understood as a “régime of truth,” as Foucault contends, philosophers cannot afford to ignore the “political, economic, institutional régime of the production of truth.” (ibid., 133) Foucault extends the Socratic binary between philosophers and sophists, and questions the status of those who make truth claims. But unlike the Socratic belief that truth could be neutralized from and remain outside of the political realm, Foucault insists that his call to arms “is not a matter of emancipating truth from every system of power (which would be a chimera, for truth is already power) but of detaching the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic, and cultural, within which it operates at the present time.” (ibid.) This injunction is more modest and honest than the one offered by Socrates who advised that if truth is powerful, then the best that could be done with it is to ensure it no longer remains exclusively in the clutches of the powerful, with the exception of the philosopher-king. For Foucault, then, it is not only that the powerful will use the truth for their purposes, as Socrates warned, but also that the power of truth will be abused. This challenge keeps the epistemic bar high enough to detect power relations wherever they are and invites, at a lower register, critical examination of what can be accepted as truth outside of or alongside the establishment that will harness whatever is available to retain its power. However tempting, might this invitation confuse, as Arendt cautions, rational and factual truths? Rational truths, as modern philosophers declared, arise from logical investigations and logical analyses, while factual truths emerge from empirical data collection. Immanuel Kant was the first to combine the two sets of claims: “thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.” Thinking requires both empirical content and logical structuring on the way of assessing truth claims. Unlike Kant, Arendt contends that much is at stake in differentiating “mathematical, scientific, and philosophical truths” from factual ones. (2005, 2) Though she would agree with Hegel and Foucault about human intervention in the production of all of these truths, she finds it useful to distinguish between them to some extent and with full awareness that the distinction is problematic. In the political realm, Arendt contends, “the chances of factual truth surviving the onslaught of power are very slim indeed.” (ibid., 3) Writing during the cultural upheavals of the 1960s, it stands to reason that she focuses on “the clash of factual truth and politics, which we witness today on such a large scale.” (ibid., 5) What would she have said had she witnessed the post-truth era of the 2010s? Since Arendt considers

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the conflict between truth and politics to be the conflict between truth and opinion, and since she understands opinion to be publicly communicated, she suggests that “facts and opinions, though they must be kept apart, are not antagonistic to each other; they belong to the same realm.” (ibid., 7) Being in the same political realm, they are susceptible to mistakes and misrepresentation, and are thereby to be evaluated differently than rational truths, the validation of which belongs to a different realm, perhaps the scientific and academic. There is an oppressive feature to the presentation of and insistence on factual truths in the political domain. In Arendt’s words: “Seen from the viewpoint of politics, truth has a despotic character. It is therefore hated by tyrants, who rightly fear the competition of a coercive force they cannot monopolize, and it enjoys a rather precarious status in the eyes of governments that rest on consent and abhor coercion.” (ibid., 8) Though Arendt’s references are to the European tyrants of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the communist Soviet Union, one could easily project this view onto the contemporary political atmosphere of Putin’s Russia, Orban’s Hungary, Maduro’s Venezuela, Netanyahu’s Israel, Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Erdogan’s Turkey, and Trump’s United States, to name but a few of the authoritarian-leaning regimes in power today. The Trumpian mantra of “fake news” reverberates across media outlets as if one were living under Orwell’s fictionalized Big Brother and the Ministry of Truth. The open hostility to a free press and the imprisonment of dissidents may be more visible in Russia and Venezuela than in Israel and the United States, but the vilification of protests by Trump as “riots” and demonstrators as “radical thugs” bears the stamp of a leader with little tolerance for dissent. Critics and whistleblowers in the United States are fired from their government positions as co-conspirators of the “deep state.” The very truth that is the goal of philosophers is itself said to have a “despotic character” by these antidemocratic politicians. The appeal to a philosophical examination of truth claims is necessary for any political deliberation. Without some ground rules and basic agreement on what counts as truth and what differentiates one truth from another, it would be difficult to communicate and administer public policies. Since facts and their truthfulness “could always have been otherwise,” as Arendt contends, they are open to manipulations, counterfactuals, and outright lies and fabrications. (ibid., 9) This much was already asserted above when quoting Quine and Foucault. Arendt pushes the point to insist that, unlike the likes of Frankfurt (whom she does not address),

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“factual truth is no more self-evident than opinion,” and therefore remains contestable and contested at every turn, lending opposing opinions their own sense of legitimacy. (ibid., 10) Under these conditions, “truthtellers,” as Arendt calls them, are bound to exercise their persuasive talents and thereby sway the opinions of others, perhaps to enjoy their political support. (ibid., 12) Without the scrutiny of philosophers and scientists, politicians like Trump exploit the problematic status of “factual truth” to license themselves to say whatever they want. Allowing lies to be used in statecraft, as Arendt concedes, may be temporary and about specific national secrets or the appropriate deception of enemies, but they are not on the level of the “noble lies” attributed to Plato as a matter of course for the political elite. In other words, white lies uttered by politicians for the sake of nudging public behavior in a pandemic, for example, differ from outright falsehoods that sow division and engender fear (claiming that the coronavirus will be eliminated quickly or have minimal effect). But the attribution of the so-called noble lies to Plato as an endorsement of misleading the public, Arendt insists, is a misreading of the Greek, and that in no way did Plato give carte blanche permission for political deception. (ibid., 19) Arendt’s classification of different kinds of truth, factual and rational, may shed light on the concerns voiced by Latour and Frankfurt in relation to the truth of scientific facts that are both open for interpretation and may yield putative consensus among researchers. Though in Arendt’s binary, scientific facts are part of rational truths, one can see their Kantian overlap with factual truths, those worthy of empirical contestation and critical scrutiny. The history of science offers ample evidence that what were once considered scientific truths have been replaced with others, at times contradictory, at other times complementary, but decisively different. (Think of the geocentric versus the heliocentric view of the universe, or leeches and bloodletting versus the use of antibiotics in immunology.) This ongoing process of confirmation and falsification does not relegate truth-bearing facts to the dustbin of opinions; instead, it demands a more robust level of verification and legitimation, ever more precise and exacting than was tolerated before. From outside the scientific community and the community of academic researchers, this process may appear unstable, confusing, contradictory, and prone to mischief. Plenty of science studies scholars have pointed out the dangers of this process, while other science studies critics have focused on its self-legitimating

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protective walls. As we shall see in the next section, scientists and philosophers of science distinguish between truths reached by convention and those deserving universal consent when addressing philosophical concerns over knowledge and truth. Just as there are different kinds of truth, there are different kinds of lies that include mistakes and errors, dissimulation and secrets, all the way to intentional and repeatable lies. (Derrida 2002) Philosophers and scientists distinguish themselves from sophists and hacks by arguing for the ongoing search for truth and the elimination of error. In their minds, outright lying would shatter the delicate framework of knowledge and truth production and therefore must be avoided at all costs. Intentional and repeated deception attributed to the charge of hypocrisy has no room in such a framework.

1.2

Critiques of Scientific Truths

Philosophers have traditionally considered themselves the custodians holding the keys to the antechambers protecting truths from prejudices and distortions, relying on the empirical data collected by the sciences and the rigors of logical analyses. In their toolbox, one finds various forms of critical analysis, the tools with which to collect data, transform them into knowledge claims, and test their truth status. Yet, philosophical inquiry without critique risks being dogmatic or slipping into the domain of rhetorical argumentation. As Theodor Adorno reminds us, critique is essential for philosophy, in its search for truth and wisdom, and for democracy insofar as it allows anyone to contest the claims of those in power. In his words, the “critic becomes a divisive influence, [or to use] a totalitarian phrase, a subversive” (1998, 283) insofar as the status quo is challenged and sacred political institutions are called upon to do better. The price of critique, in terms of divisiveness about methodological norms and what counts as knowledge claims, can be high: critique is not without risk. Whether Socratic or Spinozist, the practice of critique may exact a price: sentenced to death (as a “subversive”) after trial for the former, being excommunicated (as a “subversive”) for the latter. The search for truth, then, is no idle preoccupation of philosophers, but an urgent activity incumbent on those living in a democracy. Adorno makes a further distinction “between responsible critique, namely, that practiced by those who bear public responsibility, and irresponsible critique, namely, that practiced by those who cannot be held accountable for the consequences.” Between the two critiques, he

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notes, “critique is already neutralized.” (ibid., 285) Was Socrates’ critique “responsible” in Adorno’s terms? Was he bearing “public responsibility” as a private citizen who riled the youths of Athens? Or was it “irresponsible” because he could not be “held accountable” for the consequences of his agitation? In that sense, can critique ever be “responsible” insofar as it cannot contain the effects of its provocation to disturb or destabilize the status quo? In fact, Socrates was deemed irresponsible by his peers and tried for the potential danger his critique posed. The very distinction between responsible and irresponsible critique, in Adorno’s analysis, “neutralize[s]” critique because any moral attribution for its potential consequences defangs its epistemic power. Shifting critique from questions of truth to questions of prudence is a neutralizing move, one that undermines the power of critique to speak truth to power regardless of consequences. Adorno reminds his readers that “the truth content of critique alone should be that authority [that decides if it is responsible],” but that when such a criterion (of truth content) is “unilaterally invoked” by ideologues, critique itself can lose its power and be at the mercy “of those who oppose the critical spirit of a democratic society.” (ibid.) At stake is not critique as such but its “truth content,” which in turn should be the final arbiter about initially testing the validity of the critique by philosophers, and eventually its acceptance by politicians and the public. The “authority” of the critique in relying on its truth content, when “invoked” by philosophers and politicians alike, suggests its legitimacy regardless of those who “oppose the critical spirit of democratic society.” Citing the Greek etymology of critique in krisis, Wendy Brown explains that despite its bad reputation, critique is “the art of making distinctions, an art considered essential to judging and rectifying an alleged disorder in or of democracy.” (2005, 5) So, here we get the Foucauldian gesture toward resistance, a resistance to (self-legitimating) claims of truthfulness in political discourse, and a gesture toward the procedural and prudential processes by which a “disorder” or crisis can be approached and perhaps rectified. In Brown’s terms, adjudicating, assessing, and rendering judgment for the sake of some kind of “restorative aim” might be a way of moving from Socrates the gadfly to Adorno’s responsible critic, from words to action. (ibid., 5–6) Critique can accomplish this feat because it also “counters the distinctly modern presumption of critique’s dependency on and involvement with transcendent Truth,” (ibid., 7) whether this “transcendent Truth” is

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beholden to Plato’s Theory of the Forms or the Hegelian World Spirit. In short, Brown’s critical theory navigates between “normative moral theory” and “utopian intellectual exercises,” both of which she deems flawed since they are either too historically specific or completely ahistorical (in a universalizing sense). If this sounds ambitious, Foucault’s guiding hand remains as steady as ever. Following his advice, Brown argues that “critique, whether immanent, transcendent, genealogical, or in yet some other form, is always a rereading and as such a reaffirmation of that which it engages.” (ibid., 16) It is this commitment to the value of “rereading and reaffirming” the ideas and hypotheses of scientists that should be guiding (but sometimes are missing from) the practices of science studies critics, as Latour has noted above. Admittedly, not all science critics are well versed in the scientific literature and some lack the technical expertise they could have mastered in order to critically engage their targets. But this fact alone does not justify a wholesale attack on the pursuit of rational and factual truths in the hands of science critics as if they are all irresponsible. Scientific truth claims and their generation by the scientific community offer safeguards against frivolous skepticism, relativism, and outright deception. Robert Merton (1973/1942) famously outlined the four features of the scientific ethos as principles that characterize the ideal workings of the scientific community: universalism, communism (communalism), disinterestedness, and organized skepticism. It is the last principle that is relevant to the discussion of the truth-value of knowledge claims, since it unequivocally demands an institutionalized mindset of putative rejection of any hypothesis or theory articulated by any community member as true. The slippery political slope (authority, responsibility, and legitimacy) is apparent in the scientific context: how is being on guard against complacency different from being too skeptical to test any putative truth at all? Take the example of Al Gore, who in his An Inconvenient Truth (2006) sounded the alarm about climate change. More than a dozen years later we are still plagued by climate change deniers who refuse to look at the evidence, suggesting instead that the standards of science—from the collection of data in the North Pole to computer simulations in labs—have not been sufficiently fulfilled (“questions remain”) to hold humans responsible for the increase in the earth’s temperature. Some climate skeptics explain their doubt about climate change in this manner: “Consider someone like myself who was born in the midst of the Cold War. In my lifetime, scientific predictions surrounding global climate

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change has [sic] veered from a deep frozen to an overheated version of the apocalypse, based on a combination of improved data, models and, not least, a geopolitical paradigm shift that has come to downplay the likelihood of a total nuclear war. Why, then, should I not expect a significant, if not comparable, alteration of collective scientific judgement in the rest of my lifetime?” (Fuller 2018, 86) The seeds of doubt, as Descartes taught us, can be sown anywhere, and they bear unexpected fruits, depending on the context of their cultivation. Expecting improvements to the climate change model does not entail that no (improved) model can be offered, that methodological changes in themselves are a bad thing (they might be, rather, improvements), or that one should not take action at all based on the current model because in the future the model might change again. Change—evolutionary, fractured, continuous, cumulative, or disruptive— is what scientific processes are all about. When change is suspended—as in petrified religious dogmas that abhor critique—cognitive atrophy sets in and slow decay follows. The Royal Society of London (1660) set the benchmark for scientific credibility—what counts as factual truth—low when it accepted as scientific evidence any report by two independent witnesses. As years went by, testability (confirmation, for the Vienna Circle, falsification, for Karl Popper) and repeatability were added as requirements for a report to be considered scientific, and by now, various other conditions have been proposed as well. Skepticism, organized or personal, remains at the very heart of the scientific march toward certainty (or at least probability), but when used perniciously, it has derailed reasonable attempts to use science as a means by which to protect, for example, public health. Both Robert Proctor (1995) and Michael Bowker (2003) chronicle cases where asbestos and cigarette lobbyists and lawyers alike were able to introduce enough doubt in the name of attenuated scientific data collection to ward off for decades regulators, legislators, and the courts. Instead of finding enough empirical evidence to explain the failing health condition (and eventual death sentence) of workers and consumers attributed to asbestos and nicotine consumption, organized skepticism was weaponized to fight the sick and protect the interests of corporate giants and their insurers. Instead of buttressing scientific claims (that have passed the tests—in refereed professional conferences and publications, for example—of most institutional scientific skeptics), organized skepticism has been manipulated, exploited, and abused to ensure that no (legal) claim is ever true enough or has the complete legitimacy of the scientific community. In

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other words, what could have remained the reasonable cautionary tale of a disinterested and communal activity (that could then be deemed credible) has turned into a circus of fire-blowing clowns ready to burn down the tent so as not to admit that paying customers were fooled into a dangerous tent to begin with. Customers who get sick remain confused, not realizing that just because the stakes (for scientific validation) have risen over the decades, this does not mean there are no standards that can or should be met. Despite lobbyists’ and lawyers’ best efforts at derailment, courts eventually found cigarette companies and asbestos manufacturers guilty of exposing workers and consumers to deadly hazards, just as they are finding agribusiness giants, like Monsanto, guilty of selling weed-killers that are carcinogenic. If we add to this logic of doubt, which has been responsible for discrediting science and the conditions for proposing credible truth claims, a bit of U.S. cultural history, a broader picture of the unintended consequences of certain critiques of science can be discerned. Citing Kurt Andersen (2017), Robert Darnton suggests that the Enlightenment’s “rational individualism interacted with the older Puritan faith in the individual’s inner knowledge of the ways of Providence, and the result was a peculiarly American conviction about everyone’s unmediated access to reality, whether in the natural world or the spiritual world. If we believe it, it must be true.” (2018, 68) This way of thinking about the truth—unmediated experiences and beliefs, unconfirmed observations and personal opinions, and disregard for others’ experiences and beliefs— continues what Richard Hofstadter (1962) dubbed America’s tradition of “anti-intellectualism.” For Americans, this predates the republic and is characterized by hostility toward the life of the mind (admittedly, at the time, religious texts), critical thinking (self-reflection and the rules of logic), and even literacy. This view claims that the heart (our emotions) can more honestly lead us to the Promised Land, whether it is heaven on earth in the Americas or the Christian afterlife; any textual interference or reflective pondering is necessarily an impediment to be suspicious of and avoided. This lethal combination of confidence in one’s own feeling and righteous individualism brings about the kind of ignorance displayed in full view by Trump. This mindset is similar to what psychologists call “confirmation bias,” the view that we endorse what we already believe to be true regardless of countervailing evidence. We find ourselves in an era of “truthiness,” a term coined by talk-show host and comedian Stephen Colbert and defined as “the conviction that what you feel to be

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true must be true.” This attitude flies in the face of a long philosophical tradition that demands and expects one’s personal enlightenment to be based on the “courage to know” and the ability to release oneself from the “self-incurred tutelage” of others. (Kant 1784) However interpreted later, the Hegelian, Marxist, and Frankfurt School traditions expected the enlightenments to overcome the limits of faith, speculation, and superstition and become critical and self-reflexive enough to know the limits of one’s enlightenment, one’s own knowledge claims. (Malloy 2004) Surely, there is merit in asking for responsible critiques of science. Weren’t many of these critiques meant to dethrone the unparalleled (and in many cases unjustified) authority claimed in the name of science? This was definitely the case, as Stephen Jay Gould argues (1999, Chapter 6), during the racist exploitation of the “scientific method” to prove white superiority. There is a long history of the abuse of science (regardless of its ethos) for political purposes, justifying racist policies in the name of science and the collection of empirical data. As Gould explains, critical examination of the blatant violation of the scientific method could falsify any truth claimed in the name of science. One has to know the scientific method and not rely on the reports of charlatans. (ibid., Chapter 8) One has to question the extent to which institutional safeguards and self-policing by the scientific community (enumerated by Merton) were followed by scientists and were familiar to the public. Many have raised such objections. Jean-Françoise Lyotard (and Marx before him), warning of the shortfalls of the scientific enterprise, points out the conflation of power and money in the scientific vortex that legitimates whatever knowledge production profit-maximizers desire. In other words, the critique of scientific discourse was put on par with critiques of other discourses, refusing to grant it privileged immunity. Whose credibility ought to be challenged, and whose truth claims deserve special scrutiny? Can scientific discourse be protected from critique if it is true, as Monya Baker has reported, that “[m]ore than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments”? (2016, 1) The beneficiaries of scientific research funding are mostly silent on these questions about the problems (methodological and financial) of reproducing scientific experiments. Baker’s report cites Nature’s survey of 1,576 researchers and reveals “sometimes contradictory attitudes towards reproducibility.” Although 52% of those surveyed agree that there is a significant “crisis of reproducibility, less than 31% think that failure to reproduce published

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results means that the result is probably wrong, and most say that they still trust the published literature.” (ibid.) So, if science relies on reproducibility as an essential feature of its legitimacy (and superiority over other discourses), and if the results of reproducibility are so dismal, must this discourse not be discredited? Is this question too indicting? One answer, given by Hans Plesser (2018), suggests that there is a confusion between the notions of repeatability (“same team, same experimental setup”), replicability (“different team, same experimental setup”), and reproducibility (“different team, different experimental setup”). If understood properly with these different terms, it stands to reason that one may not get the same results all the time and that this fact alone does not discredit the scientific enterprise as a whole or undermine the scientific ethos advocated by Merton. Nuanced distinctions take us down a scientific rabbit-hole most critics and post-truth advocates refuse to follow. These nuances are also lost on a public that demands the bottom line of any inquiry in brief sound bites: Is science scientific enough, or is it bunk? Is it trustworthy? Trumpian political moves excel at rhetorical reductionism: set up false binaries so as to steer the choice in particular, even if unreasonable ways (Scott 1988), and repeat a falsehood often enough that people start believing it because they heard it already somewhere before. Complete disregard for evidencebased arguments is part of this mindset. And because sound individual critical faculties are not a prerequisite for listening to or participating in political discourse, post-truth may mean no truth, whatever the president says is true, whatever officials persuade people is the case, or whatever we get used to hearing. Critical questions about truth telling and the role of responsible critique mentioned above are relevant here just as they were in the case of scientific discourse. They become more urgent when totalitarian moves (mentioned by Orwell and Arendt and practiced by democratically elected presidents around the globe) conflate the political and the scientific, erasing the presumed distinction—methodological and institutional—between political and scientific discourses, between the truths incessantly contested and those settled on for ideological purposes. With such practices in mind, no wonder the presumed distinction itself becomes murky and unworkable. Nonetheless, is the distinction worth upholding? Admitting that the distinction between discourses is not as clear and stable as truth seekers would like it to be, and conceding the inevitable discursive overlap between the scientific and the political (as in the case of

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philosophy and sophistry and in the ways Foucault explains power relations) does not entail conceding that anything being critically engaged is thereby worthless. Discrediting a rigid distinction and navigating a blurred one are different modes of exposition from the wholesale dismissal of the usefulness of such a distinction when dealing with truth claims. Discrediting science has become a welcome political distraction that can be dated to the Reagan years of distrust of the government and its experts and continues into the Trumpian age. More than just a distraction, however, it is an ideological pivot point that opens up the floodgates to radical free-market logics, spanning from resource extraction and colonial globalization to the relaxation of environmental regulations and the exacerbation of wealth inequality. In the so-called marketplace of ideas, the wealthy few compete unfairly and always win, while the many are predestined to lose because they are poor or poorly funded. The original intent of critical investigations by truth seekers has been hijacked by the deliberate obfuscation of empirical data in the hands of corporate experts and lobbyists whose power to do so is protected in the name of freedom of speech, open competition, and democracy. (Sassower 2015) The epistemic intent of organized skepticism has been legally subverted to sow doubt and defer as much as possible the financial and moral culpability of corporate leaders. Neither the charge of outright public deception nor the charge of hypocrisy (when appealing to “organized skepticism” as a tactic for delaying the acceptance of scientific reports) deterred the lawyers and lobbyists who fought a losing battle on behalf of the tobacco and asbestos industries.

1.3

The Politics of Post-Truth

How do philosophers contribute to the climate of post-truth, where blurring the lines of demarcation between truths and lies has become commonplace? Over a century ago, Friedrich Nietzsche had a clear answer: the truth is fabricated, even when produced by scientists. In his short essay “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (2006), he credits humanity with mastering the “art of dissimulation,” an art that encourages humans to deceive and lie. This art is accomplished by “wearing a mask, hiding behind convention” so that it is bewildering “how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.” (2006, #1) It is puzzling, from this perspective, how the ubiquity of human folly would give rise to any interest in the truth. Nietzsche suggests that instead of

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knowledge of the world, “we possess nothing but metaphors for things,” because our knowledge claims are limited by the language we use. (ibid.) “What then is truth?” he asks. His answer puts the quest for (factual) truths in perspective: the truth is nothing but, in his words, a “movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding.” (ibid.) This characterization of the truth must have inspired Ludwig Wittgenstein’s switch from his view of the transparency accorded to the words we use to describe objects (1999) to a more complex understanding of linguistic family resemblances and the fluidity needed for the recognition of the contextual meaning of language. (1958) It must have also indirectly affected the pragmatic move Quine has declared about the empirical basis of philosophical truths (as we have seen above). For Nietzsche, “Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions—they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.” (ibid.) If truths are indeed illusions, and if humanity has forgotten that they were all along nothing but “binding” metaphors (because conventionally accepted), then of course these truths deserve to be critically examined. The “investigator” of truths about nature is “at bottom” only “seeking the metamorphosis of the world into man.” (ibid.) This is not the strong epistemological claim that we fabricate the world itself and that there is no “reality” outside our fabrication, but the more modest (Heraclitean) claim that the seeker’s “method is to treat man as the measure of all things.” (ibid.) As for science, Nietzsche continues, “all that we actually know about these laws of nature is what we ourselves bring to them— time and space, and therefore relationships of succession and number.” (ibid.) In case one wonders what exactly Nietzsche means by the limits of human knowledge and its scientific (factual) truth claims, he continues to explain that “we produce these representations in and from ourselves with the same necessity with which the spider spins.” (ibid.) The self-excreting spider becomes the exemplar of spinning scientific webs, perhaps to catch some truths about nature, perhaps to catch sustenance, perhaps to weave a beautiful pattern with explanatory powers or one with no function at all. Recalling the “honest Athenians,” Nietzsche concludes by saying that “all of nature swarms around man as if it were nothing but a masquerade

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of the gods, who were merely amusing themselves by deceiving men in all these shapes.” (ibid., 8) Why does Nietzsche bring up the “masquerade of the gods” as an amusement in “deceiving men”? Is it not difficult enough to have a grasp of nature without being deliberately undermined in the process? It seems naïve for philosophers and scientists to believe that if they carefully adhere to their methods when seeking the truth they can attain it, because, as Nietzsche suggests, the gods would deceive them no matter what. It is unclear why the gods would want to deceive humans, unless Nietzsche uses this personification of the elusiveness of truth to underline the inherent inferior epistemic power of humans by comparison. Eliminating human failure or the failure of one’s methods will not guarantee overcoming divine deception, that is, rising to the level of divine epistemic power. Instead, whatever is humanly known is circumscribed by understanding the meaning of natural phenomena in human terms so that the truth (about nature) is inherently “a movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms.” Some observers and promoters of the contemporary post-truth condition seem to follow this line of thought as an excuse for not seeking the truth anymore. (Fuller 2018) Instead of being the seekers of truth, thinkers who care about what and how we think, that is, Nietzsche’s “investigators” and “geniuses of [truth] construction,” philosophers are ridiculed by contemporary promoters of post-truth as marketing hacks or sophists. Some would argue that the criteria by which propositions are judged to be true or false are worthy of debate, a sentiment apparent from Socrates to Nietzsche and Frankfurt. With criteria in place (even if limited to a Nietzschean “convention”), at least we know what we are arguing about, as these criteria (even if contested) offer a starting point for critical scrutiny and communal engagement. This, as Nietzsche would agree, is a task worth performing, especially in the Trumpian age when multiple perspectives constitute the public stage on which not only the gods have chosen to celebrate their masquerade, but also politicians and their paid experts. It is much easier to enjoy the masquerade than search for the truth. In addition to debasing the work of philosophers and scientists, the post-truth mindset cynically exploits the difficulty of searching for the truth amidst the institutional skepticism that must accompany the collection of data and the construction of scientific models. It is one thing to challenge a scientific hypothesis about astronomy because the evidence is still unclear (as Stephen Hawkins did regarding his own theory of Black

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Holes until his death), and quite another to compare it to astrology (and give equal hearings to horoscope and Tarot card readers as to astrophysicists). The claims that anyone knows as much as anyone else, that experts can and should be ignored, and that any method of inquiry is as good as any other, are practically unreasonable and logically invalid. But they remain part of the Trumpian folklore and are supported by the likes of James Surowiecki (2004) who recalls Francis Galton’s 1907 observation that no matter how uninformed a crowd of people (at a country fair) may be individually, collectively it can guess the correct weight of an ox with great accuracy. (Average guess of 787 villagers was 1,197 lbs., while the actual weight was 1,198 lbs.). As folk wisdom, this is charming; as public policy, it is dangerous. Who would want a random group of people deciding how to store nuclear waste, and where? Who would volunteer to be subjected to the judgment of just any collection of people to decide on the necessity of an appendectomy or a triple-bypass surgery? Even when we endorse the view that we can collectively reach the truth, must we not ask, by what criteria, according to what procedure, or under what guidelines? Herd mentality, as Nietzsche already warned us, is problematic at best and immoral at worst. This does not imply worshipping experts and scorning all folk knowledge or having low regard for individuals and their (potentially informative) opinions. Some of us warn our students that simply having an opinion is not enough, that they need to substantiate it, offer data or logically argue for it, know its provenance, and who promoted it for what purposes before adopting it as their own, so as to be wary of uninformed (even if well-meaning) individuals (and presidents) whose gut dictates public policy. There is a difference between being skeptical of expert advice and being suspicious of nonexperts, because the former can defend themselves with data and experience while the latter can only defend their right to an opinion, however misguided. For those sanguine about the limits of knowledge and expertise, the past two hundred years offer plenty of frightening examples of state terrorism (already announced by Hegel in regard to the terror witnessed in France, and Horkheimer and Adorno [2002] in regard to Nazi atrocities) that illustrate in concrete form the limits of Enlightenment thinking. What characterizes the Trumpian age is a cynical disregard of any boundary conditions proposed by rational discourse and the reliance on evidence. Personal attacks via Twitter replace the art of persuasion. Unfortunately, this mindset has direct policy implications and it affects the entire globe with unwarranted trade wars with allies and foes that cost domestic jobs

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(when promising to bring jobs home), unnecessary escalation of nuclearwar threats that resemble a game of chicken (as if no president ever faced such an option), devastating immigration regulations, and the relaxation of emission controls that devastate the environment. Here, too, the charge of hypocrisy is limited in its potential to start critical engagement because of the cynical post-truth mindset that finds facts and evidence cumbersome and immaterial in comparison with ideological bravado. There is something appealing, even seductive, in the provocation to doubt the truth as rendered by the (elite scientific) establishment, even as we worry about sowing the seeds of falsehood in the political domain. The history of science is full of stories of authoritative theories debunked, cherished ideas proven wrong, claims of certainty falsified, and misuse of the scientific method for abhorrent ideological purposes (racism, sexism, anti-Semitism). Why not, then, jump on the post-truth wagon? Might this move unleash the collective imagination, enhance our knowledge, and improve the future of humanity? One of the lessons of postmodernism (at least as told by Lyotard) is that “post” does not mean “after” but rather “concurrently,” as another way of thinking all along. Just because something is labeled post, as in the case of postsecularism, does not mean that one way of thinking (secularism) or practicing has replaced another (religiosity); it has only displaced it and made both alternatives present at once. Under the rubric of postsecularism, for example, we find religious practices thriving (80% of Americans believe in God, according to a 2018 Pew Research survey), while the number of unaffiliated, atheists, and agnostics is on the rise. Religionists and secularists live side by side, as they always have, more or less agonistically. In the case of post-truth, by contrast, it seems that one must choose between post-truth and the hierarchical world of truths or the rigid distinction between truths and lies. But if we reject this binary of truths and lies, it becomes clear that truth as such is not given up just as modernity was not given up in the postmodern worldview. Must “post-truth” lose its hyphen, replicating postmodernism and postsecularism to avoid the periodization of chronological historical moments? Tending to the truth and the avoidance of lies, focusing on the search for truth despite the pitfalls of ignorance, and believing in the value of truth when considering knowledge claims are all practices no less worthy of pursuit in the Trumpian age than they were before. These practices may ward off the threat of cynicism while acknowledging the terror of truth telling. The lines of demarcation between truth and

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deception, however appealing and necessary at times, remain necessarily and inevitably blurry: Socrates was both a philosopher and a sophist. If post-truth meant the realization that truth and provisional or putative truth coexist and are continuously being reexamined, then no conflict would be at play. This realization could be accompanied by an appreciation of degrees of truth or degrees of verifiability when empirical observational reports are compared with other reports from different domains to encourage a lively, and hopefully critical, debate about the truth. False claims (that are only provisionally anchored in reality) would be debunked, reasonable doubts could be raised about provisional claims, legitimate concerns might be addressed when comparing different claims from different sources, and putative truths would form the basis of policy recommendations (with provisions for revision as new data emerge). In the Trumpian age, substituting personal accounts for established knowledge when such substitution is based exclusively on the right to one’s opinion is dangerous. The danger is to public policy, such as not wearing masks in public during a pandemic, as much as it is to the foundation of a community that must navigate knowledge claims and their truth-value. It is one thing to propose a theory and subject it to critical scrutiny (Popper’s conjectures and refutations) and quite another to use presidential powers to implement a theory without any scrutiny at all. While philosophers and scientists who might be also sophistical in deploying the art of persuasion to win an argument are usually clear about their intentions, those who deliberately deceive while pretending to be lovers of the truth would be haunted by the charge of hypocrisy. It is a sad moment in history when outright cynicism enables disregard of this charge altogether, dismissing along the way the importance of the search for truth.

1.4

Perspectival Truths

According to Michela Massimi, “truth within a perspective” offers a way out of naïve realism or an overly determined and absolutist view of realism. Thinking of truth within a perspective offers a nuanced appreciation of the context-dependent (Nietzschean) claim for truth. Massimi is interested in answering questions about the possibility of constructing universal knowledge claims about nature without using reductionism

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or appealing to foundationalism. In her words: “[I want] our scientific knowledge claims to track perspective-independent states of affairs within the ever-changing bounds of scientific perspectives.” (2018, 344; italics in the original) Just because humanly constructed truths are “contextdependent,” as Massimi seems to agree with Nietzsche without citing him, does not mean that the “state of [natural] affairs” themselves cannot be “perspective-independent,” that is, ontologically autonomous. While Nietzsche was inquiring about the truth in a “nonmoral world,” Massimi insists that “getting things right is a norm about what we take science to be about.” (ibid., 345; italics in the original) This is not to say that morality and norms are the same, but to recognize that “getting things right” in science has a definite normative weight. The normative aspect of scientific inquiry as an adherence to a particular prescribed ethos (in Merton’s sense) comes as close to adopting a moral framework, one with boundary injunctions the violation of which constitute “getting it wrong.” For Massimi, the epistemological quest has a moral dimension, the kind already announced in Socrates’ derision of sophistry (it was the exchange of money that was immoral, not the rhetorical devices used to persuade an audience) and his insistence on the privileged status of philosophy. With this in mind, Massimi reviews three kinds of perspectival truth, echoing in another register Nietzsche’s claim about the impossibility of knowing the (Kantian) “thing in itself” and settling on various interpretive perspectives within reasonable human reach. Perspective-dependent knowledge claims in science are “dependent on a given historically and/or intellectually situated scientific perspective.” (ibid., 347) With this historically informed move, Massimi does away with the modernist pretensions of a “view from nowhere,” the “bird’s eye view” from which the world can be observed “objectively.” Historically and intellectually contextualizing scientific claims renders their truth status contingent (perspective-dependent) but in such a way that they neither overshoot (with a universal or transcendental claim) nor undershoot (we are limited to relativized subjective opinions). Massimi explains in her second move that “perspective indexicality” is a way of conceding that scientific representation “is always perspectival and indexical because it is always from a well-defined vantage point.” (ibid., 348) Setting up an index that relates to levels of empirical richness of data adds another dimension to the perspectival one. This, too, echoes Nietzsche’s warning about the linguistic limitations of our truth claims and his acquiescence to

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the conventions of the age as well as gesturing toward more recent feminist “standpoint epistemology.” But instead of being accused of some sort of relativism, the “perspective-relativity” espoused here, she continues, “can capture perspectival considerations about truth being relative to scientific perspectives while also maintaining that nature consists of welldefined and perspective-invariant states of affairs.” (ibid. 349) Holding simultaneously the invariance of “states of affairs” and the multiplicity of perspectives as part of human experience exposes the false binary into which these two positions have been traditionally placed. Here they are posed as complementary and not oppositional. Nietzsche’s masquerade ball comes to mind: nature shows itself in different disguises because the gods playfully deceive us, but nonetheless nature remains the same regardless of its costumes and masks. In her third move, Massimi advocates “perspective-sensitivity” whereby “scientific perspectives provide the circumstances or context of use defining the truth-conditions for knowledge claims in science.” (ibid., italics in the original) Scientific perspectives are the contexts within which the truth status of knowledge claims is assessed. This kind of truth is “truth within the limits (afforded by rival scientific models or rival historical perspectives) of inaccurate-yet-successful scientific representations of a perspective-independent world.” (ibid., 353) This kind of truth is circumscribed by the conditions set up by the perspective adopted at that time by the scientific community. Popper’s situational logic (1994/1957) comes to mind as an informative methodological recommendation for the framework within which truth claims and choices among incommensurable scientific theories are made. What, then, of the scientific enterprise? What about the scientific process whose discursive privilege depends on its precise and reliable knowledge of (factual) truth? Massimi’s conclusion never loses sight of her target, which is the articulation of the conditions under which truth can be attained. Departing from the many analytic philosophers and scientific methodologists before her who used physics as their ideal model, she appeals to cartography as a model for scientific inquiry: this inquiry “becomes a mapping exercise (with incomplete and partial maps) of a world we never made. Perhaps this is all we can reasonably expect from science. Perhaps we should not ask for more from perspectival truth.” (ibid.) If this conclusion sounds too pessimistic for the acquisition of knowledge or the ascertaining of truth claims about nature, Massimi is quick to make her next move from the “context of

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use” to the “context of assessment.” There, a “cross-perspectival assessor” could “understand contextual truth-conditions in terms of standards of performance-adequacy that a scientific knowledge claim . . . has to satisfy.” (ibid., 354; italics in the original) In other words, a scientific knowledge claim that is true under specific conditions within a particular context could be compared to another claim within other contexts to fully adjudicate its cross-perspectival value and adequacy. This move is reminiscent of Kant’s notion of intersubjectivity as the bridge between abstract objectivity and solipsistic subjectivity. Massimi sounds uncannily Nietzschean in her closing words: “Perspectival truth may well be our best bet of getting things right from a human vantage point—a vantage point we equally share with our historical predecessors and contemporary rivals. This is the only vantage point we can legitimately reclaim as our own.” (ibid., 358; italics in the original) Nietzsche’s famous insistence that perspectival truth is the only truth humans can claim for themselves, following Heraclitus’ claim about humans being the measure of all things, is well recognized. Massimi can be similarly celebrated for her careful examination of the conditions under which perspectival realism maintains simultaneously a perspective-independent reality while conceding perspective-dependent scientific knowledge. In the age of post-truth, this is probably the most informed and responsible critique we can hope for: upholding some factual truths about reality no matter the context or the speaker while contesting other truths. Being epistemologically problematic while ontologically secure takes off the table nonsensical and irresponsible assertions about reality or the obvious impossibility of ever fully apprehending it, assertions that on their face derail critical deliberations. The likes of Frankfurt in the analytic tradition are correct in sensing the precarious position critics of science may inadvertently push the rest of us to adopt; but they are incorrect in preserving a pristine line of demarcation between truths and lies, between empirical facts and metaphysical statements, as Quine explains in his pragmatic move. The likes of Latour are correct to caution us against throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but incorrect in addressing the cure to the problem in washing the baby more carefully or not washing the baby at all and leaving them alone. And the promoters of post-truth in the Trumpian age are correct about the skepticism that permeates the cultural setting of contemporary political discourse, but are incorrect in ignoring the dangers associated with the cynicism that accompanies post-truth “playfulness.” Once again, it is one thing to be critical to the point of

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institutionalized skepticism and quite another to relinquish any quest for truthfulness and the ethical commitments associated with it. (Vice 2011) If the insistence on certainty and the binary of truths and lies are displaced with degrees of truth, there are readily available lessons about degrees of civility, from brutal honesty and compassionate frankness to manners and community building, that can be learned. The question of civility, manners, and etiquette, as Ruth Grant reminds us, is “necessitated by the moral shortcomings of human beings” (1997, 31), and in this respect raises questions about the charge of political hypocrisy to which we turn in the next chapter. Politicians can navigate their inevitable use of hypocrisy in different circumstances and still maintain some sense of personal integrity, that is, remain close to their moral truths even when they manipulate factual ones. Grant follows Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s sense that the “distinction between moral and factual truth governs the distinction between lies and fictions, which in turn replaced the attempt to distinguish lies from truthtelling in the ordinary sense.” (ibid., 115) To be truthful to one’s moral principles and to maintain one’s integrity may require, in this reading of Rousseau, using fictions—not blatant lies but maybe fabricated white lies—to ensure political compromises and prudent governance. In this sense, then, Grant concludes that “to lie means to betray the moral truth whether one adheres to the factual facts or invents them.” And this means, for her, that “the only falsehoods that deserve to be called lies are those that deceive us about moral judgments.” (ibid.) Falsehoods, in this recounting, are less serious, less pernicious than lies, and they seem to warrant the name “lies” only when their deception is applied in moral matters rather than factual ones. It also seems to be less about the intention of the speaker to deceive than about the context in which they are positioned: certain judgments are inappropriate in certain contexts. It seems that degrees of fidelity to empirical or political facts are more critically condemned when moral judgments are also at stake. The quest for truth in all matters is contextualized and modified, whereby the assessment of partial truths or degrees of truth is set against a moral and not a factual backdrop. Grant insists that what is at stake for Rousseau, and by extension what would worry us as well, is personal integrity, however fluid, and not within the binary of truths and lies, morality and politics. She quotes from Rousseau’s Reveries to say that “Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity” so that “truthfulness is a requirement of integrity and its demands are stricter than the demands of justice towards others.” (ibid., 117–8) This view of

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truthfulness appears here as a requirement for integrity, yet it remains unclear what the truthfulness is about: is it about one’s dignity (selfreported) or facts (reported by others)? The appeal to dignity may be related to sincerity and acting in good faith, at least being honest with oneself. Moving from the epistemological to the political sphere, it seems on this account that the discussion of truth as such or an absolute factual truth is irrelevant for political discourse where flexibility and compromise are common. Does the shift from truth to degrees of truth entail a compromise whereby truthfulness loses its meaning altogether? Would any delineation between truths and lies, good and bad behavior, moral rectitude and failure become so elusive as to set in motion the specter of relativism? Grant is ready to deal with these questions head on: “A tolerable compromise, acceptable lie, or beneficial manipulation always remains faithful to the moral truth, promotes justice as far as possible given the particular circumstances, is promoted by disinterested motives, and does not require the compromise of personal integrity.” (ibid.) “Tolerable,” “acceptable,” and “beneficial” take the burden off an absolute moral judgment, which would seem empty if dependent on “compromise,” “lie,” and “manipulation.” This would ensure, then, that the “man of integrity may make prudential calculations and must consider the consequences of his actions when making ethical and political judgments. Prudence is not in itself a threat to integrity.” (ibid., 140) Once again, classic binaries are challenged. One can be both prudent and maintain integrity, since compromise, for example, is for moral purposes, for the sake of the community, and no longer in the name of truth. In fact, at times the only way to ensure good outcomes is by calculating and manipulating, using the art of persuasion or weighing relative injury. As we shall see in the next chapters, degrees of truth, integrity, and prudence play an important role in fully coming to terms with degrees of hypocrisy, especially in the political sphere. What is at stake here is not so much the burring of binary distinctions as seeing that what is on either side of the binary does not mutually exclude what is on the other side; on the contrary: each side of the perennial binaries of philosophy and sophistry and truths and lies highlights its difference from the other, and as such, problematizes the charge of hypocrisy. In certain situations people are more honest with each other (perhaps in intimate friendships), and in others less so (in infrequent large family gathering, for example). Honesty and verbal exchanges are as much about truth telling or shielding one from the truth as they are about etiquette

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and manners: what is proper here and now may not be there and then; what may be proper in one culture seems completely inappropriate in another. What Americans perceive as aggressive modes of communication by Israelis are considered honest and truthful by Israelis among themselves; American politeness and cheerfulness, by contrast, is perceived by Israelis as saccharine and fake: why don’t you come out and say what you really mean? Context matters, obviously, but so does our cultural sensitivity to reading context and recognizing how it differs from other contexts. The professor who is completely truthful with a student under supervision may be less so with a colleague at a professional meeting where a job or promotion is under consideration or where the appearance of showing off at the expense of the embarrassment of another is unbecoming, even gratuitous. Of course, questions about authority and rank, gender and career prospects in these examples raise additional questions about accountability. In these different cases, manners and degrees of truth intermix and one’s behavior may not necessarily reflect on one’s character, integrity, or morality. Instead, what may be at play is the ability to adjust to different contexts and exhibit behavioral fluidity that is context-relative (in Massimi’s terms). This context-sensitive approach to interpersonal relationships and their discursive moves provides the epistemological backdrop—a wide spectrum of truths and lies that eschews extreme cases of blatant lies and indisputable truths—against which to question political hypocrisy as well. Will blatant lies be unrecognized? Or, will they stand out so that interest in them will become marginal? The Trumpian age makes us realize that questions about the charge of hypocrisy must be reserved for complex situations and not wasted on obvious instances. The difficulty of speaking about degrees of truth and human fallibility in scientific investigations and human communication is compounded by the difficulty of being self-conscious and critical about one’s observation and communication. Considering the complexity of determining what the truth is and how it is linguistically conveyed, Lacan explains how the speaking analysand turns the “subject” into someone who “is now speaking,” who is “the subject of the enunciation.” (1977, 298) When the question “Who is speaking?” arises in psychoanalytic treatment, when it is “the subject of the unconscious that is at issue,” Lacan insists that a “reply cannot come from that subject if he does not know what he is saying, or even if he is speaking, as the entire experience of analysis has taught us.” (ibid., 299) More broadly, how reliable is the testimony of any

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scientist or analytic philosopher when doing their best to report truthfully an experience or an observable fact? If the patient during psychoanalysis indeed “does not know what he is saying” in the sense that in speaking the truth is produced, what is at stake in the interpretation of the meaning of what is linguistically produced? Would the concept of degrees of truth be helpful here? All of this gets even more complicated when what is at issue, for Lacan, is the “Dasein hunt” that during analysis takes the form of a “paradox”: “conceiving that the discourse in an analytic session is valuable only in so far as it stumbles or is interrupted.” Scrutiny of and attention to the details of the psychoanalytic discourse—the speech pattern of the patient, whether reporting, reminiscing, or emoting—are important starting but not terminal points of analysis. Being granted entry into someone’s unconscious through a linguistic fabric, Lacan reminds us, is not as simple as ringing a doorbell and waiting for the door to open. On the rare occasion when entry to the unconscious is granted, it happens surreptitiously, as if one “stumbles” through the doorway and down the stairs or as if one is “interrupted” from the casual speech in which they were engaging to find something completely different, unexpected. The stumbling by accident or the unexpected interruption is a “cut in the signifying chain,” a chain one weaves in ordinary speech to make sense of one’s thoughts and feelings, of one’s life story, of one’s reality and the world one inhabits. Lacan continues: “If linguistics enables us to see the signifier as the determinant of the signified, analysis reveals the truth of this relation by making ‘holes’ in the meaning of the determinants of its discourse.” (ibid.) Language and speech fail the speaker and listener in different measures (as Wittgenstein concedes as well), and therefore, as reliant as psychoanalysis is on speech and linguistic chains of significations, this encounter has its limitations. The difficulties associated with revealing “the truth of this relation” are different from those found in the context of philosophical or scientific discourse, of course, because the production of meaning does not yield clarity. Yet Lacan’s analysis here is informative beyond the confines of the psychoanalysis. Just as it is the case for Lacan that getting to or stumbling upon the truth happens, so it may be the case for the seekers of (natural, factual, empirical) truth, philosophers and scientists. If in psychoanalysis the hope is not to lose what is temporarily revealed from the recesses of the unconscious, so it might be the case in scientific inquiry where some accidental revelations are gleaned in the deep or far away recesses of natural phenomena. Displacing the binary of empirical and rational methodology

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with a linguistic turn toward one’s conscious narrative allows for thinking about degrees of truth. However different, there is something enticing about recognizing that only the cracks and disruptions of one’s speech give glimpses into one’s unconscious in the psychoanalytic context and applying it to the philosophical search for truth. The precarity of internal truth seeking overlaps with the precarity of making knowledge claims and ascribing truth-value to them. The specter of Quine’s dogmas of empiricism haunts those who make any claims about the world or themselves. Can the search for truth escape dogmatic thinking? Does dogmatic thinking shackle the mind to a hierarchy of truths? Would the escape from dogmatic thinking release the mind to embrace partial truths and degrees of truth? We are wearing masks, as Nietzsche pointed out, and we are in a socalled masquerade ball to which the gods invite us but in which they also deceive us. Our epistemological difficulties are thereby compounded. Dogmatic thinking seduces the uneasy mind into what David Hume called a “dogmatic slumber” from which few are awakened. Have we crossed over to the Baudrillardian world of simulacra, a dream world of sorts where we deceive each other about an already incomprehensible world? Is there a way out of this hyperreality that is simultaneously real, unreal, surreal, and post-truth? And, perhaps more urgently: can philosophers, scientists, and others extract themselves completely from self-deception and linguistic fictions at least partially and to some extent, or are they instead doomed to remain in a foggy and messy human condition? These questions matter in assigning degrees of truth and by extension degrees of hypocrisy, and when doing so, they guide the seekers of truth because much is at stake. Once again, it is one thing to be cavalier about masks and deception when the stakes are low and one can afford to be playful (as if in a masquerade), and quite another when, for example, confiscating land and shattering lives. The Trumpian age is a reminder that the stakes are indeed high; it reminds us to resist the distraction of cynical daily entertainment delivered courtesy of the President’s Twitter feed. One way to thwart the appeal of cynical post-truth entertainment, that is, the replacement of debate over truth claims with outrageous fabrications detached from reality, is to insist on the value of truth in all communication. As will become clear in the next chapters, degrees of hypocrisy, just like degrees of truth and civility, can be informative in navigating the turbulence of political discourse at least as benchmarks against which to measure complicity and dangerous conduct. Giving up on absolute truths is not giving up on the search for truth just

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as giving up on a clear line of demarcation between truths and lies is not giving up on exposing blatant lies and defending partial truths when they foster deliberation.

References Theodor W. Adorno (1998/1963), Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords. Translated by Henry W. Pickford. New York: Columbia University Press. Kurt Andersen (2017), Fantasyland: How America Went Hotwire: A 500-Year History. New York: Random House. Hannah Arendt (1951), The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Schocken Books. Hannah Arendt (2005), “Truth and Politics,” New Yorker [2/25/67]; reprinted with minor changes in Jose Medina and David Wood (eds.), Truth: Engagements Across Philosophical Traditions. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Monya Baker (2016), “1,500 Scientists Lift the Lid on Reproducibility,” Nature Vol. 533, No. 7604, 5/26/16 (corrected 7/28/16). Jean Baudrillard (1983), Simulacra and Simulation [1981]. Translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e). Jean Baudrillard (1995), The Gulf War Did Not Take Place [1991]. Translated by Paul R. Patton. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Michael Bowker (2003), Fatal Deception: The Untold Story of Asbestos. New York: Rodale. Wendy Brown (2005), “Untimeliness and Punctuality: Critical Theory in Dark Times,” in Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, Ch. 1. Barbara Cassin (2020), Jacques the Sophist: Lacan, Logos, and Psychoanalysis [2012]. Translated by Michael Syrotinski. New York: Fordham University Press. Robert Darnton (2018), “The Greatest Show on Earth,” New York Review of Books Vol. LXV, No. 11 6/28/18, pp. 68–72. Jacques Derrida (1988), Limited Inc [1977]. Translated by Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Bernard Dupriez (1991), A Dictionary of Literary Devices. Translated by Albert W. Halsall. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Michel Foucault (1980), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972–1977 [1972]. Translated by Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper, edited by Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books. Harry G. Frankfurt (2006), On Truth. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

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Steve Fuller (2018), Post-Truth: Knowledge as a Power Game. London: Anthem Press. Al Gore (2006), An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What Can Be Done About It. New York: Rodale. Ruth W. Grant (1997), Hypocrisy and Integrity: Machiavelli, Rousseau, and the Ethics of Politics. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Donna Haraway (1988), “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 575–599. G. W. F. Hegel (2018), The Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]. Translated and edited by Terry Pinkard. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Richard Hofstadter (1962), Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. New York: Vintage Books. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (2002), Dialectic of Enlightenment [1944]. Edited by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, translated by Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Immanuel Kant (1983), “What Is Enlightenment?” [1784], in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals. Translated by Ted Humphrey. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Stephen D. Krasner (1999), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jacques Lacan (1977), Ecrits: A Selection [1966]. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York and London: W. W. Norton. Bruno Latour (2004), “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Facts to Matters of Concern,” Critical Inquiry Vol. 30 (Winter 2004), pp. 225–248. Daniel Malloy (2004), “Dialectic and Enlightenment: The Concept of Enlightenment in Hegel and Horkheimer-Adorno,” Auslegung Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 43–60. Michela Massimi (2018), “Four Kinds of Perspectival Truth,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. XCVI, No. 2, March 2018: 342–359. Robert K. Merton (1973), “The Normative Structure of Science” [1942], in The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 267–278. Friedrich Nietzsche (2006), “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” [1873], in The Nietzsche Reader. Edited by Keith Ansell Pearson and Duncan Large. Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 115–23. George Orwell (1981), Nineteen Eighty-Four [1949]. New York: Penguin Group.

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Hans E. Plesser (2018), “Reproducibility vs. Replicability: A Brief History of Confused Terminology,” Frontiers in Neuroinformatics Vol. 11, p. 76. Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fninf.2017.00076/ full. Accessed 7/10/20. Karl R. Popper (1994), The Poverty of Historicism [1957]. New York: Routledge. Robert N. Proctor (1995), Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don’t Know About Cancer. New York: Basic Books. Willard Van Orman Quine (1961), “Two Dogmas of Empiriism,” in From a Logical Point of View: 9 Logico-Philosophical Essays [1953]. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, pp. 20–46. Raphael Sassower (2015), Compromising the Ideals of Science. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Joan W. Scott (1988), “Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: Or, the Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism,” Feminist Studies Vol. 14, No. 1 (Spring, 1988), pp. 32–50. Edward Schiappa (1995), “Isocrates’ Philosophia and Contemporary Pragmatism,” in Rhetoric, Sophistry, Pragmatism. Edited by Steven Mailloux. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 33–60. John R. Searle (1983), “The Word Turned Upside Down,” New York Review of Books (10/27/1983). James Surowiecki (2004), The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Anchor Books. Samantha Vice (2011), “Cynicism and Morality,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice Vol. 14, No. 2 (April 2011), pp. 169–184. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958), Philosophical Investigations [1953]. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, Ltd. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1999), Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1922]. Translated by C. K. Ogden. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.

CHAPTER 2

Greek Masks and Hebrew Chameleons

Abstract This chapter examines the Greek and Hebrew etymologies of hypocrisy, the former related to stage acting and the wearing of masks, while the latter concerns blending into one’s environment as chameleons do. Using five examples that on their face exhibit the characteristics of deception and pretense, manipulation and gaining advantage over others, the two different etymologies are deployed to sharpen the contrast between their applicability. Examining some standard interpretations offered by analytic moral and political philosophers, primarily reliant on masking and unmasking, shows their limitations. As an alternative, literary and psychological readings are presented, where chameleon-like conduct is culturally contextualized. Keeping in mind a variety of interpretations might thwart snap judgments and encourage more considered, perhaps messier ones, when bringing up the charge of hypocrisy.

2.1

Greek and Hebrew Etymologies of Hypocrisy

The catastrophe of Trump and his coterie of neoliberal advisors and appointees forces a rethinking of the precarious conditions of democratic politics and the mental health of its participants. Instead of calibrating a new balance between liberal and democratic traditions (Mouffe 2018) or refashioning a postcapitalist political economy (Sassower 2017), the discussion here is limited to a particular set of strategies that could be considered hypocritical in the age of post-truth. An initial question guiding this discussion is: if (evidence-based) truth no longer © The Author(s) 2020 R. Sassower, The Specter of Hypocrisy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60573-5_2

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anchors debate, and if its validation criteria have been discarded (experts are suspect, science is unreliable), then are notions of deception, selfdeception, and hypocrisy still relevant? It appears, tentatively, that we should care about the truth, even if it is not an idealized Truth, truth with a capital T. This answer, though, leaves room for the following question: is conditioned hypocrisy—where context matters in terms of survival, for example, through deception—an optimal (if problematic) means for some individuals and groups (marginalized people, refugees, the permanent unand underemployed) to protect themselves? Though the answer might be in the affirmative, whether one adopts a materialist or pragmatic perspective, its moral justification remains a constant companion. We like to hate hypocrites, expose them for pretending to be better than they are, and judge them by rigid moral standards; that is the easy part. In this light, President Trump remains loathsome without being a typical hypocrite: he is open about his misogyny and racism, his greed and self-serving financial maneuvers; he refuses to pander to what he calls the (moralizing) elites, he boasts to his constituents that his way is always the right way, and he is unguarded when comparing foreign and American atrocities. He remains an obvious (and therefore uninteresting) exemplar of how politicians are sometimes condemned for voicing opinions they know to be false or politically provocative. (Galeotti 2018) Whether his hypocrisy is a form of self-deception or outright lying is irrelevant to the condemnation of his behavior, perhaps because he is explicit about his intentions, which we can judge in themselves as immoral, or because he does not care about the consequences of his actions at all and therefore pretends to transcend any moral code. Instead of offering an overview of the concept of hypocrisy in general or the criteria by which words and actions as reflections of how one’s inner moral compass ought to be judged, in this chapter the Greek etymology of the term (play-acting and masking) is juxtaposed with the modern Hebrew (coloring and chameleon-like behavior). This comparison highlights a difference and a tension that might be helpful in critically analyzing contemporary cases or at least indicating the difficulty of judging them. More specifically, while the early Greek definition lends itself to a moralizing judgment (why hide behind a mask? why not reveal your true self?), the Hebrew meaning seems more forgiving (the change of color as a disguise is expedient, even essential for survival). Theater actors wear their masks in public and thus signal to their audiences (and those who would judge them retrospectively) that they do not really mean

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what they say, since their words are designed to elicit particular effects, and as thespians, they are therefore not (epistemologically or morally) accountable for what they say. They follow a script. Chameleons, by contrast, use camouflage to remain undetected and are granted, indirectly, greater latitude for adjusting what they say to the circumstances of their utterances, regardless of the color of their true beliefs. In other words, although both could be charged with hypocrisy, Greek actors are more transparent about their pretense and the suspension of reality accompanying the disguises they don—the role played is signaled as such—while Hebrew chameleons both obfuscate detection and insist on the authenticity, however temporary, of their adopted or adaptive coloration. Why, then, should the Greek actor—“interpreter from underneath” (OED)— be denounced as participating in cowardly and immoral behavior, while the Hebrew chameleon is defended for ingenious cunning in challenging situations? I should note here that the modern Hebrew term for a hypocrite is zavua ( ), someone who is painted, insincere, or pharisaic. This , which is understood differs from the other Hebrew root of chanef by some biblical commentators as “lawless, criminal, or godless,” “an evil doer,” or “irreverent.” Accordingly, the verb means to “pollute, defile, or profane.” (Emerson 2020) I have chosen throughout this book to use the chameleon-like coloring not only because of its contrast to the Greek etymologies of hypocrisy and hypocrite, but because the second Hebrew etymology means to ingratiate oneself in a way that is perceived to be insincere or excessive, currying favor. Ingratiating oneself is less odious, even if repulsive to some, than the ancient understanding of being godless or an evil doer with a strong religious connotation. Staying away from the religious register draws me to use coloring and chameleon-like transformations as more interesting appreciation of hypocritical behavior and allows me to remain in the secular and environmental register that finds parallels between human and animal behavior. Even though in the religious context that includes the sacred texts of the Abrahamic religions, the chameleon makes an appearance only once (Leviticus 11:30) among the “unclean” animals that “swarm the earth” and should be neither touched nor eaten, it still offers in other contexts a more colorful alternative to the Greek etymological roots of hypocrisy. However informative the distinction between the Greek actor who wears masks and the Hebrew chameleon who changes its colors, it collapses or becomes permeable in the hands of Nietzsche. Actors, he says, display “falseness with a good conscience,” insofar as their art requires

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them to enact “simulation,” the kind that “pushes aside one’s so-called ‘character,’ flooding it and at times extinguishing it.” (1974/1882, 316) Actors, he continues, not only practice “good conscience,” even though “falseness” is their armor, but also respond to an “inner craving for a role and mask, for appearance.” (ibid.) The actor’s “role and mask” enhance the “capacity for all kinds of adaptations” required for performing the plays. (ibid.) The “adaptations” required of actors take a turn in Nietzsche’s On the Problem of the Actor when the actor’s “inner craving” is understood as an “instinct” that has been “developed most easily in families of lower classes who had to survive under changing pressures and coercions.” (ibid.) The shift from the adaptation of (voluntary) playacting to the “changing pressures and coercions” of the “lower classes,” in this context, parallels the shift from the Greek etymology of hypocrisy to the Hebrew. Unlike actors, Nietzsche seems to claim, the lower classes have a “deep dependency” that requires them to “cut their coat according to the cloth, always adapting themselves again to new circumstances.” There is a similarity between the mask and the coat as part of staging and fashioning one’s “appearance” and a similarity between adaptations to different roles on and off the stage. The coat, like the mask, covers the person wearing it, but it is cut “according to the cloth,” which may mean that it is too short either because there is not enough cloth or because circumstances dictate its length. If actors hide their “true selves” (whatever this may mean), poor people hide their poverty, their lower station, when appearing in public. To “become a coat” would mean here to be as changeable as a coat, to make the poor wearer and what is worn indistinguishable, whereas the rich have choices of attire and can express or hide themselves. Nietzsche’s figure ends up like the chameleon because the impoverished are no longer hiding behind the coat: they are the coat. There is only the coat. They have no freedom, no agency, and no choice but to wear what they have. Their stage, unlike the actors’ stage, is life itself; not a temporary theatrical performance, but a lifelong pretense of belonging in the public sphere like all other participants. Like actors, the lower classes “had to change their mien and posture, until they learned gradually to turn their coat with every wind and thus virtually to become a coat.” (ibid.; italics in the original) This immersive adaptation makes the lower classes as believable as chameleons who “become” who they are supposed to be; they blend into the environment’s contours and colors. Nietzsche’s description of the lower classes seems to echo the Hebrew etymology of hypocrisy more specifically when he says that they

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are “eternally playing hide-and-seek, which in the case of animals is called mimicry.” (ibid.) This “mimicry” becomes “domineering, unreasonable, and intractable” over time so that it “generates the actor, the ‘artist’.” (ibid., 316–7) The mask of the actor who entertains parallels the mimicry of animals who survive by adapting to one setting only to do it all over again in another, and in this sense, the Greek etymology seems to follow the Hebrew and not the other way around. As we shall see at the end of this chapter, the question of mimicry as a survival technique, with its evolutionary advantages of endurance and the perils of losing one’s sense of self, is a recurrent theme that has been critically revisited in the past two centuries. For Nietzsche, “a good diplomat would always be free to become a good stage actor if he wished,” (ibid.), because “social conditions” necessitate this “type” of behavior: “zany, the teller of lies, the buffoon, fool, clown at first, as well as the classical servant.” (ibid.) Moving from the theater to the political stage, the diplomat must adjust to the circumstances of foreign relations and perform, like an actor, a particular role assigned by the state so as to represent its interests. Right after considering diplomats whose play-acting seems reasonable, even obligatory (as we shall see below in the case of geopolitical agreements), Nietzsche singles out the Jews “who possess the art of adaptability par excellence,” so much so that he asks, “What good actor today is not – a Jew?” (ibid.; italics in the original) The Jew, the archetypal, persecuted, and traditionally “lower class” wanderer who adjusts in every age to different existential circumstances, is followed, in Nietzsche’s rendering, by women. The mixture of masks and animal mimicry with an instinctual “inner craving” for hiding through role-playing and wearing masks and historical adaptations in different contexts suggests that Nietzsche draws no clear lines of demarcation between the Greek and Hebrew etymologies of hypocrisy. The one turns into the other in an ongoing adaptive historical and dialectic unfolding. But is there any difference between willful deception and a forced one, between exploiting and adjusting to power relations (diplomats) and circumstances that threaten one’s life (lower classes, Jews, and women)? It should be mentioned at this point that masking, or more specifically, the covering of one’s face with a mask, has different purposes in different contexts and can therefore not be generalized. Though the focus throughout this book remains on play-acting on different stages, the extension to carnival, for example, would push the present analysis beyond its scope (see the literature on the carnivalesque as a mode of free

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interaction among people who defy the conventions of the day; Bakhtin 1984). Masks worn in carnivals differ as well from those worn in demonstrations, where anonymity may offer protective cover. Their purpose also differs from the mask robbers wear in attempting to avoid police identification. The sheets worn by members of the Ku Klux Klan both mask their identity and intend to terrorize their victims. Muslim women, by contrast, wear the hijab for religious reasons that have to do with modesty. Numerous additional examples of masking can be listed, each with slightly different intent and effect, yet they all illustrate the power of the mask to conceal or divert attention. In their various ways, they claim a right to refuse identification within a given governmental or communal regime and, on certain occasions, they unfold the problematics of being visible or invisible, gazing or being gazed upon. My analysis of the power dynamics associated with different visual contexts is limited here to the borderline cases related to the charge of hypocrisy. Hypocrites cannot be easily divided into actors and chameleons, as there are numerous contemporary situations where individuals and groups find themselves straddling those two positions or strategies, at times inhabiting both and at others choosing between them. Nietzsche’s own characterization illustrates how one kind of deception becomes the other, how the Jew is not simply the lower class chameleon who tries to fit in by deception, but is also a good model for the actor who takes on the role of someone else. Yet, unlike Molière’s charge of hypocrisy leveled at the pretenses of the high and mighty members of the upper classes, Nietzsche’s invectives target the lower classes. Perhaps he thought the pretenses of the upper classes are gratuitous and deserve no critique— they are as obvious and feed the public imagination—while those of the lower classes, the Jews, and women, deserve scrutiny. It seems odd at this juncture that those who need masks and coloring to survive are more susceptible to blame and ridicule. Nietzsche’s words are not judgments as much as descriptions, noticing the conduct of the lower classes, paying attention to their performative skills on the public stage, their coerced adaptability. The lower classes, despite the “coercion” to which they are subjected, are similar in their talents to the privileged actors who parade on the theater stage and entertain their privileged audiences. Nietzsche could be interpreted not so much as ridiculing but rather valuing what can be learned from them, the lower classes and how public conduct can be undertaken, so that “under changing pressures and coercions,” one can expect “the art of adaptability par excellence.” Having changed

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“their mien and posture,” learning “gradually to turn their coat with every wind,” they had “virtually to become a coat.” But what does it mean to “become” a coat? Nietzsche asks his readers to recognize that once the lower classes, the Jews, and women have been dehumanized, all there is left of them, all that can be observed of them, is their “coat.” The horrifying images of piles of coats, glasses, and shoes in Nazi concentration camps come to mind here. Where are the people? What happened to them? Nietzsche may be demanding that his readers pay attention where attention has not been paid before: learn from the lower classes, he seems to say, because adapting well is part of who they have become; it is an integral part of their survival strategy. Though the privileged may shamelessly want more than they already have, their identities are just as determined by their public appearance (their coats) as the poor, they, too, are engaged in adaptability processes, even though for different reasons. When Jews adapt to their social environment, Nietzsche says elsewhere, they bring to bear “extraordinary” “psychological and spiritual resources.” (1982/1881, 205) Singling out the Jews, he says that “every Jew possesses in the history of his fathers and grandfathers a great fund of examples of the coldest self-possession and endurance in fearful situations, of the subtlest outwitting and exploitation of chance and misfortune.” History has equipped the Jews to endure hardship and outwit their oppressors. More significantly, these adaptive strategies, learned over a long history of discrimination, reveal “their courage beneath the cloak of miserable submission, their heroism in spernere se sperni [despising the fact that they are despised], surpass[ing] the virtues of all the saints.” (ibid.) Characterizing the Jewish response to their condition in terms of “courage” and “heroism” beneath “the cloak of miserable submission” shows a certain compassion or favorable regard toward Jews. In these words, Nietzsche seems to speak admiringly about the “self-possession” and “endurance” of the Jews in the face of “fearful situation[s],” reorienting the conception of adaptive behavior from defeat or resignation to deliberation and cunning. To suggest that this mode of adaptive behavior “surpasses the virtues of all the saints” elevates the Jewish response to superlative heights. Questions about the conditions that justify deception through adaptation remain in the present. Five examples help examine the problems of assigning the pejorative charge of hypocrisy to conduct befitting actors and chameleons or a mixture of the two. Reviewing five well-known instances of apparent hypocrisy may explain the extent to which they are

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more problematic than they first appear. The first is the Israeli objection to the Iranian nuclear program while maintaining its own (well-known) secret one. The second is the revelation about the sexual life of avowedly celibate Catholic clergy amid the furor and exposure of persistent crimes of pedophilia. The third is the accusation of President Obama as being disingenuous when engaging different audiences in his political career. The fourth is President Trump’s comments on torture. The fifth relates to the claims of community building made by WeWork’s CEO. The ubiquitous and typical hypocrisy dramatized by Moliere’s Tartuffe and The Misanthrope (see also the commentary by Zupanˇciˇc 2008) represents the distinction of one being the masked actor, the other the chameleon, one being contemptible, the other expected for sociality. The five examples under review here test the nuanced conceptual apparatus already outlined by Moliere, and analyze the different circumstances that give rise to conditional and perhaps conditionally appropriate (if not fully justified) hypocrisy. These examples suggest that hypocritical behavior can be a reasonable response to unreasonable expectations (of oneself and of others) or an appropriate means for survival and flourishing of individuals and in some cases of group solidarity. Understood differently, the charge of hypocrisy might offer a critical tool with which to appreciate political formations and personal relations in chameleon-like terms rather than as the unmasking of politicians whose bad faith or false consciousness are exposed in light of the moral righteousness they publicly proclaim.

2.2

Five Examples

The examples invoked here have one similar feature. Though appearing hypocritical in the sense of pretending to be one thing while in fact being something else—a form of deception and perhaps self-deception as well, a pretense that becomes clear to anyone paying close attention—all the examples here appeal to the reasonableness of their respective deceptions. In fact, it would be unreasonable, even dangerous, not to be hypocritical in these situations, regardless of the charge of hypocrisy. With a low moral threshold (not the Kantian “categorical imperative” or that of religious zealots), it would be an acceptable strategic ploy to behave the way leaders of nation-states have behaved. With an elevated moral threshold, a strict rule of thumb, the behavior in these examples would be condemned as hypocrisy. There are differences, of course, between the examples, but

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all defy a clear charge of hypocrisy because of the particular circumstances within which they unfold and thereby illustrate degrees of pretense. It is also unclear against whom the charge is a deserved indictment. What can be said of the Israeli misrepresentation of its stockpile of nuclear weapons is quite different from the dissimulation of celibate Catholic priests. The charge of hypocrisy of President Obama’s code-switching in public and private exchanges differs from the hypocrisy that President Trump admitted concerning American torture. All of these charges differ as well from the one related to WeWork, an American corporation that parades adherence to social values while enriching its founder and perhasp some shareholders. 2.2.1

Israel, Nuclear Weapons, and Iran

Since its War of Independence in 1948, the Israeli state has pursued a nuclear armament program while denying having any nuclear ambitions or actual warheads. Befitting the worst kind of post-truth mindset, the Israeli government has avoided answering a simple question: are you among the nuclear power states? There are currently five “recognized” nuclear-weapon states—the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom—all of whom signed the Non-Proliferation Nuclear Treaty in 1968, while India and Pakistan have never signed the treaty and North Korea formally withdrew from it in 2003. Israel has shrouded its status as a nuclear-weapon state in a cloak of secrecy, even though it is common knowledge that it has both nuclear bombs and the means for delivering them by air, sea, and ground. Whether Israel has a few dozen or many hundreds of deployable bombs is less relevant than the fact that it has such weapons at all, that it has tested them, and that it continues to produce them. Reading the history of the Israeli development of nuclear arms, it is noteworthy that EMET , the acronym used to refer to the reorganized Israel Atomic Energy Commission as the Division of Research and Infrastructure, stands for Agaf Mechkar Ve’tichun (Research and Development Section). Emet in Hebrew means truth, of all things. The irony of referring to an open secret in the Israeli defense system as “truth” is reminiscent of Talmudic beliefs about finding truth buried in the sacred text or in between its lines: the existence if God’s truth is never in dispute, but its apprehension alludes seekers. The Israeli nuclear-weapons open secret would be less interesting in this context were it not linked to more recent debates about the nuclear disarmament agreement reached with Iran in 2015 that included the

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United States, China, Russia, France, United Kingdom, Germany, and the EU (“The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”). It makes sense that the signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty would be concerned with potential nuclear development in Iran (and North Korea). One issue worth mentioning here, of course, is that nuclear technology is used as an energy source that could be transformed into a weapons program. Israel has been a vocal opponent of the Iranian deal, given its mistrust of Iranian political and military intentions in the region, and it found a receptive ally in President Trump, who unilaterally decided in 2018 to withdraw from the Agreement his predecessor, President Obama, signed. Israel has routinely bombed (presumably nuclear) production facilities in Iraq (“Operation Opera” in 1981) and Syria (“Operation Orchard” in 2007), and hacked the Iranian nuclear program (the Stuxnet malware in 2010). Israel has made it clear that it will not tolerate the development of any nuclear arsenal by a neighboring state, all the while maintaining an enigmatic position about its own nuclear capabilities. The so-called “Samson Option” amounts to a last resort deterrence strategy—and therefore is known worldwide while still being an official secret—in relation to hostile neighboring states. (Wikipedia) One need not be a geopolitical expert to discern a hypocritical posture on the part of Israeli politicians and their international supporters. Yet the question can be asked as to whether this is outright hypocrisy in the sense of deception and pretense. It could be, instead, that we are witnessing chameleon-like adaptive behavior. The distinction remains relevant in the contemporary context, as Israel has not been brought to task by the court of international public opinion, let alone by any formal international court. The General Assembly of the United Nations has condemned Israel in at least forty-five resolutions (more than the rest of the countries in the world combined), and has called on Israel since 1974 (resolution 32/63, reiterated annually from 1975 to 1988) to agree to the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle-East. No action has been taken by Israel to comply with any of the resolutions nor have any sanctions been levied against it by any nation-state except for the ongoing Arab embargo. Perhaps the charge of hypocrisy is best directed at other international powers (some with nuclear weapons, some without) who condemn the proliferation of nuclear armaments when it gets to Iran or North Korea but turn a blind eye when it gets to the Jewish state, or at those who condemn the Israeli state while turning a blind eye when it gets to their Iranian or North Korean allies. Surely, a geopolitical logic

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is at play here. Might there be a deliberate exploitation of the specter of the Holocaust, when helpless Jews were systematically hunted and killed, as a distraction to the issue at hand, which is Israel’s denial of its nuclear power? Empirical evidence—about the military might of the Israeli state—seems secondary, as in any post-truth context. The theatricality of geopolitical posturing does not overshadow and cannot overlook its potential dangerous consequences. 2.2.2

Celibate Clergy in the Catholic Church

Under the strictures of celibacy, clergy members of the Catholic Church are supposed to refrain from sexual contact with each other during years of training, and with congregants and other laypeople in their professional roles. Though these policies were in flux during the first millennia, in 1074 Pope Gregory VII declared that anyone to be ordained as a priest must first pledge celibacy. (Future Church 2019) The formal renunciation of sex was supposed to ensure purity of spirit in the conduct of the clergy, as the Church considered both virginity and marriage to be sacred and worthy of religious supervision and strict regulation. But if members of the clergy are indeed supposed to be celibate, how have cases of pedophilia proliferated? This question has taken center stage in the past few years when revelations of the pervasive crime of pedophilia became public. Reviewing the cases reported in 2018, the National Catholic Reporter suggests that cases of abused children and nuns have been litigated in North and South America and Europe. (National Catholic Reporter 2019) There is a veiled implication that the abuse was somehow related to the rules of celibacy, where no sexual outlets are sanctioned. Similarly, conjectures about the percentage of gay priests appear to stand for an unwarranted indictment about sexual predatory conduct. (Dias 2019) It remains dubious (though speculations abound) whether or not there is any connection between being gay and being a predator. Unclear, but much more worthy of exploration, is also the relation between one’s sexuality under conditions of strict celibacy and the abuse of young children under the religious and spiritual custody of clergy members. Charges of hypocrisy can be addressed to various candidates. First, church leaders who are hypocritical about human sexuality and the sexual needs of clergy members. Second, church leaders who deceive their recruits by claiming that spiritual life not only transcends the desires of the flesh, already distinguished by Socrates (in the Symposium) in terms

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of heavenly and earthly love, but can be overcome and suppressed with devotional prayer. Third, church leaders who deceive themselves when professing these beliefs to others, while sneaking here and there to fulfill their own sexual needs (with women and men, with nuns and other priests, and in some cases, it would seem, with children). Even in a Church known for its historical patterns of hypocrisy, these cases strain credulity. In addition to Church leaders, charges of hypocrisy can be directed at members of the clergy who have engaged in illicit sexual conduct, especially with non-consenting minors. Is there any moral universe wherein such behavior is appropriate? Claiming celibacy while sexually abusing their young charges is the epitome of bad faith, deception, and criminality; hypocrisy as self-deception would be a secondary charge. And perhaps another group against whom the charge of hypocrisy can be leveled is the congregation that seems oblivious to the dangers associated with entrusting strangers, albeit clergy members, with their children. However complex this example remains, it is clear that there a difference between the charge of hypocrisy leveled at the clergy and their supervisors who should have known better from the charge of hypocrisy leveled at parents whose faith blinded them to the possibilities of abuse. This difference may also avoid the charge of blaming the victims for the actions of perpetrators. It is unfathomable that any parent would knowingly entrust a predator. One twist of this example might be that the very condition of celibacy sets up untenable options for young men who join the Catholic clergy. This example differs from the example of the nuclear armament after the formation of Israel, because the “enemies” are so different, in the first example threatening militaries and in the second faith leaders who are no enemies at all. These two examples (and the three to follow) illustrate the problematic context within which to interpret conduct as hypocritical. Israel’s hypocrisy regarding its nuclear weapons is implicated in the hypocrisy of the international community that condemns one day and remains silent on another. The Church’s hypocrisy about sexual desire is likewise implicated in the hypocrisy of the entire community of worshippers with unrealistic views about sexuality in general and celibacy in particular.

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President Obama’s “Code Switching”

One of the oldest political skills is indisputably the “ability to adjust one’s speech, and one’s mannerisms, to different audiences,” (Beam 2010) a point made already more than two millennia earlier by Aristotle about the art of rhetoric. When applied to President Obama, who was described by Harry Reid (D-NV) as being “a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one’,” this particular political skill takes on a different racist dimension. Senator Reid was calling out President Obama, not defending his own privileged whiteness. More specifically, according to Beam, “Obama’s knack for tweaking how he talks—or code-switching, in linguistics terminology—was on display during the campaign and after.” This meant that at fundraisers in New York, “he’d put on his professorial lilt. In front of mostly black audiences in South Carolina, he’d warn them against believing rumors that he was a Muslim.” (ibid.) Whether President Obama’s code-switching was stylistic or substantive is less relevant in this example than the presumed basis for Beam’s observation, which reads like a complaint about political disingenuousness. Is it fair to charge Obama with hypocrisy? Is code-switching a deceptive move, pretending to be someone one is not, deceiving an audience to which one appeals for support? According to Beam, “Code-switching—or code-mixing, or styleshifting—is as universally derided as it is universal. In day-to-day life, it is seen as somehow deceitful—a betrayal of one’s true self. In politics, it’s considered the worst kind of pandering.” (ibid.) But is “pandering” not an integral part of campaigning, an essential bridge for bringing together different communities and signaling one’s empathy and solidarity? To some extent, this is the inevitable predicament of a politician trying to reach out to and “represent more than one group of people. In other words: pretty much always.” (ibid.) One could argue that without being sensitive to different linguistic codes, one would be tone-deaf and insensitive to communities whose linguistic expression deserves respect. Relating to other people, appreciating the need to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers, and accommodating one’s demeanor and verbal expression sounds reasonable. Is the charge of hypocrisy warranted because the pretense is ill intentioned? David Runciman suggests that “when it comes to sincerity and hypocrisy in politics, one can have intellectual insight, or one can have practical flexibility, but one cannot have both.”

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(2008, 209) If “practical flexibility” is reducible to being hypocritical, then the conditions of democratic politics—campaigning, fundraising, public debates, compromising to build coalitions—will necessarily lead to hypocrisy. As we shall see in the next chapter, some of the premises on which liberal democracy is instituted are problematic in this sense: they demand compromises whose very achievement can be perceived as hypocritical. As Beam reminds us, although Senator Reid can level the charge of hypocrisy in the form of code-switching against President Obama, any bystander could level that charge against Reid himself: “It’s hard to imagine him saying the same things in front of Obama himself—or any African-American—rather than to two middle-aged white reporters.” (ibid.) Is the issue, then, the audience, the speaker, or the language itself? What seems to orient the charge of hypocrisy is the context of the exchange: how manipulative or subtle it sounds, how receptive or resistant the audience, and how sincere or disingenuous the speaker is in making explicit the need to modulate their speech or speaking style. In President Obama’s case, he could connect with many different audiences because of his experience with Black and white folks, poor and rich ones, educated and not so educated. Chapter 5 discusses code-switching in some detail in relation to the multiple ways in which it is undertaken also as a means for survival and flourishing. Suffice here to add this example to those of Israel and the Catholic Church as another reminder of the importance of context for examining the charge of hypocrisy: the institutional, personal, cultural, and political parameters that inform the criteria by which hypocrisy is charged matter. 2.2.4

President Trump’s Torture Comments

President Trump’s performances include speaking from two sides of his mouth, contradicting himself within minutes, and outright lying and are too numerous and ever-present to report here. His explicit misogyny while declaring that “no one respects women more than I do,” blatant racism toward southern border immigrants as “rapists” while claiming to respect hardworking Mexicans, and many other cases in the context of self-dealing and financial conflict of interest (part of the 2019 impeachment process against him) are well-known. One example where Trump might have said aloud what most Americans and foreigners thought was the case but preferred to remain silent on the issue (the way Israeli leaders

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are silent on the question of nuclear arms, except when it comes to Iran) may be worth reviewing. The conservative, right wing Fox News has become, especially since the 2016 presidential election, the unofficial partisan mouthpiece of Trump and his Administration. So, it was surprising, as Jacob Levy of the Los Angeles Times reported, that one of the most outspoken allies of the president, Bill O’Reilly (who has since resigned from Fox News in disgrace amid accusations of sexual assault), asked Trump about “his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying ‘Putin’s a killer.’ Trump’s reply was astonishing: ‘There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?’” (Levy 2017) In few words, Trump refocused the human rights question of torture and the killings of innocent civilians into a question about honesty and truth telling. Defying the conventions of the political stage, Trump appears more raw than polished; unmasked, he is presumed to be honest and straight shooting. He thereby appeals to his base as an authentic warrior and not a clever politician or an actor. Yet his refusal to “speak through the flower” (etwas durch die Blume sagen), as the German expression has it, however inconsistent, is also apparently unfiltered, unprocessed, and uncensored by any social mechanism—whether a conscience, a superego, or simply a sense of shrewdness—making it no surprise that he has been dubbed by some as the Id of the nation. Trump’s casual, almost flippant comment about the pervasiveness of torture openly challenged standard official claims about American moral high ground in comparison to other countries. Trump set American behavior on par with other totalitarian regimes, notably Russia’s, whose conduct is regularly condemned by international institutions. Trump did not dispute Putin’s behavior or defend it; instead, he shone a bright light on American hypocrisy: condemning other countries for what the United States does as well, torturing and killing innocent civilians. Levy continues: “There’s often been real hypocrisy in American denunciation of authoritarians, dictators, warmongers and killers. The United States has shed a lot of blood, including innocent and civilian blood. We do not have to go back to the Cold War, with CIA agents’ assassinations and support for murderous Latin American dictatorships, to see this. The Obama administration’s drone war campaign is more than enough.” (ibid.) Indeed, if one were to track American statements about its pursuit of international peace and its willingness to serve as the international police force to ensure geopolitical stability, one would be convinced that American foreign policy is all about peacekeeping. Its ongoing covert

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operations (the last of which was the 2020 “target killing” or plain assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani), however, tell another story that deserves the charge of hypocrisy. Trump correctly stated in his interview with O’Reilly that American hands are no cleaner than other regimes’ hands. He might have added that the United States has not been honest with the United Nations or that it has violated sovereign states by conducting drone warfare in more than a dozen locations without a declaration of war, a congressional appropriation, or even a U.N. sanction. Is there a difference between the United States and other states’ aggression? Is the United States’ 2018–2019 bombing in Yemen (in coordination with Saudi Arabia) different in degree or in kind from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea? Does the charge of hypocrisy fit one case better than it does the other? Levy explains that American “denunciation of authoritarians, dictators, warmongers and killers” and its “hypocrisy” were themselves “an acknowledgment that America aimed to do better. The public expected, and elites at least tried to deliver, a government that could claim the moral high ground.” (2017) Levy seems to think that Trump was missing the point of “American denunciation,” or if he got it, that his focus was too shallow. For Levy, the point is not about being hypocritical by behaving worse than is publicly proclaimed; rather, he suggests, the charge of hypocrisy carries with it a presumption about an ideal geopolitical behavior despite falling short of it: hypocrisy as aspiration. In this example, President Trump is treating a foreign adversary better than expected (given the adversary’s conduct) and justifying this treatment because America’s own record is no better. Trump’s false equivalence (between Russian and American foreign policy) is meant to avoid the charge of hypocrisy, but it overlooks the importance of the charge of hypocrisy as a bellwether of conduct and the importance of keeping a geopolitical ideal alive, no matter how many countries fall short in achieving it. Israeli politicians may use similar rhetorical devices when facing regional nuclear proliferation, at least in the sense that under ideal geopolitical conditions no nuclear deterrence is necessary. If the wellknown Israeli nuclear-weapons secret were revealed, it would uncover political masks on the international stage. Unmasking looks almost heroic in one register, but in another it seems trite, as it becomes clear that adjusting to new geopolitical realities warrants some camouflaging, adaptation, code and color switching—even some degree of hypocrisy.

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WeWork’s CEO on Community Building

The last example raised here is that of WeWork’s CEO Adam Neumann who founded a company that offers office spaces to individuals with the promise that a community will evolve as well. Rather than adopting the traditional model of shared executive suites with common secretarial staff, boardroom spaces, and technical support for communications and office management, WeWork hitched its office space offering to the “sharing economy” wagon where access to goods and services takes precedence over (or even eliminates) the quest for personal ownership. Instead of individually owning houses, cars, offices, and tools, people “share” them in the form of short- or long-term rentals. (Sundararajan 2016) According to Sara O’Brien, “Neumann wasn’t just any CEO: He harped on the importance of ‘community’—a word that appeared 150 times in the company’s IPO paperwork—even renaming the company The We Company earlier this year.” (2019) One wonders how often a word must be repeated to be taken seriously; one hundred and fifty times? Is repetition a sufficient condition to bring about, out of thin air, a community (or an image of the country, in the case of Trump)? O’Brien reports that during a U. S. Conference of Mayors in 2018, Neumann said: “As mayors, as leaders, as CEOs, it is our responsibility to set the trend of the future and the trend of the future is ‘we’ versus ‘me’.” (ibid.) The supposed innovative switch from the individual—a benchmark of American entrepreneurship with a long history of appealing to rugged individualism and manifest destiny—to the community seemed so novel to the Japanese CEO of Softbank that he agreed to invest heavily in the company. Softbank’s goal was an Initial Public Offering that valued WeWork between $18 and $47 billion. When the project fell apart and WeWork’s board decided to get rid of Neumann, reports O’Brien, “The generous payout for Neumann felt hypocritical to some.” (ibid.) How could a CEO who marketed his company as building community enrich only himself at the expense of investors and employees? There is a presumption here that the goal of community building can be monetized without being undermined. The “community” envisioned and promoted all along could be clients in the offices, WeWork’s employees, investors and financial lenders, or WeWork’s board members and executives. Putting aside for a minute the question of whose community was envisioned and promoted, it seems that self-enrichment is indeed the sine qua non of entrepreneurial capitalism. What is hypocritical in duping

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the public—investors, employees, real-estate owners, and brokers—with a clever marketing ploy? This sounds like the oldest trick in the capitalist handbook—an entrepreneur sets out to make as much money as possible—so that this example does not seem to warrant the charge of hypocrisy at all. It is one thing to build “communities” who then take care of themselves and quite another to suggest that they ought to succeed according to some ideal. So, what evidence is brought to bear in considering this example as warranting the charge of hypocrisy? Rosabeth Moss Kanter contends that WeWork was not part of “market capitalism,” but rather a “corporate kleptocracy.” (2019) Her presumption is that capitalism in its so-called pure and ideal form differs from kleptocracy, that indeed capitalism does not operate as a stealing machine, but instead benefits both buyers and sellers, employers and employees alike, and that Ponzi schemes ought to inhabit a different (criminal) universe than the run-of-the-mill capitalist enterprises, however misguided they turn out to be. In her words: “Neumann used his celebrity to hob-knob with the high and mighty while running the company into the ground—and then he received a golden parachute on steroids for his efforts.” (ibid.) Here, too, one wonders if the “golden parachute” enjoyed by Neumann is different in degree or in kind from the ones regularly enjoyed by corporate leaders who are ousted from their corporate perches. Kanter becomes more specific in her charge of hypocrisy: “Consider the hypocrisy involved. Neumann made grand pronouncements about creating a great culture of sharing and offering spaces in which people could reach their highest potential. But now thousands of people could lose their jobs solely because they believed in Neumann and his vision.” (ibid.) Neumann seems to have been less deceptive in promoting his vision of inclusion while benefitting alone than the deception of employees who wanted to see something that was not really there: a shared vision of communal engagement they fantasized about. One shudders at blaming the victims, of course, as was the case with the parents of children abused by clergy. But the employees seem to have been willing participants who deceived clients into believing that their company, WeWork, was providing more than just an executive-office service like many other vendors. Alyson Shontell shifts the discussion of this example to the board of directors, who has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, government regulators, employees, and financial institutions. She reminds us that unlike privately held companies where owners can do almost anything they want (except break the law), “A public company’s board of directors

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is supposed to look out for shareholder interest,” (2019) and presumably ensure no laws are broken. However, when it comes to startups, venture capitalists and friends of the entrepreneur have their own agenda in mind: “Their unspoken primary objective is to look out for their own self-interest and protect their returns.” (ibid.) This means two things. First, boards (who are appointed for the most part by the founder) tend to back the founder and not the company as a whole, and second, in order to ensure higher valuation of their initial investment (especially when planning an Initial Public Offering), they are less likely to find flaws in current operations and question future plans. In the case of Neumann, continues Shontell, “[venture capitalists] know that without someone like Neumann at the helm, someone who is said to be one heck of a salesman, WeWork’s valuation would be worth nowhere near $47 billion.” (ibid.) This realization, in short, upends the fiduciary responsibility of the board to employees, lenders, and investors, so that there are no “checks and balances” at play, no one to challenge misguided financial decisions. For Shontell, “Neumann, for all his excesses, is just the culmination of a trend that’s been going on for years. The all-powerful startup founder has free reign to do almost anything they want, short of murder.” (ibid.) From this perspective, then, the responsibility rests with boards of directors of startup companies even more than with founders whose exaggerations and self-promotion are to be expected, however deceptive they may seem in retrospect. Similar questions can be asked about the responsibility for foreign policy implementation and the ways in which the intelligence community deserves scrutiny when advising presidents (as in the case of Weapons of Mass Destruction leading to the decision by President Bush to invade Iraq in 2003). In the corporate context, the communication of corporate executives with their constituencies (boards, employees, consumers, regulators, bankers, and the like) is similar to the communication of presidents when campaigning or promoting public policies. Different expressions are meant to appeal to different constituencies (investors versus clients, donors versus voters), yet they are expected to be honest, consistent, and principled. Can they remain consistent and effective? If they cannot, must they suffer the charge of hypocrisy instead of being seen as walking a tight rope over the abyss of linguistic turbulence? Neumann’s hypocrisy could be dismissed as a simple marketing and public relations stunt. The board’s hypocrisy could be likewise discharged as business as usual. Similarly, the advertised claim about community building can be cast as a well-meaning attempt that happened to fall short

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of its ideal, like so many disappointments in life over which we shrug our shoulders and shed no tears. So, who or what should be charged with hypocrisy here? If market capitalism as an ideal cannot be called to atone for its routine deceptions that are masked with lofty claims of equal opportunity, freedom of choice, and merited success, it must be the leaders of corporate entities who carry out this ideal to shameless extremes. These five examples offer a glimpse at the many charges of hypocrisy we encounter daily in media outlets. The charge of hypocrisy accompanies the discrepancy between an ideal and a reality, between what one says and does, between public expectations and daily experiences. The twisted logic of many sensationalized cases shifts from the conduct itself—can you believe what they did?—to character assassination—can you believe who they are? As these five examples illustrate, context matters in deciding who deserves the charge of hypocrisy and who can escape such a charge at one point or another. To what degree is some kind of hypocrisy appropriate or even justified? What is the “correct” perspective from which to look at the situation? It may be a matter of perspective or the criteria according to which the charge of hypocrisy is conventionally agreed upon.

2.3

Some Standard Views and Their Limitations

In what follows, the five examples are reexamined from the perspective of three standard views, standard in the sense that they use the analytical tools of logic and ethics, to decipher an intentional deception and charge the offending party with hypocrisy. The first view is the Moral Analytic, the second is the Political Analytic, and the third is the Literary Psychological. Before reviewing the selective scholars who are lumped into this loose classification, I ought to explain that the switch from the theatrical to the political stage in this book is not meant to collapse or erase their distinct differences. When considering hypocritical conduct the focus is not so much on the person in real life (the individual priest, statesman, or entrepreneur), but the role each person plays in their communities, which makes everyone an actor of sorts, everyone double. Except that instead of the theatrical actors playing people playing roles, on the political stage there are people playing roles. This means that an appeal to sincerity, for example, is always addressed to individuals and cannot be, formally speaking, structural. The structural conditions of their acting, such as the demands posed by capitalism, the Church, or nationalism, stipulate specific postures, personae, and highly scripted roles. In the next

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chapter, which is focused on the political stage, the shift between the stages should be understood in the sense conveyed here. The first view, the Moral Analytic, considers hypocrisy a vice and a subcategory of lying. The condemnation of hypocrisy in the literature on ethics and morality has done little to change the currency of the political charge of hypocrisy. Among the first philosophers in recent years to argue that “Hypocrisy remains the only unforgivable sin even, perhaps especially, among those who can overlook and explain away almost every other vice” (1979, 1) is Judith Shklar. She bases her analysis of hypocrisy on the term’s Greek etymology, to say: “The double pretense of the actor playing the part of a man who is playing a part allows for all kinds of mockery of everything on the stage and in the audience.” (ibid.) Right away, she brings a dual perspective of and an interplay between the actor and the audience insofar as something worthy of “mockery” is afoot. She continues: “There is all the ambiguity of the play within a play here, but with more possibilities for invention.” (ibid.) The “invention” on display is unreal in the sense that pretending is displayed here, an ambiguous and made-up world of words and performance meant to solicit a response— indignation, empathy, disgust, or amusement—from an audience as the actor is playing to the crowd and with the crowd. There is “a power play at work in the hypocrisy” different from the kind easily observed between “conventional soldiers and rulers,” and perhaps more powerful because exercised as a play with a rhetorical and visual impact that differs from a classic power play. (ibid., 2) The seductive appeal of such play-acting disarms the audience to accept a message veiled as fictionalized entertainment and brings a level of intimacy and identification with the performing messenger. The notion of sin associated with hypocrisy, as Shklar explains, is unforgiveable in a religious sense because it relies on the fact, as the Oxford English Dictionary reminds us, that “puritanism is invariably accompanied by hypocrisy, and duly ridiculed for it.” (ibid., 3) Literary expressions of hypocrisy, notably Molière’s, are intertwined with religious piety and its rigid devotional requirement, which can never be fully met. Drawing from this feature of hypocrisy, Shklar argues, “The hypocrite is hiding something evil because it is in his interest to do so.” (ibid., 6) This, as shown in the five examples listed above, is always the case, so that under Shklar’s view, all of the participants in those examples, regardless of extenuating circumstances, warrant the condemnation of being sinful or evil. As we shall see in the next chapter, Shklar has much more to say about the political stage where charges of hypocrisy are regularly observed. For

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now, it will suffice here to note that on first, somewhat superficial and straightforward reading of the five examples in the light of Shklar’s views, they all seem to warrant the condemnation of hypocrisy, inviting in their respective manners the exposure of bad faith. Eva Feder Kittay is another ethicist who has weighed in on questions of hypocrisy on moral grounds. According to her, the hypocrite is an “Imposter, (i.e., a self-referential deceiver whose pretense is not bounded by conventionalized role-playing) who feigns conformity to some positively valued norms, ideals or expectations (thereby pretending to be ‘better’ than he is) in domains of life where sincerity really matters (e.g. piety, virtue, love and friendship).” (1982, 282) In light of this definition, charges of hypocrisy fit all five examples insofar as they all recount some version of an “imposter” who deceives and pretends, and who “feigns conformity to some positively valued norms,” whether nationally or geopolitically. The public display of allegiance to moral criteria of good and bad, what is approved and disapproved of in the public domain, is at stake in all five examples, even the one about Trump’s exposure of American hypocrisy about torture. But unlike Shklar, who remains wedded to the unforgiveable sin of hypocrisy, Kittay finds an exception, one that could feasibly exonerate at least some of the people mentioned in the five examples from the charge of hypocrisy. In her telling, a “Victim Hypocrite” should be understood differently from the run-of-the-mill hypocrite who manipulates audiences on the theatrical or political stage. In this case, “hypocrisy appears to be another form of self-protection in a hostile environment.” (ibid., 288) This, she explains, deserves a different moral judgment, one the context of which switches the moral terms of the analysis, perhaps in Nietzsche’s sense of the lower classes, the Jews, and women: “In a racist society, the black person is sometimes physically endangered, but more often he or she is endangered in more subtle ways through economic, social and political discrimination. The black person who passes as white may use hypocritical means to escape the menaces posed to those who are clearly black. The same may be said for the Jew who passes as a Gentile or the gay person who passes as heterosexual.” (ibid.) Just as moral and legal scholars have exempted selfdefense killing from the charge of murder, so does Kittay find a set of circumstances under which pretending and lying, deceiving and masking are morally warranted for Blacks, Jews, and gays. Even with this contextdependent exception, one would be hard-pressed in the example of the Israeli hypocrisy about its nuclear weapons to argue that its survival is still

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at stake given its military superiority over any of its neighbors. Feigning weakness and victimhood differs from a real threat of extinction, the kind the Jews suffered from the Nazis or the kind First Nations have suffered since the colonists invaded or the kind African slaves suffered in America (and whose descendants are still suffering today), or the kind afflicting the Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Two decades after Kittay’s analysis of the moral dimensions of hypocrisy and the boundaries within which condemnation is presumed, Christine McKinnon returns with a vengeance to condemn hypocrisy not simply as a lapse in judgment or a case of misbehavior, but as a character flaw. Her argument is as follows: because humans are selfreflexively aware and care about their self-image, and because human lives are constructed (and therefore judged) by their coherence and consistency, hypocrisy should be deemed a vice detectable in one’s immoral “character-construction.” (1999, 1–3) The hypocrite is the kind of person who is “deliberately exploiting the trust that [a moral] system engenders. This person is truly wicked: he is not ignorant of the prevailing morality, and he does not suffer from a weak will.” (ibid., 110) McKinnon’s vehemence concerning the wickedness (along the sinful lines articulated by Shklar but signaling also a religious register) of the hypocrite shifts from a behavioral analysis of hypocrisy to one based on character. So, instead of considering one’s behavioral misadventures into deceit and selfaggrandizing, masking one’s intentions on and off the stage, McKinnon explores what she considers the heart of the matter for virtue theorists (as opposed to consequentialists and deontologists). Virtue theorists care about truth telling and integrity as character traits so that an individual’s “real intentions or convictions must be known to herself, and the decision to conceal them must be deliberate … [S]he must intend some harm—if only that of deceiving or manipulating her fellow agents.” (ibid., 191) McKinnon assumes agents to be “acting rationally,” not challenging “the received standards,” “whose desire it is to be perceived in a more honourable light.” (ibid., 192) Here she falls back on the standard definition of the hypocrite but with the added caveat that this kind of conduct is no accident: “a hypocrite must be self-conscious at least to a certain degree. … Indeed, one might think that the more ‘professional’ or ‘successful’ the hypocrite, the less self-deceived she is, about both her first- and second-order desires.” (ibid., 19; italics in the original) The deliberate, self-conscious, and considerate behavior of the hypocrite is informed by a full comprehension of the moral landscape and by a

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keen understanding of “folk psychology.” Recalling the five examples, one could easily infer McKinnon’s judgment about the explicit hypocrisy they convey: flawed actors are bound to be flawed in their conduct, they cannot help themselves. No matter the exception offered earlier by Kittay, McKinnon relentlessly pushes the analysis of actions into their intentions, and these, in turn, she ascribes to reasonably self-aware individuals who are part of a moral community whose rules they fully comprehend. In her words: “She requires the existence of some moral community (because it is the judgements of the members of this community that she seeks to influence), but her relationship to it is a subversive one.” (ibid., 197; italics in the original) Membership in “some moral community” conditions each individual to think in terms of conformity and the potential judgment of others, and therefore all behavior takes place with this in mind. Any deviation from the moral standards that regulate the community are therefore “subversive” (in the sense of undermining the moral fabric) and not mere aberration of a “moral agent.” (ibid., 198) The claim for moral integrity is understood as valuing an “honesty of intention and homogeneity of purpose in himself and others.” (ibid.) As we shall see in Chapter 4, the notion of personal “homogeneity” or internal psychic and cognitive consistency is more problematic than McKinnon seems prepared to admit. But if we continue with the logic of McKinnon’s argument, “integrity,” in her reading, “is rather like a second-order commitment that all one’s first-order desires be consistent with one’s considered evaluations of what is worthy,” (ibid., 199) which is another way of expecting or assuming “some degree of functional unity” in regard to one’s moral character and one’s daily conduct. (ibid.) According to this logic, desires (first order) are measured against moral commitments (second order) and fulfilled or curtailed based on some moral standards of which one is supposed to be conscious and to which one consistently adheres. For McKinnon, what is at stake when charging individuals with hypocrisy is “the whole of morality,” and therefore “what is pernicious about hypocrisy is that it is a subtle form of sabotage.” (ibid., 200) The wickedness of the “subversive” hypocrite is not limited to a character flaw but extends to the “pernicious” intent to “sabotage” an entire moral community and the rules by which it functions. It is one thing to be morally flawed, quite another to destroy the community to which one belongs. McKinnon would distinguish between the conduct of Israeli leaders, Catholic clergy, Presidents Obama and Trump, and the officers

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and board members of WeWork, finding the charge of hypocrisy more applicable to the clergy and leaders of WeWork than to the Israeli state and the two presidents. But if one follows her argument, it seems that she would search in each case for flawed human beings whose behavior is unforgiveable, wicked, and pernicious when they threaten to bring down the moral communities to which they belong. The whole point of designating some, but not all, behavior as hypocritical is precisely to delineate between the permissible and the dangerous to maintain the integrity of the system. Among the most comprehensive scholarly treatments of hypocrisy at the dawn of the twenty-first century is Bela Szabados and Eldon Soifer’s study. They, too, continue the analysis of hypocrisy within a moral framework of the first view but also show its limitations. For them, like Shklar and McKinnon before them, hypocrisy is a character flaw associated with “weakness of will, self-deception, or irony.” (2004, 11) Gesturing to Kittay’s exemption from condemnation, they admit: “It can be argued that certain forms of hypocrisy facilitate human interaction, or enable the vulnerable to protect themselves from the powerful, or perhaps are just morally neutral,” so that “hypocrisy may be an excusable or even necessary response of individuals to unjust situations.” (ibid., 12) But unlike Kittay and later commentators who allow for exceptions while maintaining the rule, Szabados and Soifer push a more nuanced response to the post-truth or postmodern age. For them, hypocrisy is not only an ironic failure of self-knowledge, but also “a skill to cope and live with social and moral contradictions that otherwise would destroy us.” (ibid., 32) This brings to mind the earlier discussion in Chapter 1, where the very notion of truth—and the deceptive maneuvers one is accused of performing as a hypocrite—is problematized. According to this line of argument, the standard moral rules of adjudication come short of or are too restrictive for a more comprehensive appreciation of nuanced contexts and messy characters. At stake, for them, are not only individual responses to particular situations, but also a whole ethos of modernity that analyzes moral quandaries in terms of individual behavior (rather than institutional formations). In their words: “A revitalized realization of the importance of a tolerant and supportive community in the moral life of individuals punctures the illusion of rugged moral individualism, softens the assessment of such forms of hypocrisy, and attempts to eliminate obstacles to avow one’s identity.” (ibid., 32) In other words, the very logic of the charge of hypocrisy as it has been traditionally analyzed is challenged:

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one’s behavior is conditioned (rather than being a reflection of one’s character), and as such ought to be considered alongside multiple institutional variables that inform the moral community one inhabits. No case can be judged in isolation, and the charge of hypocrisy must be broadened or supplemented by a variety of hypocrisies, from victim hypocrisy on one end of the spectrum to shameless hypocrisy on the other. In between, one could find instrumental hypocrisy, conditional hypocrisy, and appropriate hypocrisy, each in their turn offering explanatory models that might change the pejorative connotation to a reasonable one. In short, the notion of degrees of hypocrisy is suggested here as an alternative. Perhaps under Szabados and Soifer’s guidance, the five examples of hypocrisy would fare a bit better than under the stricter rules of McKinnon insofar as the circumstances for one’s behavior have greater weight. Contemporary students of hypocrisy remain steadfast in their characterization of hypocrisy as morally repugnant, whether, like R. Jay Wallace (2010), this is because the hypocrite is blameworthy, or, like Kyle G. Fritz and Daniel Miller (2018), because hypocrites claim an exception to their behavior while not granting it to others. These scholars tend to revert to the logic of a moral argument about the “inconsistency in a person’s attitudes and behaviors” (Wallace 2010, 309), while demanding a steadfast exploration of “authenticity,” (ibid., 311) subscribing to a rigid standard of authenticity against which hypocrisy is judged. They dwell on the cleavage between one’s blindness to one’s own moral shortcomings and one’s assessment of the moral shortcomings of others, focusing on politicians “so caught up in their indignation about the moral lapses of others that they are blind to or forgetful about their own shortcomings in the relevant area of conduct.” (ibid., 315) Wallace explains the significance of the blameworthiness of the hypocrite in this way: “blame is a way of being exercised about immorality that shows that one cares about the values that morality protects and enables.” (ibid., 324) The logic of blaming others distracts from self-reflection of one’s own complicity or blameworthiness. This “dynamic component” seems to imply that blame rather than charge “carries with it a kind of practical commitment to critical self-scrutiny” that is, of course, missing from the deceptive or self-deceptive hypocrite. (ibid., 326) What is unfair about hypocrites is that they refuse an “equal standing” with those being blamed. (ibid., 330) Though registering the standard of equality (equal standing), there is also an appeal here to a state of exception (for the individual). Hypocrites who contrast their behavior as excusable with that of others who are condemnable, as Fritz

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and Miller argue, are “making an exception of [themselves] where there is no basis for that exception. This exception-making involves a rejection of the impartiality of morality and thereby a rejection of the equality of persons, which is the very basis for the standing to blame others.” (2018, 134) Under this novel way of casting hypocrisy in the blameworthy and exception-making mold, the five examples listed above would still warrant outright condemnation. Blaming others while excluding themselves fits most of the examples, especially the Israeli and Church leaders, perhaps exempting President Obama’s different speaking modalities. The corporate context of WeWork lends itself to casting blame on all levels of corporate leadership, and President Trump’s torture example can be interpreted in terms of who can or cannot be excluded from blame on the international stage of public opinion. The second view, the Political Analytic, focuses on reason, rationality, and the apparent inconsistency that appears when one’s behavior does not correspond to a (Cartesian–Kantian) uniform rational self. This logic of analysis presupposes a certain holistic self as a subject and agent whose thought processes and conduct work in tandem. As we shall see in Chapter 4, this presupposition is highly contested because it fails to account for social and political contexts within which individuals navigate their choices and nation-states reach agreements. All of the analytic philosophers discussed below would condemn the actors in the five examples listed above on the grounds that the leaders display, in their respective ways, an inconsistent way of thinking under the pretense that the circumstances warranted conduct they know to be wrong, saying one thing and doing something that contradicts it, or saying different things in different contexts because circumstances seemed to license this kind of deceptive misconduct. Among the philosophers most concerned with hypocrisy in this mode of analysis is Jon Elster, who argues that “Hypocrisy involves deceiving others with regard to one’s true motivations.” (2009, 51) The starting point is deception, a form of lying, whose reasoning and justifications, no matter how numerous or how strong, leave the motives of deception unchallenged. In his reading, “Trials before the ancient Greek juries (dikasters ) provide many examples of this [deception],” and in this sense there is nothing new about the charge of hypocrisy. From Elster’s perspective, “accusers who feared that they might themselves be accused of being sycophants found it advantageous to pretend to be motivated by revenge rather than by their material self-interest.” There is a

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subtle shift here from the standard accusation of pretense associated with moral standards and pretense associated with “being sycophants,” a shift that indicates the concealment of motives but also a positioning vis-à-vis someone in power (and similar to the biblical etymology of the Hebrew term for hypocrisy). This strategic posturing leads Elster to conclude that “In public debates, every self-interested proposal has to be presented as concerning the public interest.” (ibid.) It seems that self-interest is ever-present in rational human conduct, according to this line of argument, and that its presence ought to be disguised when presented in public. In his words: “it is to the advantage of all parties to present themselves as not being moved by self-interest alone,” because under such conditions “agreement may prove impossible,” and from this he draws the general, seemingly paradoxical conclusion that “the appeal to reason subverts reason.” (pp. 63–4) What does it mean to say that the “appeal to reason” in any sense “subverts reason”? Elster draws attention to the appeal itself, like an appeal to morality, which in its failure undermines morality, or in this case “subverts” reason because as an appeal it stands outside of reason. According to Elster, hypocritical conduct is justified in the public domain as probably the only reasonable strategy when competing interests are brought together and an “agreement”—perhaps a public policy or a treaty—is sought. One way to understand this logic is that appealing to reasonableness subverts strict rationality: the appeal to circumscribe one’s intentions subverts the transparency expected of strict rationality. What is kept opaque, then, is not one’s self-interest as such, but the possibility that one’s self-interest may be compromised or diverted, transposed, or converted into a workable way of thinking and behaving within a community of differently minded people. Is the subversion of one’s presumed self-interest reasonable, if not rational? Is it a price worth paying for consensus building? In this light, what seems from a strict rational perspective hypocritical is seen from another perspective as reasonable and appropriate, a virtue rather than a vice. Elsewhere Elster explains the difference between the “thin” and “broad” theory of rationality, where consistency within the belief system is assumed for the former and where beliefs and desires themselves ought to be consistent in the latter. He also develops the notion of “collective rationality” that though it transcends individual rationality must still account for it as well. (2016, 2) The problematic demand that beliefs and desires be consistent—within individual rationality, let alone when a community is expected to have an agreement about such consistency—is

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compounded by the tenuous status of beliefs themselves. Evidence-based beliefs, as Elster admits in the case of scientists, more so than in the case of politicians, are bound to suffer the prospect of self-defeat as evidence is collected indefinitely (as we have seen in Chapter 1) without ever conclusively establishing the veracity of beliefs. (ibid., 17) Once Elster presents an epistemological slippery slope of adherence to belief systems, the charge of hypocrisy (about one’s beliefs and one’s adherence to them) may fall apart. In this sense, a pronounced difference between self-deception and wishful thinking emerges, especially when choosing and weighing evidence in various ways (ibid., 150–4), How true to one’s beliefs can one be when the beliefs themselves are changing? The choice to adhere, even when consistent and well intentioned (since intentions are always foregrounded by analytic moral thinkers), can itself be self-deceptive. Such a situation is exacerbated in the business world when the entrepreneurial imagination highlights positive outcomes and ignores false starts or dead-ends. (ibid., 161–3) Delusional thinking in this context would be beyond the bounds of rationality. Speaking of the dynamics of deliberation, Elster argues that when looking for “a problem-solving and conflict-resolving device,” two options come to mind. “One mechanism could be the civilizing force of hypocrisy. Another is the conception of deliberation as analogous to negative advertising.” (1998, 12) The negative advertising Elster references here relates to a kind of candor that discloses rather than hides one’s faults or the faults of one’s position. The juxtaposition of the civilizing force of hypocrisy as one “mechanism” with “negative advertising” as another is puzzling. Does this mean that preference must be granted to hypocritical behavior over negative advertising? Or, does Elster suggest that hypocrisy is similar to negative advertising? Either way, this juxtaposition illuminates what price some analytic theorists are willing to pay to solve problems and resolve conflict. It may be reasonable to pretend to like business partners and office-mates as a “civilizing force of hypocrisy.” Does he mean that pretending to like someone is similar to negative advertisement? Elster proceeds: “Although the parties to the debates have no incentive to draw attention to the negative consequences of their own proposals, they have strong incentives to find flaws in those of their adversaries. In the ensuing contest, the truth will emerge as the set of propositions that have not been successfully challenged.” (ibid.) Instead of seeking the truth, those engaged in debates focus on the “negative consequences” of proposals. After the battle has been fought and the negative consequences of the

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winning proposals have not been exposed, the truth about their consequences emerges if only as the ones who survived the so-called battle. This sounds like granting the “last man standing” victory because their truth has not been contested well enough to be falsified. It is truth by default, perhaps in the mode of Popper’s falsificationist methodology, wherein whatever has not been falsified is granted the status of putative truth, but in Popper’s case there is no presumption that this is the Truth with a capital T. James Johnson explains what Elster means by the “civilizing force of hypocrisy”: “over time, those who invoke some principle for strategic reasons might sincerely come to embrace it.” In public debates, “psychological pressures toward ‘self-censorship’ … deter speakers from advancing claims that might be deemed ‘unreasonable’ because they reflect a speaker’s self-interest or because they articulate positions they suspect others consider morally objectionable.” It may be true that such self-censorship “expresses not so much genuine conviction as anticipation of disapproval or reproach.” Yet, over time, and this is key to the argument, “something like dissonance reduction might induce such parties to actually adopt ‘reasonable’ positions to which they earlier paid only lip service.” The psychological notion of cognitive dissonance comes into play here, as one eventually feels more comfortable to move toward reasonable rather than unreasonable positions, given the context of public debate where one’s motives and judgments are rigorously scrutinized. (ibid., 171–2) This process, as far as Johnson is concerned, is more likely to occur when ongoing deliberations are encouraged, rather than when opponents offer proposals to be adjudicated by a third party, as is often the case with court-appointed mediators or judges who are the final arbiters of disputes. (ibid., 174) Civilizing hypocrisy in this context can be constructive for participants. Would Elster therefore condone the behaviors outlined in the five examples above? It seems that in all those cases, the deliberative process favored by him was absent: leaders made decisions on their own, reluctant to forge alliances with their opponents, except in the case of President Obama where “opponents” could be substituted with constituents. Stephen Krasner furthers Elster’s analytic line of thinking about hypocrisy in two ways. On the one hand, he extends the analysis to being “an inherent problem for political organizations,” because these organizations “win support not by being consistent but by satisfying the demands of different interests.” This means in political terms that “talk,

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decisions, and products may be addressed to different constituencies,” as we have seen above in President Obama’s example. “Political organizations win legitimacy and support through a logic of justification as well as through the provision of resources.” (1999, 66; italics added) The logic of justification insists on consistency even when consistency is difficult to maintain. Politicians skirt the charge of hypocrisy by rationalizing as much as they can without resorting to outright lies, staying the course as vaguely as they can. On the other hand, Krasner also extends Elster’s argument about deliberations and negotiations that require what he calls “organized hypocrisy,” which “is the normal state of affairs” internationally. (ibid., 9) Both Elster and Krasner recognize that some forms of hypocrisy are advisable, even necessary for the sake of reaching consensus about a policy. Perhaps the overriding moral principle here is consequentialism (the ends justify the means), which focuses on outcomes rather than processes even when attention is paid to the process itself. If peace can be achieved and lives can be spared, organized hypocrisy may even be “civilizing”; if the goal is worth achieving and if a relatively small price must be paid, it seems reasonable to consent to some degree of hypocrisy. Another scholar worth citing here who is working within this second mode of analysis is Daniel Statman, who focuses on the self-deception dimension of hypocritical behavior. For him, the reason to merge “hypocrisy into self-deception is that a consistent and conscious deception of society is self-defeating from the point of view of egotistical hypocrites. The best way for them to achieve their ends would be to believe in the deception, thereby not only deceiving others but also themselves.” (1997, 57) The idea that self-deception is a way of living a consistent internal life—the deception of others is no longer a deception at all if one believes the deception to be true—one that can, within the second analytic mode of arguing about hypocrisy, be tolerated, even accepted. Statman recommends that “we ought to be more cautious in ascribing hypocrisy to people, and less harsh in our attitude toward hypocrisy.” (ibid.) Relaxing the moral high ground from which charges of hypocrisy are addressed puts Statman at odds with other analytic moral philosophers. This discrepancy could be explained away by thinking of some hypocrites as inhabiting specific roles that after a while are difficult to distinguish from the rest of their life. Their assumed personae, morally speaking, is justified under the consequentialist framework: “the intelligence, originality, and improvisation, which are necessary traits of a good spy, are also necessary for the hypocrites’ systematic and consistent deception.” (ibid., 60) Statman

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seems to depart from the logic of consequentialism ascribed to Elster and Krasner and argues instead that “whereas spies use these talents to serve their country, hypocrites use them to enhance their personal interests.” (ibid.) The reference to spies is as interesting as Nietzsche’s earlier reference to diplomats as the consummate actors who intend to please their hosts. In this context, when self-serving motives and goals are paramount, rather than the well-being of the community, all bets are off, and the pejorative connotation of the charge of hypocrisy sticks. The rationalist argument about internal psychic consistency and the problem of believing in one’s own lies, according to Statman, is cast as “cognitive dissonance,” already alluded to by Johnson. Statman continues to explain that when people lie, “a dissonance is created between this fact and our recognition that we have behaved wrongly.” This dissonance is bothersome, according to this reading, and in order to “reduce” it, “we simply bring ourselves to believe what we have said.” (ibid., 64) But this is precisely one of the problems under discussion here: is it possible to deceive oneself? Can one learn to believe in the conjured lie without any so-called dissonance, as actors, diplomats, and spies apparently do so well? What internal logic or rational process would be interrupted to overcome dissonance and bridge the gap between truths and lies? How would answering these questions exonerate or condemn the people in the five examples above? They would, despite the claims of Elster and Krasner, be condemned by Statman for their inappropriate hypocritical behavior. The very idea that humans are capable of consistent adherence to beliefs and ideas about themselves and the world is so daunting that it may be untenable. We change our tastes and preferences daily, are capable of bending to every new marketing ploy, and assent to decrees that appeared questionable before because our circumstances and contexts are always changing. Just think of social distancing and wearing masks everywhere during the 2020 pandemic. It seems reasonable to change one’s minds when new data are available, when circumstances alter, or when an urgent matter overshadows others. Sometimes this is as much about external influences (health restrictions and legal injunctions) as about inner urges and desires that are being suppressed. As we shall see in the next mode of moral analysis of hypocrisy, Freud suggests that in the name of civilization, humanity has been destined to behave hypocritically: we forego satisfying our libidinal instincts for the sake of communal harmony.

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The most recent scholar to continue this Political Analytic line of argument about the moral perils of hypocrisy is Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, for whom “self-deception is the distortion of reality against the available evidence and according to one’s wishes.” (2018, 1) Views of deception range from the “realist position, holding that deception, secrecy, and manipulation are intrinsic to politics, to the ‘dirty hands’ position, justifying certain political lies under well-defined circumstances, to the deontological stance denouncing political deception as a serious pathology of democratic systems.” (ibid., 2) The vast range of views on deception includes full, partial, and no justification for the process that elicits the charge of hypocrisy. Discounting Elster’s and Krasner’s position on the civilizing and organized efficacy of hypocrisy, Galeotti emphasizes a different way of thinking about political deception as either “induced unintentionally by SD [self-deception]” or “the by-product of government officials’ (honest) mistakes.” (ibid., 2) Like Statman before her, she explains her preference for the explanatory power of self-deception as enabling the analyst to account for three things: “(a) why the decision was bad, given that it was grounded on self-deceptive, hence false beliefs; (b) why the beliefs were not just false but self-serving, as in the result of the motivated processing of data; and (c) why the people were deceived, as the by-product of the leaders’ SD.” (ibid., 4) In this fashion, the analytic focus remains on the decision-making process in a deontological manner rather than the Elster–Krasner consequentialist mode of analysis. Galeotti seems to foster a strategic hope with her analytic tools for “prophylactic measures” that would help prevent such behavior under “typical circumstances” as well as equip “external observers” with the tools to detect it. Her goal is “creating constraints to prevent people from falling prey to SD.” (ibid., 5) She explains that her philosophical approach can provide conceptual clarity associated with the responsibility attributed to political self-deception that will, in turn, offer “precautionary” measures to prevent the potential damage of such self-deception. (ibid., 6–7) The advantage of using self-deception as an “analytic tool” with which to view political conduct and policy decisions is twofold. First, this may allow for the “proper attribution of responsibility to self-deceivers,” and second, this increases “the possibility of preventive measures against SD.” (ibid., 234) Then there is a caveat, perhaps even a critique that undermines the very use of self-deception as an analytic tool:

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“Usually, the circumstances of political decision making, when momentous foreign policy choices are at issue, are blurred and confused both epistemically and motivationally. Sorting out simple miscalculations from genuine uncertainty, and dishonesty and duplicity from SD is often a difficult task.” (ibid., 240) So, how useful is this analytic tool for assessing the consequences of hypocrisy when understood exclusively as a form of selfdeception, given the difficulty of teasing out self-deception from “simple miscalculations,” “genuine uncertainty,” “dishonesty,” and “duplicity”? Unlike Elster, Krasner, or Statman, for Galeotti self-deception is not a volitional action taken by a self-conscious agent, but instead is a position wherein agents find themselves almost by accident, as if something happened to them rather than by them. If individual moments of political self-deception were put together as a “collective product,” how would responsibility be attributed to individual politicians? (ibid., 244–5) With this question in mind, it would seem that in the five examples given above, no one is doing anything especially wrong because the circumstances impose themselves on them. Israeli self-deception about nuclear armaments becomes convincing after a while, especially within the claim of an ongoing threat. Is this kind of self-deception also true of Catholic clergy and the executives of WeWork? Neither president is self-deceiving in the examples cited above, so perhaps this analytic tool falls short of its promise. Does the “collective” (perhaps cumulative is more accurate a term) nature of political deception exculpate participants from responsibility? If a deception has been ongoing for a very long time, does this make it deception no more? Though Americans deceive themselves into forgetting the slaughter of Native Americans and the enslavement of Blacks, surely this kind of self-deception would in no way absolve them from responsibility for their crimes. As the Nuremberg Trials after World War II illustrated, though Nazi officers deceived themselves into believing that they merely followed orders, many of them were still found guilty of crimes against humanity. What role would the charge of hypocrisy play in these situations? It would be a helpful reminder to Americans and Germans alike that any national pretense to moral principles must be measured against their own histories. The third view, the Literary Psychological, with which to examine the applicability of the charge of hypocrisy distinguishes between first- and second-order hypocrisy, between one’s deception of others (as described by philosophers of the first view) and one’s deception of oneself and others (as analyzed by scholars included in the second view). The approach

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of the third view eschews the moralizing associated with deception and the forgiveness associated with self-deception. Among the first to draw attention to this ordering of different kinds of hypocrisy was Bernard Mandeville, who emphasized the impossibility of having at once the enjoyment of luxuries and the innocence of social life. (1997/1723, 20) He was clear about the two registers of duplicity: the deception of others and the eventual or perhaps inevitable deception of oneself. In his words: “The imaginary notions that men may be virtuous without selfdenial are a vast inlet to hypocrisy, which being once made habitual, we must not only deceive others, but likewise become altogether unknown to ourselves.” (ibid., 131, 160) Instead of moving from self-deception to the deception of others, in this line of argument the deception of others begets self-deception at least in the sense of becoming “altogether unknown to ourselves,” inhabiting a dual existence that is directed toward the acceptance of others at the expense of or with some disregard to the self. According to this logic of the epistemological situation, the more civilized, luxury-bound, and engulfed in its own sense of prosperity a society becomes, the more it expects its members to be deceptive about their desires and moral conduct. In turn, the more social and cultural expectations are fulfilled, the more removed from basic personal desires they become. According to Mandeville, civilized life is bound to set the conditions of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is neither an accident nor an aberration; instead, “in all civil societies men are taught insensibly to be hypocrites from their cradle.” (ibid., 138) This means, in short, that for all the five examples cited above, it would be reasonable, perhaps even necessary, to argue that displays of hypocrisy are evident and that the charge of hypocrisy—in a civil society—are inevitable. None of the participants could have escaped from behaving hypocritically, so charging them is beside the point or in fact an admission of the ubiquity of hypocrisy in modernity. Mandeville’s insistence on the conditions that turn hypocrisy into an integral feature of civilized life (rather than a moral vice that can and therefore should be excised), is amplified and given a broader canvas by Sigmund Freud some two centuries later. While Mandeville mocks the hypocrisy associated with luxuries, Freud’s critique focuses on the pretenses associated with claiming to be “civilized” in the geopolitical context of World War I. Freud starts by explaining the disillusionment suffered by those observing the painful unfolding of WWI, a war like no

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other war in which “civilized nations” have forsaken their “moral standards.” (1925, 276) Freud adds to the historical context the European fondness for a certain kind of cosmopolitanism, a “wider fatherland” that resembles a “museum” wherein the great treasures of the past can be observed. (ibid., 277) What has been disturbing, then, is that “old traditional differences made wars inevitable, even among the members of a community such as this.” (ibid., 278) The predicament of achieving unity despite differences among European nation-states becomes more visible (because of the conflict between cosmopolitanism and nationalism) by the twentieth century, perhaps more alarming as well. All of this, says Freud, is nothing but an “illusion,” one that spares us “unpleasurable feelings, and enable[s] us to enjoy satisfactions instead.” (ibid., 280) The appeal to the moral fortitude of nation-states and to individual conscience is mistaken not because of a Mandvillian appetite for luxuries, but rather because “our conscience” “in its origins is ‘social anxiety’ and nothing else.” Social anxiety is explained as a process whereby “the community no longer raises objections” to immoral behavior and thereby “there is an end, too, to the suppression of evil passions.” The register is no longer the appetite for luxuries and the moral price this appetite exacts, but a psychological price with a moral valence. Under political and social conditioning devoid of (moral) “objections” and (social) “suppression,” it is no wonder, says Freud, that “men perpetrate deeds of cruelty, fraud, treachery and barbarity so incompatible with their level of civilization that one would have thought them impossible.” (ibid.) In other words, social anxiety comes about when the guardrails are lowered or completely taken off and “men” are left to their own “unpleasurable feelings.” What does this exactly mean, and how does this social conditioning bring about world wars? According to Freud, “the deepest essence of human nature consists of instinctual impulses which are of an elementary nature, which are similar in all men and which aim at the satisfaction of certain primal needs. These instincts in themselves are neither good nor bad. We classify them and their expressions in that way, according to their relations to the needs and demands of the human community.” (ibid., 281) Claiming that human instincts in themselves are neither good nor bad confounds moral philosophers who came after him and looked for character flaws as the reasons for and origins of bad faith worthy of the charge of hypocrisy. In Freud’s telling, “civilization has been attained,” “through the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction, and it demands the same renunciation

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from each newcomer in turn.” (ibid., 282; italics added) The process of renunciation comes about under the guise of a civilizing process of moral socialization so that individual libidinal instincts are constrained by social conventions. In his words: “By the admixture of erotic components the egoistic instincts are transformed into social ones. We learn to value being loved as an advantage for which we are willing to sacrifice other advantages.” (ibid.; italics in the original) The transformation of instinctual urges and desires, erotic in Freud’s terminology, into social ones is tantamount to a personal “sacrifice,” but one that would yield an “advantage” in the social realm. He continues: “If we give the name of ‘susceptibility to culture’ to a man’s personal capacity for the transformation of the egoistic impulses under the influence of eroticism, we may further affirm that this susceptibility is made up of two parts, one innate and the other acquired in the course of life.” (ibid., 283) Society or the state, then, exercises “external compulsion” on individuals within its domain, trying to turn each “from egoism towards altruism,” adding a range of “rewards and punishments” along the way. (ibid.) Susceptibility to culture is equated with the capacity for such social transformations so that it feels neither foreign nor painfully coercive. As he says, “we learn to value being loved as an advantage” worthy of sacrificing other supposedly impulsive and aggressive advantages. Civilized society, in short, expects and demands “obedience” by “tightening the moral standards to the greatest possible degree, and it has thus forced its members into a yet greater estrangement from their instinctual disposition.” The social and cultural onslaught on individuals has the effect of an “unceasing suppression of instinct, and the resulting tension betrays itself in the most remarkable phenomena of reaction and compensation.”(ibid., 284) The suppression, however effective within the rules of the social and cultural domains, is never complete. No matter its force and weight, one’s character and psychic health are bound to be affected, perhaps to suffer “estrangement.” Freud calls the impact of such social and moral conditioning personal and individual “malformations,” so much so that there is a “perpetual readiness of the inhibited instincts to break through to satisfaction at any suitable opportunity.” (ibid.) What seems a civilized and well-formed social order on the surface may break apart at any moment with the slightest provocation or with no provocation at all. Human instincts, however malformed, can never be fully suppressed: their demand for satisfaction is inevitable and ceaseless. Any presumption to the contrary is foolhardy, as any dictatorial regime has

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known: no matter the extent of oppression, dissident activity is always lurking around the corner, ready to blow through layers of imposed conformity. Having described the pressures and tensions felt by all members of civilized societies, it stands to reason that Freud would conclude that we are all, to a certain degree, what he terms “cultural hypocrites.” Anyone continually compelled to act in accordance with percepts that suppress instinctual inclinations “is living, psychologically speaking, beyond his means” or living a lie, and as such may be described as a hypocrite, “whether he is clearly aware of the incongruity or not.” (ibid., 284). There is an “undeniable” production of “this form of hypocrisy,” so that there are “very many more cultural hypocrites than truly civilized men”—so many, in fact, that “a certain degree of cultural hypocrisy” is “indispensable for the maintenance of civilization.” (ibid., 284–5) It was obvious for Freud that his European civilization produced this form of hypocrisy to an extraordinary extent. To what extent this ongoing production of cultural hypocrisy depends on the internalization of civilizing norms of conduct or clear rules and laws remains unclear; it may be a combination of the two. Freud appears to be not only describing the effects of the European civilizing processes and their fault lines but also conceding that to be civilized one must be a hypocrite. But unlike Elster’s civilizing hypocrisy or Krasner’s organized hypocrisy, Freud’s cultural hypocrisy seems precarious enough to explode at any moment with any provocation, and turn, as it happened in Freud’s time, into a bloody and senseless world war. The disillusionment with European civilization as a guarantor of peaceful coexistence with neighboring nation-states is likewise a disappointment with the illusions still harbored by the likes of Elster and Krasner about democratic deliberation and the civilized, cosmopolitan citizens of the world. Though Freud ends this essay with a gesture toward the possibility of regaining a sense of cosmopolitan morality in the future (“the maintenance of civilization even on so dubious a basis offers the prospect of paving the way in each new generation for a more far-reaching transformation of instinct which shall be the vehicle of a better civilization.” [ibid]), what is relevant here is the recognition of the essential role hypocrisy plays in civilized societies. Like Mandeville (and as we shall see in the next chapter, Machiavelli and Rousseau as well), Freud identifies the hypocrite as the suppressed civilized European who must abide by moral norms at the cost of character malformation. In this sense, Freud

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would disagree with the Elster–Krasner argument about the civilizing effects of organized hypocrisy and their social benefits. Unlike them, he would charge the characters described in the five examples as hypocrites not so much for what they have done, but much more for the institutional roles they have been playing, even if willingly so. Their true psychological makeup is veiled and circumscribed; their desires are camouflaged so as to pretend to conform to social and geopolitical conventions in the name of civilization. Within the Freudian framework, the obvious charge of hypocrisy is accompanied by no moral outrage; instead, it is accompanied by a resignation if not a lamentation about the psychological costs civilization exacts from everyone and the misguided moral condemnation that it evokes. David Runciman follows the Mandeville–Freudian line of argument about hypocrisy’s ubiquity when saying: “hypocrisy, though inherently unattractive, is also more or less inevitable in most political settings, and in liberal democratic societies it is practically ubiquitous.” (2008, 1) Following the Greek etymology of the term, he also repeats the welltrodden line that “To play a part that does not reveal itself to be the playing of a part is a kind of deception, and hypocrisy in its pejorative sense always entails a deception of some kind.” (ibid., 8) In this sense, Runciman is as much beholden to the standard ethical condemnation of hypocrisy as he is to its inevitability: “Because hypocrisy always involves an element of pretence, it might be said that all forms of hypocrisy are a kind of lie… Broadly speaking, then, hypocrisy involves the construction of a persona … that generates some kind of false impression … as the wearing of masks.” (ibid., 9) Discussing Mandeville, Runciman argues that one should distinguish between “hypocrisy and hypocrisy about hypocrisy itself,” the difference between first- and second-order hypocrisy mentioned above. (ibid., 47) It is worthwhile to repeat the difference between first- and secondorder hypocrisy (with which we started to examine the third view) when completing the brief survey of the three views or standard modes of analyzing and morally condemning hypocrisy. Runciman explains that first-order hypocrisy is the “ubiquitous practice of concealing vice as virtue, which makes up the parade of our social existence,” while second-order hypocrisy is “concealing the truth about this practice, and pretending that the parade itself is a form of genuinely virtuous, and therefore self-denying, behaviour.” The first may be justified on one level, but the second should not: “We may need to hide the truth about

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ourselves in order to get by in the world, but we oughtn’t to hide the truth from ourselves that this is what we are doing.” (ibid., 53–4; italics in the original) Using the language of Christian theology rather than psychology, he quotes Mandeville’s insistence that “it is impossible that Man, mere Fallen man … should be [a] sociable creature without Hypocrisy.” (ibid., 52) This sociality is venerated by Mandeville and considered “fashionable hypocrisy” appropriate for a “European gentleman,” as Runicman explains. (ibid., 61) This “fashionable” hypocrite, to be sure, is not Freud’s garden-variety cultural hypocrite because, as a politician, Mandeville’s hypocrite “should be a mixture of the malicious and the fashionable.” To be clear, “Malicious hypocrisy ensures politicians know what they are doing; fashionable hypocrisy ensures that they are in step with the spirit of the times.” (ibid., 63) The malicious part demands deliberate consideration by politicians, while the fashionable exacts adherence to current cultural norms. With this in mind, it would look as if Presidents Obama and Trump are “in step with the spirit of the times”; in this framing, their “fashionable hypocrisy” is adaptive and reasonable, but not necessarily forgivable in both political and moral terms. Runicman says as much: “Knowingness about political hypocrisy is no more an escape from it than any other kind of inside knowledge, because it too can be deployed as a mask.” (ibid., 71) Galeotti’s self-deception is labeled here “inside knowledge,” the kind of political awareness that invites charges of hypocrisy. The mask never leaves the discussion: the masking of the truth or of the face of the actor/politician, the mask that can be removed, presumably in order to reveal the true face of the actor/politician. Would seeing the face suffice? The Freudian insistence on the inner workings of what appears externally as a face—smiling, sad, kind, or angry—or that of Nietzsche’s “lower classes,” would never be a sufficient indication of what is going on inside the person’s mind. Perhaps it is with the third view of standard arguments about hypocrisy that a distinction between a straightforward moral condemnation and giving political leaders a pass when they straddle the lines of deception, self-deception, and lying becomes pronounced. This may not guarantee the dismissal of the culpability of political, religious, and business leaders, but rather demand mining the depths of one’s thinking and intentions. Perhaps what the three views tell us is that there are different degrees of hypocrisy. Strong and calcified hypocrisy is undertaken with brazen impunity and persists regardless of condemnation, while the weaker or softer elicits embarrassment or even

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shame. The former may continue even if called out, while the latter crumbles at the first inkling that one is misbehaving.

2.4

Alternative Readings

The three views briefly outlined above rely to some extent on the Greek etymology of hypocrisy to adjudicate the charge of hypocrisy. What if the Hebrew etymology that relates to coloring, camouflaging, chameleon-like behavior was used? The journey to this alternative set of assessments of the five examples posed above would benefit from a detour that surveys one of Roger Caillois’ texts through Joyce Cheng’s essay on his notion of mimetic metamorphosis. As a French intellectual from the twentieth century whose range of scholarship includes literary criticism, philosophy, biology, and aesthetics, Caillois offers here a counterweight to the narrow focus evident in the writings of American moral and political philosophers of the analytic persuasion. Unlike them, he traverses the epistemological terrain with a daring imaginary flair rarely seen in scholarly texts. Most importantly for the present consideration is his exploration of the overlap between humans and animals in their mimetic practices, namely, the adaptive behavior that, as we have seen above, may be construed as hypocritical, whether or not it has an organized and civilizing function. For him, as we shall see, the mimetic dimension of the analysis holds the key to understanding the advantages and drawbacks of animal and human camouflage. His exploration echoes, without reference, similar comments about animal color adaptation made much earlier by Nietzsche (1982/1881, 20–1) and suggests a way of thinking about hypocrisy different from the masks of actors on the theatrical and political stages. There are numerous references to the mimetic-metamorphosis aspirations of avant-garde surrealists in the 1920s and 1930s: an anthropologically infused recognition of the potential for an “experiential dimension and plastic figuration of metamorphosis.” (Cheng 2009, 62) Unlike the Kafkaesque notion of the tragic metamorphosis captured in the fictional transformation of Gregor Samsa into a bug, in this case there is a temporal possibility for the “suspension of the self.” (ibid., 65) This suspension is reminiscent of Freud’s notion of the suppression of instincts, but here the social setting of the performance seems voluntary and not culturally imposed. Using Caillois’ work, Cheng moves the discussion to the context of insects, which informed Caillois’ understanding of human performances. She expounds on the notion of camouflage as “organic

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defense” that “can explain the mimicry of the leaf insects, whose spotted and veined wings blend imperceptibly into the foliage in which they find refuge.” (ibid., 74) Similarly, mantises’ legs “simulate petals or flowers.” In her rendering, there is a “rudimentary level of resemblance” and “complete illusionism,” the former more common and the latter, “performed by the Caligo butterfly from the Brazilian forests, whose wings bear oculi and feathery patterns that resemble the face of an owl,” more rare. (ibid.) The evolutionary evidence of these feats of mimetic simulation attests to the resilience of several insect species to ward off predators. Do these feats go too far? The case Cheng cites is of the “leaf insects (Phyllium bioculatum), whose spotted and veined wings blend so imperceptibly into the foliage that they end up being trimmed by the gardeners.” Or, even worse, as she quotes from Caillois’ work: these creatures end up “graz[ing] among one another, taking each other for real leaves in such a way that one would consider it a kind of collective masochism leading up to mutual homophagy.” (ibid.) Self-defense mechanisms turn on themselves: the prey evades one predator only to be consumed by another, either a gardener or member of its own species. Cheng uses the camouflaging feats of insects to draw a more general conclusion about different forms of metamorphosis, the benign and the dangerous. It is a “contrast between, on the one hand, socially mediated, artfully controlled, and essentially theatrical forms of metamorphosis such as masquerades, shamanism, and trance and, on the other, the anguished, existentially solitary loss of agency in mental illness.” (ibid., 76) Recognizing the difference between socially sanctioned behavior and solitary despair would encourage the surrealists of the 1930s, so hoped Caillois, to greater creativity. The playfulness of masquerades, shamanism, and trance could steer artists clear of “loss of agency in mental illness.” Cheng gives Caillois credit for having identified “a spectrum of experiences of passivity with specific species of phantasmagoric insects, insofar as he has understood the issue of mimicry and metamorphosis in terms of alterity and passivity.” (ibid., 77) Caillois’ spectrum of possibilities draws heavily from Freud’s psychology at least in the sense of the cultural hypocrisy that weighs on the European civilization. Eluding predators by pretending not to be insects (alterity) is combined here with inaction and is a strategic avoidance of predators (passivity). For Caillois, the external transformation of insects is similar to the internal psychological one of people.

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Camouflaged insects offer Caillois inspiration about the potential for humans to adapt their strategies. And here Cheng cites a lovely fragment from Walter Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood of 1929, one that relates to a “child’s elastic sense of self and his readiness to play, provoke, and master elements of his habitat,” a “quotidian form of mimetic-metamorphosis.” Benjamin’s own remark that “the world is full of masks” Cheng contextualizes “from the point of view of the Berlin child, for whom every object in the ‘arsenal of masks’ of his parents’ home promises an experience of transformation.” (ibid., 79) Not only is the world that surrounds children amenable to imaginary transformations—tables into temples, chairs into thrones, sheets into castles—and as such is indeed a world full of magic, but one’s own self is malleable as well to an extent limited only by one’s imagination. This personal suspension of the ego, as both Caillois and Benjamin understood in Cheng’s reading, is culturally significant because it displaces, in her words, the “excessively subjectivist notion of the ‘person’ in the West” with “its origin in the Latin word ‘persona,’ meaning the mask through which the voice (of an actor) is projected.” In short, the fluidity with which children move from one dimension of reality to another or into fantasy is curtailed, as Freud would say, by the strictures of one’s parents and home, the civilized Western society into which one is born. Other cultures, so it seems in this reading, are much more forgiving to imaginary flights of fancy and perhaps more inviting to impersonating other people, animals, and ghosts. (Think of Latin American magic realism in this context or, in Cheng’s telling, all “the cultures that became victims to [modern Europe’s] various forms of social, political, and spiritual violence.” [ibid., 81]) Cheng’s analysis is not about deception, self-deception, or hypocrisy, but her juxtaposition of the surrealist movement in 1930s Europe with the anthropology of the time offers a useful tool with which to approach the tension between the Greek and Hebrew etymologies of hypocrisy. The masking and unmasking that the theater and politics portray can be understood in the psychological terms of the passive, almost absent, agency of individuals. Here the deliberate notions of putting on a mask, distorting one’s “real” person in order to become believable by an audience (or gain advantage for one’s political aspirations), is displaced by a nuanced appreciation of the camouflaging process one may adopt. This process is undertaken in order to overcome oneself, one’s subjectivity, so as to project a “persona” that achieves much more than a mere disappearance into the environment in which one finds oneself. The tension

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between the disappearance of the self—the passivity and loss of agency— and its reappearance as an “other”—a fakery easily identified—may never be relaxed or overcome. As Caillois’ horrifying example illustrates, some insects are so thoroughly camouflaged that they fall prey to being cut with the branches of the trees in which they hide; having escaped one predator, they fall prey to another, an unanticipated one. Has their fate been so determined that no matter their tactics and strategies, no matter their temporal and evolutionary success, they are bound to perish? Is this what happened to the Converso Jews of Spain who escaped the Inquisition only to perish two and a half centuries later in Nazi extermination camps? If camouflaging displaces masking, if it is evolutionarily more effective as a means to evade predators, is it too effective in also erasing the identity of the prey altogether? In answering this question, a distinction can be drawn between the success that leads to accidental failure and the success that is only a temporary deferral of failure because it doesn’t actually succeed: the Jews were still Jews in the eyes of others as they were exterminated centuries later for being Jews, albeit converted or assimilated ones. In this context, camouflage, like masking, is not always effective and may at times lead to disastrous results. Reading the Caillois’ essay to which Cheng refers offers a rich treasuretrove of observations and speculations about these questions. He starts by suggesting that there are various kinds of mimicry: the first is offensive mimicry, which he claims is “designed to surprise the prey.” The second is defensive mimicry, which is “designed either to escape the sight of the aggressor (mimicry of dissimulation) or to frighten it away by a deceptive appearance (mimicry of terrification).” The third is direct mimicry “when it is in the immediate interests of the imitating animal to take on the disguise,” and the fourth is indirect mimicry “when animals belonging to different species, following a common adaptation, a convergence, in some way show ‘professional resemblances.’” (Caillois 1984, 18) What fascinates Caillois is the fact that “anthropomorphism plays a decisive role: the resemblance is all in the eye of the beholder.” (ibid., 19) This means, as far as he is concerned, that visual deception relies heavily on fraught perception, be it of predators or bystanders. Caillois seems uninterested in the explanatory model of evolutionary biology of his day or the semblance of a classificatory model to which he contributed. Instead, he pushes conceptual analogies to new interpretive registers. “Morphological mimicry,” according to him, “could then be, after the fashion

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of chromatic mimicry, an actual photography.” What kind of photography? A photography “on the level of the object and not on that of the image, a reproduction in three-dimensional space with solids and voids: sculpture-photography or better teleplasty, if one strips the word from any metaphysical content.” (ibid., 23; italics in the original) The object here is the animal that is going through the process of mimicry, however defined, and thereby resembles another object, and this becomes the key for Caillois’ analysis. To be clear, for an object to be teleplastic and not photographic, it no longer represents in a different form an object but relates to or involves “the materialization of psychic or other paranormal phenomena.” (OED) Caillois casually moves from the material to the paranormal world the way he moves from the animal to the human world. If the evolutionary model offered an explanation about survival and predatory avoidance, Caillois’ model is more fantastic: it is not about a naturalized process of adaptation that increases the probability of survival, but comes across as a daring process of transformation or what he calls a “dangerous luxury.” As mentioned above, the danger happens when gardeners prune “geometer-moth caterpillars [who] simulate shoots of shrubbery,” or when Phyllia “browse among themselves, taking each other for real leaves.” Another dangerous case Caillois labels “collective masochism,” which leads to “mutual homophagy,” “cannibalism,” and “totem feast.” (ibid., 25) Who would have thought that the evolutionary advantage of survival would end up in cannibalism? Cheng’s characterization of Caillois’ work as being received by his contemporaries as “bizarre” deserves attention: how does one move logically from the dangers of camouflage to “collective masochism” and “mutual homophagy”? Caillois seems to recognize that his logical leaps from the evolutionary and explanatory to his ideas about aesthetic creativity is problematic, perhaps incomprehensible. Yet he insists that his own interpretation “is not as gratuitous as it sounds” because “there seem to exist in man psychological potentialities strangely corresponding to these facts.” (ibid.) He has in mind “the huge realm of sympathetic magic, according to which like produces like and upon which all incantational practice is more or less based.” (ibid.) The shift is from insects and flies, birds and butterflies to humans, where adaptive mimicry and deception are related, to the realm of magic where “like produces like” within the incantations of worshippers, is as fascinating as it is puzzling. Admittedly, finding parallels between insect and human behavior is fascinating, but they do not necessarily lead to speculations about the strange

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correspondence of “psychological potentialities” to their material manifestation as empirical facts. Nevertheless, Caillois’ detour into magic and incantation does not obscure for him the conditions and contexts within which mimicry takes place, the natural environment for insects and the urban one for “civilized” humans. Whether “offensive” or “defensive,” “direct” or “indirect” in his classification, these forms of mimicry have the same effects of erasure of one’s reality and its transformation into another, a self-transformation that goes undetected by others, as if magically. When Caillois brings this naturalized process into the psychological realm, legitimating its occurrences in the process of describing it in quasievolutionary terms, the focus changes from the photographic to a spatial model. In his words: “It is with represented space that the drama becomes specific, since the living creature, the organism, is no longer the origin of the coordinates, but one point among others; it is dispossessed of its privilege and literally no longer knows where to place itself.” (ibid., 28) The deliberate obliteration of one’s physicality (so as to adapt, mimic, and disguise) is now brought into a psychological frame of reference: “The feeling of personality, considered as the organism’s feeling of distinction from its surroundings, of the connection between consciousness and a particular point in space, cannot fail under these conditions to be seriously undermined.” One’s personality as a distinct ontological object is challenged, perhaps “seriously undermined” when full adaptation ensues. He continues: “one then enters into the psychology of psychasthenia, and more specifically of legendary psychasthenia, if we agree to use this name for the disturbance in the above relation between personality and space.” (ibid.; italics in the original) In short, physical transformation produces psychical disorientation to the point of “psychasthenia,” which is defined as “a psychological disorder characterized by phobias, obsessions, compulsions, or excessive anxiety.” (Wikipedia) Whether or not this term is still in psychiatric use is less relevant than its hold on Caillois’ imagination. Referring to the case of schizophrenics who at times find it difficult to answer the simple question of where they are, Caillois continues to explain that “to these dispossessed souls, space seems to be a devouring force. Space pursues them, encircles them, and digests them in a gigantic phagocytosis. It ends by replacing them.” (ibid., 30) When space becomes for some people a “devouring force,” when its force “digests them,” the body “separates itself from thought,” so much so that “the individual breaks the boundary of his skin and occupies the other side of his senses.” (ibid.)

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The separation of body and thought (Descartes’ body and mind) is analogous to the process observed in insects when they use their “mimicry” to camouflage themselves and disappear into their environment. This process of complete adaptation into an environmentally inviting space is understood by Caillois as “depersonalization by assimilation to space, i.e., what mimicry achieves morphologically in certain animal species.” The insect disappears into space as if it is depersonalizing itself from its surroundings. “The magical hold (one can truly call it so without doing violence to the language) of night and obscurity, the fear of the dark, probably also has its roots in the peril in which it puts the opposition between the organism and the milieu.” (ibid., 30; italics in the original) What in some sense is natural adaptation becomes in another sense a “magical hold,” one that belies a tension between “the organism and the milieu,” between the insect or the person and their natural or social environments. If Caillois would have stopped at this stage of his analysis he and his work would have not fallen into obscurity (as Cheng intimates). But he pushes on and offers an unanticipated explanation, another logical leap: “This assimilation to space is necessarily accompanied by a decline in the feeling of personality and life.” (ibid., 31) Mimicry and metamorphosis are now described as the erasure of personality and life; the price one must pay to stay alive is to lose one’s self. And if this paradoxical, perhaps even suicidal, process seems unreasonable, Caillois quickly acknowledges his own philosophical predicament. In his own defense, he asks his readers to keep in mind that he is delving into “the obscure realm of unconscious determinations.” And there, he continues, “there is generally speaking a sort of instinct of renunciation that orients it toward a mode of reduced existence, which in the end would no longer know either consciousness or feeling–the inertia of the élan vital, so to speak.” (ibid., 32; italics in the original) While Freud speaks of libidinal desires that are subdued for the sake of civilization, Caillois speaks of an “instinct of renunciation,” perhaps hinting at the suppression of one’s Ego as a psychic moment that rubs clean one’s psychic composition, one’s internal psyche. Caillois’ instinct, unlike its Freudian counterparts, wants to remain suppressed, ignored, or even vanish into complete renunciation of its very existence. It is not waiting to be unleashed in an uncivil and aggressive mode; rather, it wants to recede even farther into its protective shell, pretending, as if it can, that it does not even exist, and if it does, that it should not be accessed.

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Learning from the biological model of evolutionary theory is one thing; collecting exemplars of insect mimicry and classifying them into offensive, defensive, direct, and indirect categories is an informative other thing; but transforming the fascinating empirical data into a psychological model that explains human unconscious behavior in space is speculative and outlandish. Or is it? Is there something subtle, even intriguing in the juxtaposition of two instincts, self-preservation and renunciation: the one does not negate the other, so to speak, but pushes the one into a different conceptual frame of reference than the other. The self-preservation instinct, the one that pushes toward assimilation and adaptation, camouflaging, and changing one’s coloration and even features in and of itself does not necessitate a complete loss of identity. The loss is temporal until danger passes, until safety is restored, until one is back to being who one usually is, with the full coloration of the butterfly or the insect that escaped predators only moments before. This temporal loss is functional, instrumental, and however fully accomplished, not a permanent loss of identity, of identifying features and external appearance. As such, this temporal loss is not a full renunciation of who one is or used to be before the need to hide arose. This temporality indicates that though one may momentarily lose one’s appearance or presence of mind (the actor, diplomat, or spy), it is not a permanent renunciation of one’s being. On the contrary, only because one has given in, so to speak, to the exigencies of the situation, one was able to preserve one’s identity in the long run. Is there anything hypocritical about this process of self-preservation? Must it involve self-renunciation? This line of reasoning may not exonerate the agents examined in the five examples from the charge of hypocrisy. In the case of the Israeli nuclear armament, it would be ironic (and extremely dangerous) if its camouflage tactics—pretending their nuclear base of operation is something else—were to backfire and cause a nuclear holocaust right there and then if hit by a stray missile not intended to start a nuclear war. Camouflaging, as we have seen, can enhance the evolutionary odds of survival while inviting unintentional consequences of annihilation. Similarly, one could ask if the corporate camouflaging perpetrated by WeWork brings about an ironic trajectory of its own demise, having lost its sense of unique identity or having lost the will to clarify how its corporate identity differs from and is superior to its competitors. Celibate Catholic clergy definitely camouflage their sexuality, but this may not deny their identity as sexual being with libidinal desires, and therefore would not

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cancel the charge of hypocrisy when directed at them. Their “instinct of renunciation” may have turned out to hurt innocent children, but would this bring about a death wish? As we shall see later in Chapter 4, how we approach our individual and collective psychological identity has much to do with how we approach so-called hypocritical behavior. At this stage, it seems that the masking and unmasking that is associated with the Greek etymology of hypocrisy presupposes a psychic uniformity and rational, consistent behavioral patterns, while the Hebrew one associated with camouflage problematizes the very sense of one psychic or social identity.

References Mikhail Bakhtin (1984), Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Christopher Beam (2010), “Code Black,” Slate (1/11/10); Available at: http:// www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2010/01/code_black. html; Accessed 3/6/18. Roger Caillois (1984), “Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia,” translated by John Shepley, October Vol. 31 (Winter 1984), pp. 16–32. Joyce Cheng (2009), “Mask, Mimicry, Metamorphosis: Roger Caillois, Walter Benjamin and Surrealism in the 1930s,” Modernism/Modernity Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 61–86. Jon Elster, (Ed.) (1998), Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jon Elster (2009), Reason and Rationality. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Jon Elster (2016), Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality [1983]. Cambridge: Cambridge Philosophy Classics. John Emerson [Haquelebac] (2020), “The Etymology of Hypocrisy,” Word Press.com. Available at: https://haquelebac.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/ the-etymology-of-hypocrisy/. Accessed 4/1/20; 7/12/20. Sigmund Freud (1925), “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death: The Disillusionment of the War” [1915]. Translated by E. C. Mayne, in Collected Papers, Vol. 4, pp. 288–317. Kyle G. Fritz and Daniel Miller (2018), “Hypocrisy and the Standing to Blame,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 99, pp. 118–139. Future Church (2019) Available at: https://www.futurechurch.org/brief-historyof-celibacy-in-catholic-church. Accessed 11/25/19. Anna Elisabetta Galeotti (2018), Political Self-Deception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Rosabeth Moss Kanter (2019), “WeWork’s saga is a cautionary tale about golden parachutes and CEO pay,” CNN Business Perspectives (11/7/19). Available at: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/05/perspectives/adam-neumanngolden-parachute-wework/index.html. Accessed 4/22/20. Eva Feder Kittay (1982), “On Hypocrisy,” Metaphilosophy Vol. 13, Nos. 3 & 4, July/October 1982, pp. 277–289. Stephen D. Krasner (1999), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jacob T. Levy (2017), “Hypocrisy Isn’t the Problem: Nihilism is,” Los Angeles Times (2/8/17). Available at: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/laoe-levy-hyocrisy-nihilism-20170208-story.html. Accessed 9/13/17. Bernard Mandeville (1997), The Fable of the Bees and Other Writings [1723 & 1728]. Edited by E. J. Hundert. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company. Christine McKinnon (1999), Character, Virtue Theories, and the Vices. New York: Broadview Press. Chantal Mouffe (2018), For a Left Populism. London and New York: Verso. National Catholic Reporter (2019), Available at: https://www.ncronline.org/soc ial-tags/pedophilia. Accessed 11/25/19. Friedrich Nietzsche (1974), The Gay Science [1882]. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books. Friedrich Nietzsche (1982), Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality [1881]. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. David Runciman (2008), Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power, From Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Raphael Sassower (2017), The Quest for Prosperity: Reframing Political Economy. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. Judith Shklar (1979), “Let Us Not Be Hypocritical,” Daedalus Vol. 108, No. 3 (Summer 1979), pp. 1–25. Alyson Shontell (2019), “WeWork’s entire board should be fired before Adam Neumann,” Insider (9/23/19). Available at: http://static2.insider.com/ wework-boardfiring-ceo-adam-neumann-broken-startups-2019-9. Accessed 5/12/20. Daniel Statman (1997), “Hypocrisy and Self-Deception,” Philosophical Psychology Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 57–75. Arun Sundararajan (2016), The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press. Bela Szabados and Eldon Soifer (2004), Hypocrisy: Ethical Investigations. New York: Broadview Press. R. Jay Wallace (2010), “Hypocrisy, Moral Address, and the Equal Standing of Persons,” Philosophy & Public Affairs Vol. 38, No. 4 (Fall 2010), pp. 307– 341. Alenka Zupanˇciˇc (2008), The Odd One In: On Comedy. Cambridge and London: MIT Press.

CHAPTER 3

Complicity and Compromise

Abstract This chapter delves into the political realm where hypocrisy is most likely to be detected and publicly condemned. At stake are policy choices and coalition building that require the art of persuasion. Whether the deliberations are domestic or international, their purpose is to yield political results that at times require compromises. Different kinds of compromise warrant different moral judgments. Hypocritical conduct in this context may be understood on a spectrum of possibilities, some acceptable and others contemptible. Political realities highlight not only different kinds of hypocrisy but underscore some of their positive implementations. When politicians appear hypocritical, they may be performing well and treating everyone much better than if they remained steadfast in their consistent adherence to principles. When citizens appear to conform to the social and cultural conventions and norms of their communities, they cannot help but fall into the alluring trap of civilized hypocrisy. Sociality may necessitate compromise, but it does not demand hypocrisy.

3.1

Political Economy

Plato’s Republic suggests that the political stage, unlike the theatrical, is so problematic that the best one can hope for is a utopian construct. There, every person is assigned a role, fulfilling a function in concert with others and ensuring the smooth operations of the polis. Craftspeople have their designated position, the guardians theirs, and at the very top is the

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philosopher-king who ensures that all contributions fit within the hierarchically ordered architecture of the republic. Some critics have taken this blueprint to symbolize the shift from messy democracy to neat totalitarianism (e.g., Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies 1966/1943), while others have understood its brilliant design to work as an essential scaffolding for economic exchanges (e.g., Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation 1944). The lamentation over the replacement of homo politicos by homo economicus responds to the weakness of the democratic state in the face of the neoliberal onslaught at the dusk of the twentieth and the dawn of the twenty-first century (e.g., Wendy Brown’s Undoing the Demos 2015). The thorough economizing and monetizing of every facet of human life comes at the expense of the political integrity of a democratic state where citizens are promised rights, principles (such as liberty and equality) guide policy, and elected governing bodies have regulatory oversight. By now, individuals no longer expect the state to intervene in labor relations and workplace safety, redistribute surpluses through progressive taxation, and provide consumer protection from product malfunction and monopoly pricing. Whether the lament of Marxists and Keynesians or the jubilance of the Austrian-Chicago Schools, the political not only supports the economic sphere (of a specific model of capitalist production, distribution, and consumption), but has also become an integral part of it. So much so, that the political becomes economic as well: from lobbying firms that plead the case of their clients (at times even writing the legislation they expect representatives to vote on) all the way to transactional relations between representatives and their constituents (e.g., Lawrence Lessig’s Republic, Lost 2011). Any presumed separation between the political and economic domains (that would repudiate the replacement of homo politicos with homo economicus ) is as false today as it was during the Enlightenment, so that “political economy” is the proper way of thinking of the overlap of these domains. The brilliance of classical economists and their critics was to infuse the economic domain with political ideals, such as freedom and equality, fairness and reciprocity, along with a strong dose of communal empathy (e.g., Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiment 1759). Their neoliberal descendants continue to insist that the only way to actualize such ideals is by giving them unfettered reign in the economic domain (where prosperity through economic growth and low taxes is the Holy Grail). The logic and coherence of this way of thinking is secured, it would seem from the historical record, by emphasizing two

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related concepts: individualism and private property. From John Locke down the historical Anglo-American road, the focus on individual private property has remained vital, and through this ploy, as critics have clearly understood, the credibility of capitalism would be safeguarded for generations to come. Odd disturbances of wealth and income inequalities and economic crises, for example, are routinely dismissed by apologists with arguments about government interference that undermines the potential of free enterprise or about inevitable personal failings (given the precarity of human behavior in group dynamics). As long as the individual remained the focus of attention, structural analyses of the Marxian, Keynesian, and Institutionalist kind were beside the point and could be ignored. (See, for example, the centrality of Methodological Individualism in the social sciences as a categorical denunciation of any collective entity, such as class, having an epistemological standing). As we move from the age of finance capitalism to the age of “surveillance capitalism” (so named by Shoshana Zuboff 2019), the collapse of the political into the economic or the wholesale overtaking of the political by the economic becomes more evident. Perhaps the missing link is not the disintegration of the citizen as a political agent into a consuming robot controlled by big technological corporations, but the complicity we all display to various degrees in adopting this mindset. Class analysis or group psychology of the past century is jettisoned in the age of social media. In its stead, a completely individualized existence is postulated, one built on the historical focus on the unique and singular consumer. If the political economic arena is dominated by consumers and their private property (now understood as much by their desires, behavior, and knowledge), then any group association or sense of belonging remains elusive, even untenable. This kind of staging, where every consumer seems to have a script of their own making, must be somehow coordinated in order to avoid mayhem. The coordination is neither directed by the state nor by religious or social institutions; it is controlled by multinational high-tech corporations whose power transcends national boundaries and regulatory authority. Their biopower (as envisioned by Foucault’s genealogy of governmentality) is different in kind from previous arrangements of power relations, because we are now willing participants, complicit in the collection of our data and explicitly agreeing to divulge information about ourselves (dates and photos, speech and sex, bank accounts and travel plans) as opposed to being coerced into doing so. Accompanying this process of being laid bare is the process of data collection that traces

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our digital footprint and can predict with great accuracy our behavioral patterns and choices. The coercive features of classical power relations are more difficult to identify (and mobilize for resistance) in this organizational pattern because of the manipulative and seductive appeal to our freedom of choice. Our boundless opportunities are celebrated and equality is cast in terms of access, instrumental rationality is promoted while collective action (except for following fads) is discouraged, and selfsufficiency if not individual responsibility (caveat emptor) displaces state protection and social safety nets. Under these conditions, Shakespeare’s famous line could be rephrased as “All the world’s a political economic stage,” turning political agents into theatrical puppets whose acting prowess is dominated by social media outlets. On this global stage, the state valorizes and promotes certain individual rights and benefits, coordinated according to specific economic and financial parameters that ignore, for the most part, inequalities among individuals. The state also grants corporations the right to collect sufficient data from individuals to form customized composites of them. Clearly, they operate in a virtual space unfathomable by earlier philosophers of political economy. Can we trust the “FAANG” (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google)? Or, has FAANG subdued the state into doing its bidding because of the outsized power of over four trillion dollars in market capitalization as of 2020 (with or without Microsoft and other high-tech giants)? At stake in this political economic analysis is the personalization of markets on digital platforms. Too absorbed by the abundance of offerings in the Internet, our critical faculties have diminished. Revisiting the charge of hypocrisy in this chapter, the question of complicity as part of communal relations is central to my examination of the psychological dimensions of the political economic domain. Freud’s analysis of the cultural hypocrisy exacted by civilization (as mentioned in the previous chapter) and the pretense of a uniform psychic formation (as will be discussed in the next chapter) are reexamined here. In Freud’s analysis, the price of civilizing a community was conformity, however tenuous or bound to break loose. This coerced conformity, however socializing and civilizing, is reconsidered here in terms of acquiescence and complicity, as we have become fetishists who readily trade our freedom and privacy for the latest gadgets and shiny objects of virtual capitalism. The charge of hypocrisy in this context may be appropriate for borderline conduct that normalizes one set of behaviors and disturbs another. When deployed as a slur or judgment, the charge of hypocrisy

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signals moral ideals a community believes in or would like to promote. The charge of and response to hypocrisy can open a conversation about the arbitration of human conduct in the polis. Before we continue to survey some of the arguments made in relation to hypocrisy on the political economic stage, the promise of critical reflection has to be explained. The appeal to reason, dating back to the Greeks and recast in modernist terms during the Enlightenment, has been an appeal to a moderating force, one that could control and transform individual (psychic) energies into a coordinated system of political economy. The specific structural compromises of such institutions (the polis, the nation-state, the local community garden) would change over time to accommodate changing tastes and preferences and account for technological innovations. The centrality of the individual is curtailed in this reading by the moderating influence of critical collective reasoning. Yet, we must ask, do all individuals universally share the same notion of “reason,” especially when we see ourselves as unique individuals? Even if some notion of reason is shared, it is unclear if it is the same (modernist) understanding of reason as rationality and consistency. This is too high a burden or imposition on us in the digital age; we are bound to come short, under most circumstances, of abiding by the strictures of rationality and consistency. Even if we made our best effort to comport ourselves as reasonable actors on this or that stage, the circumstances might change enough between stages and within the same stages at different times to warrant inconsistency or an outright refusal to maintain an unacceptable position once dearly held. In short, even if we could adhere to some rationality, we may have good reasons not to do so. Three observations seem important at this juncture. First, while one view of rationality as an organizing principle supports a political economy both legally and in terms of communicative processes (that are democratic and instrumental, according to Jürgen Habermas 1984), a corollary one suggests that adherence to rationality without an appeal to morality can become dangerous, even lethal (see Zygmunt Bauman’s concern with modernity and the Holocaust, 1989). These two contrasting views highlight the dubious completion of the Enlightenment project of reason with the murder of native inhabitants, slavery, and colonial devastation of natural resources. Second, the appeal to rationality, the philosophical bedrock of human conduct, mirrors the appeal to the ego’s organizing rationality as controlling its irrational desires. But an appeal to be rational on the personal register rings hollow (as already seen in the

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previous chapter) when primal desires cannot be fully or even partially suppressed, when digital platforms seduce beyond one’s wildest imagination, and when warfare dominates geopolitical relations. Marxists insist that there is a perverse but persistent capitalist appeal to one’s irrationality, fetishism, and insatiable consumption, no matter capitalism’s rational and malleable formation (industrial, consumer, or financial). There is nothing rational about consuming beyond one’s means or becoming indebted with no prospects of ever getting out from under the weight of creditors: the suspension of reason under the banner of reason undergirds such behavior. Third, the recent incarnation of capitalism as surveillance capitalism is part of a long trajectory that feasts on human irrationality and caprice and in fact deliberately manipulates and exploits primal desires. The very engine that sustains and bolsters capitalism’s reach as a system of extraction and exploitation is irrational through and through, preying on our insecurities and fantasies. In this sense, the rationality of the capitalist state is the mask that is placed on the faces of actors who play their prescribed roles to help hide irrational behavior, and that is placed on the face of the capitalist state in turn to hide its dependence on our fear, insecurity, and fantasy. We become unwitting participants in our own victimization: we are exploited producers of knowledge and data (about ourselves and our choices), poor recipients of whatever wealth and income trickles down from the pool of surplus value, and manipulated consumers whose choices are predetermined. These observations reinforce a view of human irrationality that is recognized by capitalism (“predictable irrationality” is one of the insights of behavioral economists, and the title of Dan Ariely’s 2008 book), and is by now scaled up by high-tech corporations to an extent that would shock even Marx (but perhaps not Freud). The hypocrisy that unfolds in the recent development of surveillance capitalism—the latest manifestation of extraction of high-tech giants corporation in the form of personal data rather than natural resources—is the pretense that consumer demand and technology drive corporate choices in the marketplace rather than the other way around. Hiding behind the mask of technology has given cover to the latest capitalist ploy, one that foregrounds entertainment (the constant appeal to “free” apps and digital games) but aims at extracting personal data with relatively little initial investment to customize it to entrap and induce individuals to purchase goods and services they neither need nor can afford (and often don’t even particularly want). This kind of hypocrisy, sadly, is not a crime. Nor does it suffer derision or

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moral outrage in the court of public opinion. Paradoxically, the political economic stage is lavishly decorated by corporate largess (philanthropy capitalism that underwrites convention centers, museums, concert halls, and sports arenas) and is fortified by the state so as to promote hightech performances. No state regulation or corporate self-policing stops the invasive encroachment of corporations into the private lives of individuals, perhaps because once we have been accustomed to seeing ourselves as autonomous participants in the virtual consumption and entertainment space of the Internet, our critical, perhaps even democratic, guard evaporates. We imagine we have no need for guardians, in either the Platonic sense or the modern one of state regulation. The disappearance of democratic protections and the masking of corporate extraction of human capital are even more dangerous than earlier warnings about the pernicious exploitation of natural disasters by multinational vulture corporation who prey on the weakness of states unready to respond to these disasters. (For more on this global phenomenon, see Naomi Klein 2007 and Wendy Brown 2015.)

3.2

Individuals and Communities

Confucius is credited with saying that “the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in the storm.” A similar sentiment is expressed in the Bible about the willow tree (Isaiah 42:3). These proverbs suggest the advisability of adaptability for the sake of weathering the elements and remaining resilient. In some cases and under some circumstances such adaptability would warrant the charge of hypocrisy: “bend[ing] in the wind” is tantamount to bowing to the powers that be, not standing up to them like an oak tree regardless of the potential for destruction, not speaking truth to power. The implication is that the green reed or the willow tree is paradoxically stronger because it bends. It is similar to the chameleon whose color changes depending on the environment. These recommendations are analogous to Caillois’ notion of the “instinct of renunciation” as the proper means for (evolutionary) survival. Let us turn to an examination of some tactical and strategic social maneuvers and their political implications in order to deal with the problem of complicity. One path begins a century ago with the German differentiation between the concept of Gemeinschaft, commonly translated as “community,” and Gesellschaft, translated as “society” (Ferdinand Tönnies

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2001/1887). It is commonly understood that while “community” denotes the coming together of individuals who share common norms and values in the sense of belonging, “society” denotes a coming together by individuals whose self-interest and the gains they may draw from the group overshadow the price of membership (perhaps in the classical sense of “social contract”). The model of the Greek polis cannot be universalized, as it relies on a homogenous group of citizens whose sex (male), genealogy (father as citizen), and property ownership (including in some cases slaves and servants) are prerequisites. How, then, could one think about social relations beyond the limits of the Greek model or the model of surveillance capitalism? What typology of individual actions (rather than intentions and motivations or prerequisite status) could undergird the collective and turn it into a community rather than an idealized society in the Greek or German sense? In his typology of social action, Max Weber is a useful guide and a precursor of most twentieth-century political economic debates over collective action. In his rendering, individual action may be “oriented” in four ways. The notion of orientation is less restrictive than a classification because Weber’s sociological analysis is a way to think about Ideal Types as heuristic epistemological guides and not as ontological categories or entities. The first individual action Weber calls “instrumentally rational” (zweckrational ), so that one’s behavior is “rationally pursued” “for the attainment of the actor’s own rationally pursued and calculated ‘end’,” fulfilling thereby one’s ‘expectations’.” (1978, 24) The second he calls “value-rational” (wertrational ), so that one’s behavior is “determined by a conscious belief in a value or principle for its own sake,” “independently of its prospects of success.” (ibid.) Unlike the first, which is conditional (or consequential in the ethical sense), the second is unconditional (or deontological in the ethical sense). The third he calls “affectual (especially emotional), that is, determined by the actor’s specific affects and feeling states,” and the fourth “traditional” insofar as this kind of behavior is “determined by ingrained habituation.” (ibid., 25) Weber concedes that the fourth type of behavior overlaps with or can be deduced from the second type in the sense that in many cases individual action relies on a set of ingrained values one may reflexively and unconsciously follow (like respect for the law or for one’s elders). Similarly, there is potential overlap between the second and third types insofar as they are both affected by how one feels about the action itself and less dependent on the consequences of such action.

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Given the Weberian typology, instrumental rationality seems most relevant to questions of hypocrisy, for it foregrounds expectations rather than behavior driven by personal conviction that is based on a set of moral principles or religious beliefs. In Weber’s explanation, instrumental rationality is not limited to choices “between alternative and conflicting ends,” but includes situations wherein an “order of urgency” arises in the sense of “the principle of ‘marginal utility’.” (ibid., 26) Referring to the economic concept of marginal utility, the mainstay of neoclassical economics of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century economic theory, Weber links the social behavior of individuals with the political economic sphere. In this sphere, as he continues to explain, “value-rationality is always irrational.” (ibid.) What is irrational about the second type of (rational) social behavior? In Weber’s words: “the more the value to which action is oriented is elevated to the status of an absolute value, the more ‘irrational’ in this sense the corresponding action is.” (ibid., 27; italics added) Adherence to any “value for its own sake, to pure sentiment or beauty, to absolute goodness or devotion to duty” ignores potential negative consequences or the price one might pay for ignoring other values; in failing to account for its price, such behavioral adherence is irrational. In refusing to bend or bow, the mighty oak breaks, while the green reed or willow tree bends or bows and survives. When moving from the typology of individual social actions to social relationships, Weber shifts into an analysis of how “a plurality of actors” finds “meaning” in social interactions, may they take the form of “conflict, hostility, sexual attraction, friendship, loyalty, or economic exchange.” (ibid., 27) No matter what these interactions turn out to be, no matter their context, says Weber, people find meaning in them. He seems to intimate as well that people seek these meanings no matter how obscure they appear at first or how misguided their initial understanding of these meanings might have been. Though the charge of hypocrisy fits some individual instrumental rationality—when the ends justify the means but the means are deliberately deceitful—it may not fit the characterization of social relations. In some social relations, Weber concedes, “reciprocity” of “subjective meaning” may not obtain. It is quite reasonable that individuals may have different perceptions of the same social action, and Weber therefore considers them to be “objectively ‘asymmetrical’.” This asymmetry may result in the breakdown of such social relations. What is at stake when asymmetries become obvious? According to Weber, when a change in one’s subjective meaning of social interaction happens, “a political relationship

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[for example] once based on solidarity may develop into a conflict of interests.” (ibid.) In this context, as we shall see below, there is an incentive to pretend that the “meaning” of the social relation has not changed: if the goal is political “solidarity” or a continuation of an already existing relationship, a dose of pretense (hypocrisy) is appropriate, perhaps necessary. This logic eventually collapses the distinction between the two kinds of behavioral rationality since the individual may both adhere to some political value, solidarity or loyalty, while considering the consequences of making concessions or compromising for political purposes, such as maintaining power and unifying the nation-state. If the distinction is upheld rather than relaxed, mutual consent to value certain principles through “instrumental rationality” can result in a political process that from purely “value rationality” seems hypocritical. This formulation reveals the paradoxes plaguing political conduct when means and ends as values and strategies intermix. Individual behavior within a community, what Weber understands as both social action and social relations, is examined here in political economic terms. One of the great expositors of the political sphere is Hannah Arendt, who reminds her readers that to “live in a polis, meant that everything was decided through words and persuasion and not through force and violence.” (1958, 26) Here, she deviates from the standard Greek extension of the household to the public realm (e.g., Xenophon’s Oeconomicus ) and distinguishes between the “natural community in the household,” which is borne of “necessity,” and the “realm of the polis,” which is supposed to be the “sphere of freedom.” (ibid., 30) Freedom, for her, “is located in the realm of the social, and force or violence becomes the monopoly of government.” (ibid., 31) Setting aside violence as the monopoly of the state for a moment, we can refocus Weber’s social action and social relations as free undertakings in the social realm. Reframing the binary of equality and liberty (where one necessarily comes at the expense of the other), Arendt insists that equality in the polis “far from being connected with justice, as in modern times, was the very essence of freedom: to be free meant to be free from the inequality present in rulership.” (ibid., 32–3) Not only does Arendt escape the binary opposition of equality and freedom by arguing equality is the political prerequisite for freedom, she also manages to deflect the Weberian binary of instrumental and value rationality. For her, the public sphere, “society,” brings individuals who are “free from inequality” together; it is “the form in which the fact of mutual dependence for the sake of life and nothing else assumes public significance

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and where the activities connected with sheer survival are permitted to appear in public.” (ibid., 46) “Mutual dependence” softens the harshness expressed in the Weberian binary where one’s instrumental engagement with others violates the Kantian moral principle of treating every person as an end and not as a means. For Arendt, the “public significance” of this “fact” supports the “form” these political relations take on. The public sphere is significant for not only “sheer survival” but also for its public exposure of the equal survival needs of all participants. The public sphere ensures that everything “can be seen and heard by everybody and has the widest possible publicity” (ibid., 50), and is “common to all of us and distinguished from our privately owned place in it.” (ibid., 52) Equal exposure in a common space, rather than individual expression in private, liberates as much as it constrains. But if “everybody has the widest possible publicity,” will some hide their true desires or pretend to be someone they are not? Would such a setup increase the potential for hypocrisy? Arendt gives Plato credit for being the “first to invent the metaphor of an actor behind the scenes who, behind the backs of acting men, pulls the strings and is responsible for the story.” (ibid., 185) The actor behind the scenes, as we shall see below in the age of surveillance capitalism, is never fully exposed regardless of their effectiveness. This means, in the meantime, that unmasking an actor will expose little and never be a full disclosure of the truth as one would expect; the actor follows the instructions of a playwright, someone with intentions and perspectives who is responsible for writing the play but remains unaccountable for its performance. Despite the fact that, for Arendt, both action and speech belong to the public realm (in the sense that in isolation they have no meaning, cannot be understood at all), their meanings can remain obscure, even undecipherable, because all performances (speech and actions) reveal only actors and not authors (unless the actors author their own performances). (ibid., 188ff.) One way to appreciate human interaction or social relations is to transport the physical into a metaphorical realm, the space “between” individuals. In Arendt’s words, the polis “is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose.” (ibid., 198; italics added) Arendt argues that Democritus and Plato understood that politics as techne, belongs “among the arts, and can be likened to such activities as healing or navigation, where, as in the performance of the dancer or play-actor, the ‘product’ is identical with the performing act

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itself.” (ibid., 2017) Some parts of the entire Kantian or Weberian meansends analysis evaporates in light of this way of thinking about politics as performance, where the activity is all there is. Other parts, associated with the third Weberian type of “affectual (especially emotional)” conduct, the kind determined by “the actor’s specific affects and feeling states,” come to mind here. Unlike the Weberian typology that considers affectual behavior secondary in importance for establishing social relations, Arendt lingers on it. According to her, “It was precisely these occupations—healing, flute-playing, play-acting—which furnished ancient thinking with examples for the highest and greatest activities of man.” (ibid.) Instead of thinking of “play-acting” as distracting entertainment (in the Trumpian mode), secondary to serious affairs of state, Arendt claims that such “occupations” are instead the “highest and greatest activities of man” (as she distinguishes between theater as art and stagecraft). These Greekinspired (Arendtian) public performances transcend their (Weberianmodernist) transactional characteristics because they are artistic. Arendt seems to deal with this issue elsewhere when commenting on the French Revolution. She explains that Robespierre and his followers, “once they had equated virtue with the qualities of the heart, see intrigue and calumny, treachery and hypocrisy everywhere” and suggests that this was a “misplaced emphasis on the heart as the source of political virtue.” (1963, 91–2) There is a connection here between the heart as standing for the emotions and their potential dangers and Weber’s third type of social interaction so that conduct driven by emotions alone is quite dangerous; reason is a needed companion or guardian. Rational evaluation of one’s speech and activities in the political sphere are translated into a “misplaced emphasis on the heart,” the locus of emotions. Arendt, in a psychoanalytic-like moment, writes that “Robespierre’s insane lack of trust in others, even in his closest friends, sprang ultimately from his not so insane but quite normal suspicion of himself,” leading her to ask, “how could he be sure that he was not the one thing he probably feared most in his life, a hypocrite?” (ibid., 92) If political virtue rests exclusively on reason moderating desire, emotions, and selfish calculations, then political power relations can be stabilized. Self-doubt translates into doubt of others in this reading, and everyone is suspected of “calumny, treachery, and hypocrisy.” Arendt continues to contend that in a political logic based on the heart, “the reign of virtue was bound to be at worst the rule of hypocrisy,” where postures of sincerity are

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publicly performed and lead to a “never-ending fight to ferret out the hypocrites.” (ibid., 93) Ferreting out hypocrites in contemporary culture turns social media into a political court, where political opponents are pitted against each other and guilty declarations without evidence are quick to materialize. In Arendt’s words: “the search for motives, the demand that everybody display in public his innermost motivation, since it actually demands the impossible, transforms all actors into hypocrites; the moment the display of motives begins, hypocrisy begins to poison all human relations.” (ibid., 93) Arendt moves from the impossibility of divining intentions and motivations, from pretending to undertake psychoanalytic exercises, to a careful analysis and critical evaluation of the actual speech and action of participants. Arendt’s reading of the French Revolution relates, for the purposes of this book, to the historical formation of the charge of hypocrisy, when this charge became not only a paranoid witch hunt but also grounds for execution in the name of founding a better politics. She comments on the “momentous role that hypocrisy and the passion for its unmasking came to play in the later stages of the French Revolution” and notes that this established a situation where “no one is left among the chief actors who does not stand accused, or at least suspected, of corruption, duplicity, and mendacity.” (ibid., 94) The allegation of hypocrisy was more than an accusation of misconduct or feigned patriotism. The “war upon hypocrisy was war declared upon society as the eighteenth century knew it” so that the “Revolution offered the opportunity of tearing the mask of hypocrisy off the face of French society, of exposing its rottenness, and, finally, of tearing the façade of corruption down and of exposing behind it the unspoiled, honest face of the people.” (ibid., 101–2; italics in the original) The faith that “the people” have an “unspoiled, honest face” drives the zeal of Robespierre and his fellow revolutionaries to tear “the mask off the face of French society.” There appears here a faith in the people’s absolute innocence and immunity to hypocrisy, a faith in the people’s “unspoiled, honest face” conjured as a moral ideal, the reality of which is irrelevant for those who use it in the meantime to accuse and punish all of those suspected of lacking it. In other words, it may be the case that there are only corrupt people whose unmasking will reveal no honesty in an absolute sense, being as we all are, sometimes honest and sometimes deceitful. Arendt’s retort, in this context, is that “as long as he remains in the act,” the actor, even on the political stage, does not have an “alter ego before whom he might appear in his true shape.” (ibid., 99)

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If the actor maintains a consistent façade, there is no lying as such, just playing a role, like an actor. There is no authentic other that is hiding behind a mask. Convincing oneself as much as others, the hypocrite, she continues, “eliminates from the world … the only core of integrity from which true appearance could arise again, his own incorruptible self… the hypocrite’s crime is that he bears false witness against himself.” (ibid., 99) So the hypocrite’s problem is in being convinced of their own innocence, their own purity in the face of others’ compromised or corrupt duality; not in being imperfect and flawed, but rather in misrecognizing themselves as having complete integrity (in the sense of wholeness and cohesiveness), which is tantamount to some form of arrogance. Three issues come to mind here: first, in the name of integrity bloodbaths and witch hunts are sanctioned; second, since self-knowledge is never fully accomplished, bearing “false witness” against oneself is inevitable; and third, even when self-knowledge is gained, self-incrimination is not legally expected. The danger of Robespierre’s fanaticism reveals the boundary conditions where morality and politics meet the legal system, and where the charge of hypocrisy is often weaponized. Actors with or without masks, continues Arendt, still keep their own voices. She explains that the unmasking of the “person” as a “deprivation of legal personality” still leaves behind the “natural” human being; unmasking of “the hypocrite,” by contrast, “would leave nothing behind the mask, because the hypocrite is the actor himself insofar as he wears no mask.” What distinguishes the hypocrite from the actor is that he “pretends to be the assumed role, and when he enters the game of society, it is without any play-acting whatsoever.” (ibid., 103; italics in the original) Unlike the actor who reverts to who they were before assuming a role once they take off their mask, the hypocrite has no such resort, remaining who they are with or without the mask. This also correlates to the private/public distinction where one has certain commitments and responsibilities in the public sphere that are not necessarily identical to those applicable in the private sphere. Arendt’s first insight indicates that different actors on different stages have different stakes and roles, and therefore have to answer to different demands and are responsible to different ideas of what is good. Unmasking as such does not deprive all the different actors of their standard legal rights. By contrast, unmasking the “person” on the political economic stage—denying citizenship rights, for example, to enslaved Blacks even after the American Revolution—was indeed hypocritical. Perhaps a brief constitutional citation may be in order

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here. “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” (U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 2) Given the “Threefifth Compromise,” as this part of the Constitution became known, Black slaves were counted as three-fifth persons for the sake of apportioning tax dollars and designating delegates to the House of Representatives; they were not counted at all as citizens with any rights until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment after the Civil War in 1865. Comparing the theatrical stage with the political economic one, in this context, does not hold up philosophically. Though I have relied on the shift from the theatrical to the political economic stage to suggest some overlap in the roles played by actors and citizens (e.g., Jay 2010, 108–9), the stakes are obviously so different as to demand some clear separation between them. Suggesting that enslaved Blacks do not deserve the same legal and political rights as whites goes much further than merely unmasking the deceptions inflicted on them; it reaches a new register of hypocrisy, one associated with the blatant mockery of the moral and political principles on which the republic was supposed to have been based. According to Arendt, “what made the hypocrite so odious was that he claimed not only sincerity but naturalness” and used that claim as a legal shield. “What made him so dangerous outside the social realm whose corruption he represented and, as it were, enacted, was that he instinctively could help himself to every ‘mask’ in the political theater, that he could assume every role among its dramatis personae.” Arendt’s second insight is just as important as the first: hypocrites, for whom politics is a game, do not risk paying the kind of price paid by others (enslaved Blacks in the example above) when their masks are metaphorically torn off. They can assume different roles at will, always evading the charge of hypocrisy, always staying one step ahead of their persecutors. The danger of the hypocrite, according to Arendt’s third insight, is that “he [the hypocrite on the political stage] would not use this mask, as the rules of the political game demand, as a sounding board for the truth but, on the contrary, as a contraption for deception.” (ibid., 103) Perhaps what Arendt has in mind here is that masks have often been used as formidable devices and “sounding board[s] for the truth,” enabling (with the protection of pretense) social commentaries and critiques of those in power. Wearing

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masks or clowning, as court jesters have historically been known to do, is an effective method of cajoling others into lowering their guard and admitting the truth (at times understood as entrapment) or as a means of protecting the identity of the critic/clown from potential retribution. Students of ancient Greece know the political satire of Aristophanes’ plays (e.g., The Birds, The Frogs, The Clouds, Lysistrata) as social commentary and biting criticism of those in power, as do readers of Swift and Voltaire and contemporary viewers of John Oliver and Saturday Night Live. Weberian instrumental rationality would explain the use of masks as prudent under certain circumstances, when power asymmetry leaves room for only the ruses or humor of those without political power. It would be not only shameful but an abuse of this reasonable defensive conceit if it were for personal gain because it jeopardizes both (Weberian) mutual dependence and Arendtian mutual trust as the foundation on which to build a community and a society. Arendt’s cautionary tale about the Reign of Terror at the end of the French Revolution is extended into a fourth insight about the “equalizing” effects of unmasking purported hypocrites by making everyone equally vulnerable. In the French context, “it equalized because it left all inhabitants equally without the protecting mask of a legal personality.” (ibid., 104) In expecting the removal of all masks, willingly or coercively, everyone was equally suspect and could become equally innocent or “patriotic” in Robespierre’s sense or equally guilty of harboring private interests or motives. This may not be the best way to harmonize a community or bring about a sense of solidarity, but it keeps everyone on their toes, fearful of being charged with hypocrisy. Before ending this section, a brief return to some of Arendt’s reflections on truth as discussed in Chapter 1 is in order. Relevant in the political domain is the spread of the “deliberate falsehood or lie,” whether injected into the discourse to sway public opinion or to engage in the “art of rewriting history.” (2005/1967, 10) In such circumstances, the stakes are higher in democratic regimes (as we see in the Trumpian age and the passage of Brexit in the U.K.) than in totalitarian ones, because, as Arendt argues, they are more vulnerable (constituted by a “politically immature public”). In democracies, where First Amendment rights, freedom of speech and the free press, are protected, the potential for propagating and disseminating false narratives of conspiracy theories is more potent notwithstanding Kant’s exhortation of “enlightenment” (aufklärung ) as the overcoming of (intellectual or epistemological) immaturity. (ibid., 12)

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The exploitation of immaturity, to be sure, is most effective with “organized lying,” a systemic and consistent barrage of speeches and images that become repetitive enough to obscure the truth and substitutes for it. As if anticipating the Trumpian regime, Arendt presciently states: “modern political lies deal efficiently with things that are not secrets at all but are known to practically everybody” (ibid.) insofar as these lies can be publicly debunked by the press. Unlike the Israeli concealment of its nuclear capabilities discussed in Chapter 2, the Trumpian performance is built on lies about facts and events some of which are in plain public view or recorded for posterity by participants (as was evident during Trump’s impeachment proceedings before the House of Representatives in 2019 and later in his trial before the Senate in 2020). Performances on the public stage, the Trump administration reminds us daily, have little to do with truths and facts, but are instead intended to entertain (like in “reality TV,” which was Trump’s training ground with his Apprentice show; see Nussbaum 2017) and fabricate new political realities. These kinds of performances need no masks nor the hiding of facts, since they are not based on real “natural” people or anything empirical: they are written anew by paid screenwriters just as was the case of the workers in the fictional Ministry of Truth (which is in fact the Ministry of Propaganda) in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Perhaps it is the drama and the distractions that accompany it that make the likes of Trump successful politicians basing their maneuvers on the model of dictators and strongmen. Charismatic demagogues get away with writing their own scripts as they take the stage, respecting neither the truth nor anyone who contradicts them (and sometimes move from discrediting critics to imprisoning or poisoning them, as in the case of President Putin of Russia). The Weberian model of social relations (where value rationality and instrumental rationality may come into conflict with each other) and his view of responsibility on the political stage anticipate the predicaments observed by Arendt’s analysis. If we start with the Weberian definition of the state as “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within given territory” (1946, 77), then the lament over the loss of homo politicos in the neoliberal state takes on greater urgency. Without some legal protections, the citizen loses the power to resist the state. Only with a Weberian hope for politics as the site of politicians’ vocation (with a dose of personal and social responsibility) might ethics be infused into the political sphere. An “ethics of

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responsibility,” according to him, requires one “to give an account of the foreseeable results of one’s actions.” (ibid., 102) The earlier division between value and instrumental rationality is recalibrated here to account for how means affect ends. To have a “calling” or vocation in the political sphere demands of politicians to align the consequentialist and deontological frames of reference: “an ethic of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility are not absolute contrasts but rather supplements.” (ibid.) The masks can and are taken off so that intentions are explicitly aligned with ultimate ethical ends when using certain means. Weber asks quite a lot of politicians and citizens alike, expecting them to eschew deception and passionately devote themselves to lofty principles. The moral dimension gives rise to the dilemma facing anyone who has to balance personal choices and public benefits and turns into hypocrisy when publicly grandstanding about an unwavering commitment to the public good. Among those who answer these questions we find Martin Jay, who argues that “it may be prudent to relax our outrage against hypocrisy under any circumstances, and concede that there are many necessary fictions at the heart of even the most transparent and accountable political systems.” (2010, 180) He agrees with Arendt that truth and truth telling are the foundations of sociality, that “social behavior is inherently rule governed” (in the Weberian sense of social action) and that therefore lying is “a deviant abuse of social trust, a breach of the covenant among humans.” (ibid., 28) Yet, he continues, even under the general and mutual agreement of truth telling, “trust in friendship” may allow for discretion so that telling some lies and secrets is allowed. (ibid., 31) It is one thing to be truthful when speaking to friends but folly to be so truthful as to hurt these friends’ feelings gratuitously. The virtue of friendship rests on emulating worthy character traits and respecting the other as an interlocutor for critically examining one’s own thinking and behavior, as Aristotle taught us. In this process, a delicate balancing act is reached, one that requires delicacy and humor, moderation and tact. Conducting oneself in the political sphere non-instrumentally does not entail an adherence to absolute “values” (in the Weberian sense). Instead, this may denote a different sense of the “political.” In Jay’s terms, individual interactions encompass “the never-ending process of building fragile alliances and forging friendships of reciprocal convenience among mutually suspicious individuals, who resist being subordinated to binding international law and observe the imperatives of raison d’état.” (ibid., 89)

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In short, “alliances” and “friendships” are at stake here: they remain “fragile” and of “mutual convenience” perhaps because they are forged by “suspicious individuals,” the ones found in Arendt’s analysis of the behavior of Robespierre and his followers. These alliances and friendships form a bond, and though predicated on “reciprocal convenience” (instrumental in the Weberian sense), they remain powerful enough to persist (“never-ending”). Their resilience comes from below, so to speak, and is not dictated by state institutions, local or international. The precarity of building communities with “mutually suspicious individuals,” understood as “friendships” or convenient alliances, must withstand both their own fragility and the power of the state. We need not look far to recall Nazi Germany, Stalinist Soviet Union, Maoist China, and Fascist Italy and Spain in the past century to find examples of the precarious nature of alliances, when frightened and threatened friends turn on each other. Nor must we exclusively look to totalitarian regimes that occupied civilian populations or democratic ones that colonialized and settled in foreign lands for evidence of loyalty breaches and outright treachery. In our own democracy, the shameless “naming” of communists was prevalent during the McCarthy era and charges of disloyalty and treason continued throughout the Cold War. We might read Arendt’s plea for trust in the political sphere as an injunction to follow Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, which exhorts us to become virtuous and follow our virtuous friends, rather than Plato’s Republic, which is more concerned with the roles each one of us ought to play within the social and political order. This plea incorporates also Weber’s advocacy for judging the political sphere by classical ethical standards and not by the efficacy of instrumental modernist measures. In their different ways, I am suggesting, these thinkers expected critiques of political discourse to include moral considerations.

3.3 Organized Hypocrisy on the Political Economic Stage Moving from individuals and their individual actions to social and collective actions in the Weberian typology gestures to morality and the values over which a community fights. The moral dimension remains as inescapable in the post-truth age as in antiquity. This is not a rediscovery of the moral in the political (a recognition that dates back to the ancient Greeks), but a probe into the moral foundation of the political sphere through questions about the charge of hypocrisy. Does virtuous conduct

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flow from the individual to the community so that the more virtuous members a community has the more virtuous the community becomes? Is virtuous conduct contagious in the Aristotelian sense of emulating the virtuous behavior of virtuous friends? Or, does it remain aspirational in the Platonic sense of an idealized utopia? Then again, can politics function without virtue? Can it, in this particular sense of community building, be exclusively rational, deliberative, and transactional (understanding these three concepts as constitutive of each other)? These questions guide the present section and suggest that the political sphere comprises moral expectations that are not fully articulated but institutionally implied. Some political philosophers focus on the transition from the private to the political domain as if the one is the template for the other. The “struggles of the politics of daily life,” says Shklar, from power relations between males and females, parents and children, families and neighbors, are “collectively replay[ed]” on the “public stage.” (1979, 12–13) This replay consists of jostling for positions of power, stating one’s subject position, and recounting injuries. “In the unending game of mutual unmasking,” as Shklar explains, “each side tries to destroy the credibility of its rivals,” and in the extreme case of politics, this “becomes a treadmill of dissimulation and unmasking.” (ibid.) Instead of mutual dependence built on trust, the game of “mutual unmasking” turns into a tiresome, perhaps vicious “treadmill of dissimulation and unmasking.” Like parents who promise more than they can deliver or neighbors who befriend neighbors in instrumentalized manner, continues Shklar, politicians “habitually promise more than they can deliver,” “profess beliefs they do not hold,” and have “intolerable” “moral pretensions.” (ibid.) In the liberal state, a modern version of the ancient democracy whose loss she laments (because she still believes in its ideals), politicians coming short of their aspirations and promises are morally judged because their confessions of faith and “personal conscience” fall short of their own and their community’s standards. (ibid.) The constitution of the liberal state by itself, it seems, cannot guarantee moral conduct. In representative democracy, the problem of hypocritical behavior becomes more acute because no matter the good intentions of politicians and citizens alike, no matter how much unmasking has been accomplished, “no one lives up to a collective ideal.” (ibid., 14) In short, Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics disappoint because their idealized promises can never be achieved. Should they have aimed lower? Should the community expect less from the promises of any social contract? The tradeoff of consenting to a social

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contract was clear: give up some freedoms in order to receive most of them back as rights legitimated by the state. Weber defined this same state as having the exclusive monopoly and legitimacy to exert its power through violence. Or alternatively, we can ask, have Plato and Aristotle promised too little by imagining utopias without expecting them to be sites of deception and violence? Perhaps they could have added a warning label: “use at your own risk of disappointment.” The promise of democracy, in Shklar’s hands, is a moral promise, and this promise is what “sustain[s] its ideology and claims for superiority.” As public expectations are raised, she continues, it is reasonable that “deficiencies will be claimed under the rubric of hypocrisy.” (ibid., 23) The aspirational shortfalls of politicians, regardless of institutional structures, are cast in hypocritical terms and not as outright failures. What about human fallibility? We can remind the court of public opinion that politicians are as fallible as anyone else is and therefore a certain degree of hypocrisy is bound to be present in their conduct. Since Plato canonized the philosopher-king, individuals have looked upward to their leaders not only as “fathers” (as we shall see with Freud in the next chapter), but as super-humans (perhaps in the Nietzschean sense of Übermenschen) or at least as individuals with superior qualities. In liberal democracy, Shklar insists, “pluralism breeds discontent and discord and thereby the weaponized slur of hypocrisy is useful, while under conditions of moral uniformity [transcendental principles?] this weapon is less useful.” (ibid.) The charge of hypocrisy no longer describes falling short of one’s promise or avowed conviction, moving from the Weberian value rationality to his instrumental rationality, but instead turns into a rhetorical device, a common “weaponized slur” against which it is difficult to defend oneself. The slur itself does the heavy moral lifting, so much so that the slur indicts the person as much as their conduct. Disparaging character, the slur gains the power to shame and insult, to “cancel” someone (in the current sense of social media and the power of erasure). In the moves from conduct to character and from an explanation to a slur, the charge of hypocrisy appears to gain moral authority in the political sphere because it presupposes a certain transcendental set of moral principles. As did Arendt’s analysis of the potential equalizing power of Robespierre’s mistrust of political participants, so does Shklar’s analysis of liberal democracy admit some value for “the system of hypocrisy and counter-hypocrisy.” (ibid., 24) This similarity is not meant to overlook the terror permeating the political sphere in the first case, while having

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a much more benign effect in the second. In both cases, the charge of hypocrisy performs “unintended services to liberal societies”: encouraging personal restraint and discouraging “fanaticism.” From this perspective, the threat of being charged with hypocrisy can have some positive impact on the functioning of liberal democracy. In totalitarian regimes, as Orwell, Arendt, and many other commentators agree, the charge of hypocrisy plays no role: truths and lies are conflated into one undisputed amalgam: the truth is whatever the fictionalized Department of Truth says it is. Liberal democracy, as Szabados and Soifer elucidate, cannot escape the charge of “dirty hands” when certain moral principles are compromised in order to achieve a greater good for the greatest number of people as utilitarian and consequentialist theories maintain. (2004, 176–7; see also Sartre’s play of this title, 1948) To be sure, there is a difference between compromises made to achieve policy goals and those made to save oneself under military occupation or from the threat of state police (as documented so many times under Nazi or Soviet occupation). Though all of these compromises are contextually understandable and perhaps morally justifiable, Jean-Paul Sartre draws our attention to the second set that focuses on saving oneself. For him, there is a distinction between “selfserving inconsistency, or a deliberate misrepresentation of oneself” and “any sort of failure to live up to one’s own principles.” (ibid., 185) The distinction between the “self-serving” and the “failure” that is identified under the charge of hypocrisy might fail us when it is unclear if the deception itself is grounded “in a concern for the public interest rather than self-interest.” (ibid., 186) In other words, aspirational failure, that is, deluding oneself about accomplishing a goal, is forgivable in a way that self-serving “misrepresentation of oneself” is not. The former may still achieve some policy goals, while the latter is more concerned with a strict mode of self-advancement or ambition for power. Perhaps this line of argument—whether or not conduct is legitimately judged as hypocritical—is less useful than thinking through the different kinds of compromise (as proxies for degrees of hypocrisy) that could sanction social action or maintain a social contract. Justification for the charge of hypocrisy presupposes a distinction between “legitimate compromise and a sellout, idealism and fanaticism, statesmanship and demagoguery, or moderation and rationalization in defense of the status quo” (Grant 1997, 3) Can such distinctions hold? If they cannot,

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their collapse leads to a wholesale justification of the charge of hypocrisy. The charge fails to appreciate the extent to which “prudence, judgment, and the art of politics coexist in perpetual tension with formal, theoretically grounded, abstract principles.” (ibid., 3) The political stage is by far messier than the theatrical stage where scripts dictate what masks are worn and how performances are staged. In politics, the “script” is limited to “formal, theoretically grounded, abstract principles” like freedom and equality, fairness and loyalty, and the settings change constantly in the name of “prudence, judgment, and the art of politics.” Idealism and fanaticism, Grant argues, are difficult to separate. As long as no political actor performs alone, some degree of hypocrisy is inevitable. Machiavelli and Rousseau, according to Grant, share “an understanding of political dependencies and of the inevitability of hypocrisy associated with that dependence” and “an appreciation of the strength of vanity, pride, and ambition as political forces irreducible to calculations of interest,” and consequently they share “a biding pessimism concerning the prospects for rational solutions to political problems.” (ibid., 12–13) Weber’s specter of “affected action” haunts Machiavelli’s and Rousseau’s analyses of political interactions. They share a recognition that passions never exit the political stage. Vanity, pride, and ambition are ubiquitous in communal life. To some extent, according to Grant, both Machiavelli and Rousseau go against “liberalism’s overly optimistic attempt to overcome the inevitable irrationalities of political life.” (ibid., 14) It is not only the false promise of liberalism that animates Grant’s work differently from Shklar’s, but also her reading of Machiavelli’s and Rousseau’s ideas that induce her to conclude that “prudential flexibility” is “compatible with integrity as long as political compromise flows from judgment of the circumstances and not from the corrupting pressures of dependence.” (ibid., 17) The binary of prudence and integrity, reminiscent of the Weberian binary of instrumental and value rationality is discarded once again in the name of an appropriate “judgment of circumstance”: as conditions change, choices may have to change as well. Admittedly, politicians routinely employ “rhetoric, flattery, and deception in order to build alliances and gain support.” (ibid., 21) The art of persuasion is essential to getting things done and is condoned when it is motivated by the “corrupting pressures of dependence.” Grant seems to extend Arendt’s sense of equality in liberal democracies to the engagement in “mutual attempts at persuasion in an effort to reach a collective decision.” (ibid., 177) Persuasion in this context means rhetoric, flattery, and deception. Given the goal of

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reaching a collective decision, “honesty and openness can be destructive.” (ibid., 178) Hypocritical speech in this context is not a by-product but an essential ingredient of compromised principles. The inevitability of some degree of hypocrisy when compromise is sought often becomes an excuse for hypocritical behavior to go unchecked. Of course, some charges of hypocrisy remain warranted when they point out deliberate acts of bad faith. Most scholars of political hypocrisy concede that there are “different forms of hypocrisy.” (ibid., 26–30) Would such a concession undermine critical engagements with the charge of hypocrisy? Such concessions could instead make explicit the criteria by which to situate different degrees of hypocrisy. Accepting the usefulness of some degree of hypocrisy does not entail moral defeat in the name of political expediency nor an abandonment of morality as such. It may be instead a refusal to choose between deontological (Golden Rule) and consequentialist (ends justify the means) ethics in the political economic context. Adam Smith, for example, outlined the deep moral commitment undergirding mutual dependence. His long treatise on empathy and love for others (1759) was supposed to support a political economic model in which participants are motivated by self-interest to exchange goods and services (1776). Instead of reading Smith’s first treatise as being exclusively about value rationality and his second exclusively about instrumental rationality, it makes more sense to see how the first is a prerequisite for the second. Once moral foundations are established, the likelihood of corruption and gratuitous deception diminishes, as people know each other better and form trusting relationships. There appears, as far as Grant is concerned, a “paradoxical truth” here: “there will be more genuine virtue and integrity in politics where there is a judicious appreciation of the role of political hypocrisy than where there is a strident and wholesale condemnation of it” (1997, 180–1) Denying one’s pretenses is worse than explaining their usefulness; ignoring one’s shortcomings is likewise worse than openly compensating for them; and realizing the usefulness of some degree of hypocrisy may enhance the possibilities for reaching mutually beneficial goals. Is it cynical to embrace some degree of hypocrisy? David Runciman answers this question negatively by drawing a line between “unavoidable” and “intolerable” hypocrisies. (2008, 4) Like critics before him, he concedes that some kind of hypocrisy is inevitable, but instead of accepting this as a fact and shrugging his shoulders (which could give fodder to cynical hypocrisy), he advises taking “a stand for or

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against one kind or another, not for or against hypocrisy itself.” (ibid., 7) This would mean discriminating between the criteria according to which the charge of hypocrisy is declared. Some degree of hypocrisy is in fact a “coping mechanism” and therefore not a vice at all: it is not a “concealment [which] makes things worse,” but “a form of amelioration,” a way of taking care of political problems in an amicable fashion, compromising or forging ahead without consultation given the circumstances. (ibid., 10) In courts of law, such distinctions are routine: advocacy and embellishment are expected from both sides and a judge (and perhaps a jury) keeps score and ensures that no matter how outlandish the claims and arguments, they never get completely out of hand. (ibid., 161ff.) One wonders, though, if in the post-truth age, the adjudicating power of journalistic and legal impartiality has been lost. Unlike Grant, who thinks that prudence and sincerity need not be at odds in politics, Runciman thinks that “when it comes to sincerity and hypocrisy in politics, one can have intellectual insight, or one can have practical flexibility, but one cannot have both.” (ibid., 209) The binary of “intellectual insight” (adherence to moral principles) and “practical flexibility” (caution and compromise) seems to hold such sway that any pretense of overcoming it could be deemed cynical. Perhaps another way of approaching different kinds or degrees of hypocrisy is to think of them as expressing different kinds of political compromise. An early nineteenth-century British critic, John Morley, suggested that there are two kinds of compromise, a “legitimate” and an “obstructive” one. A legitimate compromise may include the “deliberate suppression or mutilation of an idea, in order to make it congruous with the traditional idea or the current prejudice on the given subject,” that is, to forge an alignment of thought where otherwise differences would prevent a compromise. However, when “the compromiser rejects the highest truth, or dissembles his own acceptance of it,” he might be prolonging “the duration of the empire of prejudice,” and thereby retarding “the arrival of improvement.” This kind of compromise is “obstructive.” (1908/1886, Ch. V) There are still other cases, as when compromise may mean “a rational acquiescence” in which the “bulk of your contemporaries are not yet prepared either to embrace the new idea, or to change their ways of living in conformity to it.” Your own ideas may be ahead of the time, and they might therefore need to wait for the rest of the public to catch up with them. In the meantime, the compromiser “holds it courageously for his ensign and device, but neither forces nor

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expects the whole world straightway to follow.” This “rational” kind of compromise never loses the integrity of the original position from which the compromise emanates, and it allows for a slow change of hearts and minds to gain full support. In this situation, the compromiser admits that they “cannot persuade you to accept my truth; therefore I will pretend to accept your falsehood.” (ibid.) The pretense here, though utilitarian, is temporary, as the truth to which one was originally committed is maintained. Morley’s different kinds of compromise—legitimate, obstructive, rational, and utilitarian—seem to follow the two kinds of “logics of action” delineated by Stephen Krasner. One is the “logics of consequences” where outcomes are “the product of rational calculating behavior designed to maximize a given set of unexplained preferences.” The other is the “logics of appropriateness” where political action is perceived as a “product of rules, roles, and identities that stipulate appropriate behavior in given situations.” (1999, 5) The classic moral binary of deontological and consequentialist, or the Weberian binary of value and instrumental rational action, is reconfigured into two logics. In Krasner’s typology, there is room for what he calls “organized hypocrisy” (already encountered above: not fully civilizing and not completely pernicious) as part of the second logic of appropriateness. (ibid., 9) When describing the deliberations of international participants, compromising on rules and principles is expected (hence the notion of organized hypocrisy), as rulers wish to optimize their power; this means that at times they follow international laws and at others ignore them, since in both cases such behavior “provides them with resources and support (both material and ideational).” (ibid., 24) Given certain geopolitical realities, such as “multiple norms, power asymmetries, competing domestic demands, and the absence of any hierarchical authority,” it is clear why political leaders cannot adhere to one universal set of principles consistently. (ibid., 43–4) To be clear, what justifies the label “organized” here seems more related to being reasonable and even predictable rather than arbitrary or capricious. It is true, as Krasner explains, that by international relations standards there are conventionally four “core values” found in the international framework: “public order [forbidding] behavior that would risk general war,” “self-determination,” “minimum human rights,” and “modernization.” (ibid., 46) But even these “core values” may be compromised when leaders are not philosophers-kings because they likely suspend these core values for good circumstantial reasons.

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Critics may dismiss the justification supporting so-called organized hypocrisy in international relations as a smokescreen that excuses abuses. How is it that the United States does not demand Israeli leaders to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty? How is it that two of the United States’ closest allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, are notorious for violating human rights within their borders? Why would the United States, during the Trump Administration, align its foreign policy with authoritarian and warmongering regimes, such as Russia and Turkey? To answer these questions without the charge of hypocrisy is to suggest that the charge has lost its moral authority or at least to admit that maintaining some kind of world “order” is more important than protecting human rights. In doing so, the concession is both to different kinds of hypocrisy and to a presumed hierarchy where some weigh more heavily than others or where some kinds can be ignored, while others must be exposed. It appears that some commentators have faith in the cleansing power of some degree of hypocritical conduct, while others warn of the power of some forms of hypocrisy to evade the moral judgment of political conduct. The second option aligns with Krasner’s conclusion that the violation of norms is the standard state of international affairs because “norms and actions have been decoupled. Logics of consequences have trumped logics of appropriateness.” (ibid., 220) With this in mind, four options obtain. First, some degree of hypocrisy is inevitable and therefore not worth denying. Second, when instrumental rationality (logics of consequences) overtakes value rationality (logics of appropriateness), an immoral degree of hypocrisy is evident. Third, when some degree of hypocrisy is deployed in deliberations, its civilizing effect yields reasonable results. Fourth, when some degree of hypocrisy informs the logics of consequences, its organizing powers come short of the expectations of the logics of appropriateness. These options, despite their differences, attest to the fact that some degree of hypocrisy is apparent in all political conduct and that moral questions are never far behind political deliberations. Even when expediency is paramount, even when the consequences hold pragmatic sway over decision-making processes, the specter of morality haunts the political sphere. More specifically, the charge of hypocrisy haunts political participants who remain mindful of the appropriateness of different degrees of hypocrisy. Ideological commitments to small government in the name of individual liberty, for example, are routinely compromised when large police forces and generous military budgets are provided by local communities in the name of public safety and by legislative bodies

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in the name of national security. In international affairs, the U.N., for example, applies its sanctioning powers unevenly in the name of world peace. No policy choice can withstand the test of moral purity, just as no political deliberation can avoid compromise. In each case, some degree of hypocrisy may be warranted. Would this license enhance cynical disregard for morality? To answer this question, we turn back in the next section to the influence of the economy on the political sphere.

3.4 The Price of National Security: Loss of Identity State-sponsored performances go back to ancient Greek military parades, gladiator games, and Olympian athletic competitions. Modern spectacles have been rebranded under fascist and democratic regimes alike to instill nationalist fervor as much as patriotic loyalty. The prominence of such state-sponsored spectacles during the Trump Administration and the celebration of the cult of personality are frightening reminders of this cynical disregard of the principles of liberal democracy, from political deliberation to the rule of law. Broadcasted on live television, President Trump’s rallies upend party politics in the kind of frenzy of zealotry that Nietzsche worried about when speaking of herd mentality. Fanning the resentment of his supporters, Trump’s performances eschew the art of persuasion and depart from nominal political conventions of leadership. Embracing the worst of the Orwellian dystopic nightmares, the Trumpian Administration forges ahead with complete indifference to mounting public resistance to some of its policies. The charge of hypocrisy is no more effective as a reminder of moral standards and reasonable political discourse against the delusional rhetoric of a narcissist than a reminder of the ideological commitments to which the American experiment owes at least a conceptual debt would be. The contempt expressed by the Trump presidency toward constitutional politics ignores the organizing and civilizing powers of some degree of hypocrisy; it is a contempt that flouts any sense of decency and challenges the very conditions of political discourse. What political presuppositions are being ignored in this context? Chantal Mouffe, for instance, distinguishes between “political liberalism,” which promotes “the rule of law, the separation of powers, and the defense of individual freedom,” and the “democratic tradition,” which focuses on “equality and popular sovereignty.” (2018, 14) In this, she

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continues in a long tradition that pits liberty against equality, where preference for one is necessarily at the expense of the other. As we saw earlier, this is not, however, a problem for Arendt, for whom equality is a necessary condition for freedom. Simon Griffiths (2014) agrees with Arendt’s line of argument that no tradeoff between equality and liberty is required and extends it: the more equality, the more freedom, and vice versa. Using the British experience as his guide, he advocates a conceptual rapprochement that recognizes the mutual influence of freedom and equality. How can there be freedom of choice if the options are not the same for everyone to start with? Market socialism, for him, provides sufficient personal liberty while ensuring the collective ownership of much of the economy to mitigate against wealth and income inequalities. Though Mouffe’s position comes close to Arendt’s and Griffiths’, her analysis rests on the difference between liberalism and democracy. In her view, the tradition of liberalism embodies a commitment to individual freedom (marketplace freedom of choice) and the tradition of democracy a commitment to equality (one person, one vote). She reminds her readers that there are those, like Carl Schmitt, who contend that “liberalism denies democracy and democracy denies liberalism,” while others, like Habermas, insist on the “co-originality of the principles of freedom and equality.” (2018, 14) Some are willing to sacrifice democracy for the sake of liberty (the U.S. Supreme Court case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 2010), while others want to hold democracy as the only tenable political system that can accommodate both liberty and equality (on the European model of Social Democracy and the Scandinavian model of the welfare state). By advocating an “adversarial, agonistic politics oriented towards the establishment of a different hegemonic order within the liberal-democratic framework” (ibid., 37–8), Mouffe prefers “radical reform” to revolution. She believes an institutional reform from within can be achieved by fostering an “immanent critique that mobilizes the symbolic resources of the democratic tradition.” (ibid., 40) Admittedly, it is a tall order to expect both immanent critique and the mobilization of the “symbolic resources” of the democratic tradition from an overworked and undereducated public. Her “left populist strategy” is one that radicalizes the existing institutional frameworks of the state and the economy, ensuring liberal democracy and social ownership of the means of production. What distinguishes Mouffe’s call to arms from those of moderates, like Griffiths, or radicals, like Fredric Jameson (2016), is her reliance

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on psychoanalysis as a guide to human interactions. Mouffe insists that the “allegiance” to democracy is not exclusively based on rationality but is rather a “participation in specific forms of life.” (ibid., 75) These (Heideggerian?) “forms of life” are influenced by “affects in politics,” following “Gramsci’s lead when he calls for ‘an organic cohesion in which feeling-passion becomes understanding’.” (ibid., 76) An “organic cohesion” is more likely to arise from “affects in politics” than from rational discourse or the art of persuasion, where convincing others of the truth of one’s position is of paramount importance (whether in Habermas’ communicative terms or those of Elster’s deliberative democracy). As some understand affect theory, “patterns of affective response” are not reducible to arguments or feelings, yet they move people to recognize “a historical moment appear[ing] as a visceral moment.” (Berlant 2011, 16) There is much more to say about the variants of affect theory and the layers of attachment that are fostered and at times disappointed in the political as well as in personal domains. This overly brief gesture to affect theory is meant in this context to anchor Mouffe’s reliance on Gramsci’s “organic cohesion” in experiences of collective solidarity that could mobilize radical political reform. What chance does such reform have in the American context? Two sets of arguments suggest that it is untenable to speak of the political sphere in the twenty-first century as autonomous and having its own logic (which can be radically or otherwise be reformed). The first set of arguments is made by, among many others, Lawrence Lessig (2011), Timothy Kuhner (2014), and Zephyr Teachout (2020), who have persuasively documented the collapse of the political into the economic. They demonstrate how beholden political decision-making processes, from elections to legislation, are to the financial largess of corporate America. According to them, the only way to understand the American political landscape is by observing the capitalist influence that controls it and guarantees private (corporate) benefits at the expense of the public. The enormous bailout of private banks during the Great Recession (under the Bush and Obama Administrations) and the 2018 Trump Administration tax “reform” (reminiscent of the Reagan Administration’s tax overhaul in the 1980s) are just the more visible public displays of corporate domination of political authority which would thwart any reform. To think of the political domain as independent from capitalism’s chokehold is to think of it in prosaic and erroneous ways. Brown’s analysis of the replacement of homo politicos with homo economicus is not limited to a

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leftist lament echoed by Mouffe, but is interestingly shared by neoliberal apologists, like Paul Collier, who admit as much when responding to the “new anxieties” of the day. Unlike Mouffe’s call for radical socialist reform that would transform the state and the economy, Collier wants state institutions to remain as they are and to continue to support the “astonishing dynamic” of market capitalism. (2018, 18) What renders Collier’s argument about the preservation of American political institutions and market capitalism relevant in this context is that it, too, rests oddly enough on a plea for community building. Collier claims that the most important value that should guide community building is “a sense of belonging to place” and a powerful “place-based identity.” (ibid., 65–6; italics in the original) Here is where Collier sounds like a Heideggerian Trumpian. The notion of building a shared identity among supporters at the cost of alienating, excluding, and being openly hostile to others, all the while using the phrase “Restoring the Inclusive Society” (ibid., 68) sounds very much like Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and his invectives against immigrants, women, and people of color. Yet it seems that leftist critics and neoliberal apologists agree that political discourse depends on “affects in politics” and that the political sphere is not independent from the economic. They differ, of course, in their views of what kind of community is supposed to be built, what ideals it should uphold, and what strategies could be used along the way to reform it. A second set of arguments about the indebtedness of the political sphere to corporate leaders explains how digital technologies enhance the demise of the state and the defeat of individual autonomy (and therefore would undermine any reform movement). Zuboff’s critique of “surveillance capitalism” has to do with the fact that “rights to privacy, knowledge, and application have been usurped by a bold market venture powered by unilateral claims to others’ experience and the knowledge that flows from it.” (2019, 7) Rights denote a legal structure founded on a social contract and supported by state authority, so when they are “usurped,” their loss signals the conquest of the state by “a bold market venture.” Adopting a Marxist vocabulary, Zuboff explains the extraction of “behavioral surplus” to develop “prediction products” that will “nudge, coax, tune, and herd behavior toward profitable outcomes.” Like the “means of production” owned by industrial capitalists, the “means of behavioral modification” are owned by surveillance capitalists whose “instrumentarian power knows and shapes human behaviors.” (ibid., 8) Since what is extracted is not the surplus of labor power but the surplus

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of knowledge about individual behavioral patterns, most critics of the new digital age have falsely focused on the technology itself rather than on its owners, failing to realize that it is still capitalist extraction, no matter its technologies of extraction. The logic of capitalist extraction and exploitation has not changed with the change of technologies. Much of the success of the new extraction regime is realized “under the banner of ‘personalization,’ a camouflage for aggressive extraction operations that mine the intimate depths of everyday life.” (ibid., 19) Zuboff’s use of the term “camouflage” here is not the chameleon-like behavior used by the prey to evade predators, but an explicit mode of predator deception to gain market advantage over its prey. “Personalization” is an intentional misleading marketing maneuver to lower resistance and guarantee voluntary participation in the process of extraction, a maneuver that can be seen as hypocritical in its manipulation and deception. The effect of the process of digital personalization is not greater personal gratification but a loss of privacy and the “right to sanctuary” (which is somewhat protected in the European Union). For surveillance capitalism, this results in greater predictive certainty about people’s behavior, which is now informed by digital interactions that are easier to document than social or political ones, which are more difficult to ascertain. (ibid., 20–1) The overwhelming power of surveillance capitalism to evade state regulation is compounded by the intrusion into the lives of individuals in a way that undermines, in this reading of digital technologies, autonomy, free will, and agency. The convergence of “behavioral surplus, data science, material infrastructure, computational power, algorithmic systems, and automated platforms” took control of free will and secured the prosperity of surveillance capitalism, while the state remains in the background, yielding, accommodating, and cheering on. (ibid., 83) Corporate leaders in this arena have overwhelmed the polis and its inhabitants with promises of security, on the one hand (especially after 9/11), and convenience and efficiency, on the other. The price of privacy appeared reasonable to pay: free entertainment and unlimited freedom of choice on the Internet are worth the price of surveillance. The increasing capitalist control of politics is openly self-serving and therefore not hypocritical; the insidious control of the political and personal domains by surveillance capitalism, by contrast, deserves the charge of hypocrisy. As in the example of WeWork we saw in Chapter 2, numerous charges of hypocrisy pertain to the intricacies of surveillance capitalism. The first charge can be leveled against any of the CEOs of FAANG and their associated high-tech giants, who pretend to offer “free” entertainment while

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extracting high financial fees from advertisers and ever-higher personal fees from consumers who upload personal information and allow their own movement and consumption habits and those of their network of friends to be tracked. A second charge would fit the euphemistic use of “freedom of choice,” which is in fact a manipulated and coerced “personalized” choice navigated by FAANG when selling their own products and services or those of their advertising clients. Exploitation overlaps some degree of hypocrisy insofar as the pretense to cater to consumers is a ploy to con them. The third charge of hypocrisy relates to the convenience of fingerprints and facial recognition to operate digital devices, which in the hands of FAANG turns into technologies of state control. While state agencies are supposed to regulate corporate entities to ensure fair competition among them and fair treatment of clients and customers, their complicity in exploiting surveillance techniques belies another degree of hypocrisy. The legal system does not enforce the social contract between the state and its citizens. Instead, it cynically hands over its regulatory power to corporations (perhaps because the technologies are too advanced or because it uses these corporations as proxies for normalizing its own surveillance) and exploits surveillance technologies to spy on citizens rather than to protect their privacy and safety. Public awareness of this ongoing process of corporate exemption from state oversight began with 9/11 and the Patriot Act of 2001 and continued with the Supreme Court ruling in Citizen United in 2010. Earlier legislation remained obscure until more recently: Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act of 1996 shields website owners from lawsuits and state prosecution for user-generated content. Using the logic of free speech, explains Zuboff, “the logic that links ownership to an absolute entitlement to freedom of expression has led to the privileging of corporate action as ‘speech’ deserving of constitutional protection.” (2019, 109) This kind of legislation illustrates a higher degree of hypocrisy because it explicitly subverts political ideals for the exploitive service of a few corporate giants. If there was ever a pact between the political and economic domains to uphold values dear to all participants, surveillance capitalism has violated it. The monopoly on violence associated with the state apparatus and its control over its charges (whether in Weber’s sense, Foucault’s sense of governmentality, or Agamben’s sense of the subject 1998) seems less threatening than the monopoly on human lives associated with billionaires who own and control surveillance capitalism. While Mouffe (and

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even Collier) envisioned a Gramscian solidarity that would foster the democratic and liberal tendencies of the modern nation-state, Zuboff’s critique of surveillance capitalism highlights the cynical abuse of such potential. The process of so-called “organic cohesion” is now safely in the invisible hands of surveillance capitalists, who intrude into the inner lives of individuals to influence their choices and shape their desires. If “affects in politics” were supposed to supplement rational communication, under the regime of surveillance capitalism their role is more suited to an Orwellian dystopia. In Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the charge of hypocrisy would fall flat because intentional deception is openly admitted and exercised and history is daily rewritten. Truth and morality are explicitly controlled by the state. The charge of hypocrisy is valuable when liberal democracies appeal to ideals worthy of upholding while administering their policies. Capitalist entities that pretend to care about their customers while exploiting their innocence on behalf of predatory clients surely deserve to be called out. Unrestrained by laws they lobby for and emboldened by their financial power, corporate giants display the highest degree of hypocrisy, perhaps cynical hypocrisy. Like President Trump, they have contempt for critics who remind them of their duties within a social contract to which they are implicit signatories. Once licensed to practice their high-tech wizardry, they forget their debt to the political framework that protects their patents, for example, ensures them government contracts, and guarantees safe markets. Like President Trump, the entertainment they provide is a distraction from the ways they flout social conventions and moral norms. Substituting corporate for state elites, the power to control individuals is sinister in its deceptive allure. In Zuboff’s critique, the individual has become an object whose unconscious is mined, manipulated, and turned into a subject of insatiable consumption. Privacy is relinquished not in the name of safety, but in the name of extraction and profiteering, just as any real power of choice is traded for prefigured customized consumption. The charge of hypocrisy is warranted here when personalizing the fulfillment of desires has nothing to do with anticipating capricious personal choices and more to do with a well-oiled machine of desire production whose fulfillment is guaranteed with predictable certainty. In fact, whatever totalitarian regimes fail to accomplish with the heavy-handed exertion of power through control regimes and violence (Foucault’s biopower), the latest stage of capitalism accomplishes with a gentle encouragement to participate in social media that meets little resistance.

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We are back to the beginning of the chapter with a focus on individuals who perform roles they believe to have authored without realizing that algorithmic puppeteers are pulling all of our strings. Though critics of political economy already highlight the cynical abuse suffered in the age of surveillance by those of us who still believe in the guiding force of morality, psychologists and psychoanalysts add a different critical dimension to the potential power of the charge of hypocrisy. What sense of self do individuals have during social interactions, and how does that sense affect the potential for solidarity and communal belonging?

References Hannah Arendt (1958), The Human Condition. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Hannah Arendt (1963), On Revolution. New York: The Viking Press. Hannah Arendt (2005), “Truth and Politics,” New Yorker [2/25/67]; reprinted with minor changes in Jose Medina and David Wood (eds.), Truth: Engagements Across Philosophical Traditions. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Lauren Berlant (2011), Cruel Optimism. Durham: Duke University Press. Wendy Brown (2015), Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone Books. Ruth W. Grant (1997), Hypocrisy and Integrity: Machiavelli, Rousseau, and the Ethics of Politics. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Simon Griffiths (2014), Engaging Enemies: Hayek and the Left. London, England: Rowman & Littlefield International. Jürgen Habermas (1984), The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume One: Reason and the Rationalization of Society [1981]. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. Fredric Jameson (2016), An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army. Edited by Žižek, Slavo. London and New York: Verso. Martin Jay (2010), The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press. Naomi Klein (2007), The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books. Stephen D. Krasner (1999), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Timothy Kuhner. (2014). Capitalism v Democracy: Money in Politics and the Free Market Constitution. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lawrence Lessig (2011), Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—And a Plan to Stop It. New York: Twelve. John Morley (1908), On Compromise [1886]. London: Macmillan and Co.

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Chantal Mouffe (2018), For a Left Populism. London and New York: Verso. Emily Nussbaum (2017), “The TV That Created Donald Trump,” New Yorker (7/31/17). Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/ 31/the-tv-that-created-donald-trump. Accessed 2/4/20. George Orwell (1981), Nineteen Eighty-Four [1949]. New York: Penguin Group. Karl R. Popper (1966), The Open Society and Its Enemies [1943]. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. David Runciman (2008), Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power, from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Jean Paul Sartre (1955), “Dirty Hands” [1948], in No Exit and Three Other Plays. New York: Vintage Books, pp. 131–248. Judith Shklar (1979), “Let Us Not Be Hypocritical,” Daedalus Vol. 108, No. 3 (Summer 1979), pp. 1–25. Adam Smith (1937), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations [1776]. New York: Random House, Inc. Adam Smith (1976), The Theory of Moral Sentiments [1759]. London: Penguin. Bela Szabados and Eldon Soifer (2004), Hypocrisy: Ethical Investigations. New York: Broadview Press. Zephyr Teachout (2020), Break’em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big AG, Big Tech, and Big Money. New York: All Points Books. Ferdinand Tönnies (2001), Community and Civil Society [1887]. Edited by Jose Harris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Max Weber (1946), “Politics as a Vocation” [1919], in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated and edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 77–128. Max Weber (1978), Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Shoshana Zuboff (2019), The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for the Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: Public Affairs.

CHAPTER 4

In Search of the Self

Abstract This chapter moves from the political discourse of state actors to the psychological discourse that inquires about these individuals and their capacity to participate in affairs of state. Not only must they reconcile the civilized hypocrisy of conformity and professional role-playing assigned to them by the community, they are also presumed to fit some Cartesian–Kantian model of the self as a unified and consistent subject whose conduct can be judged against a standard of hypocrisy. This model is contrasted with different models that problematize the uniformity of the self. If the self cannot be fully known, and if there is no clear ontological self prior to its unfolding in language, how is it possible to claim the absence of authenticity in the name of hypocrisy? Similarly, if the mind has multiple modules with different functionalities, is the charge of inconsistency appropriate as the basis for the charge of hypocrisy? Even if hypocrisy seems too blunt a term, it might still serve as a deterrent for immoral and antisocial behavior.

4.1

Acting, Reacting, and Posing

The political economic sphere discussed in the previous chapter argued for the value of civilizing or organized hypocrisy for democratic deliberations. Those participating in the deliberation are presumed to have the capacity to navigate such deliberation and compromise for the sake of social cohesion and political expediency. Individual engagement on the social or political stage, as we saw in Chapter 2, may require a level © The Author(s) 2020 R. Sassower, The Specter of Hypocrisy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60573-5_4

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of moral fortitude and personal virtue that can withstand the charge of hypocrisy even when complicity is inevitable. The present discussion shifts to a critique of the standard philosophical formulation of the self as a coherent and consistent rational subject whose agency and conduct, in words and actions, reflect a unified cognitive structure. Acknowledging a multifaceted, complex, incoherent, and inconsistent self who is bound to disappoint traditional philosophy will, I argue in this chapter, show how the charge of hypocrisy is often misguided: only a robot could abide by the rational strictures of conduct (or algorithms) expected by conventional philosophy’s ideal subject. Yet we remain within the realm of hypocrisy more often than not when we refuse to admit our ambivalence and confusions, our inexplicable behavior, and our lack of self-conscious reflection. The shame that accompanies the charge of hypocrisy keeps haunting us whether or not it is justified. The sociologist Erving Goffman and the medical sociologist Irving Rosow outline a map of behavioral strategies recognized in everyday life as updates and elaborations of the Weberian typology seen above. According to Goffman, “the part one individual plays [in real life] is tailored to the parts played by the others present, and yet these others also constitute the audience.” (1959, xi) Within the context of a performance, an individual “gives off” certain impressions that are indirectly understood in addition to the ones that are given more directly with an intention to convey a particular message. (ibid., 4) There is a “symmetry of the communication process” so that information about each participant in the exchange evolves as “an infinite cycle of concealment, discovery, false revelation, and rediscovery.” (ibid., 8) As cues are gleaned from the social situation in which individuals find themselves and as they react to others in their presence, layers of concealment are not discarded one by one to discover the truth about one’s personality, but are, rather, piled up in an “infinite cycle” that does not fully reveal or conceal intentions. As long as “lip service” is paid to upholding common values, a “working consensus” reminiscent of the organized and civilizing hypocrisy examined in the previous chapter can be reached among individuals and “open conflict” can be avoided. (ibid., 9–10) During the process of social interaction, a moral dimension emerges. On the one hand, any individual who “possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way.” On the other, any individual who “implicitly or explicitly signifies that he has certain social characteristics ought in fact to be what he claims to be.” (ibid., 13)

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The moral demand, Goffman argues, applies to both the “player” and the “audience” or “others” in this social situation and is reminiscent of the Popperian notion of the logic of the situation (1994/1957), where choices are framed and informed by social conditions, hence the importance here of Goffman’s use of the word appropriate. Goffman, unlike the philosophers who deduce ontological entities from their epistemological inquiries, argues that “stage craft and stage management,” though “sometimes trivial,” are generally informative because they occur “everywhere in social life.” (ibid., 15) Performance on the social stage is ubiquitous, its mastery mandatory to avoid misunderstanding. Stage performance is composed of “all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants.” (ibid., 15) The emphasis here is on influencing others rather than self-recognition or exposure of one’s true self. At one extreme, Goffman continues, “the performer can be fully taken in by his own act,” and at the other, the performer “may not be taken in at all by his own routine.” (ibid., 17) Just as we examined the different degrees of hypocrisy, especially when someone unconsciously instrumentalizes something one is not aware of, like self-deception for political purposes, an actor in this sociological analysis may “delude his audience for what he considers to be their own good, or for the good of the community.” (ibid., 18) From this perspective, performances are “socialized” insofar as they “fit into the understanding and expectations of the society” in which they are performed, including both democratic and totalitarian regimes. They are like a “ceremony” or an “expressive rejuvenation and reaffirmation of the moral values of the community.” (ibid., 35) Here is where the performative and the moral come together, the former expressing the latter, perhaps focusing attention or highlighting what is taken for granted or not fully realized by participants. The world, says Goffman in a provocative and outlandish manner, “in truth, is a wedding.” (ibid., 36) The very appearance of the self on the social stage is conditioned by social norms and conventions so that the range of play-acting is ceremonial (as in a wedding) and preordained by the dictates of the social setting in which the ceremony takes place. Social conditioning is so powerful, in Goffman’s telling, that instead of the actor, agent, or subject expressing in the performance some inner self, the reverse occurs: personality is constructed from the outside to the inside. In his words: “Individualistic modes of thought tend to treat processes such as self-deception and insincerity as characterological weaknesses generated within the deep

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recesses of the individual personality,” as if there is a disconnect between one’s inner self and the self projected onto the world. For Goffman, this is not the case. Instead, insincerity and self-deception “can be seen as something that results when two different roles, performer and audience, come to be compressed into the same individual”. (ibid., 81n) Since in most cases the performer is part of the audience in front of which they perform, this process of self-deception is bound to arise and as such reflects the conflict of playing two roles at once rather than expressing a deep-seated (Freudian) psychic malformation or the refusal to conform to or meet social expectations. There is an entire literature on the moral conduct of audiences and performers, as my colleague Michael Sawyer has reminded me, that specifies the difference between, say, spectators in a sports arena and audiences in live or movie theaters and the respective norms that inform their response and engagement (e.g., Comparative Drama Special Issue 2014 or the Journal Performance Philosophy). Suffice it here to remark that Goffman’s focus on daily performances of individuals as externally shaped renders speculations about intentions moot. This approach also diverts the charge of hypocrisy from individual conduct to its social conditioning. Moving from individual performances to team behavior in social interactions, Goffman explains that such behavior is “largely concerned with moral matters,” and performers are therefore “merchants of morality” insofar as they display “the very obligation and profitability of appearing always in a steady moral light, of being a socialized character.” (ibid., 251) “Moral matters” are social conventions in this context. Being “practiced in the ways of the stage” routinizes the socialization of “merchants of morality” for whom, after a while, regardless of their disregard of “moral matters,” these matters become part of the performance. Performative adherence to moral matters is expected as a matter of course. “The self,” then, as a “performed character,” seems from this perspective not to be “an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, and to die.” Instead, “it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented, and the characteristic issue, the crucial concern, is whether it will be credited or discredited.” (ibid., 252–3) Once again, Goffman moves from the outside, the sociological realm, to the inside, the psychological realm, appreciating the problematics of the externally constructed self being “credited or discredited”—being charged with some kind of hypocrisy or another—based on “performance” and not on character. As he continues, “The whole

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machinery of self-production is cumbersome, of course, and sometimes breaks down, exposing its separate components,” so the constructed self appears in public as an inconsistent, troubled, and troubling self whose behavior is easily dismissed or judged to be hypocritical. Being a self is a messy endeavor whose “separate components,” as we shall see below in terms of the modular mind, may at times appear inconsistent. On the other hand, if this “machinery of self-production” is “well oiled” and calibrated, then we can expect that “the performance will come off and the firm self accorded to each performed character will appear to emanate intrinsically from its performer.” (ibid., 253) The “firm self” will be center stage and the audience will assume that the performer’s “character” can be directly and explicitly gleaned; transparency is finally achieved through successful socialization. Not so fast, warns Donald Winnicott, for whom the so-called firm self is made up of a False Self “whose defensive function is to hide and protect the True Self, whatever that may be.” (1965, 142) However false the False Self, it is crucial for the protection of the so-called True Self. Winnicott sees the “extreme” False Self as the one that “observers tend to think is the real person” because of its visible external presence, but this is a misrecognition because it is a proxy for the real, True Self. In less extreme cases, the False Self need not fully hide the True Self so much as preserve it “in spite of abnormal environmental circumstances.” Instead of deception, what comes to light here is protection. There are situations when the False Self assists the True Self in not exposing itself too much, which might cause it to falter since without filters its honesty could become a liability. (ibid., 142–3) In short, the performances of individuals, whether True or False, reflect deeper psychic formations whose exposure to others may be dangerous, affecting not only what they express to the world around them but also how they repress parts of themselves that may get them into trouble in a social setting. Winnicott’s conclusion brings us back to Goffman’s stage performance. “It can easily be seen that sometimes this False Self defence can form the basis for a kind of sublimation, as when a child grows up to be an actor.” Admittedly, for Goffman every child grows up to be an actor, while for Winnicott this situation represents a small subset of grown children. “In regard to actors,” continues Winnicott, “there are those who can be themselves and who also can act, whereas there are others who can only act, and who are completely at a loss when not in a role and when not being appreciated or applauded (acknowledged as existing).” (ibid., 150) From this

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perspective, Goffman’s framework of performance is questioned in terms of individuals who are not acting, when they have no roles to play, when they have to be who they are without “being appreciated or applauded.” Goffman’s reliance on the theatrical setting to explain human behavior in general and teamwork in particular, offers yet another case of how the Greek etymology of the term hypocrisy dominates the political and sociological imaginary when it relates to human performances, but with a twist. The twist is that neither masks nor scripts are at issue. Instead, the very activity of performing is what influences who one is, who one ought to be within the social context of the performance, so that “moral matters” as social conventions not only condition—in the sense of influencing and prodding—but in fact construct one’s character. There is no ontological preexistence that is revealed in the performance; the performance fabricates the self so the self gets to know itself when it is presented to the world, when it performs. Goffman says there is no true or false self, while Winnicott says there is a true self being protected by a false self. In a Nietzschean way, Goffman argues that acting and putting on masks are part of a self-referential process of gaining an understanding of who one is and what roles one plays in society. We learn to be sons and daughters, siblings, and friends as social demands are clarified to us over time, realizing along the way who we have become and who we should be regardless of who we want to be. In this context, then, the charge of hypocrisy may more reasonably be applied to those who mischaracterize the social setting in which we find ourselves. This way of looking at the situation shifts the focus from comparing a false to a true self to comparing a good to a poor performance. The “good actor” fulfills audience expectations of the role being played rather than any expectation that the actor might reveal their own true self out of the context of the performance. The charge of hypocrisy often misses this distinction; it fails to sufficiently attend to the context of the performance. Irving Rosow seems to agree, in general terms, with Goffman’s view of the move from the outside to the inside, from external social pressures on individuals to their self- construction as social agents. “Adult socialization,” says Rosow, “is the process of inculcating new values and behavior appropriate to adult positions and group memberships” (1965, 35), which means here that “new expectations and conformity” will initiate individuals into social beings. Learning social roles is accompanied by learning what values the community upholds. In any context, the “fully socialized person internalizes the correct beliefs and displays

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the appropriate behavior.” (ibid.) “Correct” and “appropriate” are taken to be positive here without qualification for political contexts where community values are racist, misogynist, or anti-Semitic. Runciman’s logic of appropriateness comes to mind here as social standards regulate and inform behavior. Unlike Goffman who situates the individual in teamwork so as to recognize social interaction, and unlike Weber who characterizes individual types of social behavior, Rosow focuses on four “forms of socialization” into which individual behavior fits. Individuals are Chameleon, Unsocialized, Socialized, or Dilettante (ibid., 36), and in what follows, I will focus primarily on chameleon-like behavior. When setting up his table of possible types of socialization, Rosow introduces a distinction between conformity to value and conformity of behavior such that adherence to them “may vary quite independently.” (ibid.; italics in the original) The distinction between behavioral and normative conformity ensures that observations of one’s conduct are not mistaken as expressing a commitment to the norms that are supposed to guide such behavior. Unlike the focus on masking and unmasking in Chapter 3 and in Goffman’s performance model, Rosow switches the focus to the chameleon in his classification: “the Chameleon is competent, skilled and actively meets behavioral expectations. But his conformity is essentially adaptive, without the corresponding value basis on which the behavior presumably rests.” (ibid.; italics in the original) The chameleon blends into the environment, as we saw with Caillois’ analysis, at times to its own detriment. Here, though, the treatment of chameleon-like behavior separates one adaptation, “competent, skilled, and […] actively meet[ing] behavioral expectations,” from another, namely, the “corresponding value basis on which the behavior presumably rests.” Behavioral conformity does not entail moral conformity. This split is important because standard philosophical views of human conduct, as we saw in Chapter 2, presume behavior to be an expression of accepted underlying beliefs, which, as we saw in Chapter 3, can set in motion the ferreting out of hypocrites undertaken by Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety. Rosow continues with the second form of socialization, the Unsocialized, who, unlike the Chameleon, “has too little stake in the system to warrant even behavioral conformity.” (ibid.) The Unsocialized does not conform at all. The Unsocialized remains outside the boundaries of socialization, refusing any participation whatsoever and living as an outcast, as one who may be sent to jail or to a psychiatric institution because the refusal of any pretense of conformity is too much for society to

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tolerate. Rosow continues to explain that both the Chameleon and the Unsocialized “tend to have low commitment to the basic values per se.” (ibid., 37) They may be “expedient and self-interested (in terms alien to the system) so that voluntary participation is minimized, and quid pro quo reservations become essential conditions of their actions.” Their behavior is instrumentalized to such a degree that they are efficient in minimizing their exposure to others, limiting their social interactions to self-interested ones. Here is where Rosow takes on moral philosophers: “despite contrary assertions by various utilitarians, system maintenance is not an invariant function of self-interest.” (ibid.) This means, for example, that self-interest, in Adam Smith’s sense of market behavior, may counterintuitively sustain the system: one can be both self-interested and interested in being part of a system one realizes is made up of many like-minded self-interested individuals. Chameleons within this framework “are susceptible to alternative values or opportunities and are, therefore, quite amenable to change.” (ibid., 38) Because Chameleons do not conform to values despite behavior that indicates that they might, they are more forgiving, perhaps even not caring that much, when values underlying expected social behavior change. Unlike the Unsocialized, who care neither about norms nor behavioral conformity, Chameleons conform, like the Socialized, to socially appropriate behavior and in this way “simply make the system work and meet its requirements.” (ibid.; italics in the original) Chameleons, in this view, may be reluctant to participate and may even doubt the values espoused by the political establishment, as was the case with some generals after the Bolshevik Revolution, yet their behavior contributes to the functioning of the system. That is, they may behave “inconsistently” with their beliefs. (ibid.) Chameleons, then, overlap with both the Unsocialized and the Socialized, straddling the boundaries of conformity in ways that would confound analytic moral philosophers as much as Weberian observers. On the other hand, according to Rosow, when considering behavior only, “it is the Socialized and the Chameleon who integrate the system and the Dilettante and Unsocialized who are least functional.” (ibid., 38) Behavioral conformity seems to matter more than conformity to social and moral values. The focus of Chameleons on social integration and adaptation incorporates three factors that turn them, despite their reluctance to become fully “socialized,” into important conduits for and bellwethers of social cohesion. First, “Chameleonism limits the extent of

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possible consensus in the system” because they do not accept the underlying values of the system. Even when they go through the “motions” of participation, they maintain reservations about the system as a whole. (ibid., 39) Second, “Chameleonism significantly affects a system’s allocation of resources” because “social controls must also be increased to set limits on possible deviance,” and the Chameleon is always “open to the appeal of attractive alternatives and better opportunities.” (ibid.) In this sense, Chameleons exact a price on the system: their persistent reservations about the system requires of the system an expensive watchful eye. Third, the “Socialized-Chameleon distinction” highlights a “structure’s ability to withstand stress” because the “Chameleon is not always dependable,” and may “default” or even “defect completely.” (ibid., 40) The threat of dissent or defection stresses the social system in general and under particular circumstances of upheaval and change, the Chameleon cannot be relied on to remain within the system; behavioral conformity may not hold as it lacks the commitment to values that would stabilize and reinforce it. In Rosow’s words: “as pressure and crisis mount, the Socialized tend to be functional and the Chameleon dysfunctional for systemic integration.” (ibid.) Chameleon-like behavior, in this characterization, is neither a systematically reliable and cohesive feature of socialization nor is it so suspect that its very existence threatens social formation. It depends on particular situations for chameleonism to be either an attractive (functional) or a problematic (dysfunctional) mode of socialization. Incidentally, as we shall see in the next chapter, chameleonism overlaps with immigration experiences of assimilation and integration, and in some instances segregation. Moving from social to political settings, Rosow concludes, “during normal periods, behavior is the major integrative variable, while under stress, commitment to values is the significant factor in organized action. Socialization processes provide both elements, but their relative importance for system-maintenance varies with conditions.” (ibid., 41; italics in the original) By now, it becomes clear how useful the distinction between behavioral and normative conformity is: integration and cohesion are achieved under normal circumstances through behavioral conformity, while under unusual circumstances, conformity to norms is essential. Under conditions of social and political change, chameleons are the ones who are the most adaptable and are instrumental in keeping the social fabric from fraying (if they adapt instead of “defect”). According to Rosow, “the sheer pragmatism of the Chameleon may enable him to view

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objective problems more rationally than the Socialized in both sacred and secular systems,” despite the suspicion cast on them. Lacking rigid standards against which to measure political maneuvers, their flexibility is an asset. Chameleons are not wedded to a set of values that, once challenged or discarded, will throw them off completely, the way they might the fully Socialized who rely on them as anchoring foundations. (ibid., 42) In Rosow’s words: “the Chameleon may be the midwife or efficient agent of change, while the Socialized and Dilettante may be dysfunctional if they are too inflexible to accede to structural revisions.” (ibid.) The Hebrew chameleon meets the Socratic “midwife” and not the Greek masked actor in this explanation; adaptation and camouflage turn into the “efficient agent of change.” Rosow observes Chameleon-like behavior in a variety of historical settings. Relevant to the next chapter, he recounts among the many instances, the “stereotyped complaisance of many Negroes in traditional contacts with whites” as well as the “orientation of prostitutes to clients.” In both cases, behavioral conformity or “stereotype compliance” says little about compliance with a set of values; on the contrary, it deflects attention from and averts discussion of underlying values because what is at stake is survival. Similarly, there is the “involuntary union member in a closed shop” who pretends to endorse socialist ideals, the “married homosexual” who conforms to heterosexual marriage mores to avoid drawing attention, or the “unskilled worker in the marginal labor market who has no occupational or organizational identity but fits tolerably well into a diversity of work situations.” In all of these examples, the individual adjusts and adapts, keeping at bay moral principles and personal desires. Rosow expounds on the fact that chameleonism is apparent “in almost any repressive control of majorities by minorities (colonialism) or of minorities by majorities (racial and ethnic relations).” (ibid.) Both behavioral conformity and disregard of or nonconformity to moral stances may not be unusual at all, and perhaps a common “pattern in many workaday settings, especially in complex societies.” (ibid., 42–3) Not only does Rosow give a typology of social adaptation that distinguishes between behavioral and normative conformity, he identifies the pragmatist chameleon as a valued participant in the social order whose behavioral conformity escapes the charge of hypocrisy because no conformity to norms was ever established. Perhaps only the Socialized deserve such a charge when behavioral conformity does not fully match conformity to values.

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Chameleon-like adaptive pragmatism in this schema appears because the Chameleon “views the system in utilitarian rather than intrinsic terms” and therefore conforms only when rewarded for such conformity. When there are restrictive boundaries to how one should behave, the Chameleon assesses “opportunities and available alternatives” and is therefore more socially acceptable when there are “pluralistic values in a system”; “with less consensus and looser value integration, there is more systematic socialization to diversified sets of values.” (ibid., 43–4; italics in the original) Rosow concludes with an appreciation that in large systems, “Chameleonism should increase with social rewards, limited opportunities, pluralistic values, and high and low social control pressure.” (ibid., 45) Though it is unclear what would be an optimal level of socialization and integration, it seems from what Rosow says that Chameleonism has the power of civilizing and organized hypocrisy mentioned in the previous chapter. It also seems that society should encourage chameleonlike behavior and stop the search for the True Self, socializing instead people to be open-minded and to tolerate some degree of hypocrisy in every society, as norms keep on changing and adjustments must be made. Once Rosow’s two-dimensional analysis (of behavioral conformity and conformity to values) enriches the one-dimensional Weberian analysis (of types of social action), the charge of hypocrisy is not so easily affixed to deceptive or pretentious conduct. This shift illustrates the limitations of the charge of hypocrisy and the need for rethinking both the target of the charge and the appropriateness of some degree of hypocrisy under certain circumstances.

4.2

Group Psychology

Unlike Weber and Goffman, Freud insists that the difference between “individual psychology and social or group psychology,” “loses a great deal of its sharpness when it is examined more closely.” (1921, 69) Weber and Goffman are aware of group dynamics, of course, but they still focus primarily on the individual agent as the locus of their analyses. Freud, by contrast, wants to identify the overlapping features of individual and group psychology. According to him, “In the individual’s mental life someone else is invariably involved as a model, as an object, as a helper, as an opponent; and so from the very first individual psychology, in this extended but entirely justifiable sense of the words, is at the same time

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social psychology as well.” (ibid.) Others are always present in the individual’s life from the very beginning, so that to study the individual in isolation from social interactions would be incomprehensible. The relations of individuals to each other are “social phenomena” and therefore group psychology concerns itself with the individual as “a member of a race, of a nation, of a caste, of a profession, of an institution, or as a component part of a crowd of people who have been organized into a group at some particular time for some definite purpose.” (ibid., 70) But, is there such a thing as “social [rather than individual] instinct”? And if there is such a thing, continues Freud, is it “primitive” or has it been developed by “the family”? (ibid., 71) Would the social conditioning of an individual as part of a group have the “capacity for exercising such a decisive influence over the mental life of the individual?” (ibid.) Freud offers here an argument that claims in short that “what is heterogeneous is submerged in what is homogeneous” and this brings about the shift from group to individual mentality. However, “the mental superstructure, the development of which in individuals shows such dissimilarities, is removed [when examining individual psyches], and the unconscious foundations, which are similar in everyone, stand exposed to view.” (ibid., 72) The interesting part of this shift from the heterogeneity of the group to the homogeneity of individual psychic foundations—the “unconscious foundations, which are similar in everyone”—is that the individual is “brought under conditions which allow him to throw off the repressions of his unconscious instinctual impulses.” The process of emancipation shepherds the “disappearance of conscience or of a sense of [personal] responsibility.” (ibid.) Within the group, it seems, instead of instinct being suppressed by the dictates of moral norms and social conventions (the cultural hypocrisy to which Freud refers elsewhere, as we saw earlier), individuals feel more emboldened to express themselves while ignoring their own “conscience” and “responsibility.” This makes perfect sense when observing political rallies in which the frenzy of the crowd seems to manifest an unbridled explosion of individual frustrations. Freud quotes Le Bon, who explains the condition of an individual in a group as “being actually hypnotic,” through “contagion” and “heightened suggestibility.” (ibid., 76) Nietzsche’s concern with herd mentality comes to mind here as well, as group contagion and the susceptibility to any inflammatory suggestion undermine individual resistance and standing for one’s own ideas and ideals or the moral standards that ought to guide social conduct. Freud continues to quote Le Bon:

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“by the mere fact that he [the individual] forms part of an organized group, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct.” (ibid., 77) It is unclear why and how an individual may have become “cultivated,” as cultivation requires the cultural resources only a group can provide, but perhaps here, too, Freud reverts to his earlier thinking about the impact of his “civilized” European culture. Likewise, why and how does an individual automatically become a “barbarian” or a “creature acting by instinct” once in a group setting? One would think the opposite to be the case: as an individual, instinct satisfaction might lead to barbaric behavior, but within a group, cultural cultivation would have a moderating, even oppressive effect on individual behavior (especially when conformity, as we saw above, is expected). The answer comes to a few lines later and appears to be a modified version of methodological individualism, where the group cannot be granted the cognitive and behavioral agency accorded to individuals. In Freud’s words: “A group … has no critical faculty … it thinks in images … whose agreement with reality is never checked by any reasonable agency. The feelings of a group are always very simple and much exaggerated. So that a group knows neither doubt nor uncertainty.” (ibid., 78) Indeed, groupthink appeals to the lowest common denominator of its members and discourages any dissent or critique that might threaten its cohesion, its allegiance, or the loyalty of its members. The simplicity of group affect (often experienced as “feelings”) is uncomplicated and straightforward since it “knows no doubt or uncertainty.” However inflamed and repressed individual reactions may be, when a group of like-minded disgruntled and frustrated people congregate, like those observed in Trump’s rallies since his nomination in 2016, these feelings can devolve into hysteric extremes. Freud worries about the loss of critical faculties when individuals come together in a group and “all their individual inhibitions fall away” to the point where individual conscience is compromised, perhaps ignored. He remarks: “Whereas the intellectual capacity of a group is always far below that of an individual, its ethical conduct may rise as high above his as it may sink deep below it.” (ibid., 79) Moral rectitude, once lodged in the group rather than the individual, could “rise above” that of the individual’s—through social conventions and even the legal system—because “it is only society which prescribes any ethical standards at all for the individual” and thereby controls individual misbehavior, or

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it may “sink deep below” when a demagogue incites a crowd to violence. Individual conformity may miss the mark of group morality. (ibid., 82–3) Instead of focusing on social performativity (Goffman) or the schism between two kinds of conformity (Rosow), Freud sees the intimidation suffered by individuals in groups as coercive and how, in such situations, the individual’s “sense of responsibility for his own performance” is diminished. (ibid., 85) Peer pressure frees individuals from critical assessment and responsibility. Would this mean, then, that one could “equip the group with the attributes of the individual”? Is it possible to treat the group as if it were an entity endowed with “continuity,” “selfconsciousness,” “traditions and customs,” and “particular functions and position” distinguished “from [its] rivals”? (ibid., 86) Does group formation follow the same ego-formation of individuals? Group psychology seems to combine the emotional features of individuals, such as “loveforce, the libido of psychoanalysis,” while inhibiting critical intellectual activity and the repression of desires. (ibid., 91) For Freud, “love relationships (or, to use a more neutral expression, emotionalities) also constitute the essence of the group mind.” (ibid.) His “hypothesis,” then, is not reductionist in attributing individual traits to the group; rather, it has two main features. First, he contends, “a group is clearly held together by a power of some kind; and to what power could this feat be better ascribed than to Eros, which holds together everything in the world?” Second, individuals give up “distinctiveness” in a group because they feel a need to be “in harmony with others rather than oppose them, perhaps as a result of [their] love of them.” (ibid.) The introduction of love is deliberate on two counts as well. First, it offers the glue with which to bind the relationship with others, cementing the identification with others who are seen as equals. Second, Freud asserts, “love alone acts as the civilizing factor in the sense that it brings a change from egoism to altruism. And this is true both of sexual love … and also of desexualized [love]… which springs from work in common.” (ibid., 103) Instead of setting individuals apart and then figuring out how they relate to each other (intimidation, suppression, coercion), Freud hypothesizes a natural group formation (in Gramsci’s sense of organic cohesion) based on love: “the essence of a group formation consists in new kinds of libidinal ties among the members of the group.” (ibid.) To be sure, libidinal energy (or what Freud called earlier “love-force”) emerges from “love instincts which have been diverted from original [sexual satisfaction] aims, though they do not operate with less energy on that account.” (ibid., 104) The

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diversion of the satisfaction of sexual desires to group cohesion seems to have, for Freud, a greater lasting endurance because of the “libidinal energy” that powers and sustains it. Freud’s analysis differs from Nietzsche’s appeal to herd mentality as the fear of being alone, by posing the concept of the “primal horde,” which he partially attributes to Darwin’s evolutionary theory (while Darwin does formulate the basic idea of the primal horde, the parricide theme comes from Freud). The group appears “as a revival of the primal horde … [and] the psychology of groups is [therefore] the oldest human psychology.” (ibid., 121–3) Freud delves into a speculative presentation of the “two kinds of psychologies, that of the individual members of the group and that of the father, chief, or leader.” (ibid., 130) The psychology of individual members rests on the fact that they were “subject to ties just as we see them to-day,” but the psychology of the “father of the primal horde was free.” The ties that bind members together and produce camaraderie and identification are no doubt both libidinal and restrictive, whereas the independence of the leader stems from Freud’s suggestion that “his ego had few libidinal ties; he loved no one but himself, or other people only in so far as they served his needs.” In this respect, “at the very beginning of the history of mankind, [the leader] was the ‘superhuman’ whom Nietzsche only expected from the future.” Nietzsche’s imaginary Übermensch is Freud’s prehistoric father. But unlike Nietzsche’s heroic superhuman, Freud’s historical character offers an illusionary promise that all the members of the group “are equally and justly loved by their leader” while he himself “need love no one else.” So, how does one reconcile the “absolutely narcissistic, self-confident and independent” father figure with the libidinal ties of group members? Freud triumphantly answers: “We know that love puts a check upon narcissism, and it would be possible to show how, by operating in this way, it became a factor in civilization.” (ibid., 124) Moreover, the sexual prohibitions leaders in “the history of mankind” imposed on their sons and followers “forced them, so to speak, into group psychology.” That is, the father’s “sexual jealousy and intolerance became in the last resort the cause of group psychology.” (ibid.) In what way would this work? The father’s prohibition and his hogging all the sex for himself in the form of jealousy and intolerance of any violation of that prohibition pushes his sons to express love between themselves as a reasonable alternative outlet. In Freud’s word, being “equally persecuted by the primal father,” and having “feared him equally,” individuals are turned into “the totemic clan,” a group that formed by the substitution

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of brotherly love for the denial of fatherly love. (ibid., 125; italics in the original) Freud’s analysis reorients the examination of the specter of hypocrisy that haunts the current age toward the mysteries of the psychic makeup of people whose external behavior we are quick to judge and whose rational cognitive and behavioral apparatus we have assumed at least since Socrates and Descartes. Even when contextualizing individual conduct within groups, the charge of hypocrisy does not dissipate. However influenced by others, however prone to conformity, and however complicit we become in behaving in ways we might otherwise find abhorrent, the charge of hypocrisy itself is not eliminated. Perhaps the charge under conditions of stifling social pressures needs to be undertaken with compassion or good humor rather than with contempt—depending on the situation and the person—but it can be made all the same. The different ways in which we are torn between doing the right thing and being caught in the moment of social exhilaration that obscures what the right thing might be in itself do not absolves individual reckoning. On the contrary, these social contexts make public what otherwise had been an internal ambivalence or contradiction between one’s desires and the social conventions against which they were supposed to be satisfied. In this sense, then, social pressures do not offer refuge from judgment nor can we excuse ourselves that conformity imposed a specific mode of conduct for which we are not responsible.

4.3

Krasner on the Modular Mind

From group psychology, we are moving back to individual behavior, but now in an evolutionary context with a unit of analysis that encompasses the human species. Robert Kurzban, an experimental evolutionary psychologist, advances a complementary view of the self, one encased in the latest studies of the brain and the functioning of the mind. He argues that “much, or at least some, of what makes us ignorant, mindnumbingly stupid—and hypocritical—is that we evolved to play many different kinds of strategic games with others, and our brains are built to exploit the fact that being knowledgeable, right, or morally consistent is not always to our advantage.” (2010, 3) The argument rests on evolutionary psychology, a field that traces brain functions to their evolutionary adaptability and development within a Darwinian framework. Human brains are supposed to have survived in one form or another because of

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the advantage that their mutations had over time; therefore, retroactively, the likes of Kurzban have readily available data—current studies of the brain with sophisticated fMRI scans—with which to bolster their claims. The emphasis, in Kurzban’s analysis, is on the social context of human behavior where “strategic games with others” yield advantages thought by analytic philosophers to be exclusively derived by rational, consistent conduct. In his words: “Because humans are such social creatures, while being right is still really important, it’s very far from everything. In fact, being ignorant, wrong, irrational, and hypocritical can make you much better off than being knowledgeable, correct, reasonable, and consistent.” (ibid.) In other words, the Cartesian–Kantian classical framing of individuals as rational beings who acquire knowledge and who make their choices based on rational analytic models is challenged in Kurzban’s hands. Being “better off” must mean in this presentation social success for survival and procreation, the continuation of certain brain-induced behavioral patterns. When these patterns of behavior are successful, attributions such as “ignorant, wrong, irrational, and hypocritical” seem beside the point. Would anyone suggest that a chameleon changing its colors to fit in new environments is ignorant, wrong, irrational, or hypocritical? From Kurzban’s perspective, the very discussion of the charge of hypocrisy as outlined in the previous three chapters may be beside the point, too. Or, if it is of relevance for the assessment of human behavior, regardless of the difficulty of ascertaining in the midst of doubt and ambiguities who the subject, actor, or person is, the relevance is not about these categories as such but in terms of being “ignorant, wrong, irrational, and hypocritical in the right way.” (ibid.) The right way, presumably, is the way that improves the odds for survival and the passing of genes from one generation to the next. In Kurzban’s view of the human brain, there are different parts of the “mind” (interchangeably used with “brain”) that have different functions and that are to some extent separate from each other; so separate in fact, that they evolve in different ways and in different spatiotemporal regions. In his words: “Because which part of the mind is in charge changes over time, and because these different parts are designed to do very different things, human behavior is—and this shouldn’t be a surprise—complicated.” (ibid., 4) There is no doubt that human behavior is “complicated,” that is, not reducible to simple and uniform causal connections. There is also no doubt that neuroplasticity plays a role in the evolution of human brains all the time, and more

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perceptively in individual cases of trauma, for example, and in intergenerational cases where effects of the traumas of parents can be detected in their children. This evolutionary design leads to the claim that, according to Kurzban’s model of the brain, different parts of our brain “don’t always work in perfect harmony.” (ibid., 6) Not working in “perfect harmony” is another way of saying that internal conflicts arise, that disharmony characterizes human brain processing, and that behavior, therefore, can be ambiguous and perhaps perceived at times as being “ignorant, wrong, irrational, and hypocritical.” Focusing on optical illusions to demonstrate the validity of his model, Kurzban continues to argue that “different parts of your brain can ‘disagree’ about what’s true,” (ibid., 17) so that “normal human brains can have mutually inconsistent information in different parts.” (ibid.; italics in the original) Human brains in this model are akin to an Artificial Intelligence computing device that receives certain inputs, processes them, and then “reacts” or draws inferences in certain ways, but with a twist because the computer is segmented into different input regions such that they contain, as it were, “mutually inconsistent information.” No wonder that the brain will react inconsistently if the information input according to which it makes choices is inconsistent; in fact, the brain as a whole—the human being as one agent—would be inconsistent if it were to behave consistently (that is, if it erased the differences, perhaps contradictory pieces of input). For purposes of the present exploration of the charge of hypocrisy, Kurzban’s model reveals the inappropriateness of presuming consistency in human decision-making processes. Among the various inconsistencies is “moral hypocrisy,” which for Kurzban is “something like expressing moral condemnation for something and then doing exactly that thing. Hypocrisy is so easy to imagine that it might be hard to imagine anyone who isn’t a hypocrite.” (ibid., 20; italics in the original) The process of expressing moral outrage and then proceeding to behave in a manner that would likely be condemned ignores the different contexts and different regions of one’s brain when such transgressions appear. Since inconsistency is endemic, the charge of hypocrisy may be as often misguided as spot on. Though it would appear that according to this model the structure of our brain makes us all hypocrites at times, we can still ask about individual judgment that must be still operative. To say at this stage that there are different kinds of hypocrisy is to argue for the difference of these kinds and the level of responsibility we can attach to them.

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Kurzban’s mechanistic view of the human mind takes us back to the Cartesian model, and definitely away from the more porous and complex Freudian–Lacanian model. This obvious fact illustrates the thirst for simple, straightforward models of nature or the human subject regardless of the many falsifications that appear. In other words, complex models, as we have learned from the (natural) sciences are difficult to explain, and in their stead a reductionist intervention enables a more simple formulation, one whose explanatory power (and therefore predictive power as well) is clear, concise, and testable. Whether refuted or not, as we are seeing when discussing Kurzban’s model of the brain, the neuropsychological or neuroscientific model (seeking the credibility and legitimacy of the scientific method) is best presented in mechanistic terms, in terms whose fMRI images are observed and recorded. Brain activity is identified and classified in a manner that easily fits into a chain of causal connections. But as Hume (and later Popper) already noted in relation to causality, moving from effect to cause is problematic: we are limited to hindsight extrapolations and speculations. Is the same cause detectable in all cases where a certain effect is present? Are there multiple causes or only one? Can Kurzban avoid these methodological pitfalls when claiming that the human mind “has a large number of subroutines—modules—designed for particular purposes”? (ibid., 22) What if these “subroutines” or “modules” are not all seeking the truth, but “prefer” (in some metaphorical sense) to be “ignorant” or even “wrong” about their surroundings? It might even be a category mistake to suggest that subroutines or modules have anything to do with seeking the truth (rather than reactively ensure strategies for survival, which, admittedly, might have truth-value to them but are in themselves neutral with respect to the truth in a general sense of the term). For Kurzban, the modularity of the mind is “very much like a subroutine in computing—a bit of computer code that performs a function—generally operating relatively independently of other parts of the code.” (ibid., 24) With this model of the modular brain and its computational subroutines, evolutionary psychology as a field of inquiry contends that additional modules have been added to our complex brains over thousands of years to ensure our survival. This model is also called the “computational theory of mind” and it describes (with Darwinian variations) the “organized functional complexity” of the human mind. (ibid., 27) In this respect, and within this computational-Darwinian model, “organisms are machines with parts that have functions, such as helping to

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avoid detection and predation,” which brings Kurzban to engineering. When applied to natural evolution, “an organism’s features have functions and, because natural selection is an inherently competitive process, even slight advantages in the efficiency with which the organism’s parts execute their functions can matter a great deal.” (ibid., 32) The focus here is diverted from the mutation and survival of the organism as a whole to the features and functionalities of the organism whose own so-called internal “competition” favors some over others. In Kurzban’s words: “A key point is that any given specialized computational mechanism—any module—might or might not be connected up to any other module.” (ibid., 42; italics in the original) Much rides on the connection or lack thereof between modules: does their mutual dependence raise the probability of their endurance? If one module seems less essential for the functioning of others, does it reduce its odds of survival? Do certain modules lose their importance and perish? Do others function independently and therefore ensure their longevity regardless of the weaknesses or dysfunctionality of other modules? The specter of the mechanization of humans (metaphors of mechanical clocks and air pumps come to mind in this context) that accompanied the scientific revolutions of the seventeenth century seems to still haunt researchers. Kurzban answers these questions by focusing on the “informational encapsulation” of different modules so that the “brain can represent mutually inconsistent things at the same time.” The encapsulation seems to have no relevance to other modules that encapsulate the same or different pieces of information. He continues: “As long as the information is ‘walled off,’ many, many contradictions can be maintained within one head.” (ibid., 43) The first claim of this model of the mind is that separated, “walled off” modular or functional subroutines of the brain may yield “many contradictions.” Because contradictions are compartmentalized, they may not appear contradictory at all; only in a model of an overarching mind, can a uniform and synthesizing mind detect contradictory pulls that would otherwise confuse it. The mind works simultaneously on different levels or in different regions of the brain and keeps them so separate that there is no singular viewpoint from which they could appear as contradicting each other. The second claim of this model suggests that the modules may be by (evolutionary) design separate from each other so as not to interfere or distract from one function because of a warning from another module. Put differently, there is an overall evolutionary advantage to keeping modular estrangement: the separation of

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the different modules makes them individually more efficient and therefore collectively more effective. This is reminiscent of the division of labor in classical economic theory where efficiency is increased the greater the operational division of labor. The third claim is also the most extreme in explaining the partitioning of the functionalities of the brain. Not only is there a residual evolutionary design that ensures that different sets of information are encapsulated in separate modules, and not only does this design increase the efficacy of each module and presumably the overall effective functioning of the brain, but that greater efficiency can be reached when modules have “wrong” information. (ibid., 44) What would it mean for information to be wrong? From whose perspective? According to what criteria? Without a bird’s eye view, a coherent and comprehensive viewpoint is impossible, and all we are left with are individual modules and their respective data processing functionality. Perhaps what Kurzban has in mind here is that there is an evolutionary benefit to not integrating all the modules, that their distinctive interpretation of information, however wrong from one perspective, may be correct from another. Perhaps not consulting other modules and going one’s own way improves the distinct efficient functionality of modules. This would be in line with what contemporary capitalist thinking has to say, for example, about entrepreneurs whose confidence bias and overestimation of potential success overshadows known evidence about the failure rate of new businesses. Their “wrong,” even “irrational” persistence in the face of obstacles and with disregard of available information turns out in some cases to have been “right” and “rational” after all; in retrospect, their “ignorance” is more than bliss: it is the key to their success. In Kurzban’s words: “So, informational encapsulation—the lack of information flow across modules—is, oddly, the default. Evolution must act to connect modules, and it will only act to do so if the connection leads to better functioning.” (ibid., 50; italics in the original) The default evolutionary position is not to connect the different regions of the brain but rather to connect them only when necessary. One can remain skeptical of the scientific proof of this claim. One could challenge the connectivity of the regions of the brain, the difficulty of knowing for sure when the brain does or does not operate in unison. Regardless of these challenges, this model serves to contrast earlier models of the thinking self, where the mind is understood to be fairly unified, coherent, and logical most of the time. The established view of the mind that analytic moral and political philosophers work with leads them to “worry a lot about contradictions

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within the mind.” (ibid., 67) Kurzban’s model assuages these philosophical worries (e.g., Wallace 2010) and replaces them with a more sanguine view of the mind’s different functionalities that eschews potential conflict arising from cross-modular analyses. From this view of the modular mind, Kurzban infers a so-called “public relations” part of the self designed to present the self to others in the most functionally efficient and advantageous manner, a way that not only makes social sense, but that also simplifies the complexity of one’s being. (ibid., 61) This makes sense for Kurzban because “modules, shaped by evolution, are designed to implement strategies that are appropriate for the relevant problem.” (ibid., 65) And if the problem is social in the Weberian sense of different operational rationalities, performative in Goffman’s and Rosow’s senses of conformity and group integration, or in Freud’s sense of group formation, it is reasonable to tackle it with evolutionary strategies that maximize success. From this, Kurzban concludes that “to the extent that the mind does consist of separate modules, there’s no reason to talk about what one module believes as being more ‘genuine’ or ‘real’ than another one.” (ibid., 70–1; italics in the original) Kurzban’s model undermines the Cartesian–Kantian model while also coming closer to the Freudian-Lacanian one: claims about the “genuine” or “real” self are misguided. No single module encapsulates or represents the individual any more than any other, so at most only glimpses of this or that part of anyone’s personality are available, much in the way the analyst hears partial reports, words with which to construct meaning. Any pretense that digging deep enough into the psyche will yield a comprehensive and True Self is overstated, even futile. Similarly, the fixation on truth is misguided, since the truth may or may not be as helpful for survival and reproduction as other forms of belief, some mistaken, some relevant, some speculative. (ibid., 76ff.) In effect, Kurzban insists, “the value of ignorance comes from the costs of others seeing you know something that puts you in a position in which you are perceived to have a duty and must choose to do one of two costly acts—punish or ignore.” (83) The point is that sometimes having less information is better than having more insofar as your action (based on information) is always already contextualized within a community that judges us and that forces on us some conformity. As to the formation of friendships and alliances, whether in the Gramscian sense or another, to ensure a greater potential for reproduction, “some modules are designed to acquire systematically biased—i.e., false— information, including information that other modules ‘know’ is wrong.”

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(ibid., 86; italics in the original) Wrong information in this context of social interaction and group formation may include biases that reduce anxiety and inhibition, for example, or that encourage vulnerability when guarding oneself from exposure would be wise. This point goes back to the previous comment about the public relations functioning of modules that represent individuals in the best light, however fallacious this may be. “These ideas suggest that the modules that cause the speech and behavior that lead to others’ impressions should be designed to generate as positive a view as possible of our traits and abilities.” (ibid., 92; italics in the original; see also 100–5) Kurzban makes this sound as if it is “akin to a propaganda ploy designed to persuade others that you’re a valuable social being.” (ibid., 108) Intentional deception is transformed in this model into the functioning of one module, call it the sociality module, which ignores other modules and ensures like a “propaganda ploy” that people will like even the most unlikeable person. Though it appears as an outright deception, it could be considered less condemnable because it is only a partial deception by one of many different brain modules. Could such functionality be turned off even if it has evolutionary advantage? In other words, despite the complexity of this computer-like model, it differs little from other sociological models of social interaction and integration offered above. Kurzban concludes from his data analysis and model of the brain that “self-deception’ doesn’t need some special explanation. It just happens because of the way that the mind is organized, with many different compartments, strategically wrong representations in one place, more accurate representations in another.” (ibid., 149; italics in the original) The entire philosophical literature on deception and self-deception (parts of which were discussed above) seems irrelevant or perhaps misguided in this reading. Similarly, one could argue that the entire literature on personhood is irrelevant, if we take this kind of modular neuroscience seriously. If the mind is “organized” in a particular fashion that inevitably leads to “self-deception,” and if self-deception is something that “just happens,” it may be useless to apply the charge of hypocrisy and the moral standards to which it appeals. “Representations” in the different “compartments” are simultaneously “accurate” and “wrong,” but because of their segmentation into different modules, they should be treated separately, as if they do not affect or inform one another, as if the one module cannot undermine the veracity of another. One objection would be that this model excuses bad behavior because this is the natural state of affairs:

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“it just happens.” Another objection would be that even if the brain has multiple functionalities, this alone does not prove their absolute segregation. Old Jewish lore has the congenital inclination to do evil (yetzer ) fighting with one’s inclination to do good (yetzer hatov ), hara with the hope that good inclinations would overcome the temptations to do evil. This way of thinking suggests the connectivity of one’s inner modules, instincts, or inclinations such that one’s conduct is a result of an inner struggle and not one dependent exclusively on one module, instinct, or inclination. As we saw earlier with Freud, cultural hypocrisy is the suppression of libidinal instincts for the sake of group formation and peaceful coexistence, however problematic may turn out to be. Kurzban might respond to these objections by arguing that human preferences (and their expression through actions) are “context-sensitive” (in Massimi’s sense) and thereby bound to change (given changing circumstances), and are therefore never completely or absolutely consistent or even rational in some philosophical overarching or foundational sense of the term. (ibid., 162ff.) Different contexts require moral inconsistency: different parts of the mind with different functions are generating different moral judgments and nothing gives them mutual feedback or checks them all at once. Consistency, concludes Kurzban, is not the human mind’s default position. “It takes careful engineering to keep systems consistent. In some cases, the human mind is engineered that way. But in many cases, it is not.” In this model, the Cartesian–Kantian consistency is conditional. “If consistency does not improve the functioning of the system overall, there is no particular reason to expect it. To the extent that there’s no advantage to consistency in moral judgments, it’s not all that surprising that they are mutually contradictory.” (ibid., 205) Appealing once again to a speculative view of the evolution of the mind, Kurzban’s pragmatic model (“no reason to expect it” unless it improves “the functioning of the system overall”) may permit immoral behavior when it is advantageous. There seems no (evolutionary) advantage to being consistent, even though here and there humans display that quality and behave in predictable ways. Otherwise, adaptive survival favors flagrantly inconsistent humans who are opportunistic and sensitive to contextual differences that require adaptive behavioral flexibility, perhaps in Rosow’s chameleon sense. What do we do with the charge of hypocrisy, then? For Kurzban, “hypocrisy really amounts to favoritism,” applying rules to others while exempting oneself. Should this kind of “favoritism” be socially condemned yet be widely practiced by individuals? If he is right to assert

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that “hypocrisy is part of the modular design” because of its potential advantages, then it would make evolutionary sense that individuals would remain “strategically ignorant” of their “own hypocrisy.” (ibid., 216–7) It is one thing to argue that given the modularity of the mind humans cannot be consistent all the time even if they so desire, and quite another to say that hypocrisy is ubiquitous when it offers advantages. The first claim is interesting but might be false, while the second is trivial and appears to be tautological. Similarly, Kurzban’s claim that though it is “the natural state of the human mind, [hypocrisy] makes for bad policy” (ibid., 219) is obvious as well. The point of having any “policy” is to promote individual adherence and conformity; and the point of enforcing a policy is to socialize individuals away from their so-called “natural state,” especially when it is presumed to be selfish. It is not surprising that Kurzban concludes with the obvious statement that “moral judgments are sticks, and a moral rule is just a way to say that people who do something [deemed wrong] should be punished for it. When we all have the same view—particularly in a democracy—we are saying that we as a group will use our sticks to stop people from doing various things.” (ibid.) The history of political and moral philosophy has made it abundantly clear that sociality depends on adherence to rules, and that no community could survive without some level of conformity (as we saw in Rosow’s analysis). The modular self, the complexity of one’s psyche, and many other reasons for inexplicable and puzzling personal behavior are all helpful reminders of (but should not turn into excuses for) the messy inconsistencies apparent in daily social interactions. One question underlying the present book is not if this or that conduct deserves the charge of hypocrisy, but what kind or degree of hypocrisy is helpful or harmful in different social and political contexts. Moral principles need not be completely compromised in the name of expediency; nor can they be forgotten when noticing some degree of hypocrisy. In concluding this section, perhaps a recent account of the “evolutionary origins of a good society” may be a useful contrast to (if not a falsification of) Kurzban’s view of the modularity of individual minds. According to Nicholas Christakis, “Natural selection has shaped our lives as social animals, guiding the evolution of what I call a ‘social suite’ of features priming our capacity for love, friendship, cooperation, learning, and even our ability to recognize the uniqueness of other individuals.” (2019, xxi) Drawing from the richness of evolutionary data and multiple theoretical frameworks, Christakis’ model focuses on what he

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calls a “social suite of features” that have the power to “prime” our “capacities” and not on separate modules with different functionalities. Following Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), these social suites of features prime humans to feel great when helping others. More specifically, Christakis specifies what features the social suites include and how they foster the capacity to “have and recognize individual identity,” “[l]ove partners and offspring,” and enjoy such social interactions as friendship, social networks, and cooperation. (ibid., 13) Because of their adaptive advantages, these and other social capacities are transmitted genetically, “endowing us with social sensibilities and behaviors”; in short, “our genes help to shape the societies we make on both small and large scales.” (ibid., 15; see also 235) Though Christakis readily concedes that critics would accuse his work of falling into the trap of anthropomorphism (ibid., 228ff.), his response is to note that animals routinely sort members of their own species into kin, familiar non-kin, and unfamiliar strangers just the way humans do. (ibid., 233ff.) In this sense, then, he says that he is not applying human characteristics to natural phenomena but is instead observing similarities between animal and human behavior and their respective developmental trajectories (reminiscent of Caillois’ claim of doing the same thing). This approach to evolution is called “convergent evolution” and is defined as the process by which “all of these species must have independently arrived at these similar solutions to the challenge of living in groups.” (ibid., 284; italics in the original) Without analyzing this evolutionary model any further, it would be helpful to focus here on the “paradox of cooperation,” since evolution favors selfinterested acts of natural selection and survival and not cooperation. The Darwinian evolutionary model is accepted by both Kurzban and Christakis, but their unit of analysis—individuals versus groups—is different. Christakis provides three explanations for the evolutionary advantages of group cooperation, whereas some evolutionary models see natural selection operate on the scale of individual adaptability. The first explanation is that kin relations, or what he calls family, ameliorate any outright selfishness. Among family or kin, individuals cooperate and are less selfish. The second explanation relates to “direct reciprocity” whereby repeated interactions reinforce trust among people and mutual help (perhaps in the Arendtian sense). The third explanation focuses on “indirect reciprocity,” which deals with people’s interest in maintaining and bolstering their reputation through gossip. (ibid., 306–12) Obviously, scale is a major factor for any sort of cooperation (the smaller the better), just as

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punishment of “free riders,” for example, is more effective through peer pressure in small groups. Whether it can be proven or not, Christakis argues about the influence of genes “outside bodies” (as “exophenotype”) that fits into models of “gene-culture coevolution” or what is called by some the “dual-inheritance theory” (ibid., 335, 366), where external and internal conditioning coalesce and mutually strengthen the benefits of cooperation. (See in this context also Wilson 2012; Hare and Woods 2020.) The convergent evolution model would invite the charge of hypocrisy to be a regulatory reminder for cooperative success (in the Gramscian sense of organic cohesion). Whether the charge is limited to kin relations or to larger communities, it seems to guide appropriate survival conduct. Similarly, those who interact with each other on a regular basis cannot afford the charge of hypocrisy because it might sow mistrust and undermine ongoing cooperation. Finally, the threat of the charge of hypocrisy could be powerful when gossip ruins or bolsters reputations. Though both Kurzban and Christakis appeal to evolution and the genetic imprint that enhances survival in the natural selection of mutations, their models play contradictory roles in explaining the importance of the charge of hypocrisy. For Kurzban, the modular mind excuses inconsistencies and dismisses the charge of hypocrisy at every turn because it is too ubiquitous to be worth mentioning; for Christakis, gene-culture coevolution enforces cooperation that would eliminate hypocrisy, or would use the charge of hypocrisy as a threat worthy of attention. If in the first case the charge of hypocrisy loses its regulatory force in social settings, in the second case the charge would be a welcome reminder of social commitments that sustain a community.

4.4

Caillois and Nietzsche on Mimicry

Transitioning from the political to the social at the beginning of this chapter and then transitioning from the social to the psychological (in the sense of raising questions about actors as subjects whose verbal self-construction reveals layers of ambiguities and complexity) thwarts standard attempts to shift questions about the charge of hypocrisy from behavior to personality or character, as some analytic moral philosophers regularly do. Roger Caillois, already mentioned in Chapter 2, can be helpful at this juncture to think through the different ways in which camouflaging provides opportunities for immediate survival in contrast

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to Kurzban’s or Christakis’ sense of evolutionary survival over time. Unlike the evolutionary line of argument that would dismiss charges of hypocrisy as irrelevant (or perhaps dependent on an idealized philosophical imaginary about human rationality, consistency, and uniformity), Caillois’ approach is anchored in the mysterious, aesthetically rich, and environmentally intricate world in which mimicry plays an important role. For Caillois, there are three kinds of mimicry: the first is disguise as “essentially imitation,” one that takes a “definite, deceptive appearance” in order to ward off predators. The second kind is “camouflage,” which amounts to “a disappearance, an artificial loss of identity” that makes “the creature fade into the background so that the observer can no longer mark it down.” The third kind is “intimidation,” which is either an “appearance” or an “action” that tends to produce an “exaggerated fright, one with no real basis, by means of sight, sound, rhythmic movements, smells,” any one of which (or in combination) would “allow the weak to escape the strong and the voracious to transfix their prey.” For Caillois, though, it is not as if human behavior fits into “these classes” of mimicry; rather, “folk-lore of transformation” and the “taste for disguise” inspire human imagination through “stories.” (1964, 63) These stories inform human behavior, from warfare and interpersonal communication to public appearances and intimate interactions with family and friends. Caillois continues to explain that for humans, “invisibility is an ever recurring desire.” The fulfillment of this desire would be useful in time of war, for example, and is ubiquitous in “folklore all over the world,” the kind that “abounds in cloaks and caps of invisibility.” The focus on invisibility as the desire to hide, whether for military or personal advantage, is accompanied in Caillois’ analysis by “moral invisibility,” which “is no less appreciated.” “Masked by their feigned insignificance, or completely masked, they are above suspicion until the moment comes to reveal themselves.” Invisibility guarantees insignificance because what cannot be seen is assumed not to exist. But when the disguise disappears, “surprise is added to terror.” This terrorizing effect is intended to paralyze “the adversary” into defeat before a struggle can take place. (ibid., 87–8) Moral invisibility, like hiding behind masks and cloaks, is the kind of “feigned insignificance” in ignoring moral norms and social conventions in the hope of remaining under the radar or “above suspicion,” of avoiding discovery as someone who has in fact violated norms and conventions. The three modes of mimicry collapse here into overlapping functionalities where “disguise” and “camouflage” are just

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as much about not being detected or visible as they are about “intimidation.” Caillois invites another overlapping of functionalities between masking and camouflaging as the “tricks of the sorcerer” who conducts a “liturgy of panic.” (ibid., 106) In this description, the sorcerer is the high priest of terror who offers liturgical options from which to choose. Different contexts, obviously, call for different tricks. More emphatically, and perhaps in the European modernist, universalizing manner of his time, Caillois flatly asserts that “there is no tool, no invention, no belief, custom or institution which unites mankind so much as does the habit of wearing a mask.” (ibid., 107) The “habit” of wearing masks as unifying “mankind” leads Caillois to hypothesize that “peoples belong to history and civilization the moment they give up the mask, when they reject it as a vehicle of personal or collective panic and strip it of its political function.” History and civilization, in this view, depend on the rejection of masks, perhaps because they can identify with each other or see in others their own image. “The question of masks,” therefore, “is neither episodic nor localized: it affects the whole species.” (ibid., 107) The mask, for Caillois, is “man’s only real invention” (ibid., 108), and paradoxically, the most significant symbol of human accomplishment is something they ought to discard in order to belong to the civilized world. When Caillois moves from the mask as a common symbol of civilization to the similarity between human and animal masking as a way to become invisible and adapt to one’s environment, he compares insects to humans. The insect “definitely behaves like a spell-binder, a sorcerer, the wearer of a mask who knows how to use it.” The tricks sorcerers conjure in their “liturgy of panic” are found in nature as well, according to Caillois, since “fear is an emotion so well known in nature” perhaps as “the reason for so many alleged ornaments and so much mimicry.” (ibid., 121) Mimicry, in all its overlapping forms of disguise and intimidation both in humans and insects, forms a colorful tapestry of pretense, fear, and survival. Caillois moves seamlessly between the behaviors of insects as they camouflage themselves in order to survive in their environment and the cases where their survival strategy backfires, as was mentioned in Chapter 2, and they are either mistaken for leaves and clipped away or eaten by other insects. As outlandish as some of Caillois’ examples are, they arise out of his belief that humans can learn from nature and that humans in some cases mirror the adaptive strategies of insects. In an earlier essay from 1935, Caillois describes his ambition to establish a “revolutionary New Science” “predicated on a more imaginative ‘judgment of resemblance’ than that of

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classical science or rationalism.” (2003, 12) The resemblance, for Caillois, is no mere coincidence or rare curiosity. On the contrary, its pervasiveness is so evident that it could potentially become the basis of a revolutionary new science, a science devoted to exploring natural phenomena as informative for human conduct, rather than reducing nature with the scientific method into a rationalized framework. The deliberate switch from the Cartesian axis of rational analysis to an “imaginative ‘judgement of resemblance’” resonates with the earlier discussion about the psychoanalytic framework where interpretations of interpretations are the signifiers with which therapy works and could also become the basis for social conformity. The establishment of a new science of resemblance makes sense in Caillois’ telling because it would bring together three areas of research. First, “legends” about “hats and cloaks that make their wearer invisible, and of camouflage techniques”; second, “impulses” that are commonly “expressed in mankind by the phenomena of fashion and disguise, carnivals and theater”; and third, “sacred, institutional terror” that is “aroused by the masked and disguised officials in primitive ceremonies.” (ibid., 345) These three interlocking features of human sociality have something in common, contends Caillois: “Anthropomorphism!” Yet his study does not fall into the trap of anthropomorphism, he maintains, but becomes its exact “opposite,” because “the point is not to explain certain puzzling facts observed in nature in terms of man.” In this sense, it is not anthropomorphism at all: Caillois is not imputing human-like meaning to comprehend animal behavior. On the contrary, he continues, “it is to explain man (governed by the laws of this same nature, to which he belongs in almost every respect) in terms of the more general behavioral forms found widespread in nature throughout most species.” (ibid., 346) How would “man” be explained more fully or accurately by observing nature? What about human fascination with mimicry and sorcery can be more fully explained by observing insects who mimic? Or, even more troubling, what about the human psyche can be understood by focusing on insect behavior? Having rehearsed in detail the strategic invisibility of some insects, Caillois seems to turn into a psychoanalyst himself. He declares with the authority usually granted to therapists that “in this crisis of depersonalization, what is at stake is not (as with the praying mantis) the simple disappearance of the ego, but (as in mimicry) the ego’s fascination for a world in which there would be no place for it, in which it would be out of place.” (ibid., 159) The “depersonalization” under review here is the

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human version of the transformation of the insect into a leaf, losing its so-called insect characteristics, denying its supposed “real” features and identity as an insect for the sake of survival. In the human case, this denial of the self is not simply the “disappearance of the ego,” but also an expression of a connective “fascination” with its surroundings, whether limited to the therapeutic treatment or broadened to interactions with other people in the world. Unlike Kurzban’s view of the modular mind and unlike the Cartesian rational mind, here we find a claim about the “necessity of the mind” as the “autobiography of the subject literally possessed by its own absence,” a record of who one is and what one does with oneself when exploring one’s identity. This process is one of “witnessing [in abstentia] (but nonetheless in the first person) his own absence,” noticing, so to speak, that one is no longer who one was before, like the “praying mantis” who was an insect at some point and now is a leaf. This autobiographical process, applied to humans, conveys a peculiar, perhaps inconceivable potential for the individual, “as if he had succeeded in disappearing without losing sight of himself, as if his absence, instead of denying, had confirmed the first person.” (ibid.) How can denial, disappearance, and absence turn into ontologically confirming moments? Are they, in the Cartesian–Kantian sense, the moments of epistemological self-reflection that announce ontological presence and the metaphysics of becoming, perhaps even the Hegelian-Heideggerian Dasein? Are these moments more like what Giorgio Agamben interprets Heidegger to say in terms of the “structure of being-in-the-world” that is “always already presupposed in every conception (both philosophical and scientific) of life”? (2004, 50) In closing this chapter, I wish to move from Caillois’ animation of the human psyche and the difficulty therefore of assessing its hypocrisy to a Nietzschean exploration of acting, circling back to the beginning of the chapter and setting up a bridge to questions related to code-switching and passing as means of self-preservation and assimilation, as will be discussed in the next chapter. In Human All Too Human, Nietzsche explains how appearance becomes actuality, how the truth is fabricated, and how human conduct might be viewed from different perspectives. “Ultimately, not even the deepest pain can keep the actor from thinking of the impression of his part and the overall theatrical effect, not even, for example, at his child’s funeral. He will be his own audience, and cry about his own pain as he expresses it.” (1996/1878–1880, 50) Actors fall prey to their own performances, believe what they perform, convincing themselves of the “impression” they make and the “overall theatrical effect”

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they produce. Like actors, hypocrites “who always play one and the same role finally ceases to be [hypocrites],” because when only one role is performed actors are too close to that role to be able to situate themselves as members of the audience as well. Nietzsche continues with an example of priests, who “are usually conscious or unconscious hypocrites when they are young men” but, as they get older, feel their role to be naturally their own and therefore become priests “without any affectation,” feeling comfortable in their own skins without suffering any longer from the impostor syndrome. (ibid., 50–1) The desire to appear as someone else, say, a grieving father or a priest, may induce long-term role playing that eventually inhabits one’s being so completely that it becomes difficult to be anyone else. Any professional role, claims Nietzsche, “begins with hypocrisy,” as one pretends to be someone else, albeit someone one truly wishes to become, say, an artist or professor of philosophy. Everyone starts as an impostor, a deceiver of the public who pretends to know what they are supposed to be doing. Is this, then, not a reasonable socialization of individuals into their social roles? Might this be a process of integration and adaptation worthy of (Rosow’s) conformity and (Christakis’) social cooperation? Unlike Nietzsche’s earlier description of the lowest classes, women, and Jews who pretend to belong to the community that dislikes and discriminates against them, in the present text Nietzsche finds potential benefit for hypocritical behavior among those who are liked and are integrated already into their community. In his words: “The man who always wears the mask of a friendly countenance eventually has to gain power over benevolent moods without which the expression of friendliness cannot be forced—and eventually then these moods gain power over him, and he is benevolent.” (ibid., 51) Nietzsche exposes a psychological process by which the pretense becomes so internally embedded that it displaces any other internal confusion or resistance. If you wear the mask of friendly countenance long enough, if you constantly habituate yourself to be friendly toward others, at some point you become who you pretend to be: a friendly person. You own your friendliness; you have become in fact a friendly person. As Bruce Benson explains, “Nietzsche makes the counterintuitive observation that there are relatively few real hypocrites.” (2002, 77) In Nietzsche’s “Raids of an Untimely Man,” he says: “The few hypocrites I have met were imitating hypocrisy: they, like almost every tenth person today, were mere actors.” (ibid.) Instead of being hypocrites because they are actors, they are only acting as hypocrites. To be worthy of the charge

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of genuine hypocrisy, thinks Nietzsche, there must be real belief on the part of the hypocrite: “Hypocrisy belongs to the ages of strong faith, when even if you were forced to display a different faith, you didn’t let go of the faith you had.” (ibid.) According to Benson, Nietzsche thinks hypocrisy is hard to find because nobody really believes in anything with strong enough conviction. The problem of a “lack of hypocrisy,” then, is not limited to the Christians who have lost the fervor of their faith; rather, Nietzsche thinks that it has become “a feature of the intellectual life of the time” (ibid., 81), when skepticism, if not outright nihilism guides one’s thoughts and judgments. Nietzsche points to a problem glossed over by so many commentators: the charge of hypocrisy makes sense only if someone is disavowing a deep belief in some value or losing a grip on a moral principle that was dear to their heart. But what happens when faith in an ideal or moral principle is so superficial that disavowing it in practice means very little? What force does the charge of hypocrisy carry in such a situation? The specter of cynical hypocrisy looms over this concern, as no moral ideals carry any weight anymore and no moral standards anchor social formation. It may therefore be useful to turn in the next chapter to some comments about religious views of hypocrisy as reminders of the cultural backdrop against which Nietzsche’s question about the meaning of the charge of hypocrisy is formulated.

References Giorgio Agamben (2004), The Open: Man and Animal [2002]. Translated by Kevin Attell. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bruce Ellis Benson (2002), Graven Ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida & Marion on Modern Idolatry. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Roger Caillois (1964), The Mask of Medusa [1960]. Translated by George Ordish. London: Victor Gollancz LTD. Roger Caillois (2003), The Edge of Surrealism: A Roger Caillois Reader. Edited by Claudine Frank, translated by Claudine Frank and Camille Naish. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Nicholas A. Christakis (2019), Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society. New York, Boston, and London: Little, Brown Spark. Sigmund Freud (1921), “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, edited by James Strachey, Volume XVIII (1920–1922), pp. 65–144. Erving Goffman (1959), The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.

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Robert Kurzban (2010), Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Friedrich Nietzsche (1996), Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits [1878–80]. Translated by Marion Farber, with Stephen Lehmann. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Karl R. Popper (1994), The Poverty of Historicism [1957]. New York: Routledge. Irving Rosow (1965), “Forms and Functions of Adult Socialization,” Social Forces Vol. 44, No. 1 (September 1965), pp. 35–45. R. Jay Wallace (2010), “Hypocrisy, Moral Address, and the Equal Standing of Persons,” Philosophy & Public Affairs Vol. 38, No. 4 (Fall 2010), pp. 307– 341. E. O. Wilson (2012), The Social Conquest of Earth. New York: W. W. Norton. D. W. Winnicott (1965), The Maturation Process and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development. New York: International Universities Press. Brian Hare and Venessa Wood (2020), Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Redicovering Our Common Humanity. New York: Random House.

CHAPTER 5

Misrecognition and Passing

Abstract This chapter begins with an acknowledgment of religious precedents that refer to and warn against hypocrisy, since moral condemnations rely on fixed moral ideals, some of which are found in sacred texts. Passing and code-switching are essential strategies for survival available to oppressed minorities. Victim hypocrisy as a response to threatening and discriminatory treatment has been morally justified for centuries. The moral register is never far removed from discussions of human conduct and when historically studied calls for rethinking such judgments. Barring an appeal to the divine or to solidarity and empathy, perhaps what remains is an appeal to virtues and the virtue of friendship. Virtuous friends might be in a position to critically challenge the conduct of their friends with honesty and goodwill. No matter the judgment, it can serve as a useful lifeline that has the potential to ensure the well-being of a community.

5.1

Religious Precedence

Identifying the conditions under which certain kinds or degrees of hypocrisy appear and suggesting when the charge of hypocrisy is warranted presuppose, in Western societies, the influence of the sacred texts of the Abrahamic religions. Just as the history of Western art relies heavily on biblical stories and legends, so does the history of Western morality and politics. In this framework, piety under the watchful eye of

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the divine informs moral principles and social codes of behavior. There are, of course, some societies and some periods in which religion is more pronounced than other cultural institutions. In seventeenth-century Europe, for example, “hypocrisy, often involving false protestations of piety, was a particular obsession: one commentator has gone so far as to call it the ‘vice of the century’.” (Jay 2010, 57, 122ff.) Vice is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “Depravity or corruption of morals; evil, immoral, or wicked habits or conduct; indulgence in degrading pleasures or practices,” mixing the depravity of morals and habits and conduct. The religious overtones of “evil, immoral, or wicked” and the association with “indulgence in degrading pleasures or practices” are understood to be in stark contrast to austerity and asceticism as forms of religious life. The life of pleasure is denounced in this framing in the name of the spiritual life of abstinence and pious devotion. While the OED defines vice as a “habit or practice of an immoral, degrading, or wicked nature,” it also defines it as “a character in a morality play representing one or other vice; hence, a stage jester or buffoon.” The theatrical roots of hypocrisy, mentioned repeatedly in this book, commingle here with the theatrical roots of vice as a “stage jester or buffoon.” As Jay suggests, hypocrisy is the vice of the seventeenth century, which is suffused with religious connotations. Of all the vices, hypocrisy rankled more than others within a religious framework, because it is the kind of social deception that is accompanied by an undeserved special respect by other members of the community. For pious observers of the faith, a blasphemer pretending to be just as pious as themselves would elicit resentment. It would also violate the institutional setting of religion whereby human conduct is judged not only among members of the faith, but also by the divine. I would argue here that if one were subject to divine scrutiny only, deception could proceed undetected and the charge of hypocrisy would be absent. What religious texts of the Abrahamic tradition make abundantly clear is that one’s deception and pretensions are judged within communities of like-minded religious observers, where rules of conduct are expected to be upheld, and where divine judgment is presumed to be omnipresent. The fact that the appeal to divine omnipresence is supposed to guarantee observance is secondary to the communal judgment of individual conduct that predates surveillance capitalism but is similarly imbued with the watchful eyes of neighbors and friends: they may lack the technological sophistication of the digital age, but surveil nonetheless with curiosity and zeal.

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As mentioned at the end of Chapter 2, the case of the Jewish Converso in late fifteenth-century Spain speaks to the exception of religious deception. Their deception was meant to mislead the Catholic authorities who threatened the Jews with expulsion or death if they refused conversion. In such cases, avoiding religious oppression by pretending to adhere to rituals not of one’s own choosing would seem appropriate because it was supposed to be temporary and not express the abandonment of one’s true faith. Just as we saw in the case of insect adaptation and camouflage, camouflaging as a deceptive strategy in the face of mortal threat is advantageous within an evolutionary framework, and it could be justifiably applied to the Converso case. This raises an interesting question to which we are returning in this chapter: does the instrumental rationality adopted for the sake of survival discard the charge of hypocrisy? In other words, what is under consideration in this chapter is not so much the religious condemnation of pretense among community members but instead the voluntary social commitments that are upheld because one is a member of that community. Membership in a religious community reflects an agreement with a set of principles, may they be social, political, or moral, worthy of upholding jointly. Violation of this commitment is at times a legal matter, but it is also a violation of trust. The religious overlay, whether of the seventeenth or the twenty-first century, when power-hungry institutional leaders do not abuse it, reminds community members of their covenant with the community as a whole and not only with the God of Abraham. I use the term covenant to highlight the religious connotation it evokes in describing the political term social contract. Revisiting the Oxford English Dictionary, a hypocrite is not only an actor, dissembler, and pretender but also a “person who falsely professes to be virtuously or religiously inclined or to have feelings or beliefs of a higher order than is the case; a person given to hypocrisy.” The parallel between professing to be “virtuously or religiously inclined” as applied to a “higher order” reminds us that virtuous behavior has been traditionally understood in religious terms. The religious framework offers a blueprint with which to assess one’s conduct and delineate the virtuous from the malevolent, deploying the notion of hypocrisy as a guardian of that behavioral divide. The charge of hypocrisy in this frame of reference could be seen as a watchful guardian of the purity of intentions when they are expressed in speech and action. The Greek etymological root of hypocrisy of hupo (under) and krino (to judge) is worth noting as well here insofar that a judgment from below or behind is presented. The idea

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that a judgment is rendered from behind a screen or under a mask is easy to visualize but difficult to understand: who is making the judgment? The hypocrite from behind the mask? The actor who is not a hypocrite but a pretender nonetheless? And what is being judged, the performance, the script, or the audience? Suggesting that the religious register has been historically informative for social and political frameworks is meant here not as a mere platitude about how, for example, the Ten Commandments have influenced legal institutions in the Western hemisphere. Instead, I want to argue that morality in general and some specific ethical lessons and principles have been imported from religious texts to secular ones, and that this phenomenon is evident when the OED includes phrases like “especially in respect of religious life and or beliefs” when defining hypocrisy. Perhaps this is the case because among the faithful, judgments about piety were paramount and observable, and because it was presumed that if one falsely pretended to be pious, one could just as easily falsely pretend in other spheres of life to being someone one was not. It should be noted in this context as well that some commentators on the biblical antecedents of the charge of hypocrisy couch the analysis in economic and political terms, first and foremost in relation to financial dealings and extraction of interest on loans, and also in relation to debates and disagreements about decrying opponents as un-Christian or heretical. (Moberg 1987, 8, 11) Of course, any sectarian belief system is guided by a conviction, however exaggerated, of the absolute truth handed down by divine power or is assumed to rest with the divine and only conditionally revealed to true believers who are granted the privilege. (ibid., 17) In general terms, then, charges of hypocrisy emanating from religious belief, whether Christian or other, “may be an iatrogenic disease,” the kind of disease whose treatment causes “even more problems than were present before it was identified.” As the religious scholar David Moberg explains, “Sometimes virtues may actually poison spiritual growth, for the worst of behavior can spring from noble motives.” (ibid., 18) The tension between one’s belief and conduct is heightened in the religious context where there is moral fidelity to divine authority. The question of judging other people, of casting aspersions on other people’s behavior as if one’s own behavior is pure and beyond reproach, is the hallmark of hypocritical behavior (in the Abrahamic religious texts), behavior that rests on the pretense of being better or fulfilling higher principles in comparison to the rest of one’s neighbors who fall short. Sacred texts remind believers of all faiths to be watchful of the sins of others as much as the potential of being sinful themselves and place

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human conduct under the watchful eye of God or the righteous few who serve as his proxies. This might mean not only licensure for the continuous surveillance of everyone by religious authorities, but also that all interactions rest on the shaky ground of permanent suspicion that relates to human fallibility. The starting point is not innocence that is tempted and corrupted, but an inherent and incessant suspicion permeating one’s life with fear and dread of being accused of hypocrisy, of being exposed as falling short of the religious ideals set by sacred texts and holy apostles. The appeal to lofty moral standards may be debilitating as much as motivating, perhaps simply an unbearable burden few can endure. Socrates reminds his interlocutors that if piety is what is “pleasing to the gods” and if the gods might disagree among themselves about this point, then it is difficult to come up with a clear definition of what piety is and how to be pious. (Euthyphro 6e–7a) The difficulty of defining piety seems to be resolved for the Abrahamic religions with official interpretations by rabbis, priests, and imams that revolve around unconditional obedience. To obey unconditionally, perhaps in the way Abraham was willing to sacriHa-Aqedah), is a problematic fice his son Isaac (“The Binding,” proposition, as Søren Kierkegaard was at pains to illustrate with multiple interpretations of this complex and frightening (perhaps awe-inspiring to the devout) biblical scene. (1985/1843) Does faithfulness under such circumstances defy rationality and morality? Or, as the Abrahamic religions would have it, does religious piety, because it is directed toward God, transcend human rationality and morality (as God reminds Job in their exchange, Job 38: 4ff.)? The condemnation of hypocrites as impious pretenders is a reminder of their simultaneous failure to be religiously pious enough and sufficiently trustworthy members of a community. The one failure spills into the other: how can the offender of God’s covenant with the Israelites be trusted not to violate the social contract among mere mortals? If this question seems a bit outlandish because one can be an atheist and a trustworthy friend and community member, just think about the expectation that an American presidential candidate belongs to a faith community (and have pictures taken worshipping, preferably in a church). The religious framework where charges of hypocrisy are heard and where appropriate degrees of hypocrisy are considered cannot be avoided. No matter how secular the present age may appear to some, it is still full of religious thinking about piety and righteousness, trustworthiness and unconditional obedience. God serves as the ultimate arbiter of good and evil and the prohibitions that should guide a community of believers. The

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American Constitution is seen similarly in this light as a sacred text with original intent only the chosen can decipher. The Supreme Court has the constitutional authority and public reverence reserved, for instance, for the Pope and his Cardinals in the Catholic Church. Ceremonial decrees shroud the inner workings of such institutions in cloaks of secrecy that enhance their presumed profundity and divinity. Just as biblical stories inspired centuries of art production (sponsored in large part by religious institutions), so have the Ten Commandments been inspirational for legal systems (like the American Constitution) before and after the inception of the nation-state. Religious forewarnings about hypocrisy as sinful violation of divine moral standards always appeal to a higher authority. The absolute wisdom of such an authority is taken for granted because to think otherwise is hubris. The fear that accompanies the charge of hypocrisy and the degrees of hypocrisy that might be acceptable under certain circumstances are not limited to the failures of statecraft, but speak to the loss of divine intimacy that bestows legitimacy on secular endeavors in a Weberian sense of disenchantment (Entzauberung ).

5.2

Passing and Code-Switching 5.2.1

The Predicaments of Passing

The religious context where a covenant informs the behavior of participants takes on a different dimension when discussing the political realities of nation-states. As we discussed earlier, victim hypocrisy (Kittay 1982), whether under conditions of religious or Nazi persecution, has been interpreted as a (morally) appropriate survival strategy. Being a hypocrite in order to protect yourself against a regime that threatens to kill you or oppress and discriminates against you is obviously different from pretending to be better than you are. As we have seen in previous chapters, the warrant for the charge of hypocrisy depends on the particular social, political, or economic context wherein it is situated. In the political sphere, the French philosopher Etienne Balibar explains that, “revolutionary politics sheds the hypocrisy that consists in holding up the established order” as if it were “the very reality of nonviolence when it is quite often only the common framework for a host of general or particular, open or veiled forms of violence.” (2015, 7) Whether legally justified by rationality or consensus (logic or convention), nation-states both have the monopoly on violence (in Weber’s sense) and claim to be

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the guardians of their citizens (in the Social Contract sense of ensuring peaceful coexistence and the maintenance of rights and duties). Balibar’s commentary is on the political hypocrisy of states that in the name of nonviolence in fact regularly commit acts of violence. The recent protests since the summer of 2020 (decrying police brutality against Black men in America) are by now well documented and have expanded across the nation. Those protesting state violence are being blamed by the Trump Administration and some sycophant media outlets for disorderly conduct, rioting, and looting. Calls for law and order have brought out armed militias defending the status quo and in many cases these armed antiprotest groups have been tacitly and blatantly supported by police forces and other state agencies (e.g., the Department of Homeland Security). The question of hypocrisy in the American political context becomes clear in Balibar’s commentary: the “established order” pretends to uphold “nonviolence,” while it is in fact a “common framework” for “veiled forms of violence.” The violence that these protests expose is not limited to police brutality or the license to kill with guns (under the protection of the Second Amendment), but permeates a “host of general or particular, open or veiled forms of violence,” such as racial and gender discrimination, income inequality, real-estate “red lining” (that bars minorities from purchasing houses in certain neighborhoods either through zoning restrictions or the refusal of banks and mortgage companies to finance these homes because of who is applying for the mortgage), and disproportionate incarceration of people of color. Balibar continues to explain that the “idea of the precariousness of politics” is linked to “a modality of contingency” about “risk and discontinuity in everyday life (or, better, in the everyday reality of conflict).” (ibid., 97) If political systems are “precarious” and therefore display a “modality of contingency” in their administration of power (and violence), then it would not be surprising that everyone within such systems would experience precarity, especially some minority groups within the state that are bound to experience also “risk and discontinuity in everyday life.” Their risk relates to the “everyday reality of conflict,” a conflict or struggle between those who demand certain rights and protections and those who withhold them; this is done in the name of law and order or in the name of an ideal equality that derides, for example, any whiff of affirmative action policies (as if they denote preferential treatment). In this context, Blacks in the U.S. context more often than not suffer systemic discrimination and injuries, both physical, financial, psychological, and electoral. The Black

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Lives Matter movement in the United States (the anti-racist advocacy and protest group founded in 2013) has taken to the public square the pain of this reality and has been successful in raising awareness among non-blacks to rethink, for example, defunding the police. What strategies can Blacks deploy under these circumstances? As we saw in the previous chapter about social role-playing, Goffman was clear about the “legitimate performance of everyday life” that individuals put on “because of the effect it is likely to have.” (1959, 73) Certain threatening conditions favor, for example, “acting” as a Gentile for the persecuted Jew or as a white person for the runaway Black person escaping the horrors of slavery. Society corrals people into prescribed roles and positions of Otherness, and therefore, continues Goffman, there are “indeed many precautions to imprison a man in what he is, as if we lived in perpetual fear that he might escape from it, that he might break away and suddenly elude his condition.” (ibid., 76) Slavery until the Civil War and racist discrimination into the present indeed set the conditions for what Goffman describes. Social stratification, envisioned already in Plato’s Republic and practiced by the British on their own island and by Indians with a rigid caste system, ensures the confinement of people into a prefigured place in society without the possibility of change. Goffman mentions the fact that passing was regularly observed among “Negroes in the Southern states” and “American college girls” who had to conceal how smart they were in order not to threaten sexist preconception of gender difference. In the case of women college students, they would hide their intelligence to avoid scaring off potential suitors (who were not as smart as they were or who felt threatened by smart women), because women were expected to be subservient to their male companions and potential husbands. (ibid., 38–40) In these cases, it should be noted from a sociological perspective, “a sacrifice is made” for the sake of “marriage eligibility.” (ibid., 45) It appears that Goffman’s examples are meant to highlight both the outrage such behavior may elicit today and the routine of what he calls the interplay between “backstage” and “frontstage behavior language,” (ibid., 128) the behavior you openly display in order to abide by the status quo. Language, as we saw earlier in the example of President Obama, is an audio-visible reference point for where to locate and fasten social status, the kind celebrated by Bernard Shaw in his play Pygmalion (first performed in 1913). There, the fictional character of Professor Henry Higgins bets that he could teach the Cockney-sounding “flower girl” Eliza Doolittle how to lose her accent and diction and speak

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“proper” English. Many later iterations of accented class pretense in the British context appear in television shows and plays till today in the U.S. context as well. The question of passing in a socially stratified society, whether under the British monarchy with its class-conscious accents or in the American republic with its historically race-sensitive dialects, has drawn the attention of scholars around the world. In his lecture notes from 1959 to 1960, the French West Indian psychiatrist and political philosopher Frantz Fanon, focuses on Blacks in America. He poses the question, “In a society that is as divided as American society, to what extent can a Black encounter a White?” His answer: “When a Black American is face to face with a White, stereotypes immediately intervene; it is necessary for him not to be ‘true’ with the White because the value systems are not the same; at bottom, there is a lie which is the lie of the situation.” The “lie of the situation” responds to a prefigured “stereotype” where the context of the “value systems” that guide them both is different. Black Americans, therefore, must “lie” and pretend that they conform to the White “system of values,” as if they have voluntarily agreed to participate in it, as if their ancestors had not been kidnapped or “bought” and then transported in chains across the Atlantic Ocean as slaves. They never consented to the American unjust and racist social contract; they never agreed to comply with the white system of values that dehumanized them and kept them in slavery for generations. Even under the conditions of emancipation, the social contract remained skewed in favor of white supremacy (with Jim Crow laws). What, then, asks Fanon, must a Black person say when encountering a white person? “To confess,” continues Fanon, “is to confess that one is part of one’s own social group; if the Black is dominated, he cannot be required to engage in ‘human behaviour’.” What does this even mean? It could mean that when encountering non-blacks, Blacks have to change to fit better into the other social group. Fanon explains that when “a Black addresses a White, first he has a particular voice, as well as a particular demeanor and style.” This “particular voice” is different from the voice used with other Black people. Passing and code-switching coalesce into a process whereby the particularity of the voice is subordinated to a “demeanor and style” that suits the dominant culture of whiteness. (2018, 525–6) Confession is an important category in this context of encounters with the Other, especially in its dual meaning. According to Fanon, “Confession has a moral pole that might be referred to as sincerity. But it also has a civic pole, a position, as is well known, that is dear to Hobbes and

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philosophers of the social contract.” These two poles cannot be separated from each other, because moral considerations inform the assessment of political discourse and conduct. When confessing, it seems, the two poles might come apart, since the moral confession differs enough from the political even if one could layer the one on top of the other (in the sense that the one promotes or gives rise to the other). As Fanon explains: “I confess as a man and I am sincere. I also confess as a citizen and I validate the social contract.” (ibid., 415; originally 1955; italics added) When thinking about the charge of hypocrisy leveled against Blacks who pass when encountering whites, two comments emerge. First, the socalled “lie” has been historically imposed on Blacks and therefore the degree of hypocrisy expressed there is understandable but based on a flawed moral situation into which Blacks were coerced. Power relations dictate the expected “proper” linguistic norms, and therefore chameleonlike conformity on the part of Blacks is not only reasonable but a necessary strategy to avoid harmful consequences. Confessing to the “lie” is nothing more than an acknowledgment of the linguistic conditions of survival within a system built on lies about white supremacy that dehumanizes Blacks. Second, this acknowledgment is accompanied by a dual declaration (the confession), one about one’s sincerity as a human being (under such circumstances) and the other about one’s participation in the social contract as a presumed (but never fully accepted) full-fledged member. This complex declaration, however constrained by the specific linguistic conditions of whiteness, still assumes a powerful reminder that Blacks are part of this malformed social contract and may change it over time. The notion of confession has an obviously strong religious connotation even though it is not limited to the standard religious notion of confessing one’s wrongdoings or sins (as some may think of the term). In general, a confession reveals something about oneself that would otherwise remain unknown, a truth of some sort, perhaps, but one not necessarily related to an admission about legal or moral transgressions. Such an admission may or may not contain the caveat that the wrongdoing was intentional or accidental, which from a consequentialist perspective makes no difference, though it may be meaningful within a deontological legal system of rules and prohibitions (where intention counts). The weekly sacrament of confession in the Catholic Church dates to the thirteenth century and continues to the present among the devout. The Jewish annual recounting of acts of commission and omission during the Days of Atonement is a confession to the divine and to fellow members of the faith with

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an expectation of cleansing and perhaps forgiveness. Yet confessions need not be religious or moral in nature; they may be the confessions of love or dedication to a cause. In these cases, the positive feature of confession comes close to Fanon’s sense of a civic declaration that reaffirms one’s participation in a social contract, however flawed. In his words: “Certainly, this duplicity [doubleness between the moral and civic poles] is forgotten in everyday existence, but in specific circumstances, it is necessary to know how to lay it bare.” (ibid.) In other words, one’s civic commitment as a citizen differs from one’s moral sincerity, and Blacks in America cannot be condemned for the double burden of having to prove their sincerity as well as their fidelity to the state. This sense of doubleness has been used against President Obama, for example, when questioning his eligibility to be president because of his birthplace, and more recently against Senator Kamala Harris who joined former Vice President Biden on the Democratic presidential ticket as his running mate. Similarly, such an understanding of this double burden goes a long way in explaining the ongoing murder of Blacks by police officers sworn to “serve and protect” them as part of the social contract, but who approach them instead as criminals and enemies of the state, as if they were outsiders in their own state. In his The Souls of Black Folk of 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois famously explained what he means by a “double-consciousness”: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” (1999, 10) He continues to explain that “One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” And concludes this passage by saying that “the history of the American Negro is the history of this strife—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.” (ibid.) One of the greatest contemporary Africana Philosophy exponents, Michael Sawyer, explains this passage in terms of a “tripartite subaltern self-consciousness,” consisting of “Second Sight, Double Consciousness and Two-ness.” (2020, 34ff.) For Sawyer, this characterization suggests that “Du Bois proposes, ultimately, a putatively unsolvable binary relationship between the Negro and the American.” (ibid.) What is at stake is the movement from Second Sight through Double Consciousness that ends with Two-ness, which represents “a complex way of being that includes, in its manifold relationship of

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these discretely complex ideas, a way to dismantle its logic.” (ibid., 36) The “double life” that “every American Negro must live,” according to Du Bois, is “as a Negro and as an American.” In his poetic and indicting language, this double life, is “swept on by the current of the nineteenth while yet struggling in the eddies of the fifteenth century,” and gives rise to “a painful self-consciousness, an almost morbid sense of personality and a moral hesitancy which is fatal to self-confidence.” (1999, 95) As this double life, according to DuBois, marks the life of every “American Negro,” every enslaved and freed Black person, it forms a “painful self-consciousness” regarding one’s place and role in a white supremacist country, wherein one is forced to look at oneself from the perspective of the dominant and racist culture, through the “eyes of others.” Du Bois describes the condition of the American Negro in this way: “Conscious of his impotence, and pessimistic, he often becomes bitter and vindictive.” And, he notes, little solace can be had, given that “his religion, instead of worship, is a complaint and a curse, a wail rather than a hope, a sneer rather than faith.” Du Bois continues then with his description of the condition of American Negroes after the Civil War. In contrast to the hopeless and pessimistic, complaining and cursing American Negro, there is “another type of mind.” This one is “shrewder and keener and more torturous too,” one who “sees in the very strength of the anti-Negro movement its patent weaknesses, and with Jesuit casuistry is deterred by no ethical considerations in the endeavor to turn his weakness to the black man’s strength.” Weakness is turned into strength “with Jesuit casuistry,” the kind of sophistry that may yield the results of persuasion, the kind that finds “weaknesses” in the “very strength of the anti-Negro movements.” “Thus,” concludes Du Bois, “we have two great and hardly reconcilable streams of thought and ethical strivings; the danger of the one lies in anarchy, that of the other in hypocrisy.” This no-win situation, as far as Du Bois is concerned, characterizes and dooms Blacks in their future lives in America. In his words: “Today [1903] the two groups of Negroes, the one in the North, the other in the South, represent these divergent ethical tendencies, the first tending toward radicalism, the other toward hypocritical compromise.” (ibid.; italics added) Whether or not the regional designation of “North” and “South” holds or is more malleable and multifaceted because it “represent[s]” is secondary to the divide between the two “divergent ethical tendencies” (earlier “streams of thought and ethical strivings”), one associated with “radicalism” (or “anarchy”) and the other with “hypocritical compromise” (or

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“hypocrisy”). Though the hypocrisy at stake, for Du Bois, reflects a way of thinking and an ethical tendency, it sounds similar to the kind Fanon describes years later when encountering social and political situations in which “compromise” is necessary (as we have seen above). The predicament or impossible position Blacks are facing today seems not far off from the description of Du Bois dating back to more than a century ago, having to make compromises in a white supremacist environment. As we saw in Chapter 2, negotiations can result in a compromise that improves policy or makes political coalitions possible and therefore has a positive outcome, regardless of tactical maneuvers that appear to be or in fact are hypocritical. As we also saw in Chapter 3, the “three-fifth compromise,” for example, was believed essential for the Constitution to be adopted and ratified by all the colonies. There are, of course, different kinds of compromise. Some take place under conditions of military occupation, like the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, where any form of resistance is punishable by the destruction of one’s home and the jailing or killing of one’s innocent relatives, and where Palestinians can be perceived as compromising their ideals and principles in order to survive. Others are limited to compromises for gratuitous personal gain. There is an obvious distinction between legitimate, however painful and constrained, compromise and a sellout for no good reason except one’s enrichment or enhancement of power. The distinction between legitimate and obstructive compromises (as discussed above) suggests that not every compromise in and of itself is subject to the specter of hypocrisy. Yet Du Bois was concerned about the specter of hypocrisy that would haunt Blacks: their ethical double bind or the double life to which they are condemned in America will be accompanied by this specter or the specter of anarchy. They remain in a difficult and untenable situation. Radicalism will delegitimize them as a threat against the social contract, as seen during the 1960s with the Black Panthers movement, for example, or kill them, as is seen repeatedly in the cases of assassination, lynching, and ongoing police brutality. Hypocritical compromise will offer no protection from white supremacist abuses. Stuart Hall responds to some of the questions about the predicaments facing Blacks in terms of the old logics of identity, those of the 1960s, in which philosophically, for the Cartesian subject “identity is the ground of action.” Whether or not this action is radical or compromised (in Du Bois’ sense) remains contextually an open question. But, as becomes clear from Hall’s perspective, identity is construed in terms

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of “a notion of the continuous, self-sufficient, developmental, unfolding, inner dialectic of selfhood.” (2019, 64) Selfhood in Hall’s sense differs from the static Cartesian–Kantian model that in its self-discovery reveals itself; Hall’s selfhood is a powerful starting point for developing and unfolding self-expression. Black identity contains “the true self, some real self inside there, hiding inside the husks of all the false selves that we present to the rest of the world,” eschewing the conformity to the social order. “It is a kind of guarantee of authenticity. Not until we get really inside and hear what the true self has to say do we know what we are ‘really saying’.” (ibid.) The move to the authentic Black voice worthy of attention, the voice Fanon was worried might be relegated to the margins of church gospel and then jazz music, cannot yield the expected results because the presumption of uniformity is unwarranted. There is no universal and authentic “true self” to be uncovered inside the “husks of all the false selves.” Following in the footsteps of Marx, Freud, and Saussure, Hall contends that a conceptual “rupture” has taken place. It heralded a move from the search for an authentic Black voice and identity to a recognition of a fractured, multifaceted selfhood more complicated even than what was envisioned by Du Bois and Fanon, more problematic to capture no matter how careful one is listening to what Blacks “are really saying.” The cultural transformations of the latter part of the twentieth century brought to “the end” any kind of “a perfect transparent continuity between our language and something out there which can be called the real, or the truth, without any quotation marks.” (ibid., 65–6) Just as the presumption of uniform authenticity was relinquished, so was the presumption of transparency between one’s thought and language, between the real or truth and one’s speech. In short, continues Hall, “there has simultaneously been a fragmentation and erosion of collective social identity” such as “class, race, nation, gender, and the West.” (ibid., 66) Hall focuses here on identity formation, using his discussion of Black identity as an example for his overall argument. Using the languages of feminism and psychoanalysis, Hall explains that by the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, “identities are never completed, never finished,” that they “are always, as subjectivity itself is, in process,” along the Hegelian model where “identity is always in the process of formation.” (ibid., 69) Because “identity is always in part a narrative, always in part a kind of representation,” its fluidity and “inner dialectic” refuse the classifications and markings of earlier notions of identity, either of the uniform or the double consciousness kind. (ibid., 70) The “odyssey

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of difference,” following Derrida, is one that problematizes as it explains and differentiates as it models different identities. (ibid., 71) For Hall, this ongoing and messy process of historical formation and transformation is no license for “mere playfulness.” Rather, “if signification depends upon the endless repositioning of its differential terms, meaning in any specific instance depends on the contingent and arbitrary stop, the necessary break.” (ibid., 72) This “messy process” produces meaning, and this in turn has to be couched in the contingent and differentiated terms of its historical position. Like the Hegelian process of aufhebung, which adds meaning, so does any moment of a “break” or “stop” in the ongoing process of unfolding. Just because they may be contingent and arbitrary does not obviate these moments from generating meaning, from being meaningful. The “paradox of meaning” is that “you have to come into language to get out of it.” (ibid., 73) The confinement and limitations of language do not absolve the seeker (of meaning) from the search for meaning, nor can the seeker circumvent linguistic confinement and limitation when engaging in the fabrication of meaning. This means for Hall that “Black” was “created as a political category in a certain historical moment. It was created as a consequence of certain symbolic and ideological struggles.” These struggles, continues Hall, offer a “change in consciousness, a change in self-recognition, a new process of identification, the emergence into visibility of a new subject.” (ibid., 75) The “new subject” comes to light in a changed environment that in turn changes “consciousness,” “self-recognition,” and “identification.” Acknowledging the difficulty of resisting racist institutions locally “behind the slogan of black politics and the black experience” because of “the notion of black as an essentialism,” Hall insists that this is in fact “the politics of living identity through difference.” (ibid., 76–8) Replacing an essentialized identity with difference takes away any “guarantee of authenticity. “Blackness as a political identity,” according to this view, is “always complexly composed, always historically constructed,” reflecting “a variety of black experiences.” The differences evident in a “variety of black experiences” force “conducting politics in light of the contingent, in the face of the contingent.” (ibid., 76–80) Any attempt to codify, streamline, or construct a metanarrative of “black identity” is bound to fail because it could never fully capture the multitude of experiences endured by Blacks in different regions of the world under different regimes of oppression and slavery. In the “face of the contingent,” no single explanatory model can apprehend all the different narratives and

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modulations of Blackness in a century of “moments” that span from Du Bois to Hall, even though there is something particular to Blackness that holds up across these narratives and modulations. Fred Moten makes Hall’s double bind assessment—having to choose between essentializing and relativizing “black identity”—even more difficult to explicate. If Hall identified the predicament of unifying a variety of experiences without conceding to an essentialist position or robbing Black identities of their difference, Moten resists any such attempt altogether. In his words: “one might plan to continue to believe that there is such a thing as blackness and that blackness has an essence given in striated, ensemblic, authentic experience,” but this belief is difficult to sustain. Instead, he offers a broader definition of Blackness, one that “has always emerged as nothing other than the richest possible combination of dispersion and permeability in and as the mass improvisation and protection of the very idea of the human.” Instead of falling into the traps of identity politics, authenticity, or biology, Moten stipulates that “blackness is present … at its own making and that all the people who are called black are given in and to that presence, which exceeds them.” (2018, 159) Blackness in Moten’s reading transcends the different and particular local experiences of Blacks around the world, and thereby touches all of humanity, not as a way to erase the specificity of Black identity or marginalize it in the European Enlightenment mode of universalization, but rather in the subtle way in which to be human is also to be Black, which in turn can be seen as offering a new universal human subject. Moving from the debates over Black identity to the discourse of “PostBlackness” poses new challenges for the conceptualization of the ways in which passing may no longer be associated with a form of Du Boisean “hypocritical compromise” but instead presents an existential challenge for Blacks in America. As Michael Dyson explains in the introduction to Touré’s Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?, there is a “plasticity of Blackness” in the present context of American life, a kind Du Bois and Fanon could not have envisioned. For Dyson, this is partially because of “the shift from colored to Negro to Black as a self-identifier among African Americans,” so that “the very malleability of Blackness permits Black folk to shape it into weapons to fight on all sides of the debate about what Blackness is and isn’t.” (2011, xiv–xv) For him, this means that “post-Black” is a term that is as powerful in its self-proclamation as “black is beautiful” was during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Sounding very much like Hall, Dyson argues that “Touré’s notion of post-Blackness is just

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what we need to move from exhaustive Blackness to expansive Blackness,” namely, a move from “the idea that Blackness is one thing to a focus on the things that Black folk should never forget.” “Expansive Blackness” opens conceptual horizons for Blacks to see themselves in more ways than those offered within an “exhaustive Blackness.” Blacks should never forget “that we are so many wonderful and terrible things all at once,” and those many “things” or images should license “the birthright of enormous Blackness that is ours for the asking and doing.” (ibid., xix– xx) From “exhaustive” to “expansive,” from “one thing” to “so many wonderful and terrible things,” the transformation shifts the discourse of identity not simply from Negro to Black to African American, but into a phenomenological discourse of post-Blackness. From a postmodern perspective, this move does not shed the past in the name of the present, nor is it a move pretending to replace one exhaustive identity with an expansive one. Instead, this is a displacement found in Hall and Moten alike, a way to expand without erasing, include without marginalizing, and engage without alienating. Old identities and ideas about identity can comingle with their alternatives with no need for a hierarchy of signification and authenticity. In comparison to Du Bois’ concern with the pessimism that pervaded the Blacks he encountered around the turn of the previous century, who were sick and tired of how they were treated and of the limited options they had in life, this move to post-Blackness is marked by a determined openness to the future and the possibilities of change. Touré seems to agree with this kind of postmodern intervention. Quoting approvingly Professor Murray on Kara Walker, he writes: “and that’s a postmodern way of looking at it. She’s not interested in that simple binary of who’s good and who’s bad and I think that’s really post-Black.” (ibid., 35) Perhaps Touré is responding as well to Du Bois’ observation about the two ethical tendencies (or ways of thinking) that characterized or represented Blacks at the dawn of the twentieth century by insisting that there are multiple ways of understanding Blackness and the ethics they can make possible. Is there no such thing as “Black identity” or “authenticity”? Touré’s answer is the following: “I know there are many who are unforgiving and intolerant of Black heterogeneity and still believe in concepts like ‘authentic’ or ‘legitimate’ Blackness. There is no such thing.” (ibid., 4) The emphatic denial of essentializing Blackness becomes linguistic in Touré’s analysis: “Black success requires Black multi-linguality—the ability to

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know how and when to move among the different languages of Blackness.” (ibid., 11; italics in the original) This could be a response to our earlier discussion about the accusation leveled against President Obama for switching his verbal registers depending on his audience, for speaking differently to Blacks and whites (as explained by Fanon and Goffman). To be sure, the postmodern move is not one that levels the field of expression and assumes cultural color-blindness or audio deafness. “Post-Black does not mean ‘post-racial’,” argues Touré, because “Post-racial posits that race does not exist or that we’re somehow beyond race and suggests colorblindness, it’s a bankrupt concept that reflects a naïve understanding of race in America.” Racism in the age of Trump reminds all Americans that race does exist politically and that it has devastating consequences for Blacks. “Post-Black,” by contrast, “means we are like Obama: rooted in but not restricted by Blackness.” (ibid., 12) President Obama becomes an exemplar of post-Blackness for Touré because he never denied his Blackness and never acted as if his Blackness was not a factor in the way he was perceived by different audiences during his two-term presidency. Post-Blackness admits the role Blackness plays in defining one’s life, but holds that this fact, however significant, should not be restrictive. In this context, President Obama’s reflection on the killing of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012, is germane. He talked at the time about the dubious wisdom of the “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida that sanctioned this murder, and about the fact that he could have been the target of this murder or that he would have had to warn his son, if he had one, about the dangers of being a Black teenager in America. Obama’s Blackness was never abandoned, forgotten, or betrayed even when he became the president of the United States. Touré, realizing that the Obama presidency was a historical moment that may symbolize his sense of post-Blackness, concludes his book by saying that “we need more insiders to acquire power and effect lasting change by infiltrating white American institutions the way our government once infiltrated Black Power groups. Obama did not fight the power, he became powerful. And so can you.” (ibid., 201) One is left to wonder how much this outlook can be actualized in the Trumpian age, when white supremacy has been unleashed in public rallies and counterdemonstrations, and when there is no federal will to combat systemic racism. Will “King James” (the basketball superstar billionaire LeBron James) or Oprah or Beyoncé turn the tide? Are there enough other “powerful” people of color who can push for post-Blackness, appealing perhaps to some liberal proclivities?

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Just as Du Bois, Fanon, Hall, and Moten were concerned with the presentation of “Black identity” in different social settings, Touré is worried about Blacks navigating their identity in different contexts. In his words: “The ability and need to mediate between different ways of performing Blackness exists in all Black people, especially in the modern era where we typically work, party, and/or reside in racially mixed worlds. And the choice of how to perform Blackness in one moment versus another can mean all the difference between getting ahead or not, as well as the difference between feeling good about yourself or not… So how do you maintain a positive self-image and a job in a world where you feel torn between making nice so you can get money and putting your foot in whitey’s ass so you can feel good about yourself?” (ibid., 68–9) The shadow of Du Bois’ distinction between radicalism and hypocritical compromise appears in full view with this question. Is it possible to be “both and” rather than “either or”? Must one choose between “getting ahead or not,” “feeling good about yourself or not”? Must the one be at the expense of the other? James Baldwin, in an article written for the New Yorker, brings us full circle to the parallels between theatrical and religious performances as a way to answer these questions. “Being in the pulpit was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion was worked. I knew the other ministers and knew the quality of their lives. And I don’t mean to suggest by this the ‘Elmer Gantry’ [Lewis Sinclair’s novel of 1926] sort of hypocrisy concerning sensuality; it was deeper, deadlier, and more subtle hypocrisy than that, and a little honest sensuality, or a lot, would have been like water in an extremely bitter desert. I knew how to work on a congregation until the last dime was surrendered—it was not very hard to do—and I knew where the money for ‘the Lord’s work’ went. I knew, though I did not wish to know it, that I had no respect for the people with whom I worked. I could not have said it then, but I also knew that if I continued I would soon have no respect for myself’.” (1962) Religious hypocrisy is as ubiquitous as political hypocrisy, but then there is another, more personal dimension that comes through in Baldwin’s words, one that diminishes his sense of self and threatens to take from him his “respect for [him]self.” Is “respect” what is left out or absent when the religious pulpit is as hypocritical as the political stage? Baldwin leaves unanswered Touré’s question about the desire to “get money” and to put his “foot in whitey’s ass,” since the religious con is presumably perpetrated against other Blacks as well. Touré is not writing about Black people conning and stealing from

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each other as a way to get money, but rather playing the white man’s game, getting a law degree, going into sales, joining the right clubs, but not the kind of radical politics that would overturn the whole (white) apple cart or putting his “foot in whitey’s ass.” One wonders, though, how different is Baldwin’s “deeper, deadlier, and more subtle hypocrisy” from Touré’s choice between “making nice” and “feel[ing] good about yourself.” In both cases, the predicament of having to choose remains unsolved, perhaps unsolvable. 5.2.2

Code-Switching

As we saw above, Fanon alerted his readers that we all adapt our speech to the situation we are in, emphasizing various parts of ourselves at different times. (2018, 525) As we recall from the example of President Obama (in Chapter 2), he is half white and half Black and grew up with his white grandparents. He also traveled and lived among poor people as well as attended Harvard Law School. He has learned from being in different milieus how people speak in those contexts and he seems comfortable talking to them in the “appropriate” register. He may not have been degraded to cow-tow to “whitey,” made to pander or offer a very restricted or “inauthentic” version of himself. So, Fanon is describing a situation similar to but more subtle than what we call code-switching. Fanon is talking about the demand to betray oneself, or perform a self that one does not fully recognize, and even if one does, one may not fully identify with that self. Sixty years after Fanon, Touré’s take on postBlackness in the context of having elected the first Black president in the United States and in light of the professional accomplishments of what he calls “educated blacks” is reminiscent of Goffman’s “frontstage behavior language.” In Touré’s words: “The way you talk—the grammar, articulation, and diction you choose to employ as well as the specific tone that comes from your throat—is also a critical way of either disarming and comforting whites and subtly suggesting that you deserve to be a leader, or of scaring them and cancelling yourself from the game.” (2011, 184–5) “Disarming and comforting whites” is still the benchmark Blacks must meet or exceed in their so-called hypocritical compromise, in their ongoing effort to be accepted in white culture. The choice, as far as Touré sees it, is between “scaring them” or “suggesting that you deserve to be a leader.” Not much in between fear and desert, both in line with the linguistic terms dominant white culture has decreed. As much as America

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insists on having cast aside the British class system, it has established its own racialized system that in its “critical way” is at times “subtle” and at others more explicit. Television networks, radio stations, and advertisers have hired British-accented commentators, following perhaps in Shaw’s footsteps, which presumed the superiority of the Queen’s English to which all must aspire. “Grammar, diction, and articulation” are markers of difference, says Touré, signaling class origins and education, and they are weaponized against those who, like President Obama, are accused of being too learned and aloof, too Harvard Law School-like. Obama does not belong to the political white elite is what the message says, and it says so without subtlety or shame (as Senator Reid was quoted in Chapter 2). If it seemed earlier that Touré’s analysis promises to transcend Du Bois’ two choices, by now it becomes clear that it cannot. Touré is still working with binaries he and many Blacks cannot escape and therefore must overcome, choosing one way of behaving as opposed to another and paying the price of having made an inevitably problematic choice. Is the charge of hypocrisy warranted under these conditions? Or is the charge besides the point since the conduct is neither voluntary nor one that would guarantee beneficial results? The answers to these questions depend on the different contexts in which professional Blacks find themselves, as the case of the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas makes evident. Code-switching in linguistics is “the alternating or mixed use of two or more languages, especially within the same discourse,” going back and forth between one’s mother tongue and the language of one’s adopted country. In sociolinguistics, it is “the use of one dialect, register, accent, or language variety over another, depending on social or cultural context, to project a specific identity: Politicians use code-switching on the campaign trail to connect with their audience.” This is what politicians are good at; this is how they relate to different constituents without alienating them, being sensitive to the nuances of regional dialects. Code-switching might extend beyond speech into the modification of “one’s behavior, appearance, etc., to adapt to different sociocultural norms: For many female Muslim students, code-switching from their home environment to that of school requires forgoing the hijab.” (Dictionary.com) According to Richard Skiba, code-switching is most prevalent among bilingual people for whom this practice offers ease of expression and intimacy. This happens both when the switch is from one context to another and within the same context for emphasis or contact, at times full sentences, at others

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just a phrase that is more familiar or untranslatable. Of course, depending on the situation, the switch can be inclusive (of those whose comprehension of one of the languages is imperfect) or exclusive (when only some in the group understand the nuances of a linguistic phrase or reference). In Skiba’s words: “code switching … provides a continuity in speech rather than presenting an interference in language” because it allows “speakers to increase the impact of their speech and use it in an effective manner.” (1997) Sociolinguists like Seckin Esen echo these reasons for code-switching, suggesting they fall into the three categories of need fulfillment, establishing rapport, and solidarity. There are cases, though, when this practice has harmful consequences. For Esen, this occurs when “a dominant culture requires all citizens to conform to the dominant language and manner of speaking, or if subcultures are punished in any way for not conforming completely to the language majority,” as may happen when police officers arrest people whose language or dialect they cannot understand. (2016) Another sociolinguist, Leah Donnella, enumerates five reasons for code-switching: showing solidarity, reflecting social status, appropriateness of the subject matter, expressing affection, and persuading audiences in different venues. (2017; see also Rihane 2007) Some sociolinguists have narrowed their focus to the political sphere rather than study the population at large. Among them is Monica Heller who used data from ethnographic studies of the use of French and English in Ontario and Quebec in a variety of settings between 1978– 1990. She found that “language choice is a political strategy, especially as a strategy of ethnic mobilisation.” For her, this strategy illustrates that “code switching must be understood in terms of individual communicative repertoires and community speech economies, particularly as these are tied to a political economic analysis of the relationship between the availability and use of linguistic varieties, on the one hand, and the production and distribution of symbolic and material resources on the other.” (1992, 123) More specifically, as another sociolinguist, Yova Kementchedjhieva, argues, “there is extensive scholarship in the field of sociolinguistics on mediated political discourse as strategically employed in gaining support for elections … the rhetorical success of politicians greatly depends on their ability to get the right balance between the expression of authority and solidarity in their speech performances.” (2016, 1) She elucidates this point by explaining that it is a way for politicians “to respond in

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keeping with the ever changing nature of public address,” and it is a “purposeful symbolic ‘transgression’ of ‘the normative and prescriptive boundaries’ between the standard and nonstandard variety”; ultimately, the goal is “to appeal to a wider range of people.” (ibid., 2–3) Politicians must paradoxically navigate the complexities and ever-changing linguistic terrain and pretend that they are not navigating it at all by maintaining their authentic voice and being cool in deploying social media jargon, for example, in political rallies and fundraisers. I include this section on code-switching for two reasons: the first relates to the subject of the book, the second is more personal. As for the first, code-switching as a practice has been judged by observers of political discourse to be a form of hypocrisy when a candidate adopts the language of a local audience for the sake of garnering support before an election. As we have seen in Chapters 2 and 3, the idea that a modulation of linguistic expression is in and of itself a form of deception (and therefore deserving of the charge of hypocrisy) does not resonate with sharper critiques of bad political conduct, such as embezzlement and outright lies. Yet politicians are continuously being chastised or mocked for their modulated political speech, as if this strategy alone would entice skeptical voters to join the party or vote for a candidate. Smooth talking, whether by politicians or members of the clergy, is at times a sufficient condition to induce action; at others, much more must be delivered when persuading or proselytizing, converting someone from one set of beliefs into another. Of course, some people are gullible enough to think that a politician or man of the cloth has no agenda, while others remain skeptical. So, is code-switching hypocritical insofar as it veils, like a mask, the identity of the person who is speaking? Or are code switchers like chameleons whose colors change depending on the environment and therefore have no color of their own? The contrast between the accusations of President Obama’s code-switching and President Trump’s lying about the facts is informative. While Obama’s political engagements were judged by some to be hypocritical, Trump’s speeches have been fact-checked and proven to be full of outright falsifications or lies, therefore transcending the threshold of hypocrisy. According to the Washington Post, Trump made “false or misleading claims” 20,055 times in the first 1267 days in office (7/9/20), which amounts to almost sixteen per day. False or misleading claims are at the extreme end of the spectrum of deception and lies and therefore cannot be measured in terms of degrees of hypocrisy, while the sociolinguistic code-switching for which President Obama has been denounced

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has such a minor degree of hypocrisy that it can easily deflect the charge of hypocrisy. Adjusting one’s language and demeanor in various contexts differs in kind from using the presidential bully pulpit to spread lies and mislead the public, the way, for example, President Trump routinely does. President Obama’s conduct was appropriate in the context of politicking, while President Trump’s conduct remains outside the boundaries of any political discourse or moral norms associated with the office of the presidency. The second reason for ending this section with code-switching has to do with my family history. For as far back as family records are remembered, we were born in one country and lived in another. This has meant for us a linguistic adjustment whose success remains partial. Just as my grandparents spoke German in Germany with Polish and Yiddish accents, so did my parents speak Hebrew in Israel with a German accent. I speak English with a Hebrew accent, and my daughters are the first, so far, to be living in the country of their birth. Speaking with an accent is obviously a handicap for immigrants who wish to assimilate into an adoptive culture or, as in some of my ancestors’ cases, the countries that accepted them as refugees. Is assimilation a form of hypocrisy insofar as one denies one’s origins of birth and mother tongue and pretends to belong to another country, no matter how good the reasons are for such conduct? “Where are you from?” is as much an indictment as an innocent question, asking one to confess an identity or perhaps an allegiance or confess to being a foreigner. Stateless refugees do not have the luxury of an identity card or passport with which to travel across often treacherous seas or unwelcoming borders. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is an agency with the mandate to protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people, and assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integration, or resettlement to a third country. In its latest 2020 report, the UNHCR counted about 70.8 million “forcible displaced people worldwide,” 41.3 million “internally displaced people,” 25.9 million refugees, and 3.5 million asylum seekers. With these numbers in mind, code-switching is no longer just an interesting sociolinguistic topic of study but a reality that crosses national borders and affects the world. The kind of immigration I enjoyed was voluntary and legal, yet it still has the residues of linguistic suspicion and exposure. One can only imagine how much harder it is for stateless refugees who are at the mercy of border and immigration officials. Cases where I was told to go back to where I came from sting years later because the suggestion was meanspirited; it probed into my past and my identity and challenged me to

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come up with a simple, uniform, Cartesian-like image of myself I found difficult to formulate. I can only imagine what it must be like for those who involuntary escaped their homelands and lack the legal protection of their countries of origin as well as their new host countries, not to mention those stuck in refugee camps for months, years, and generations. Questions of identity do not only afflict Blacks and Jews, but any individual or group that does not conform to a prefigured set of standards and norms. Personal experiences, as Hall argues, help weave a rich tapestry of many narratives. The fracturing of metanarratives into numerous narratives expands the human imaginary and can never exhaust it. With this in mind, we move from the religious antecedents that set moral standards against which charges of hypocrisy were deemed appropriate to the different modes of passing that attempt evasion of such standards and therefore such charges. Non-faith-based communities raise slightly different questions about the social codes and moral norms within which they have to negotiate their identities. Before we review some cases that tease out and reflect personal and structural difficulties of pretending to be someone else, the “imposter syndrome” deserves a brief mention. As the psychologist Megan Dalla-Camina clarifies, the term was coined by clinical psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978 and refers to the phenomenon of people remaining “convinced that they don’t deserve” their success “despite having adequate external evidence of accomplishments.” (2018) This syndrome affects men and women alike, even though it is more prevalent in women and among minorities. Whether caused by or tied to perfectionism or fear of failing, the syndrome “can be debilitating, causing stress, anxiety, low self confidence, shame and in some cases, even depression.” (ibid.) Unlike cases where individuals self-promote and exaggerate their accomplishments (and deserve the charge of hypocrisy because they fall short of their proclamations), the reverse is the case here. In both cases, there is dissonance between the inner and external narratives; it is dissonance in search of judgment by an external arbiter; the judgment is supposed to tip the scale toward endorsement and approval or rejection and disapproval. In other words, unified or fractured, the self is not at ease within the social setting in which it is located, recognizing and to some extent fueling the tension between the inner and outer self, the internally known and the externally performed. Having considered in the previous chapter an explanatory model that portrays the self as consisting of multiple functional modalities in contrast to the Cartesian–Kantian uniform one, this

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still does not offer a solution to the tension of not believing in or seeing oneself the way others do (regardless of evidence to support the external perception). Perhaps the dialectical movement of the self in the social world finds moments of reduced tension if not complete peace of mind, when self-recognition aligns with the recognition of others, when being in the world (in the Heideggerian sense) is existentially effortless, when one does not feel like an impostor. Perhaps these moments offer solace to the so-called impostor as to the religious or political “hypocrite” who believes their narrative or behaves in accordance with its unfolding, as Nietzsche suggests. In those moments, what may have started as pretense is wholly absorbed and resonates with whoever one wants to be in the world, friendly or pious, truth telling or conformist. In these moments, the fusion of the inner and outer self is constituted along the way and is supported by an accepting audience.

5.3

Visibility, Invisibility, and Identity

Considering yet another strategy of passing that problematizes the norms that elicit the charge of hypocrisy would be well served by the insights of the sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann about the social construction of reality. According to them, the question of role-playing in social interactions is prefaced by the recognition that “reality is socially constructed” and that therefore “the sociology of knowledge must analyze the processes in which this occurs.” (1966, 1) Though individuals experience reality as an ontological given with epistemological cues about its meaning, what is missing from this observation is the (Hegelian) recognition of the historically changing context of any given reality and its relative meaning. (ibid., 8) Berger and Luckmann echo some of Goffman’s ideas about the mundane daily experiences of individuals, what they call “commonsense knowledge,” in contrast with the world of “ideas,” made up of knowledge that “constitutes the fabric of meanings without which no society could exist.” (ibid., 15) The knowledge about “the fabric of meanings” is shared by individuals and includes “self-evident routines” of everyday life. These routines, because they have been “ordered” and “objectified,” appear as if constituting given ontological and metaphysical frameworks. (ibid., 21–3) Epistemology, in this formulation, comes later and not as co-constitutive of these prefigured frameworks. In this articulation, Berger and Luckmann seem to follow

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(without mentioning linguists, such as Ferdinand de Saussure, or psychoanalysts, such as Freud and Lacan) a line of argument about the use of language and the “human production of signs” as a means by which reality is both constructed and understood. (ibid., 34ff.) Berger and Luckmann align their view with the Weberian and perhaps Rosowian views about the socialization of individuals alongside institutional knowledge production: just as humans construct their worlds of meaning, so are they influenced by them in a self-perpetuating or dialectical process. If this were indeed a self-perpetuating process, would it also become self-legitimating, having no reference point outside its self-construction? Berger and Luckmann appreciate the degree to which “legitimation justifies the institutional order by giving a normative dignity to its practical imperatives.” No longer drawn from religious sources, social reality in the form of “institutional order” must claim some “normative dignity” of its own. Legitimation in this context is supposed to serve “practical imperatives” normatively suffused. If throughout this book prudence and integrity were contrasted with each other to question the validity of the charge of hypocrisy, a case is being made here that prudence or expediency deserves moral legitimation. “It is important to understand that legitimation has a cognitive as well as a normative element,” (ibid., 93), so that an explanatory model can serve also as a moral guide. Legitimation for them means something more complex than, for example, the Habermasian kind whose rational and communicative framework is more constrained (1975), insofar as it operates on multiple levels and is the bedrock on which meaning is produced and human interactions conducted. According to them, the first level of legitimation is what they call “incipient legitimation,” which is present “as soon as a system of linguistic objectifications of human experience is transmitted.” (1966, 94) Transmission itself carries a certain legitimacy because it allows for human communication, and as long as it works, its “linguistic objectifications” are considered legitimate enough as initial starting points for communicating “human experience.” The second level “contains theoretical propositions in a rudimentary form,” such as “explanatory schemes,” “proverbs,” or “moral maxims.” (ibid.) These forms of legitimation offer larger conceptual “schemes,” easy to grasp and repeat so they become part of the “fabric of meaning” for a community. The third extends the second and “contains explicit theories” that distinguish them as “a differentiated body of knowledge,” namely, “fairly comprehensive frames of reference for the respective sectors of

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institutionalized conduct.” (ibid.) Theoretical constructs become more sophisticated as time goes by and “moral maxims” are lodged within broader conceptual frameworks, yet they are segmented to different “sectors of institutionalized conduct”: the military will have a behavioral framework different from the post office or the university system. The fourth is the “symbolic sphere” whose “processes of signification” refer to “realities other than those of everyday experience.” (ibid., 95) At the symbolic level of legitimation, the appeal transcends “everyday experience” and refers to higher ideals, like those found in institutionalized religions. These four levels of legitimation also relate to the “individual’s subjective identity.” Because the process of socialization expects individuals to conform to prefigured norms and thereby destabilizes them, “subjective identity is a precarious entity” (ibid., 100), according to Berger and Luckmann. Perhaps because of this precarious condition, individual identity is constantly in search of some form of legitimation. It is an identity whose feedback loops of self-expression, recognition, and identification by others, and then acceptance or rejection by others, play an important function for its stability or precarity. For Berger and Luckmann, “identity is ultimately legitimated by placing it within the context of a symbolic universe.” (ibid.) This symbolic universe “establishes a hierarchy, from the ‘most real’ to the most fugitive self-apprehensions of identity.” This means that the individual “can live in society with some assurance that he really is what he considers himself to be as he plays his routine social roles, in broad daylight and under the eyes of significant others.” (ibid., 101; italics in the original) Recognizing self-doubt of the impostor syndrome kind and many other doubts about one’s social environments, embodying a precarious and multileveled sense of identity makes sense because “All social reality is precarious. All societies are constructions in the face of chaos.” (ibid., 103; italics in the original) In the face of chaos, identity construction remains problematic and complex, however ontologically stable one may appear to others. Perhaps more in the Freudian spirit, where doubt remains with us, and unlike Descartes who thought he could excise doubt once and for all, Berger and Luckmann work with the chaotic nature of social relations and the complexity of social reality. With this in mind, one’s identity forms and is formed by social relations and “stands in a dialectical relationship with society.” The Hegelian dialectical process (e.g., in The Phenomenology of Spirit ) comes to mind here insofar as Being (identity) goes through the process of Becoming (constructing oneself while being

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socially constructed) when encountering the Other (objectified, ordered, and legitimated social reality). Since identity is being formed by “social processes,” once it is “crystallized,” it keeps on being “maintained, modified, or even reshaped by social relations.” The sociality of individuals is inescapable in this model, discussed by psychologists and psychoanalysts as well as political scientists and moral philosophers mentioned before. Just as much as the “social structure” influences the social formation of individual identities, it, too, is being maintained, modified, and even reshaped. In short, “societies have histories in the course of which specific identities emerge; these histories are, however, made by men with specific identities.” (ibid., 173) As much as social settings condition individual identity and conduct, so are they transformed by the individuals who dwell in them. This reciprocity has been long understood, but in this rendering suggests a disagreement with, for example, the likes of Rosow for whom chameleon-like behavior adjusts and adapts to the political settings in which it finds itself, conforming or resisting as the case may be, but without the power to change these political realities themselves. In short, “Identity is a phenomenon that emerges from the dialectic between individual and society.” (ibid., 174) If no fixed identity exists to be unveiled, how can the charge of hypocrisy hold? What would it mean to point at a chameleon and exclaim: this is not your true color? From the sociological bird’s eye view of social and individual formation, we move to some personal accounts of passing reminiscent of Caillois’ descriptions of insects and flies who become invisible to their prey. In a collection of essays, We Wear the Mask, Native Americans and other minorities retell their personal experiences of passing in America. Passing, for them, is a strategic expression of fluid identities, codeswitching, and assimilation for racial, gender, religious, ethnic, class, and other reasons. According to one of the editors, Brandon Skyhorse, “‘Passing’ is when someone tries to get something tangible to improve their daily quality of life by occupying a space meant for someone else”. (2017, 5) This sounds like a zero-sum game: every gain is at the expense of someone else. Passing in his autobiographical recounting is a performance, one he tries to pull off when applying from the reservation to a prestigious university. He also explains that passing can be “silent” or “loud,” where the former is about invisibility for survival and the latter about being seen and heard, actively performing in a manner that will have a desired effect and yield positive results. (ibid., 11) Positive results,

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some immigrants report, relate to reinventing themselves, shedding their background from the Old World or from a besieged country of origins and trying on new masks or new colors in the New World. (ibid., 23) Only after some time and realization of their limited options in a social setting, as Berger and Luckmann explained above, can individuals refabricate who they would like to be, admittedly with many restrictions besides language (employment and residence, for example). They might have new options to choose from or different opportunities to explore, perhaps not right away but in future generations, the way some immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island, for example, Americanized their names to increase the horizon of their opportunities or were forced to change their names to make it easier for immigration officials. (ibid., 45) The transformation, though, is not as easy as changing a name. Residues offer clues from the past, and ambiguities about one’s identity linger. Another contributor to the collection is Lisa Page, who says: “I wasn’t blond. I wasn’t white. I was mixed. I learned early that ambiguity along racial lines made people uncomfortable. So I worked to make people comfortable by passing for whatever they wanted me to be.” (ibid., 102) This kind of adjustment to other people’s expectations “involves deliberateness,” so that passing is both “studied and intentional.” “I tried to be a chameleon,” says another contributor to We Wear the Mask, blending into the environment. (ibid., 111) There are cases where the casting away, the shedding of old colors for new ones to fit into the environment recalls Caillois’ insight not only about invisibility and survival but also about loss and regret, a disappearance into another identity without the capacity to recuperate the original. Is this like Caillois’ “instinct of renunciation,” when the urge to disavow who you are dictates your present conduct at the expense of losing yourself? As many migrant workers can attest, new environments may be even more hostile than the ones they left behind. Another contributor to the collection, Doren Perkins-Valdez, echoes Touré’s analysis of post-Blackness. For him, “historical passing” is “not so different than racial passing in the years before integration, when people of color chose to identify as white in order to gain certain advantages.” Unlike Touré who objects to the notion of post-racialism, he says the following: “Rather than view race as an in-progress narrative, postracialism seeks to do away with the narrative altogether,” the narrative that suggests that at a moment in time the country overcame its racializing and racist outlook and policies. (ibid., 124) But then Perkins-Valdez makes an interesting distinction between the terms and categories he uses.

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“The difference, it seems to me, between individual passing and historical passing lies in scale. Self-identification is a form of individual agency, and no one should be denied that right.” Self-identification as a right takes over from self-identification as a painful and problematic process that is both coerced and full of ambiguities. The point, though, is more political than psychological: “A national discourse that denies the facts of a country’s history presents a much more critical dilemma.” (ibid.) “Dilemma” is a curious term to use here: why not danger, outrage, lie? What is it about America’s racial history that has disappeared? What residual “facts” are still determining the acceptance and rejection, advancement and humiliation that Blacks suffer systemically at the hands of whites (and not only white supremacists)? As Clarence Page, another contributor to the collection, elegantly summarizes, “We are a nation of passers and simultaneously a nation in denial about class.” (ibid., 154) To be a “nation of passers” suggests that more than one group of people feels pressure or desire to pass as someone else, finding ways to improve its conditions of oppression or subjugation. “After all,” he continues, “passing is the American way.” (ibid., 167) Perhaps because of America’s history of four hundred years of Black enslavement and the massacre and banishment to reservations of Native Americans, or because of its long and shameful history of discrimination against certain immigrant groups, passing as a process of self-invention has indeed become the “American way” of survival and at times flourishing. But perhaps what is at stake is neither success nor failure in survival strategies, but, as Rafia Zakaria (another contributor) suggests, something else. “The burden of passing, its central fault, lies not in its success or failure as an endeavor, but rather in the requirement of deception that it imposes on all those who engage in it.” This requirement of deception we have already visited earlier, but something important is being added here. “Inherent in this deception is the clear message of inadequacy, of falling short, of being less than an ideal, inferior to an original.” Just as the charge of hypocrisy refers to a moral ideal, so does the process of passing become an admission that we ought to be different from who we are in some sense, that we are pressured to transform ourselves into some cultural ideal. “It is this kernel of untruth demanded, of selfhood corroded, that is the burden of passing, one that weighs down the manner and mien of all those on whose shoulders it rests.” (ibid., 197) Unlike the discussion in the previous chapter that acknowledged the inherent problematics of finding the Cartesian– Kantian self because of the fractured self we reconstitute over time, here

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the reverse is at work. The self is being “corroded,” perhaps in a religious or moral sense, burdening us as we attempt to conform to cultural norms. Does this mean, then, a return to an authentic and uniform self, the one whose essential character can be recovered when unmasked? The specter of authenticity haunts all “passers.” Perhaps the image of the chameleon is better suited in this context, because having no fixed coloration it never suffers from the “untruth demanded” of passers. The chameleon’s adaptive qualities are not questioned, so whatever color one observes is the “true” or “real” color in this or that environment; there is no ultimate color lying in reserve. The philosopher Daniel Silvermint interrupts some of the conversations about passing as autobiographical revelations and sets them within the context of various communities other than Blacks, Jews, or Native Americans. For him, not all passing cases are alike, and therefore generalized judgments about them ought to be foresworn. “Unlike passing as someone who knows his Orwell, passing to conceal my mental illness (among other things) is a morally complicated act. It’s an example of passing as privileged, or when a member of an oppressed, stigmatized, or otherwise discriminated-against group is instead perceived to be a member of an advantaged group, and is treated accordingly.” (2018, 2; italics in the original) Hiding something about one’s past, as we already examined when immigrants or refugees leave their country of origin, applies also to hiding a mental illness. The passing “as privileged” is similar to passing as invisibly as possible in the sense that in both cases one assumes a position that comes with privileges of some sort, for example, those of citizenship. The privilege here seems relative to different subject positions as they stack up, so to speak, within the “institutional order” that has been granted “normative dignity” in Berger and Luckmann’s sense and as such is taken for granted as being normal, natural, and universal. As we continue to compare people and their conduct, we are apt to distinguish and classify them, using convenient markers (stereotypes) to typecast them. In Silvermint’s words: “We quickly and continuously sort the people around us into groups, often on the basis of stereotypeinformed heuristics,” so that most people find themselves passively passing or “passing by default,” that is, being stereotyped without their participation or consent; they fit into a rubric they themselves had not chosen. “Active passing,” by contrast, is “a strategy.” (ibid., 3) The distinction between passive and active passing suggests that some of us indirectly and unknowingly participate in the passing conundrum. Though philosophers

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are prone to condone “victim hypocrisy” (Kittay 1982), Silvermint raises the question, “if a victim of oppression can successfully pass as a non-victim, ought they?” (ibid., 4; italics in the original) Indeed, just because one can successfully pass, as the naturalistic fallacy suggests, does not mean that you should actively try to pass, especially when there are some who cannot pass. Under the moral model, and perhaps following the Judaic injunction that preserving life overshadows all other religious obligations, it seems that passing should always be attempted and when successful morally approved. One case study already mentioned before is that of the Marranos (Spanish and Portuguese Jews) who (strategically) converted to Christianity or pretended to disavow their Judaism to avoid expulsion or execution at the hands of the Catholic Inquisition (1492). Admittedly, the conversion as a public act differs radically from passing. Yet there is an overlap in the sense of yielding to external pressure. Some Converso still practiced their religion in secret, others fully adapted to their Christian surroundings, and still others were successful enough to gain positions of power in the Church’s hierarchy. (Martínez-Dávila 2018) According to Silvermint, though, religious absolution of this kind does not go far enough in dealing with conversion in moral terms. That is, a display of religious piety alone does not preclude moral deliberation. Strategic agents who “surrender their authenticity” also “harm their fellow victims by reinforcing stereotypes and oppressive expectations.” (2018, 4) Passing in this interpretation is a moral choice of an implicit complicity with those in power and conformity to a misguided, discriminatory, or pernicious regime. Silvermint pushes the point about solidarity with other fellow victims and argues that “opting out of a shared struggle” compounds the moral compromise of personally “benefitting” from participation in an “oppressive system.” (ibid.) Not only do they refuse to fight against oppression, they seem to accept the terms of the oppression, reinforcing stereotypes of their group that underlie this oppression. Returning to the Marranos, would it have made any difference if they all remained united in refusing to convert to Catholicism? History is awash in cases of ethnic cleansing and genocide where any resistance had little effect on the zeal with which oppressors murdered their chosen victims. Silvermint calibrates his argument at this point and concedes that there are functional parallels between passing and resistance, but even if this is true, for him there is an implicit complicity that passing entails primarily because active passing consists of “self-regarding considerations,” expecting to avoid annihilation at the hands of oppressors. (ibid., 5–6)

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Yet Silvermint admits that “the lived realities of some individuals at the margins” may “upend standard arguments about passing,” especially when thinking through the “double bind that authenticity presents for groups like queer femmes, who pass as straight precisely by being themselves.” (ibid., 8) He is clear that gender-fluid individuals’ “defiance of identity categories” is not in and of itself a form of passing, but “it does reveal one way in which the construction of identity categories complicates the ethics of passing.” (ibid.) One can think of the case of the queer femme (and not about the case of trans femmes) who ends up seeming like straight cis female, expressing woman. But should she tell people she is queer in solidarity with members of her queer or trans community who cannot pass? As we have seen in different cases above, the construction of identity is complex, precarious, and ambiguous because it is an ongoing dialectical process with feedback loops and social confusions. As we have seen in some autobiographical disclosures, there are many situations in which a so-called “disfavored identity” must be toned down to “fit into the mainstream,” situations that distinguish between passing that “pertains to the visibility of a particular trait” and one that “pertains to its obtrusiveness.” (ibid., 10; italics in the original) The distinction between the visible and the obtrusive, between passing by not avowing and actively covering up, depends as much on the audience as on the strategy being deployed. (ibid., 11) In some cases, the audience is oblivious, while in others it is actively pursuing those who try to pass or cover up their “true identity.” How difficult was it to detect the hiding Jew under the Nazi occupation or the “deviant homosexual” in a homophobic culture?, asks Silvermint. Will the authorities install a detective in every restroom to ensure the “right” person uses the “correctly” designated restroom, as some Republican lawmakers in North Carolina demanded in 2019? As Silvermint repeats, “visibility depends on recognition,” and recognition is audience-specific. He continues: “To insist that victims refrain from passing on deception grounds is to misunderstand the challenge of visibility” (ibid., 17) as some clearly cannot hide certain features or become as invisible as the chameleon. Though Silvermint argues that there are three reasons to condemn passing—deception, the reinforcement of harmful stereotypes, and opting out of shared struggle to end oppression—might the whole discussion

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about moral condemnation (the charge of hypocrisy) be misguided? Why judge the person who is trying to pass rather than condemning the system that demands such passing? Why focus on individual stories when none of them would have come about without a system of stereotyping and discrimination that punishes certain identities and demands conformity? Differences in and of themselves do not entail a preference hierarchy. They can remain as differences. Of course, when we distinguish between poisonous mushrooms and those we can eat, there is an implicit hierarchy that one kind is good and the other bad, one preferable to eat in comparison to the other. Similarly, different degrees of hypocrisy might be affixed to people’s conduct in different contexts. The clear demarcation criteria philosophers seek may not be available here, especially as modes of resistance and self-protection upend straightforward moral judgment. Some of these include the “self-regarding considerations” of passing that indeed may improve “one’s life or circumstances in the face of oppression.” Silvermint argues that two standard arguments guide the moral response to passing. The first claims that passing should be morally “unproblematic” because to some extent it is a “form of successful resistance,” a surreptitious defiance. By contrast, the second argues that passing is morally “impermissible” because in the process of actively passing, “victims have to give up too much,” they give up their autonomy and conform to the oppressor’s frame of reference. Instead of condoning or condemning passing, he offers a “middle ground” response that advances one’s “well-being” (survival for persecuted minorities and success for Touré’s Black professionals) and mitigates wholesale condemnation. (ibid., 27–8) Silvermint’s middle ground may offer no consolation for some of the cases reviewed above because it refuses to declare the system itself corrupt or untenable. Such a middle ground fails to address the cruelty of the choices oppressed individuals experience. At the end of his discussion, Silvermint joins the long tradition of sociologists and moral philosophers who have made moral provisions for some degree of hypocrisy foisted on Blacks and Jews, women and the lower classes (in Nietzsche’s list). He concludes, like so many before him, that passing can make “life go better” for victims in “choice situation[s]” for which they are not responsible, and therefore “complicity isn’t always wrong.” (ibid., 40) This is not simply “don’t blame the victim” mentality, but more importantly keeps in mind the context of marginal self-improvement and supports the little comfort that such a strategy can afford the victim. In other words, philosophers must abandon strict demarcations between

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the morally permissible and impermissible and adopt an “anti-oppression theory” that “should be slow and messy and cautious and particular,” because only such a theory would be “as complicated as the lives it attempts to model.” (ibid., 41) This is a beautiful way of rethinking the blame game, victim mentality, and the expectations of solidarity and moral fortitude accorded to those who pass, to those who can pass, and to those who do not pass or cannot pass; passing and the charge of hypocrisy would then be attenuated to the specificity of each context. Traditional religious demarcations (of what conduct is good or bad) may be ill suited for the messy world in which humans interact. Were humans only subject to divine law, how relatively easy choices would be for them. However, life’s messiness is endemic and perhaps unavoidable, and therefore uniform and tidy solutions are often unavailable. Philosophical rules of thumb applied to adjudicate individual cases, which condemn some and condone others, would inevitably miss their mark. As we have seen, survival strategies of animals were studied a century ago by Caillois, who also speculated about the conundrum of invisibility and the instinct of renunciation. One of his recent commentators, the French Sinologist Anne Cheng, argues convincingly that the “trope of invisibility has provided a central motif in the literary representations of racial minorities.” She continues to explain that the “values of racial visibility and invisibility can only emerge in relation to one another,” characterized by a “restless and often vexing interplay between perception and projection, recognition and disavowal.” (2005, 553) She interprets Caillois’ fascination with animal mimicry and his description of it as if they are unrelated to survival strategies in the evolutionary process of natural selection; in her eyes, what is at stake for Caillois is an aesthetic appreciation of the “superfluous showing” of such cases and the apparent “squandering of resources” they display. (ibid., 554) This interpretation overemphasizes the aesthetic dimension. It is true that for Caillois there was much to admire about insect mimicry and that for him this phenomenon was an inspirational bridge with which to cross from nature to culture, especially in the artistic milieu of surrealism. But to suggest that his critique of “the utilitarianism underlying the principle of selection” ignores mutation, adaptation, and natural selection goes beyond the textual evidence (some of which was already covered in Chapter 2). Cheng is correct to insist that Caillois “describes the ecstasy of passing” in nature, but when he does this he is not “replacing the biological and

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pragmatic motivations for passing with instinctual and social drives.” (ibid.) At best, he complements one set of interpretations with another. Indeed, he uses fanciful language, such as “aimless delirium of perfection in mimicry,” just as he speaks of the wide-ranging invisibility practices found in warfare and folklore; but to conclude from these passages that “Caillois does indeed rescue aesthetics from Darwinian utilitarianism” (ibid., 555) is overstating the case. Aesthetics needs no “rescue” from Darwinian evolutionary theory, nor can one theory be explained exclusively in terms of another. Moreover, these theoretical frameworks are neither in competition with each other nor are they attempting to annihilate each other’s domains of influence and practice. Besides, is Cheng indirectly suggesting some volitional intention rather than the instinctual response of insects and chameleons when they blend into their natural environments and elude predators? Is anthropomorphism at work here, despite Caillois’ own claims of doing the opposite? Cheng’s argument gains steam and insight when she addresses the question of passing and assimilation in their social rather than moral context. In her words: “The philosophical and political quandary posed by assimilation (and other acts of ‘passing’) may not be about whether it is right or wrong to act like someone else but rather about whether acting like yourself (here the idiom is itself revealing) may be fundamentally the same as acting like someone else.” (ibid., 556; italics in the original) Passing and assimilation are performances whose purpose, as we saw above with some of the autobiographical pieces and Silvermint’s analysis, is rendering the subject invisible to others while negotiating its own subject position, its own (hypocritical?) compromises in social settings. Cheng, though, shifts the discussion away from the moral adjudication of “right and wrong” toward a deeper “philosophical and political quandary” about assimilation as a process that collapses rather than highlights the identification of the self with “someone else.” In the “racial context,” Cheng explains, “the desire to become object remains unthinkable when it comes to persons historically and brutally objectified.” (ibid.) After four centuries of Black enslavement and systemic discrimination, the notion of objectification is indeed “unthinkable”: who would want to return to a time when Blacks were not only objectified, but also commodified, bought, and sold on the auction block? “The fantasy of agency—with its implied presence of subjecthood—remains fundamental to ideas of political efficacy,” and this fantasy, according to Cheng, exacts the high price paid by those who attempted it in the Americas. Indeed, Cheng is

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correct to argue that the political vocabulary comes short of “addressing the intimacy—even complicity—between subjectivity and objecthood,” between the desire to claim for oneself an identity and the reality of having that identity exploited and abused or respected and protected on the social as well as the political stage. (ibid., 556) With this in mind, Cheng cannot help but move closer to Silvermint’s concern with moral quandaries. For her, the “ethics of recognition” deals with “what it means to see someone, what it means to be seen, and to be seen yourself through the eyes of the Other.” (ibid., 557; italics added) The three dimensions of recognition, the seeing subject, the seen subject as an object, and the seeing subject through the objectification of someone else, problematize the standard sociological view about how the individual fits or does not fit into a community (and returns to the Du Boisean analysis of double consciousness). This formulation also eschews the standard binaries of “authentic versus fake, truth versus lie, allegiance versus betrayal, essence versus performance.” (ibid.) These binaries imply moral preferences and hint at the direction toward which any political analysis worth its salt strives, but these binaries also oversimplify that which is too complex to be simplified to begin with. “Social camouflage,” Cheng continues, may reveal “ontological satisfaction—and perhaps even necessity” for those who attempt to pass or assimilate, forcing a reconsideration of hasty moral condemnation associated with assimilation or passing. Cheng returns to Caillois’ provocative notion of the instinct of renunciation, which might drive individuals to lose themselves as a way to find themselves. Like Silvermint, she asks the following question: “What if we understand passing to be not a form of self-denial but, paradoxically, an act of disappearance through which a subject actively inserts him/herself into a social field?” (ibid., 558) The notion of “active passing” as the deliberate machination of “inserting” oneself into a “social field,” the kind of chameleonism described by Rosow as well, resurfaces here. There is a sense, then, that “to not be noticed is to be known.” (ibid., 559) That is, once active-passing subjects are no longer singled out and discriminated against, once they are “known” simply as members of the community (hence the “ethics of recognition”), they in fact “insert” themselves into the community; their “disappearance” is paradoxically a normalized appearance that is safe from discrimination. For Cheng, the “complicity between psychic and material impoverishment,” especially in the American context of historically enslaved Blacks,

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offers no political remedy but only an “ethical injunction to acknowledge this imbricated relationship.” (ibid., 569–70) In other words, when political remedies are considered in the context of reparation, they often fail to consider the psychic toll suffered by Blacks and focus instead on their “material impoverishment,” which can be somehow repaid. The “ethical injunction” here relates to the “ethics of recognition” that goes back to four centuries of Blacks being dehumanized and commodified. To think of “political remedies” requires acknowledging the “complicity” between psychic and material deprivations, and then rethinking how the historical object position into which Blacks were relegated must be transformed into that of political subjects who fully participate in the social contract with dignity and rights. In the context of American history, argues Cheng, “the anxiety surrounding [Black] miscegenation and racial difference has both continued and diffused, so that assimilation (often associated with other racial minorities, such as Asian Americans and Jewish Americans) has now come to replace passing as a source of anxiety.” (ibid., 573, note#2) Assimilation, when successfully executed, defies the objectification of subjects and guarantees equal subject position. Successful assimilation by racial minorities, then, becomes a “source of anxiety” for white supremacy. If Silvermint’s analysis focused on the morality of active passing, Cheng seems to focus on the ethics of recognition; while he worries about complicity, she worries about what might be lost with successful assimilation. Their analyses imply that Caillois’ speculation about the instinct of renunciation is not farfetched after all. The risk of losing oneself in an adaptive process of camouflage is anxiety provoking for individuals as well as for their communities. The charge of hypocrisy in this context seems to heighten such anxieties that if assuaged or ignored would endanger the “natural” order and hierarchy of social institutions. In this context, then, the charge of hypocrisy is less about revealing the truth or appealing to moral standards, but is instead a tactical maneuver designed to maintain the status quo of power relations where oppressed minorities are kept in their object position. The specter of this charge serves to dissuade assimilation even though, as we saw above, “after all, passing is the American way.”

5.4

Morality at Work

One of the questions that arises in the face of the paradoxical (or simply inconsistent) response to passing and assimilation relates to the anxieties provoked by these processes. In the Trumpian age, white supremacy can

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be understood as an expression of some of these anxieties. To be clear, the anxiety concerning people passing suggests a metaphysical belief about identity, the idea that identity is not performative but ontological. As for those who pass or assimilate, they may suffer from cognitive dissonance (or misgivings), which for social psychologists highlights the discrepancy between one’s behavior and the cultural mores of the community. Though there have been studies of “induced hypocrisy” where participants are made aware of their own hypocrisy to prompt them to alter their behavior, it remains unclear if distinguishing intentionality from actual behavior suffices to induce behavioral changes. (Priolo et al. 2019) In other words, social psychologists have sought to alert people to the perceived hypocrisy of their actions in order to change their behavior, assuming an innate desire to reduce if not eliminate any psychological discomfort and conform to social conventions and moral norms. Three problems come to mind with the presuppositions associated with this view: first, is there a presumption of a holistic psyche that operates in unison and reacts as a holistic agency? As we saw in the previous chapter, this is only one among many models and perhaps not the most useful one with which to inquire about the functionalities of the mind or one’s intentions. Second, is there also a presumption that cultural mores (social conventions and moral norms) have the same impact on all individuals in a community? As we have seen before, individuals do assume social roles according to social settings, but they always have multiple strategies of how to perform their roles given the circumstances in Rosow’s, Goffman’s, and Berger and Luckmann’s senses. Third, is there a presumption about the reasonableness of the norms themselves to which one is pressured to conform? For example, going to Christian “conversion camps” to “pray the gay away” would seem “reasonable” from the perspective of dominant Christian culture, but abhorrent in liberal democracy. Social discomfort might be reduced, but at what unreasonable, oppressive, and homophobic price? All of this suggests that cognitive dissonance is less an issue than corrective adaptation, which is a social strategy that motivates individuals to calibrate their behavior each time they are on the social stage, performing according to situational and environmental cues in Weber’s and Caillois’ sense, perhaps even in Gramsci’s sense of organic cohesion, and thereby escaping the wrath of their oppressors and avoiding the charge of hypocrisy. Underlying this discussion are also two related presumptions about morality. The first has to do with its influence on social and cultural mores:

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are moral principles, such as fairness and honesty, indeed foundational or essential for the establishment of a community? Are they the bedrock on which to develop sociality and political philosophy? Or, can states function well by force and legal sanction, as democratic and fascist regimes do, without any moral pretense? The second is trickier to assess as it relates to the impact morality has on individuals within a community. Not only is it necessary to presume an underlying morality (whose? how is it articulated? is it religiously based?), but it is also necessary to presume its recognition by everyone all the time. If the first presumption can be empirically tested, the second is more difficult to test because it is unclear if moral principles and norms (idealized, as they ought to be to carry that designation) are recognized as behavioral guides or come to light only with the retroactive judgment of others. In other words, does “appropriate” behavior voluntarily follow moral guidelines or is it a response to the threat of condemnation by others or punishment by the state? Simply answering, as those who study induced hypocrisy do, that psychological discomfort (cognitive dissonance) steers people away from hypocritical behavior sidesteps the role of morality in informing social behavior (even if it for the sake of avoiding punishment). Moreover, do these studies consider moral principles to be arbitrary (in the sense that though they can be defended, they are not universally accepted) and thereby only conventionally legitimate (in the sense of being relative to their cultural context)? Or, are moral principles considered to be universal—“thou shall not kill” or the prohibition against incest—and therefore cross-culturally applicable (even when qualification for self-defense, for example, are warranted)? Moral philosophers and anthropologists have perennially debated these questions, and though they are not answered here, they deserve to be aired before reaching conclusions about cognitive dissonance or corrective adaptation. We come full circle in the discussion of the moral dimension of hypocrisy, ending the book where it began: what social problems are under consideration when examining the charge of hypocrisy? The moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has some useful suggestions at this juncture. For him, “characters” are the “moral representatives of their cultures” because of the manner in which “moral and metaphysical ideas and theories assume through them an embodied existence in the social world. Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophers.” (1981, 27; italics in the original) MacIntyre reminds his readers that individuals, whether “characters” or not, embody a set of ideas, “moral and metaphysical,” even when they are not fully aware of this fact. As people

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who embody ideas, we interact with others in our social settings and initiate tension or conflict when disagreements surface. More specifically, moral philosophers wear the masks of their characters insofar as they argue from a certain point of view and present themselves in a unique and at times exaggerated manner to amplify the views they represent. Distinguishing between individuals and the roles they play, MacIntyre explains: “Social type and psychological type are required to coincide. The character morally legitimates a mode of social existence.” (ibid., 28; italics in the original) Indirectly responding to the presumption about cognitive dissonance, MacIntyre seems to collapse the social and psychological roles individuals play and finds in the “character,” however embellished, a legitimate constellation and expression of ideas, beliefs, and behavior. He echoes here both Weber (to whom he is explicitly indebted) and Goffman (whom he follows to a point) and extends their work with a moral analysis. For him, performing on the social or political stage is ideally undergirded by a moral conviction, one that structures one’s psyche as much as it informs the kind of mask one wears in public, the kind of character one displays. The modern self, from this perspective, is a byproduct of the social context in which it is anchored; it is “entirely set ever against the social world.” (ibid., 31) For MacIntyre, the modern process of socialization undermines the Aristotelian conception of virtues as essential and omnipresent for personal flourishing. The “liquidation of the self into a set of demarcated areas of role-playing allows no scope for the exercise of dispositions which could genuinely be accounted virtues in any sense remotely Aristotelian.” Why would “demarcated areas of role-playing” be an obstacle for the propagation and manifestation of virtues? MacIntyre’s answer is that anyone who “genuinely possesses a virtue” would be expected to “manifest it in very different types of situation,” even when such manifestation yields no beneficial results, as would, for example, “a professional skill.” (ibid., 191) It is precisely because virtues are present and unbending that they cannot help but “manifest” themselves under all circumstances, regardless of how appropriate or not they are judged to be. In fact, some virtues, when expressed, undermine the efficacy of one’s conduct, as when telling the truth leads to being fired from a job, or when a whistleblower reveals illegal or unethical conduct by government officials or corporate leaders. For MacIntyre, the fractured self that adapts so readily to the multiple pressures of modern society, playing many roles under different conditions and within various contexts, cannot fit

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into the Aristotelian model of the virtuous person. Since the modern self pretends to be “detached from its social and historical roles and statues” and demands individualized consideration within each context, this self, in MacIntyre’s lamentation, does not feel responsible for the community or its history. (ibid., 205) Just as MacIntyre investigates the moral dimension underlying modern culture and its discontents—the ghost of Weber’s disenchantment thesis (about the rationalization of the world order and the loss of wonderment and spirituality) looms large here—Richard Rorty appraises liberal modernity in moral terms as well. Relying on irony and contingency, Rorty hopes for solidarity. To argue for solidarity despite the fracturing of the self and the pervasive cynicism that accompanies liberal modernity, he returns to Freud and his impact on the twentieth century. In his words: “We can begin to understand Freud’s role in our culture by seeing him as the moralist who helped de-divinize the self by tracking conscience home to its origin in the contingencies of our upbringing.” (1989, 30) Freud the “moralist” grants prominence to morality in modern culture while at the same time extracting the self from its religious clutches. The move to “de-divinize” the self is an attempt to come to terms with the religious influence on Western culture. Once Freud looks elsewhere (than religion) to explain subjectivity, the “contingencies of our upbringing” come into play. Holding onto an absolute moral standard seems impossible because these contingencies create at times conflicting moral demands that require different responses. Rorty continues: “If Freud had made only the large, abstract, quasi-philosophical claim that the voice of conscience is the internalized voice of parents and society, he would not have startled.” But Freud goes farther than replacing religion with parents and society; he shocks with his radical intervention into the way we understand ourselves. “What is new in Freud [are] the details he gives us about the sort of thing which goes into the formation of conscience, his explanations of why certain very concrete situations and persons excite unbearable guilt, intense anxiety, or smoldering rage.” (ibid., 31; italics in the original) Instead of the uniformity of human conscience as a by-product of religious indoctrination, we have multiple and different consciences that are the by-product of autobiographically contingent circumstances. Freud’s intervention upends the approach of moral philosophers. Their abstract generalizations fail to account for “very concrete situations and persons.”

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Any talk of passing and assimilation, for example, must leave behind theoretical abstractions of the kind we saw above and deal closely with the particularities of every case of passing and assimilation. The charge of hypocrisy, if it has any value at all, must be specific enough to account for the details of a situation. The self, in this Freudian model, “is a tissue of contingencies rather than a potentially well-ordered system of faculties.” For Rorty, Freud’s “tissue of contingencies” thwarts an easy moral judgment. Instead, any moral judgment regarding human conduct requires moral deliberations different from those commonly exercised by moral philosophers and religious leaders. This Freudian-informed deliberation would have to be “just as finely grained, just as detailed and as multiform as prudential calculation has always been.” If prudential calculations were nuanced enough in the hands of utilitarians, so must be moral calculations in the hands of thoughtful philosophers. Freud’s advice regarding “the distinction between moral guilt and practical inadvisability” would blur “the prudence-morality distinction.” (ibid., 32) On several occasions in this book, political and social conditions that seem to warrant certain conduct on prudential grounds (such as efficacy, social cohesion, and political stability) were still viewed as morally suspect or deserving the charge of hypocrisy. The Freudian model, according to Rorty, overcomes the dichotomy of “moral guilt” and “practical inadvisability.” Rorty’s contribution to the present discussion is not the revival of the notion of the fractured self, the contingencies of whose behavior depend on their upbringing, but the partial divorce of the self from religiously informed “moral guilt” (since one’s religious upbringing, for example, may still have partial influence on children). This so-called divorce is bolstered by considering “seriously” “Nietzschean pragmatism and perspectivalism,” both of which undermine if not obliterate the Platonic–Cartesian–Kantian framework. (ibid., 33) The insistence on the particularity of individual situations, a sort of moral particularism or moral contextualism (and not a naïve moral relativism), poses the problem of how to respond to and assess, for example, the Holocaust. “Yet at times like that of Auschwitz, when history is in upheaval and traditional institutions and patterns of behavior are collapsing, we want something which stands beyond history and institutions,” admits Rorty. The quest for universal principles seems important for the condemnation of genocide. But, asks Rorty, “What can there be except human solidarity, our recognition of one another’s common humanity?” Evading the binary of moral relativism and absolutism, Rorty offers human solidarity as a universal moral bedrock, which

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does not stand “beyond history and institutions.” His is a quest for an immanent, not transcendental principle, something that resides in the human and not in the divine world. For Rorty, “a belief can still regulate action, can still be thought worth dying for, among people who are quite aware that this belief is caused by nothing deeper than contingent historical circumstances.” (ibid., 189) Rorty’s faith in the humanity of others is as appealing as it is unrealistic. Action might indeed be informed by beliefs, but if Rorty were to follow his own advice about the importance of the Freudian model, he would admit that impulses, desires, and drives are just as influential as belief in human solidary when motivating action. What, then, is the relationship between beliefs and impulses, desires, and drives? To what extent is it possible to separate between external social forces (family and culture alike) and so-called internal ones? Under what circumstances, if any, could one rely on solidarity to ensure political cohesion and peaceful coexistence? Rorty answers these questions in the terms we reviewed in the previous two sections. It turns out that, for him, the promise of solidarity relates to a sense of belonging to a group from which, as we saw with passing and assimilation, one might be excluded or into which one may be invited and feel included. In Rorty’s words: “our sense of solidarity is strongest when those with whom solidarity is expressed are thought of as ‘one of us,’ where ‘us’ means something smaller and more local than the human race.” (ibid., 191) However “smaller and more local” the category of “us” is defined, it is still a category that also excludes others. Rorty does not list who these others might be. Moreover, human solidarity, however nuanced in Rorty hands, does not recognize a core self or human “essence” in all human beings. “Rather, it is thought of as the ability to see more and more traditional differences (of tribe, religion, race, customs, and the like) as unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain and humiliation—the ability to think of people wildly different from ourselves as included in the range of ‘us’.” (ibid., 192) In this reading, the struggle of passing to gain an advantage (paramount in the discussion above) seems pointless because “pain and humiliation” trump any other appearances of difference. Are pain and humiliation similar enough to erase differences? Are they so universally part of the human condition that anyone anywhere can recognize them as such and identify with their carriers? In the idealized Rortian view, the “similarities with respect to pain and humiliation” suffice, almost in Adam Smith’s sense of empathy or Silvermint’s sense

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of solidarity. This view misses the point that commiserating with others is not a goal at all, but a painful experience the origins of which we would like to eradicate. (See Sagi 2002, Chapter 11 on “Rebellion, Solidarity, and Self-Consciousness” for a critique of Rorty’s approach.) The instrumentalization of pain and humiliation may inadvertently justify their continuation if they are presumed necessary ingredients to embrace solidarity. Is Rorty advocating participation in what some have called the “oppression Olympics,” that is, a competition for the most horrible state of victimhood? What he may miss is that victim hypocrisy in the case of those trying to pass in order to escape their “pain and humiliation” is premised on the potential of escaping one’s condition and enjoying the privileges available in the dominant culture. Rorty may be seduced by his own privileged imaginary that readily delivers the transcendence of differences “of tribe, religion, race, customs, and the like.” Rorty’s appeal to solidarity may end up much more Hegelian than Nietzschean or Freudian because contingencies seem reducible to similarities. Despite Rorty’s replacement of Aristotle’s ethics with Nietzsche’s genealogy of morals and its historical contingencies, Aristotle’s virtue ethics deserves a brief mention here. What would life look like without hypocrisy, a life where truth and kindness, goodwill and generosity enlighten and guide every action? From the outset of the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle conflates the individual and the city, but not in the way later political philosophers model the state on the family. Instead, he proposes that the “good is the same for a city as for an individual,” qualifying, however, that “the good of the city is apparently a greater and more complete good to acquire and preserve.” (1985, 3) The “good” in Aristotelian terms is the highest good to which all aspire, and it is to be sought for its own sake and never as a means to another end. Other goods are to be pursued in its light. Emphasizing consistency of character, Aristotle contends that the search for the highest good, like the search for happiness, is best accomplished by someone who can sustain “the character he has throughout his life.”(ibid., 25) Since “happiness is an activity of the soul expressing complete virtue,” according to Aristotle, “the examination of virtue is proper for political science” (ibid., 29). That is, the focus on individual happiness and virtue is pertinent for the study of politics. Virtue of thought, along this line of exposition, needs “experience and time,” while virtue of character “results from habit” (ibid., 33). Virtue, for Aristotle, is “a mean, in so far as it aims at what is intermediate” (ibid., 44), which becomes for him the most important feature

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of evaluating human conduct. What is “intermediate” is that which situates itself between two extremes. Among the virtues listed by Aristotle are bravery, temperance, generosity, magnificence, and magnanimity. He speaks of the intermediate state as being “praiseworthy,” and since it “has no name,” Aristotle declares that it is “most like friendship”; here, the connection between character, virtue, the good, action, and friendship is established. (ibid., 108ff.) By connecting character, virtue, and friendship with the truth, Aristotle seeks an anchor for human interactions. For him, then, “a lover of the truth who is truthful even when nothing is at stake will be still keener to tell the truth when something is at stake, since he will avoid falsehood as shameful [when something is at stake], having already avoided it in itself [when nothing was at stake]. And this sort of person is praiseworthy.” (ibid., 111) Though not discussing the social role of the charge of hypocrisy as such, Aristotle singles out “falsehood” as “shameful” when there is something “at stake.” Being truthful in general is the norm and becomes a heightened duty when its impact can make a difference, when deception can hurt another, when hypocrisy is shameful enough to undermine trust and social cohesion. The focus on “when something is at stake” versus “when nothing is at stake” is crucial for Aristotle’s point about truth telling: one should tell the truth no matter the situation. Aristotle’s virtue ethics finds no room for any argument for passing or assimilation. This may be the case because Aristotle, like Rorty much later, is generalizing from the privileged position he occupies. Decision, to be clear, “is either understanding combined with desire or desire combined with thought”; that is, virtuous action by a virtuous individual follows a decision that originates from thoughtful reflection combined with feelings. (ibid., 150) How does this relate to the justice that a community can endorse or enforce? Justice, for Aristotle, is understood “as a state of character,” whether as lawfulness or as fairness. (ibid., 116ff.) Justice in the political realm, however, is connected with not only character and virtue and the actions that come about in their light but also with “rectificatory justice as a mean,” the kind of justice that restores what was lost by one party in its interaction or exchange with another. (ibid., 126) From this perspective, then, reparations for Blacks in America would be sanctioned in the name of “rectificatory justice.” Aristotle continues to argue that “justice is the virtue that the just person is said to express in the just actions expressing his decision, distributing good things and bad, both between himself and others and between others.” (ibid., 134) What

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makes the Aristotelian view of justice both problematic in MacIntyre’s sense of the rigidity of the self required by virtue ethics and inspiring is the reciprocal relation between the “just person” and political justice. (ibid., 160) Just as intelligence and wisdom are required for virtuous action, and just as any virtuous action must aim at the good and remain an intermediate between potential extremes, so is friendship among virtuous people based on the character of the friends. In his words: “if people are friends, they have no need of justice, but if they are just they need friendship in addition; and the justice that is most just seems to belong to friendship.” (ibid., 208) Why is the most just justice the one that relies on friendship? What is it about virtuous friends that brings about a just community? Friends need no justice in the sense of courts of law because their friendship already incorporates a deep sense of justice. In his words: “friendship would seem to hold cities together, and legislators would seem to be more concerned about it than about justice.” (ibid.) Regardless of the three types of friendship outlined by Aristotle—the one based on utility (among the old), pleasure (among the young), and the one that is “complete” (among “good people similar in virtue”)—friendship must be both central to the affairs of state and be “enduring” in order to cement the bonds of a community (ibid., 212ff.). He repeatedly defines and exalts the friendship of those who are similarly virtuous, the kind of friendship that endures regardless of changing circumstance. This friendship is the basis and model of the endurance of a “political community.” (ibid., 225) Once again, Aristotle the classifier distinguishes between the different political communities, but what remains as the constant yardstick for their strength and stability is that “friendship appears in each of the political systems, to the extent that justice appears also.” (ibid., 228) The more just the system, the better the kind of friendship its foundation rests on. Alternatively, without friendship, there is no hope for justice. There is a reciprocal relationship between Aristotle’s insistence on friendship as the foundation and binding feature of communities and the endurance of those communities as political systems. As he says, “good people’s life together allows the cultivation of virtue” through their upbringing, education, and laws. (ibid., 259) The mediating effect of community building legislated and practiced between virtuous friends, must, according to this model, follow the intermediate position, always careful to stay away from extremes, always mindful of finding the mean.

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The Nicomachean Ethics contains the seeds of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiment as well as the intellectual seeds that brought about the works of Arendt, Jay, and Szabados and Soifer. In Aristotle’s terminology, the reciprocity of human interaction, if based on virtuous (“complete”) friendship among people who are equally virtuous themselves and want to achieve the good for themselves as well as for their friends, has an impact on the community. In Aristotle’s words, “everything that is right will be done for the common good [koinon], and each person individually will receive the greatest goods, since this is the character of virtue.” (ibid., 255) This is exactly what Smith thought his small villagers would do for each other, how their love of the well-being of others would bring them pleasure, and how this mutually reinforcing behavior would bring people together and eventually generate an Aristotelian-inspired “common good.” Surely, such a community can accommodate all kinds of just exchanges, including the kinds Smith envisioned in the marketplace. Little did Smith realize, however, that his villagers were not friends in the Aristotelian sense and that once barter was transformed into the exchange of money and money itself became a mode of extraction and accumulation in financial capitalism, all bets were off; virtue and justice, friendship and community took a back seat to debt and credit, greed and inequality, fraud and exploitation. To be sure, Aristotle’s warning that “knowing about virtue is not enough, but we must also try to possess and exercise virtue” (ibid., 291) rings as true today as it did in his time. This means that “someone who is to be good must be finely brought up and habituated, and then must live in decent practices, doing nothing base either willingly or unwillingly.” (ibid., 293) The pursuit of the common good for the community is itself the foundation of friendship and justice, just as complete friendship based on virtue is the foundation of a just community. The mutual reinforcement expected in this political model may raise questions about scale: have large cities and nation-states in the twentyfirst century become too big to nurture the virtues expected of friends in Aristotle’s polis or Smith’s idealized small village? What does friendship mean in mass culture and how can it be “habituated”? There could also be, following Nietzsche, questions about the public display of virtue: “Of what use was a virtue one could not exhibit or which did not know how to exhibit itself!” (1982/1881, 22) Must virtue be publicly “exhibited” to take hold on people’s imagination and promote virtuous conduct? Does the exhibition of virtue undermine its integrity or reinforce it? Can it slip into self-aggrandization? As we saw earlier in Chapter 3, Jay argues for

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the “trust in friendship,” both in the Smithian sense of empathy among friends but also in the Arendtian sense forging “fragile alliances” among “suspicious individuals.” (2010, 31, 89) Trust is defined as a “firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something; confidence or faith in a person or thing, or in an attribute of a person or thing.” (OED) This etymology reminds us of the faith we put in our relations with our friends, the confidence we have to share our thoughts and ideas, our feelings and desires with someone who will not exploit or mock them. No wonder Jay expects trust to be a necessary if not sufficient condition for friendship and community alliances. The stakes in friendships are too high to ignore, and the danger of exposure and ridicule is obvious. By the twenty-first century, the visibility of virtue is best examined in social media outlets where it is a tool for producing a sense of one’s virtue through exhibiting oneself, as is the common act of “virtue signaling.” The invitation to exhibit oneself invites hypocrisy by its very logic: we are afforded a broad and uncensored canvas on which to paint the image we would like the world to see of us, regardless of how accurately it represents who we are. Those “friending” us are tricked into seeing only those parts of us we display and foreground, letting the rest of our embarrassing or shameful conduct remain concealed. Obviously, not all friendships are alike and not all friendships that are alike have the same functional effectiveness across different political systems. Likewise, not all virtues carry the same weight or have the same impact on friends who emulate each other. Nonetheless, the very fact that for Aristotle community building and friendship are intimately intertwined in their appeal to virtue differentiates his from many other political theories and models that rely either on divine order or on social contract. The amorphous and messy concept of friendship offers a different ethical framing for sustaining communities, preparing and giving rise to Rorty’s notion of solidarity, however flawed, or to Silvermint’s later formulation of community grounded in shared pain. This closing discussion of Aristotle’s views of virtue, character, and the good life among friends suggests a framing for the charge of hypocrisy unlike the Abrahamic religions’ warnings about hypocrisy with which the chapter began. Neither model answers the persistent and unresolved question of who is to judge human conduct. While religionists insist on the dual judgment of God and leaders of the religious community, Aristotle leaves the matter in the hands of friends. Religionists appeal to God but cannot prove his judgment, deflecting the conundrum of the evil person enjoying a good life by promising the punishment of hell in the afterlife; they also stipulate that

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religious leaders are in the best position to make such judgments regardless of the scandals that have plagued religious institutions for centuries. Aristotle makes no appeal to the divine or to political leaders, but finds legitimacy in the judgment of virtuous friends on the grounds that their own standards of behavior guide them and, in their minds, should guide others. Virtuous friendship, in this model, sets the tone for judgment, so that the charge of hypocrisy is an indictment worthy of consideration and reflection. It has the presumption of warrant and the weight of personal conviction. But is such a conclusion not dangerous in its claim for the self-legitimation of those claiming to be both virtuous and friends? Could it be abused by those who not only wish to preserve the status quo but proclaim it virtuous when it is in fact discriminatory, exclusive, and harmful? Thinking about President Trump and the cohort of loyalists surrounding him, his crew of friends could be a critical sounding board; unfortunately, they have become instead an enabling source of affirmation; when they defect and threaten to blow the whistle on his misconduct and lies, they are cast away from his orbit and denounced as traitors or criminals. It would not dawn on Trump and his tight circle of family members and friends to grant friends the legitimate power of the charge of hypocrisy, because on some fundamental level there is no will to keep everyone on their moral toes. The bond of friendship can be enhanced by charges of hypocrisy as a means to rethink one’s conduct in terms of the welfare of others and the common good, but only if a critical engagement and respect for others’ judgment are the conditions for such a bond.

References Aristotle (1985), Nicomachean Ethics [c 340 BCE]. Translated by Terence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. James Baldwin (1962), “A Letter from a Region in My Mind,” New Yorker (11/17/62). Etienne Balibar (2015), Violence and Civility: On the Limits of Political Philosophy. Translated by G. M. Goshgarian. New York: Columbia University Press. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966), The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Doubleday. Anne Anlin Cheng (2005), “Passing, Natural Selection, and Love’s Failure: Ethics of Survival from Chang-Rae Lee to Jacques Lacan,” American Literary History, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Autumn 2005), pp. 553–574.

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Megan Dalla-Camina (2018), “The Reality of Imposter Syndrome,” Psychology Today (9/3/18). Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ real-women/201809/the-reality-imposter-syndrome. Accessed 4/13/20. Leah Donnella (2017), “‘Racial Impostor Syndrome’: Here Are Your Stories,” NPR Code Switch 6/8/17. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/ 2017/06/08/462395722/racial-impostor-syndrome-here-are-your-stories. Accessed 3/6/18. W. E. B. Du Bois (1999), The Souls of Black Folk [1903]. New York: Norton Critical Edition. Seckin Esen (2016), “Code Switching: Definition, Types and Examples,” Owlcation 6/11/16. Available at: https://owlcation.com/humanities/Code-Switch ing-Definition-Types-and-Examples-of-Code-Switching. Accessed 3/6/18. Frantz Fanon (2018), Alienation and Freedom [2015]. Edited by Jean Khalfa and Robert J. C. Young, translated by Steven Corcoran. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Erving Goffman (1959), The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books. Jürgen Habermas (1975), Legitimation Crisis [1973]. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. Stuart Hall (2019), “Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities,” in Essential Essays. Edited by David Morley. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Monica C. Heller (1992), “The Politics of Code Switching and Language Choice,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development Vol. 13, Nos. 1–2, pp. 123–142. Martin Jay (2010), The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press. Yova Kementchedjhieva (2016), “Code-Switching as Strategically Employed in Political Discourse,” Lifespans & Styles Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 1–9. Søren Kierkegaard (1985), Fear and Trembling [1843]. Translated by Alastair Hannay. New York: Penguin Books. Eva Feder Kittay (1982), “On Hypocrisy,” Metaphilosophy Vol. 13, Nos. 3 & 4, July/October 1982, pp. 277–289. Alasdair MacIntyre (1981), After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Roger L. Martínez-Dávila (2018), Creating Conversos: The Carvajal-Santa María Family in Early Modern Spain. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. David O. Moberg (1987), “Holy Masquerade: Hypocrisy in Religion,” Review of Religious Research, Vol. 29, No. 1 (September 1987), pp. 3–24. Fred Moten (2018), Stolen Life. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

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Friedrich Nietzsche (1982), Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality [1881]. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Daniel Priolo, Audrey Pelt, Roxane St. Bauzel, Lolita Rubens, Dimitri Voisin, and Valerie Pointiat (2019), “Three Decades of Research on Induced Hypocrisy: A Meta-Analysis,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin Vol. 45, No. 12, pp. 1681–1701. Walid M. Rihane (2007), “Why Do People Code-Switch: A Sociolinguistic Approach.” http://www.academia.edu/2649532/Why_do_People_Code-swi tch_A_Sociolinguistic_Approach. Accessed 3/16/18. Richard Rorty (1989), Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Avi Sagi (2002), Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd. Translated by Batya Stein. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. Michael E. Sawyer (2020), Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X. London: Pluto Press. Daniel Silvermint (2018), “Passing as Privileged,” Ergo Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 1–43. Richard Skiba (1997), “Code Switching as a Countenance of Language Interference,” The Internet TESL Journal Vol. III, No. 10. Available at: http://ite slj.org/Articles/Skiba-CodeSwitching.html. Accessed 3/27/20. Brandon Skyhorse and Lisa Page (2017), We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America. Boston: Beacon Press. Touré (2011), Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now. New York: Free Press.

Conclusion

A specter is haunting America, the specter of the charge of hypocrisy. If we are indeed all occasional hypocrites, the specter at times haunts us all. No one is spared from the threat of being charged, justifiably or casually, by well-meaning friends and colleagues, jealous rivals and self-righteous posers, critics who are neither, or journalists whose job is to objectively report the facts. There are times when the charge of hypocrisy is the glue that binds us as a collective to religious and secular covenants. Could this specter guide us today and play an important role in getting American society in the age of Trump to appreciate truth telling, personal integrity, and public civility? Or is the charge of hypocrisy a prophylactic that prevents comingling and assimilation, blocking the path that could lead to equality and liberty? Would this specter in these cases separate the righteous from the wicked, the virtuous from the hypocritical? Would it expect authenticity in the name of truth telling or forbid entry for the sake of keeping power relations intact? Perhaps the specter is remote and invisible enough to be ignored but not too remote and invisible to be harnessed by those who conjure it. Would the charge of hypocrisy be diminished when faced with degrees of hypocrisy or many kinds of hypocrisy in different contexts? Perhaps the appeal of this charge is the presumed clarity that it wields when confronting messy social situations. Hypocrisy is easy to find when looking for it, and just as easy to miss when not looking for it. Similarly, the charge of hypocrisy disappoints more often than it satisfies

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because it is directed at trivial instances as often as at complex and interesting ones, yielding mixed results and keeping us wondering. Despite its disappointments, this charge serves diverse enough constituents and social purposes to recommend its utility. While for some, it is a proxy for lengthy explanations about misconduct or abuse of power, for others, it is a starting point for discussions about moral standards and their role in social formation and political deliberations. The specter of hypocrisy haunts not only individual actors but also those who presume that their targets have fixed identities. In this sense, then, its usefulness as a watchful guardian transcends the particular circumstances of its deployment, not because it is universally applied, but because it brings to light the different circumstances of its deployment and their institutional conext. Though it may be haunting different people in different ways, the susceptibility of being called a hypocrite, threatening and cajoling as it is, relies for its authority on many sets of beliefs about the human condition and morality, about suffering and politics, about desires and social expectations, which are haunted by their own conceptual ghosts. Interrogating the charge of hypocrisy as a specter, this book has explored some implicit social presuppositions about agency and culpability as much as concealed some prejudices about the power of truth telling and the importance of trust. Because it is impossible to be fully cognizant of desires and intentions, let alone how well or poorly they can be fulfilled, the charge of hypocrisy is messy enough to upend any demarcation criteria, and it points to the different contexts where pretense and deception appear on one level, and self-deception and deliberate strategies for passing because of social expectations on another. More questions could be raised about appropriate and tolerable degrees of hypocrisy and about the contexts within which to launch charges of hypocrisy altogether. These questions in turn bring up other questions about the presumptions associated with truth and truth telling. If the charge of hypocrisy is supposed to protect truths from lies or at least set the truth on a footing powerful enough to expose deception, Nietzsche reminds his readers that “in itself truth is no power at all,” regardless of the pronouncements of philosophers and “its flatterers of the Enlightenment.” Truth has to “draw power over to its side, or go over to the side of power, or it will perish again and again!” (1982/1881, 212) Does the charge of hypocrisy alone enable and empower truth telling? Or, does it matter more who is in power to make the charge? If, on its own, truth telling cannot elevate itself above the fray of dissimulation, its fate is in the hands of the powerful who may wish it to perish. The Trump regime follows a

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historical pattern, evokes images of twentieth-century fascism, and exemplifies what Nietzsche has said about the truth in itself having no power at all. Being at the mercy of the powerful, truth telling has become an act of courage by the powerless, even though the likes of Trump insist that their “unconventional” leadership relies on being a straight shooter as a mode of subversion and honesty. It has become obvious that the charge of hypocrisy has no effect on the Trump Administration, which dismisses it cavalierly as “fake news.” In this situation, questions about absolute and relative moral standards come up as well, because any decontextualized concession can be perniciously exploited. Thinking about degrees of truth and degrees of hypocrisy does not mean giving up on truth telling and ignoring the dangers associated with dissimulation or pretense. Making allowances for certain kinds of hypocrisy in political deliberation and cultural assimilation for the sake of solidarity and community building does not license outright abuse of the basic rules of public communication and civility. Where does one draw the line of hypocrisy? It could be argued that the most human of our traits is hypocrisy both in aspirational terms (we want to be better than we are) and in terms of unconscious drives (we really do not know what would satisfy our desires). In this sense, then, perhaps the specter of hypocrisy is to be celebrated rather than shunned, embraced rather than despised. This is not the specter of past infractions and dereliction of moral conduct but the specter that defines the present and invites humility and generosity. It is a way to rethink the human condition as neither bleak nor dreadful, neither cunning nor evil, but instead as floundering on the edges of the great moral ocean of possibilities, wishing to stay afloat as long as possible without any guarantee of success. To think that we can be reduced to the logic of neuroscientific robotics is to reduce the richness of emotions and the unknown, the irrational, accidental, and fantastic. Hypocrisy, like fidelity and dignity, challenges simple assessments and quick responses; when interesting, it demands contemplation and reconsideration of implicitly held beliefs about truth and honesty, trust and friendship. When uninteresting, it remains an easy and useful way to dismiss odious behavior and self-righteous people. Unfortunately, too often we find acquaintances performing the theatrics of shock and indignation when exclaiming “can you believe this?” instead of ignoring obvious pretenses and silly delusions and focusing on curious, ambiguous, and problematic instances that require more careful thoughtfulness.

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Think of masking as a precautionary strategy to avoid contagion in the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, when Blacks wearing masks in public are stopped and questioned while their white counterparts are congratulated for being safe and responsible. These cases replay an ongoing trope of American racism whose origins predate the republic and whose centurieslong racist practices continued in the Jim Crow era and are exemplified in the present with police brutality that galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement. While governors in many states have asked people to wear masks when leaving their houses, fifteen states as of this writing still have “anti-mask laws.” Would the charge of hypocrisy in these cases be directed at state statutes, governors who enforce them, or individuals who refuse to abide by mask-wearing rules while expecting protection from health care agencies when they get sick? Who is behaving hypocritically? Once the specter of the charge of hypocrisy appears, it subsumes not only the particularity of who is or is not wearing masks but the general application of the Fourteenth Amendment, for example, that guarantees equal treatment by the federal government. And once the Constitution is brought up, what can we make of the discrepancies between its declared commitment to equality and freedom and the legal importation of more than 300,000 Africans slaves (by 1776) into the thirteen colonies whose total population was at the time around 2.5 million? (According to the TransAtlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World between 1525 and 1866.) What about the Founding Fathers who owned slaves, who had children with women who were slaves, who cohabitated with Blacks but still had the power to buy and sell them as if they were commodities? Even if we limit ourselves to the present situation of wearing masks, historical precedents are worth mentioning. Most anti-mask laws were passed in response to the Ku Klux Klan, whose white members masked themselves in various ways to disguise themselves and terrorize their Black (and at times Jewish) victims. As Robert Khan sees it, “supporters of such [anti-mask] laws argue that wearing masks emboldens people to commit crimes and makes those crimes more frightening to the victims.” By contrast, there are three standard arguments against such laws. The first is based on the “freedom of association” clause of the First Amendment and claims that “mask laws deprive wearers of the anonymity needed to express their views.” The second claims that masks constitute “symbolic speech” and therefore cannot be unlawful (it has held no sway in the courts so far). The third is about the violation of the equal protection clause because courts “make

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exceptions for Halloween masks, masquerade ball masks, and masks worn for medical reasons, but not masks for political acts.” (Khan 2020) So, one can ask, is it appropriate to apply or suspend anti-mask laws in the current pandemic? Or, is it a matter of the law and not morality? But the moral is always somehow imbricated in the charge hypocrisy, whether one goes as far back as American independence and the enslavement of imported African people or as recent as the differential treatment of Black citizens who wear masks as part of an effort to protect themselves and others against the transmission of COVID-19. And all of this does not even scratch the surface of the charge of hypocrisy in political economic terms, where prosperity for all is promised (equal opportunities and freedom of choice) but what is delivered favors whites over Blacks, the privileged few at the expense of those who are othered. The charge of hypocrisy can identify layers of pretense and reveal systemic discrimination. In this sense, the charge can accomplish quite a lot. There are those who might object to having anything problematic haunt the Constitution, for example, because they view this document as an unquestionable sacred text. Would the charge be better suited for the Constitution itself or reserved for its authors? Does the charge apply only to individuals and their conduct or can it be applied to documents and institutions? Methodological individualism, the view that only the actions of individuals count when analyzing communities and institutions, prescribes that the charge must be exclusively applied to those agents who are responsible for their actions. In this sense, the slaveowning Founding Fathers of the American republic are hypocritical in authoring a document that contradicts their behavior at home and in their plantations. As an inanimate object, by contrast, the Constitution cannot be responsible for its composition or the discrepancy between the conduct of its authors and the words and ideas it contains. Yet it can be argued that regardless of the identity of its authors, any document, once written, endorsed, and administered takes on a life of its own and therefore bears responsibility for the consequences of its implementation. Once alive in this sense of the term, we can appreciate the legitimacy of the charge of hypocrisy addressed to any legislative document, including the Constitution. Its authors may have been well meaning, aspirational, perhaps naïve in producing such a document, but once adopted by the colonies, the Constitution deserves the charge because of its sanction of their continued enslavement of Africans and Blacks born in America. My reason for saying this is to trouble the notion of charge as applying only

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to personal moral failing, so individuated that no one is guilty but the person who is perceived violating the moral code. This sleight of hand is familiar to theologians who use a similar logic when shifting the burden of the problem of evil from God to the individual who was theologically granted “free will” and is therefore culpable for any moral transgression. In both cases, hypocrisy and evil, the framing of the situation, that is, the context within which judgments are made, is paramount. Charging only individuals with hypocrisy is doubly flawed. On the one hand, if there is no unified psyche with premediated intentions (for deception), individuating hypocrisy is misguided. On the other hand, even if there are individuals who deserve the charge of hypocrisy, the charge may be misguided, too, because the action under scrutiny may be imposed by circumstances beyond the individual’s control. Why, then, charge the individual with hypocrisy and not the system and the institutions that expect and control such behavior? Perhaps Aristotle can help here with the importance of friendship as the axis around which relations and interaction revolve, an axis more concrete than solidarity or empathy. In seeing human relations mutually reinforced by virtuous behavior, divine or legal sanction is relinquished as superfluous. If neither religious nor state moral codes (enshrined in laws) guide individual behavior, neither could be the final arbiter nor judge of such behavior. This would shift the legitimate authority of judging behavior to friends. Can only friends be trusted with this task? And if they are trusted with this burden, must they be virtuous to exercise it? Perhaps the logic of this way of thinking about who is in the position to despense such a charge relies on the weight of critique, which in turn highlights the boundary conditions of truth telling as well as trust. As a critical device, the charge of hypocrisy can be at once generous in its approach, because it engages friends and not strangers, and pointed, because friends know each other better than strangers do. Friends can be trusted to withhold judgment if the evidence is incomplete or ambiguous, just as they can be trusted to call out egregious failures. Virtuous friends presume their critical participation is conducive to building the character of their friends as much as their own. They keep each other honest because that is what they expect from each other. This is not a Weberian instrumental rationality that has another end in mind but a value rationality in search of a virtuous life. As friends feel their way in the world, unless they are religious or legal zealots, their guides cannot be limited to religious sacred texts and the legal codes of their state. Nor can a presumed covenant or

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social contract suffice as guarantor for moral conduct. At best, these rules and laws maintain a level of mutual nonviolence, perhaps a suspension of hostilities in the political arena and within certain social settings. Being a citizen, as Fanon explains, is different from being a human being; the first satisfies the necessary conditions for sociality under the social contract, the second the sufficient conditions for preserving human dignity among people. Degrees of civility and decency depend on the extent to which humanity and morality are constitutive parts of legality. European civility, as Freud insists, requires the systemic imposition of conformity, which he labeled cultural hypocrisy. What degree of cultural hypocrisy is tolerable? Virtuous friendships, where virtuous friends reinforce virtuous conduct, can bridge the gaps between morality and sociality, dignity and civility. Even at their best, would they be sufficient, as Aristotle envisioned, for political deliberations and community building? If these friendships were predicated on virtues alone, they might be limited in their scope. If, on the other hand, they also include keeping a vigilant eye on the application of the charge of hypocrisy, they could maintain a reasonably and acceptably low degree of hypocrisy. The specter of the charge of hypocrisy may not be powerful enough to eliminate any degree of hypocrisy, yet it could minimize its pernicious effects and expose cases that deserve public airing, the kind that could serve as lessons from which to teach the boundaries of immorality that need not be crossed. Egregious cases would be just as simple to recognize as trivial cases, the ones that we can scorn out of existence. As we are asked to consider teaching civics in the age of Trump, degrees of hypocrisy and different kinds of hypocrisy can center public discourse. Morality may be taught in religious institutions or at home, but unless it is also considered in wider social, political, and economic spheres, it remains abstract and academic. In the Trumpian age, morality cannot be left out of the conversation, because the moralizing we hear about in terms of “law and order” or “freedom of choice” is not on the same register as critical engagement with a set of principles worthy of democratic deliberation. The flagrant immorality displayed daily by an administration that cares about neither the rule of law nor moral decency is compounded by the fact that this mode of political conduct appears as an acceptable new normal. Critics from outside the administration and dissenters from within can appeal to a commonsense understanding of hypocrisy as a starting point for more comprehensive conversations about revising this new normal.

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The charge of hypocrisy has the power to galvanize public pressure, complement legal sanctions and religious dissatisfaction, and awaken the national conscience. The devastating effects of the 2020 pandemic have reached beyond the global death toll and economic collapse and have forced an overdue reckoning with the many hypocrisies that lie at the heart of the American experiment. There are hypocrisies about the enslavement of millions of Africans, the conquest of lands inhabited by millions of native people, the emergence of slave capitalism, the endurance of the Constitution, the mistreatment of women, and the fraught separation of state and church. On the brink of total environmental catastrophe, debates over these hypocrisies, and many others, are no longer confined to small academic circles and radical critics. Instead, they are spilling into the public square with courageous demonstrations against the powers that be. Police defunding in the wake of the murder of Blacks in the hands of officers who are supposed to serve and protect them is only one demand for changing public policy. Hopefully, this awakening will usher greater changes than those following the 1960s and 1970s civil rights movement. President Trump’s contribution to this awakening has been to bring to the surface white supremacy, systemic racism and misogyny, and the entrenchment of extreme wealth inequality, which have been simmering below the surface and at the margins of public discourse for centuries. If the specter of hypocrisy has no sway on the likes of him, we are all in trouble, as moral boundaries have lost their meaning and human decency has vanished.

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Index

A Actor(s)/acting performance, 101, 129, 131, 132, 157, 164, 197 political stage, x, 45, 60, 81, 103 theater, xiii, 42, 46 Adorno, Theodor, 17, 18, 27 Arendt/Arendtian, Hannah, 7, 14–16, 23, 100–109, 111, 113, 119, 152, 209, 210 Aristotle, 5, 13, 53, 108–110, 206–210, 220, 221 B Balibar, Etienne, 166, 167 Baudrillard/Baudrillardian, Jean, 8, 10, 37 Beam, Christopher, 53, 54 Berger, Peter, 186–188, 190, 192, 200 Black(s) blackness, 176–179 double consciousness, 171, 174, 198

post-blackness, 176–178, 180 slavery/slave(s), 95, 168, 169, 175 Brown, Wendy, x, 18, 19, 92, 97, 120 C Caillois, Roger, 81–87, 97, 133, 152–157, 189, 190, 196–200 Camouflage, ix, xiii, 43, 81, 84, 85, 87–89, 122, 136, 154, 155, 163, 199 Capitalism, 12, 58, 60, 93, 94, 96, 97, 120, 124, 209, 222 surveillance, 93, 96, 98, 101, 121–124, 162 Cassin, Barbara, 7, 10 Chameleon(s)/chameleonism, ix, xiii, 43, 44, 46, 47, 97, 133–137, 143, 183, 192, 194, 198 Cheng, Anne, 196 Cheng, Joyce, 81 Code switching, xiv, 182 Community/communal, vii, x, xii, xiv, xv, 3–5, 8, 13, 16, 19, 20, 22, 29, 31, 34, 52, 57, 59, 64, 66,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. Sassower, The Specter of Hypocrisy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60573-5

233

234

INDEX

68, 72, 76, 94, 95, 97, 98, 100, 106, 107, 109, 110, 129, 132, 148, 151, 153, 158, 162, 163, 165, 182, 194, 198, 200, 201, 203, 207–210 building, xii, 33, 48, 57, 59, 109, 110, 121, 208, 210, 217, 221 organic cohesion (Gramsci), 120, 124, 140, 153, 200 scientific, 4, 16, 19, 20, 22, 31 Compromise, xiii, xiv, 33, 34, 54, 112, 114–116, 118, 127, 173, 179, 180, 197 Conformity, xiv, 62, 64, 78, 94, 115, 133–137, 139, 140, 142, 148, 151, 156, 158, 174, 193, 221 Covenant/social contract, xii, 163, 165, 166, 215, 220 Critique, x, 3, 8, 9, 12, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 73, 75, 105, 109, 121, 124, 128, 183, 220

D Deception(s), ix, xiii, 3, 6, 16, 17, 19, 24, 26, 29, 33, 45–48, 50, 52, 58, 60, 67, 162, 183, 191, 194, 207, 216, 220 self-, 6, 37, 42, 48, 65, 69, 71, 73–75, 80, 83, 129, 149 Democracy, 17, 24, 54, 92, 109–112, 118–120, 151, 200 Derrida, Jacques, xv, 8, 17, 175 Descartes/Cartesian, xiv, 20, 67, 87, 127, 142, 143, 145, 148, 150, 156, 157, 173, 174, 185, 188, 191, 204 Divine/god, xiv, 162, 170, 205, 210, 220 Du Bois, W.E.B., 171–174, 176, 177, 179, 181

E Elster, Jon, 67–74, 78, 120 Evolution/Darwin, 141, 152, 197

F Fanon, Frantz, 169, 171, 173, 174, 176, 179, 180, 221 Foucault, Michel, 6, 12–14, 19, 24, 93, 123 Frankfurt, Harry, 8–10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 22, 26, 32 Freud/Freudian, Sigmund, 7, 11, 12, 72, 75–83, 87, 94, 96, 111, 130, 137–141, 145, 148, 150, 174, 187, 188, 203–206 Friendship/friend(s), xii, xiii, xv, xvi, 13, 34, 59, 99, 102, 108, 109, 123, 148, 151, 154, 162, 165, 207–211, 215, 217, 220, 221 Fuller, Steve, 4, 20, 26

G Galeotti, Anna Elisabetta, 42, 73, 74, 80 Goffman, Erving, 128–132, 137, 140, 168, 180, 200, 202 Grant, Ruth, 33, 34, 112–115, 211

H Habermas/Habermasian, Jürgen, 95, 119, 120, 187 Hall, Stuart, 173–176, 179, 185 Hegel/Hegelian, G.W.F., 10–14, 19, 22, 27, 157, 174, 175, 186, 188, 206 Hypocrisy aspirational, 111, 112, 217, 219 bad Faith, viii, xii, 48, 52, 62, 76, 114

INDEX

charge of, vii, viii, xii, xv, 6, 17, 24, 28, 29, 33–35, 46–50, 52–54, 56, 58–62, 65, 67, 69, 71–76, 79, 81, 88, 89, 94, 99, 103–105, 109, 111–115, 117, 118, 122–125, 128, 130, 132, 136, 137, 142–144, 149–151, 153, 159, 161–164, 166, 170, 181, 183–187, 189, 191, 195, 196, 199–201, 204, 207, 210, 211, 215–222 civilized, xiv, 75, 77, 78 contextualized, 148 cultural, xiv, 12, 14, 54, 75, 77, 78, 80, 82, 94, 138, 150, 162, 221 cynical, xii, 114, 124, 159 degrees of, ix, xiii, 34, 37, 66, 80, 112, 114, 115, 117, 129, 161, 165, 183, 195, 215–217, 221 fashionable, 80 Greek etymology, 44, 45, 61, 81, 89, 132 Hebrew etymology, x, xiii, 44, 45, 83 inevitable, viii, 33, 113, 114, 117, 128 kinds of, ix, xiv, 75, 117, 144, 215, 217, 221 organized, 71, 73, 78, 79, 116, 117, 127, 128, 137 price of, 181 victim, xiv, 62, 66, 166, 193, 206

I Individual/individualism, ix, xiv, 21, 23, 27, 42, 46, 48, 57, 60, 63–65, 67, 68, 74, 76, 77, 83, 86, 89, 92–96, 98–100, 108, 109, 111, 119, 122, 124, 125, 128, 131, 132, 134, 138, 143, 144, 147, 148, 150, 152, 158,

235

168, 185, 186, 188, 189, 191, 195, 199, 201, 218, 220 methodological, 93, 139, 219 Institution(s)/institutional, vii, ix, xi, 14, 17, 20, 22, 23, 26, 54, 55, 58, 65, 79, 93, 95, 109, 111, 119, 121, 133, 155, 162, 163, 166, 175, 187, 199, 204, 211, 221

J Jay, Martin, 108 Jew(s), 45–47, 51, 62, 84, 158, 168, 185, 192, 194, 195

K Kant/Kantian, Immanuel, xiv, 13, 14, 16, 22, 30, 32, 48, 67, 101, 102, 106, 127, 143, 148, 150, 157, 174, 185, 191, 204 Kittay, Eva Feder, 62, 64, 65, 166, 193 Knowledge/knowledge-claims, 3–6, 9–13, 17, 19, 21, 22, 25, 27–32, 37, 80, 93, 96, 122 Krasner, Stephen, 70–74, 78, 116, 117 Kurzban, Robert, 142–150, 152, 153

L Lacan/Lacanian, Jacques, 7, 11, 35, 36, 145, 148, 187 Latour, Bruno, 3, 4, 8, 10, 16, 19, 32 Leader(s)/leadership, x, 3, 15, 24, 48, 51, 52, 54, 57, 58, 60, 64, 67, 70, 73, 80, 111, 116–118, 121, 122, 141, 163, 180, 202, 204, 210, 217 Lie(s), ix, xii, xiii, 1, 7, 12, 15–17, 24, 28, 32–35, 38, 71, 72, 78,

236

INDEX

106–108, 112, 169, 170, 183, 184, 191, 211, 216 blatant, 22, 33, 35, 38 white, 16, 33 Luckmann, Thomas, 186–188, 190, 192, 200 Lyotard, Jean- François, 6, 22, 28 M MacIntyre, Alasdair, 201–203, 208 Mandeville, Bernard, 75, 78–80 Marx/Marxism, Karl, xv, 6, 13, 22, 92, 93, 96, 121, 174 Mask(s)/masking, ix, x, xii, xiii, 24, 29, 31, 37, 42, 44–46, 48, 56, 63, 72, 79–81, 83, 84, 96, 97, 103–106, 108, 113, 132, 133, 154, 155, 158, 164, 183, 190, 201, 202, 218, 219 Masquerade(-ball), 31, 37, 219 McKinnon, Christine, 63–66 Mimicry, 45, 82, 85–88, 154–156, 196 Moliere, 48 Morality/ethics consequentialism, 71 deontology, 63 standards/norms, vii, viii, 30, 42, 64, 68, 76–78, 118, 124, 138, 139, 149, 154, 165, 166, 184, 185, 199, 200, 216 virtue, vii, viii, xv, 206–208 Moral philosophy, viii, ix, 151 Morley, John, 115, 116 Moten, Fred, 176, 177, 179 Mouffe, Chantal, 41, 118–121, 123 N Nietzsche/Nietzschean, Friedrich, viii, 6, 13, 12, 24–27, 29, 30, 32, 37, 43–47, 62, 72, 80, 81, 111, 118,

132, 138, 141, 157–159, 186, 195, 204, 206, 209, 217 herd mentality, 27, 118, 138, 141 O Orwell/Orwellian, George, 1, 2, 4, 7, 15, 23, 107, 112, 118, 124, 192 P Passing, ix, xiv, 143, 157, 168, 169, 185, 189–195, 197–199, 204, 205, 207, 216 Philosophy/philosopher(s), xii, 2, 5–7, 9, 10, 17, 30, 34, 81, 128, 158 Plato, 16, 19, 91, 101, 109–111, 168 Politics/political sphere, x, 12, 14, 33, 34, 41, 53, 54, 73, 100–105, 107–111, 113–115, 117–122, 161, 176, 182, 206, 216 deliberation(s), xiii, 2, 4, 8, 15, 117, 118, 216, 217, 221 Popper/Popperian, Karl, 20, 29, 31, 70, 92, 129, 145 Postmodern/postmodernism/ postmodernist(s), xiii, 3, 8, 9, 28, 177, 178 Power/power-relation(s), viii, 2, 12–14, 22, 24, 25, 45, 50, 68, 93, 94, 97, 100, 102, 105, 110, 112, 118, 140, 145, 158, 167, 170, 178, 189, 199, 215 Private/privacy/private sphere, 49, 94, 97, 101, 104, 121–124 Prudence, viii, 18, 34, 112, 115 and integrity, xii, 34, 112, 187 Psychoanalysis/psychoanalyst(s), 7, 36, 120, 125, 140, 156, 174, 187, 189 Psychology/psychologist(s) drives, 197, 205, 217

INDEX

group, 93, 137, 138, 140–142 instinct of renunciation, 87, 89, 97, 190, 196, 198, 199 instinct(s), 77, 78 love, 5, 140 modular mind, 131, 148, 153, 157 Public sphere/domain, 44 Q Quine, Willard Van Orman, 3, 4, 8, 10, 15, 25, 32, 37 R Rationality/rational, 14–16, 19, 27, 67–69, 89, 95, 100, 102, 110, 113, 116, 128, 142, 143, 147, 150, 154, 165, 166, 187 instrumental, 94, 98–100, 106, 107, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 163, 220 value, 98–100, 107, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 220 Relativism/relativist(s), viii, 2, 4, 13, 19, 31, 34, 204 Religion/religious, viii, xii, xiv, 10, 20, 21, 28, 43, 46, 48, 51, 61, 63, 80, 93, 99, 159, 162–166, 171, 172, 179, 185, 186, 189, 192, 193, 203–206, 215, 220 Rhetoric/rhetorician(s), 6, 53, 113, 118 persuasion (art of), xiii, 27, 29, 34, 113, 118, 120 Rorty, Richard, 203–207, 210 Rosow/Rosowian, Irving, 128, 132–137, 140, 148, 151, 158, 187, 189, 198, 200 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 13, 33, 78, 113 Runciman, David, 53, 79, 114, 115, 133

237

S Science/scientific evidence, xi, 2, 8, 16, 19–21, 26, 28, 58, 69, 73, 82, 103, 109, 147, 186, 196, 220 legitimacy/legitimation, 4, 10, 16, 18–20, 23, 71, 111, 145, 166, 187, 211, 219 method, 7, 13, 22, 28, 145, 156 Shklar, Judith, 61–63, 65, 110, 111, 113 Silvermint, Daniel, 192–195, 197–199, 205, 210 Skepticism/skeptic(s), 4, 19, 20, 24, 26, 32, 159 Society, 7, 13, 18, 62, 71, 75, 77, 83, 97, 98, 100, 103, 106, 132, 137, 169, 188, 202, 203, 215 social interaction(s)/relation(s), 98–102, 107, 125, 128, 130, 134, 138, 149, 151, 152, 186, 188, 189 sociality, xiv, xv, 48, 80, 108, 151, 156, 201, 221 Socrates, 5–7, 10, 12–14, 18, 29, 30, 142, 165 Soifer, Eldon, 65, 66, 112, 209 Solidarity, xv, 48, 53, 100, 106, 120, 124, 182, 193, 196, 203–206, 210, 217, 220 Sophistry/sophist(s), xii, 2, 5–7, 9, 10, 14, 24, 29, 30, 34, 172 Statman, Daniel, 71–74 Survival/survivor(s), xiii, xiv, 42, 48, 54, 62, 85, 88, 97, 101, 136, 143, 145, 146, 148, 150, 152, 153, 155, 157, 163, 166, 170, 189–191, 195, 196 Szabados, Bela, 65, 66, 112, 209 T Touré, 176–181, 190, 195

238

INDEX

Transcendent/transcendental, viii, 8, 18, 19, 30, 111, 205 Trump/Trumpian age, vii, ix–xii, xv, 2, 4, 6, 15, 16, 21, 24, 26–28, 32, 35, 37, 48, 55–57, 62, 106, 120, 178, 199, 211, 215, 221 Trust/trustworthy, xv, 23, 63, 102, 106, 108–110, 152, 163, 165, 207, 210, 216, 217, 220 Truth/truth telling contextualized, 12, 33 degrees of, xii, 4, 29, 33–37, 217 perspectival, 30–32 post, ix, xii, 2–4, 6, 14, 23, 24, 26, 28, 32, 37, 41, 49, 51, 65, 109, 115 search for, 7, 11, 13, 17, 26, 28, 29, 37

truth-value, 4, 8, 10, 19, 29, 37, 145

V Violence, 83, 87, 100, 111, 123, 124, 140, 166, 167

W Weber/Weberian, Max, 98–102, 106–109, 111, 113, 116, 123, 128, 133, 134, 137, 148, 166, 187, 200, 202, 203, 220

Z Zuboff, Shoshana, 93, 121–124