The Cult of Virtue - Part Four

Humza Yousaf, (1985 - ), present Cabinet Secretary for Justice (now there’s an ironic title) for the Scottish National (Socialist?) Party, overseer of Scotland’s new hate crime bill, would very much like to criminalise conversations that have taken place in private homes were they purportedly stirring up hatred against any group with what are considered to be protected characteristics; that is to say, race, sexual orientation, religion.  ‘If you invite ten mates round and it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that you intentionally stirred up hatred against Jews’, said Scotland’s first ever Muslim cabinet minister, ‘why should this not be prosecuted? It would if you did so down the pub but not in your house?’ How such prosecutions for letting slip some hateful comment in your own home are to be followed through is unclear; presumably some kind of smart technology home surveillance devices to keep an eye on you lest you make some off-colour remark, if I may use the expression; or some kind of Ministerium für Staatssicherheit perhaps, a State Security Service, otherwise known as the Stasi, to encourage family members to become informants, to report to the authorities what has been said by their own father, or mother, or brother or sister, or maybe just visiting friends, or if you are the visitor in someone else's home then you can be the one to do your duty; and all in the name of promoting tolerance and social cohesion.

It would therefore be somewhat indiscreet for those living in Scotland to adhere to any personal opinions or judgements they may hold that run counter to the ideology of the party, whatsoever that might be; for at the cost of nothing to themselves major corporations and the big tech giants quite happily virtue signal their devotion to the cause of Black Lives Matter (now I believe called the Black Liberation Movement, liberation from what?) and to LGBT rights; but are silent on the matter, for instance, of companies expecting their staff to work in slave camp conditions. The cause one espouses is a mark of one’s social and political standing; employ a term such as 'white privilege', advocate for open borders notwithstanding it would mean one no longer had a country, and thereby make it known that you belong to a social and political elite. When actress and toff Emma Thompson, (1959 -) described the UK as ‘a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island’ we know it wasn’t the food and the weather she was disparaging, although there is nothing there to be construed as hate speech of course; (upon moving to Venice having had enough of this grey old island she is now living in Scotland apparently, where she will no doubt find it easy enough to tow the party line).

The Scottish law is of course an assault upon free speech; Yousaf is desirous for the rules being applicable to theatre directors and to journalists also; and Christians have voiced their concern that as a consequence of the law the Bible itself could become vulnerable to charges of containing material likely to cause offense; and indeed one need not look too far into it to find the possible offending verses inciting hatred towards the LGBT community for instance: 

‘The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God’.

- Deuteronomy 22:5

Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?

- 1 Corinthians 11:14

But of course the proposed law, threatening one's liberty to judge or discuss the faults as one finds them of religion, will raise expectations for the protection of religious sensibilities; in effect it will serve as a kind of blasphemy law. One wonders what the leading lights of the Scottish Enlightenment would make of Scotland today; that period in the 18th and early 19th century that witnessed a burgeoning of intellectual and scientific achievements, that promoted a close study and discussion of new ideas, and a rationalistic and humanistic outlook; that asserted the importance of human reason and a rejection of any authority that could not be justified by reason; that placed emphasis upon the empirical method and adopting the principle values of advancement, in philosophy for instance, and of virtue, (I shall get to that shortly), and of practical advantages for society as a whole as well as for the individual. Scottish achievements were held in high esteem outside of the country, its ideas and attitudes spread far and wide, European and American students in particular came to its shores to study there.

And while Yousaf sets about transforming Scotland into an totalitarian state on the North Korean model, the David Hume Tower at Edinburgh University, named after one of the most important and influential Scottish Enlightenment figures and a great philosopher, is to be renamed on account of the fact that great philosopher he might have been he nonetheless failed to foresee what the moral climate would be 250 years into the future. The Yousaf Tower would perhaps suit as a new name; after the great social reformer and liberator who struggles tirelessly to lift the Scots from out of their bigotry, their intolerance and backwardness, their hate.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, 'High Street, Edinburgh', c. 1818

David Hume, (1711 - 1776), it so happens, wrote extensively upon morality; what morality is primarily concerned to evaluate, he argued, is the quality of one's mind regarded as a character trait, which is to say, an action's appraisal is itself drawn from an appraisal of an inner quality putatively having given rise to that action; and a typical moral assessment is one whereby some trait, a particular person’s wanton idleness, or their generosity, and so on, is either a vice or a virtue; a character trait understood here as a psychological disposition comprising an inclination towards feeling a certain sentiment or a congeries of sentiments, such a feeling predisposing its holder to action; and a moral judgement is arrived at through a feeling of approval or disapproval after reflecting upon a person's trait in a disinterested way and from a common perspective; that is, moral approval or otherwise derives from sentiment or feeling; a favourable sentiment is elicited upon observing a person’s disposition to having certain motivating sentiments; it is a sentiment itself directed toward sentiments, or the dispositions to have sentiments, sentiments all the way down.

Hume stresses that ‘our sense of every kind of virtue is not natural; but … there are some virtues, that produce pleasure and approbation by means of an artifice or contrivance, which arises from the circumstances and necessities of mankind’. That is, virtues are either natural, our endorsement of them does not depend upon any cultural concoctions or co-operatively generated social mores and rules, or they are artificial, and depend for their existence as character traits and for their ethical worthiness upon the presence of conventional rules for the common good, whatever that may be. Natural virtues are of course more pure and exalted as well as more entire in themselves forms of human sentiments that we would anticipate discovering even in those who did not belong to a society, rather cooperating merely within limited familial collectives; artificial virtues are the traits required for successful impersonal cooperation; whereas our natural sentiments are too partial to give rise to these in the absence of some kind of mediation.

So how do we distinguish between artificial and natural virtues? For Hume material honesty, faithfulness to promises and contracts, these are not natural but artificial virtues. Upon what basis? Well, the arguments run like this: paradoxes would emerge were we to suppose the given character trait existed and gained our approval in the absence of some assistance from any cooperative social arrangement; furthermore one can explain how relevant conventions come to be while refuting alternative genealogical narratives; the social construction of the other artificial virtues and the social good they serve are open to explanation. As for natural virtues, these include 'a hearty pride, or self-esteem, if well-concealed and well-founded'; and greatness of mind, goodness or benevolence, the latter embracing generosity, gratitude, friendship, and so on, and natural capacities like wit and prudence, despite not usually being considered as moral virtues though for Hume they are.

As for the artificial virtues these also include allegiance to one’s government and conformity to the laws of nations, but perhaps he would have had a rethink there were he living in Scotland today; and chastity, refraining from non-marital sex ,and modesty, all of which are more important for women and girls than for men and boys. Why so? Because the virtue of chastity, together with the vice of adultery, would not have occurred to us were it not for their usefulness in promoting the peace and harmony for all concerned, and in virtue of the relatively extensive infancy of human being that stands in need of a combination of parents and the security of a comparatively stable home environment to guarantee that the child has the opportunity to grow and develop in a normal and healthy manner; and the virtue of chastity is more important for women than for men on account of childbearing; nonetheless those rules instituted for the purpose of guaranteeing the interests of children continue to be recognized even once the period for which they were originally intended has come to an end; hence adultery, I am sorry to have to inform you, is forbidden not just before the period of childbearing is over, but after it too.

Hume's insistence upon the virtue of chastity as being more important for women more than for men is enough to alert us to what is wrong with this kind of moral reasoning; the moral reasoner it seems always ends up with conclusions about what is morally right or wrong in line with what he already approves or disapproves of; plus, it skims over what is really a fundamental problem in ethics, perhaps I should have brought this up in the first part of this series; namely, the human condition is ambiguous, it involves a tragic ambiguity as Simone de Beauvoir, (1908 - 1986), puts it in the The Ethics of Ambiguity, though there is no real need to be quite so dramatic about it, it is just how it is. What a person is up to is open to more than one interpretation, or it can be described in many different ways. It is all very well for Immanuel Kant, (1724 - 1804), to invoke his three practical maxims for moral behaviour in his assessment of a person's act:

1. Act only on that principle which thou canst at the same time will to become a universal law.
2. Act so as to treat humanity whether in the own person or in that of any other, always as an end, and never as a means.
3. Act as a member of a kingdom of ends.

And yet the ways in which people talk about themselves and their motivations are ambiguous, we have the capacity for multiple interpretations; as de Beauvoir points out we are in the world but we are in addition something that discloses and understands the world, so how can we evaluate actions if actions are ambiguous, or can be described in many different ways? How could Kant's three practical maxims possibly assist in this? It is somewhat different for the behaviour of robots; given that they are programmed there is no ambiguity there, and so along similar lines to Kant's three practical maxims Isaac Asimov, (1920 - 1992), can formulate his three laws of robotics for his regulation of robotic behaviour:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

One has only to ensure that no errors slip into the programming, as happened with the robot R-11 in John Sladek's, (1937 - 2000), story Broot Force by Iclick As-i-move, in which the hapless robot kills a human being and is then asked about it:

'Tell me, R-11, how was it you were to kill Dawson, when the First Law specifically says: 'A robot must not injure a human being...'

'Injure? said the shiny metal fellow, slapping its own head dramatically. 'Good Grief, I thought the Law read: 'A robot must not *inure* a human being...'

'Don’t let yourself forget how many doctors have died, after furrowing their brows over how many deathbeds', said Marcus Aurelius, (121 - 180). 'How many astrologers, after pompous forecasts about others’ ends. How many philosophers, after endless disquisitions on death and immortality. How many warriors, after inflicting thousands of casualties themselves. How many tyrants, after abusing the power of life and death atrociously, as if they were themselves immortal'.

Ay there's the rub, one of the explanations de Beauvoir offers for the ways in which human experience is ambiguous is that people in good faith pursue their goals even though they know they will die; everyone feels like a subject with a will in the world, but experiences everyone else as an object, and yet also knows that others also see them as an object; and as much as people feel empowered to act in the world, they also recognize that the world is infinitely greater than they are and can easily overwhelm them; and yet philosophers will insist on merely resolving one half or the other of this ambiguity; for instance, maintaining that people are immortal, or only their intentions are of significance, and so on; but no matter how much people try to impose their will upon the world and to pursue their aims and objectives, they will unavoidably come to grief; this is why ethics is needed in the first place, to give ourselves something to strive for; morality, far from being meaningless and subjective within the existentialist perspective, is on the contrary subjective and yet meaningful in virtue of the very fact that all meaning is subjective.

A particularly egregious instance of a philosopher ignoring or more likely not understanding the ambiguity of the human condition and its significance in ethical philosophy is Timothy Hsiao, (1993- ), who I wouldn't normally give the time of day were his philosophy not such a prime example of how moral reasoning can go so hideously wrong when a moral theory, in his case classical natural law theory (physical laws of nature exist, and so do universal moral laws, the latter disclosing themselves to us upon close examination of the world and of the nature of humans) is adopted (quite arbitrarily) and applied to human behaviour in assessing its moral correctness or otherwise. Hsiao is a member of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, so we know his philosophy is of the having one's cake and eating it too kind; for we know he really favours Divine command theory, whereby an action's status as morally good is equivalent to whether or not it is commanded by God; what is moral is determined by God's commands and that for a person to be moral he or she is to follow God's commands. Which serves to remind us how fortunate that not only is objectivity not required in morality but it is a good thing that there are no objective moral values; for if they derive their objectivity from God (even though God is a subject) then whatever God says is morally correct is so in virtue of God saying that it is; and if God were to proclaim that sacrificing one's first born was a moral act, and if I wished to be a moral person, which I do, then I would have no choice other than to get the sacrificial gear together as I await my first born even though the very thought of doing such a thing fills me with horror.

Hsiao's reasoning does not, of course, lead him conclude that some particular thing is morally right though the very thought of it makes him uncomfortable, on the contrary, the moral universe reflects his own (Christian) moral outlook just perfectly. He selects classical natural law theory among other possible ethical theories, even though it is at odds with Divine command theory but he presumably hopes no one notices as he never brings Divine command theory into the conversation, so he can then draw upon it to defend what he calls a broadly libertarian-conservative approach to controversial moral issues, but one need only look at the titles of his articles to see that the theory merely serves to justify moral precepts as set out in the Bible, included those that Christians generally prefer to ignore or gloss over given how they conflict, to say the least, with our moral intuitions: A Moral Defense of Trophy Hunting, In Defense of Spanking, The Case for Marijuana Prohibition, Industrial Farming is Not Cruel to Animals, Against Moderate Gun Control, In Defense of Eating Meat, Against Gun Bans and Restrictive Licensing, The Moral Right to Keep and Bear Firearms on Campus, A Defense of the Perverted Faculty Argument Against Homosexual Sex.

The perverted faculty argument: morality has to be grounded upon human flourishing (why so? Is it not rather grounded upon God's commands?); what counts as human flourishing depends upon human nature and, in particular, upon the biological functions of our natural faculties; ergo the only moral use of the sexual faculty is in its non-contracepted heterosexual use between married spouses; any other use of the faculty is contrary to its purpose and is thus perverted, that is, immoral (quite a leap in reasoning there). Aside from the question-begging premises and the unsophisticated scientific grounding, let us put the argument to the test in other matters besides sex. The Stoic philosophers taught that we attain happiness by living according to nature; and since nature endows the human male with a beard, and the woman not (well, not usually), the Stoics took the beard as nature’s signal of maleness and therefore shaving was something they ruled out. Chrysippus (c. 279 - 206) recounts that Diogenes the Cynic, (412 or 404 BC - 323 BC), challenged a clean shaven man by asking of him, 'surely you don’t bring a charge against nature for making you a man and not a woman?' So shaving is an immoral act, by the perverted faculty argument. But I can console myself with the thought that my never using anti-perspirants is very ethical of me; for they are against nature in virtue of their blocking the scent glands from carrying out their function, whatsoever that function may be from a physiological point of view; mayhap to attract a mate, but it is easy enough to slip into teleological explanations of nature which have supposedly been abandoned with the onset of evolutionary theory.

As de Beauvoir explains, we are in the world, but we are also something that discloses the world, and something that does what it can to understand the world.

Illustration from George Wither’s 'A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne: Quickened with Metrical Illustrations, both Moral and Divine; and disposed into Lotteries, that Instruction and Good Counsel, may be furthered by an Honest and Pleasant Recreation', 1635. An allegorical plate, originally by Crispin van Passe, the message being, if you sin, this is what will happen to you ... but it is not all easy to break down and interpret what is represented there, and hence to discern what it is that will happen to us. And so we must interpret it and give it our own meaning.

The Humean notion of virtue may be close to what people have in mind when talking of virtue signalling but Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s, (1770 - 1831), notion is more deontological; the focus is upon duty, what one ought to do; he presents virtue (Tugend) and what he calls the way of the world (Weltlauf, also the course of the world, or world history) in terms of law and universality that are locked in a struggle against each other; law is the essential moment, whereas individuality to be nullified; it is an analysis of virtue that discloses the assertion of virtue signalling to be even more apposite than if it were understood in Humean terms; showing as it does how contemporary theories of virtue generate mere emptiness and boredom, being devoid of real content other than pompous rhetoric, endeavouring to instil a pretentious sense of moral excellence in those that subscribe to them with what are in effect meaningless words.  

Hegel’s discussion of virtue follows on from his description of the myriad groupings of individuality and universality that are manifested in two shapes of practical reason that are prior to the third shape, which is virtue; the sequence explains why a virtuous consciousness emerges. These two are first pleasure and necessity, whereby the pure individuality of self-consciousness is placed in proximity against the empty universality of fate and an ill-disposed and unsympathetic society; and second the law of the heart and the frenzy of self-conceit, the attempted realization of which unifies individuality and universality, albeit as contraries, whereby an emancipator acting spontaneously concretizes their immediate unity, with society all the while representing their opposition. The heart signifies, well, what exactly? (see the illustration above from the George Withers' collection of emblems) ... the individual’s intention of realizing a law of spontaneity that is nonetheless valid for everyone, but which unhappily leads to a chaos of good intentions, the road to Hell as we know being paved with such; which is to say, to a whole or to a universal that dispossesses individuals of their authority.

Out of which dialectic emerges the third shape of practical reason, one that involves an even more complex relation between the two moments of individuality and universality, whereby both are at the same time 'the unity and antithesis of these moments, or are each a movement of law and individuality towards one another, but a movement of opposition'. However, in this movement towards one another it is individuality that announces the need to be overcome and transcended (sublated in Hegelian jargon); overcome from the side of consciousness, and from the side of the social world with which it is in confrontation. Virtue involves the individual’s mastering and putting under control his or her drives and wishes in order to act for the sake of the universal. The independence of history, that is to say, the way of the world, from intentions of the individual, and which previous shapes of consciousness had understood as a kind of reversal of individual intentions, is now self-willed; for one ought to realize the universal rationality of the course the world actually takes, rather than the false intentions and deeds of individuals: 'this sublation [of individuality], however, only makes room for the in-itself of the way of the world to enter into existence in and for itself'.

A virtuous individual as an agent of progress carries out no less than the plan of history itself; what is in a state of inversion here, what gets things exactly backwards, is, in fact, the idea that the way of the world consists solely in a play of individual intentions and deeds. Virtue must needs struggle against such an erroneous conception; a struggle that Hegel delineates through calling upon ironic metaphors of swashbuckling clashes between knights of virtue and knights of vice.

'Since this universal is equally at the disposal of the virtuous consciousness and the 'way of the world', it is not apparent whether virtue thus armed will conquer vice. The weapons are the same; they are these capacities and powers. Virtue has, it is true, held in reserve its belief in the original unity of its own purpose and the essential nature of the 'way of the world'. a reserve that is intended to fall on the enemy from the rear during the fight, and in principle to achieve that aim. Asa matter of fact, therefore, the knight of virtue's own part in the fighting is, strictly speaking, a sham-fight which he cannot take seriously - because he knows that his true strength lies in the fact that the good exists absolutely in its own right, i.e., brings itself to fulfilment - a sham fight which he also dare not allow to become serious'.

Does this not put you in mind of Extinction Rebellion? Virtue cultists par excellence, in their own minds engaging in civil disobedience ostensibly to compel governments to take action to offset points of no return in the climate system, the loss of biodiversity, and the danger of social and ecological collapse; and yet fighting their sham battles; for instance, taking up arms against grass because it is not diverse enough:

Or the sham battle of choosing Remembrance Sunday, a time to remember those that sacrificed their lives in a real and terrible war to defeat evil, but within the outlook of Extinction Rebellion a mere petty ritual, to drape the cenotaph with a meaningless slogan 'climate change means war', a pointless caper led by, it subsequently transpires, a drug dealer with a conviction for domestic violence.

The fight between virtue and vice becomes a mock combat; for virtue aims directly at that which the way of the world achieves indirectly; that is to say, the aim of virtue is a poor abstraction from what is achieved in fact by the way of the world; and from the perspective of virtue there are gifts and powers of which there may well be a right and noble use but which are abused and perverted by the way of the world; and yet such gifts and powers are in effect the substantive content to which virtue and vice add an insubstantial nuance of difference; and one cannot transform the vicious into the virtuous without damaging such content. However, what is really at issue is a contemporary conflict between revolutionaries and reactionaries, although which is which is hard to say in our own times; perhaps from previous times we may think of Maximilien Robespierre, (1758 - 1794), obsessed with a vision of an ideal republic, a rational order, indifferent to the human cost of bringing it about; for with regard to the respective programs of the two antagonists virtue tussles for the aforementioned gifts and powers, talents and skills, of individuals that necessarily have to be realized within a rational order. 

Paolo Veronese, 'Youth between Virtue and Vice', between 1580 and 1582

One is tempted to suppose Hegel to be some kind of prophet who foretold of the coming of Humza Yousaf when he characterises this program of virtue as the 'pompous talk about doing what is best for humanity, about the oppression of humanity, about making sacrifices for the sake of the good, and the misuse of gifts'; he laments somewhat sardonically about the 'empty, ineffectual words' that 'lift up the heart but leave reason unsatisfied, which edify, but raise no edifice ... a puffing-up which inflates him with a sense of importance in his own eyes and in the eyes of others, whereas he is, in fact, just inflated with his own conceit'. Ah the caved in, edifying moral applications of that program; applications assuming the content of this program to be already familiar from the culture of our age and thereby feeing free to substitute that content with a flurry of phrases or with an appeal to the heart:

'The emptiness of this rhetoric which denounces the 'way of the word' would be at once revealed if the meaning of its fine phrases had to be stated. These, therefore, are assumed to be something the meaning of which is familiar. The request to say what this familiar meaning is would be met either by a fresh flood of phrases or by an appeal to the heart, which inwardly says what they mean - which amounts to admitting that it is in fact unable to say what the meaning is. The fatuousness of this rhetoric seems ... in an unconscious way to have come to be a certainty for the culture of our time, since all interest in the whole mass of such rhetoric, and the way it is used to boost one's ego, has vanished - the loss of interest which is expressed in the fact that it produces only a feeling of boredom'.

As for the other side that views the way of the world as an unordered play of individual deeds, this opposes such an account of virtue by pointing out just how self-serving individuals are; but Hegel has this point of view in his sights also, for its 'shallow cunning, as also its fine-spun explanations which know how to demonstrate the presence of self-interest in every action - all these have vanished, just as the purpose of virtue that exists only in itself, along with its rhetoric, have vanished'. Hegel may have in mind the likes of Adam Smith, (1723- 1790), and his 'invisible hand' metaphor to characterise the mechanisms by which beneficial social and economic outcomes may arise from the accumulated self-interested actions of individuals, none of whom intends to bring about such an outcome; a phenomenon disregarded by defenders of egoism and sceptics of virtue such as Bernard Mandeville, (1670 - 1733), author of Fable of the Bees, (see The Cult of Virtue - Part One); and yet ignore it such advocates of vice as much as they may the common good nonetheless is promoted through private vices, also known as public virtues; and so clearly Hegel's target is those who seek to trivialize theories of self-interest.

Illustration from George Wither’s 'A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne: Quickened with Metrical Illustrations, both Moral and Divine; and disposed into Lotteries, that Instruction and Good Counsel, may be furthered by an Honest and Pleasant Recreation', 1635.

Where does it all end? Will we ever see the back of the likes of Humza Yousaf once and for all? The struggle between virtue and vice thus outlined will perhaps at the surface level come to an end with a manifestly apparent triumph for the champion of self-interest and for the indifference of the way of the world with regard to rational intentions; but then we need to recall the master/slave dialect that Hegel describes in the Phenomenology; for the views of the winner in the dialectical struggle are not in the end proven to be right, and furthermore the successive steps of this experience give expression to problems that find their way into many so-called progressive, although they are really regressive, movements; Extinction Rebellion for instance. For neither the content of historical reason, nor the future rational state of society, nor the form of its realization, are in fact independent of the principle of individuality; whereas reason, the universal, depends upon individual deeds in virtue of the fact that the realization of a society in which all talents and gifts can be developed can look very different depending upon one’s individual interpretation; for good ends can be put to an improper use in the creation of a reality that leads towards the annihilation of individuality:

'The good or the universal ... as it comes to view there, is what are called gifts, capacities, powers. It is a mode of the spiritual, in which it is represented as a universal, which requires the spirit of individuality to give it life and movement, and in this principle has an actual existence. The universal is put to good use by the principle of individuality, in so far as this principle lives in the virtuous consciousness, but is misused in so far as it clings to the 'way of the world' - a passive instrument which, controlled by a free individuality which is indifferent to the use which it makes of it, can also be misused for the production of an actual existence which destroys it: a lifeless material lacking an independence of its own, which can be formed this way or that, or even to its own ruin'.

Indeed, even a severely constraining and strict benevolent dictatorship can be instituted for the cause of facilitating individual development; and of course the good intentions and selflessness of virtuous revolutionaries by no means grants any assurance of what is good in itself ever being realized; though the revolutionary may respond by merely invoking the logic of history and of progress; and yet the conception of virtue contains a contradiction between the power and the powerlessness of historical reason, given that it is supposedly independent of individuals’ deeds and yet would remain unreal without either its executors or the struggle against reactionaries. But such a struggle transmutes into a kind of self-deceiving punching at shadows in virtue of the fact that what is being fought for would realize itself either way. I do believe Hegel anticipated Karl Marx, (1818 - 1883), and historical materialists; the latter having to confront an especially glaring problem with their theory, namely, that historical tendencies cannot in actuality be fought for; that is to say, the defenders of historical materialism aim, on the one hand, to bring about progress through revolutionary activities while, on the other hand, they want to let the contradictions of history develop and radicalize themselves; that is, the real strength of a revolution rests in the 'original unity of its own purpose and the essential nature of the 'way of the world'', which is to say, it rests in the fact that 'the good exists absolutely in its own right, i.e. brings itself to fulfilment'.

Taking on board his own metaphor of the one to one duelling, Hegel understands this as 'the ambush from which the intrinsically good is to attack the 'way of the world' (i.e. the reactionary party) cunningly, from the rear, this is essentially a vain hope'. See my articles The Cunning of Reason, parts 1 - 4, for a discussion of how the progress of history is effected through the deeds of individuals who intended to accomplish something very different.

K?the Kollwitz, 'The People' ('Das Volk]) from 'War' ('Krieg'), 1922

It is not possible that whatever is in itself good and necessary in the course of history or the 'way of the world' may be disconnected from the individual deeds with which it is comprised, for even the activities of self-serving individuals constitute the development of skills and talents; and furthermore. they are themselves a component in the necessary realization of the good in itself; this universal, this good, reason in history, realizes itself through the deeds of individuals; and 'as the in-itself of the 'way of the world' is inextricably interwoven in every manifestation of the 'way of the world'', it must not be resisted: 'Wherever virtue comes to grips with 'the way of the world', it always hits upon places which are the actual existence of the good itself'. And at this juncture the metaphorical fight takes on nearly unrealistic chimerical characteristics: virtue is not allowed to engage in combat, but must 'keep his sword bright' and 'preserve' the weapons 'of the enemy and protect them against its own attack'. Virtue has thus lapsed into a contradiction, it must struggle against something that is, as it happens, the actualization of the good; though virtue’s contrasting counterpart is to begin with free from this contradiction, for the latter’s principle is individuality liberated from morality, for which 'nothing is established or absolutely sacred'. This position can therefore engage in combat and change things without contradiction, and in this it has the course of the world as an ally; for it does not conceive of the world’s course as something concealed, but rather as the play of conscious individual's 'alert, self-assured consciousness'.

So far the consequence has been the victory of the 'way of the world' and of the reactionary antagonist over virtue: 'The 'way of the world' was supposed to be the perversion of the good because it had individuality for its principle; only individuality is the principle of the real world'. The 'way of the world' becomes actual through individual deeds and its reason is only the consciousness that individuals have of it; for the realization of the good is nothing less than the consciousness that individuals manage to arrive at concerning historical events. The 'way of the world' does 'pervert the Unchangeable, but it perverts it in fact from the nothing of abstraction into the being of reality'; and the worldview of the virtuous activists and of the do-gooders is not something real but only the 'creation of distinctions that are no distinctions'; a worldview which is, as noted previously, pompous talk without any clear content, and which Hegel likes to contrast with the substantial concept of virtue in the ancient world:

'Virtue in the ancient world had its own definite sure meaning, for it had in the spiritual substance of the nation a foundation full of meaning , and for its purpose an actual good already in existence. Consequently, too, it was not directed against the actual world as against something genuinely perverted, and against a 'way of the world''.

The representation of a good that cannot articulate itself in rights, or institutions, or material social objecctives, is simply vacuous and something that the virtuous knight 'drops like a discarded cloak'. The contention that individuality must be given up for the sake of the universal good as a foe now unrealized idea is untenable, given that 'individuality is precisely the actualizing of what exists only in principle'. Individuality is therefore not empty and insignifican but the realization of a universal of shared norms and customs of a common good that is manifested and made conscious in deeds; which does however suggest that 'what stood opposed to the consciousness of what existed [only] in principle, has in fact likewise been conquered and has vanished'. Since this experience not only demonstrates the idealized universal or good to be untenable but in addition discloses individuals to be the executors of actual universal orders, and it refutes the hypothesis that the 'way of the world' is indifferent to the disarray of individuals pursuing their own self-interest. Virtuous revolutionaries sacrifice themselves in the name of an abstract idea supposedly possessing the power to govern history, and on the other hand the defenders of the present state of affairs are so blinded by individual freedom that they no longer recognize the social patterns and universal goals that realize themselves, part consciously, part unconsciously, behind the backs of individuals. And so the universal, or the rationality of history, realizes itself in and through the actions of individuals; and the content of the universal, the rational, in history itself is constituted by the talents and skills of individuals, which are open to development. Rational self-consciousness may thereby begin anew and occupy itself with itself and not with another; because individuality is in its own self actuality, the material of its efficacy and the objective of its action rests in the action itself and the element in which individuality manifests its form has the significance of a pure assuming of this shape, the way in which in and of itself consciousness wishes to present itself.

Having discussed sham or metaphorical battles I end with a very real one and return to where I began and the disagreeable subject of Humza Yousaf. The 'way of the world' or the course of history is in many ways an evolutionary process and once a single crucial and far-reaching determination has been carried through it generates a sequence of further developments that could be viewed as individual determinations in their own right but are on the contrary very much derivative in their nature following on as they do from the initial determination; and the unavoidable consequence of an idea playing itself out for either good or bad is exemplified through the pernicious notion of hate speech given that freedom of expression lacks any a proper grounding in law that would grant it its due primacy over other legislation in this country; the British constitution such as it is is apparently thought of as some kind of gentleman's agreement and a gentleman Yousaf is not. And mock virtue signalling as we may, and as we should, what is being signalled, a factitious virtue, frequently has at its heart a very real vice. J. S. Mill, (1806 - 1873), in On Liberty, forwards the view that those who would take away our right to freely express ourselves are the moral equivalent of purse snatchers; as indeed they are, Yousaf is helping himself to something that doesn't belong to him.

The battle for the right to freedom of expression is, however, hindered by both those on the political right as well as on the left being supportive of censorship in the name of virtue and in opposition to perceived degeneracy; the Tory party puritans for instance would like control over what the British public can or cannot watch as part of their pornographical viewing habits. You will have noticed among the articles of Timothy Hsiao that I listed above is A Defense of Spanking. I have not read it but I would assume were he to cover the issue with the depth it deserves he has to address spanking as a sexual act. Does he approve of that I wonder? Certain Tory politicians certainly don't and and thus sought to legislate for what UK citizens no longer being allowed to view it in the privacy of their own homes, should that be their thing:

There can never be a permanent resolution of this issue for so long as those claiming to be opposed to Yousaf are so only concerning the matter to which his proposed laws apply; as longs as there is a cultural acceptance of censorship and the advocacy for it in UK politics prevails there is a rear entrance for hideously badly thought through proposals like Yousaf's, stemming as they do from a long tradition of virtuous ones who care about what you do in the privacy of your own homes; if there are laws appertaining to what we can or cannot watch it is no surprise once some fanatical enthusiast for a cause is drawing up laws about what adults may or may not say in the privacy of their own homes and the State is dictating to you what you are allowed to express and punishing you if you fail to live up to what is required from its arbitrary regulations. Such a tradition that there are some things that are just too depraved to be spoken needs to be crushed; one must let go of one's desires to curb others sinfulness and allow them to press our good Lady Liberty to their bosoms; for unclean, smutty and dangerous she might well be but she is also our greatest ally when the likes of Yousaf come a-knocking; our only hope in what has been for too long an ongoing contest of strength. Time to polish our swords. Let the battle commence.

THE END

'Innocence entre Vertue et Vice', Marie-Guillemine Benoist, 1790