J Value Inquiry (2010) 44:477–487 DOI 10.1007/s10790-010-9247-8
Self-Righteousness as a Moral Problem Jeanette Bicknell
Published online: 24 November 2010 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
We all know of persons whose words and actions we would at least sometimes want to describe as self-righteous. Indeed one striking feature of self-righteousness is its prevalence. It can be found across economic classes and political and social spectra. We can see it in religious believers of many different creeds, in humanists and atheists, in smokers and non-smokers, in vegetarians and omnivores, and on both the political left and the right. In fact people who have little else in common may share a tendency to self-righteous behavior. Yet it has no defenders, in the sense that no individuals would like to hear themselves or their friends described as selfrighteous. It is difficult to imagine the non-sarcastic avowal of claims such as, ‘‘Spending time with Bob is enjoyable, since he is really self-righteous’’ or ‘‘Jane would make a great colleague because she is so self-righteous.’’ The designation ‘‘self-righteous’’ is a condemnation, if not an outright insult. This is paradoxical, as righteousness or justice is an aspect, perhaps the very foundation, of selfrighteousness. Self-righteousness consists in either exaggerated or inappropriate claims of moral injury or personal moral development, or excessive or misplaced public moral pronouncements, which may be true or false. In the first case, the aptness of the charge of being self-righteous, and so a moral assessment of the actions or speech which are the target of the charge, rests on the acceptance or rejection of antecedent moral claims. Yet in the second case the resolution of the moral issue is different. Even when we are in the right, and know that we are clearly in the right, there is good reason to refrain from the kind of behavior that warrants a charge of selfrighteousness.
J. Bicknell (&) Toronto, Canada e-mail:
[email protected]
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Very little philosophical analysis has been done directly on self-righteousness and related moral attitudes and emotions.1 The concept is traditionally more at home in theology, where it is contrasted with righteousness in God and is seen as the enemy of repentance.2 However self-righteousness connects to a cluster of related and different issues, some of which have been the subject of philosophical analysis. First, self-righteousness can be analyzed as part of an account of our moral attitudes to others. Self-righteousness can be found together with emotions, whether selfdirected like pride, or other-directed, including anger, indignation, contempt, disgust, resentment, and schadenfreude. Presumably self-righteous attitudes and such emotions reinforce one another, and sorting out just how the emotion influences the attitude or is part and parcel of it would be difficult and might not help us with moral questions. There is a long philosophical tradition, from Aristotle through P.F. Strawson, that some of these emotions can be part of appropriate moral life and discourse. Feelings of indignation are suitable responses to some injustices, and some actions warrant moral disgust. Second, an account of self-righteousness might be situated within a virtue ethics perspective that would have us consider it together with related character traits. This could take the form of a discussion of valued character traits which are presumably at odds with self-righteousness, such as integrity and decency.3 Alternatively, self-righteousness might be considered together with the vice of hypocrisy, as these two character traits are sometimes seen to co-exist.4 Some of the philosophical literature on virtues and vices thus brushes against self-righteousness, without addressing it directly. Finally, self-righteous behavior raises a host of issues concerning social relations and our dealings with others. Thomas Nagel has forcefully argued for the importance of some forms of concealment and the restraint of self-expression for social life.5 It may turn out that self-righteousness is at the root of at least some behavior that is inimical to harmonious social life.
1 Self-Righteousness and Claims of Injury One difference between righteous and self-righteous behavior is that self-righteous behavior is often self-serving or designed to draw attention to ourselves. While a righteous person is concerned that justice be accorded to others, a self-righteous person would seem to be concerned that justice be accorded to herself. Claims for justice, whether on behalf of ourselves or of others, may or may not be appropriate. They have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Demands for justice are certainly 1
See Thomas E. Hill, Jr., ‘‘Symbolic Protest and Calculated Silence,’’ Philosophy and Public Affairs vol. 9, no. 1 (1979).
2 See ‘‘Self-righteousness’’ by C.H. Watkins in the Encylopaedia of Religion and Ethics ed. James Hastings (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1920), vol. XI, pp. 369–70. 3
See Gabriele Taylor, ‘‘Integrity,’’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 55 (1981).
4
See Be´la Szabados and Eldon Soifer, Hypocrisy: Ethical Investigations (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004).
5
See Thomas Nagel, ‘‘Concealment and Exposure,’’ Philosophy and Public Affairs vol. 27, no. 1 (1998).
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sometimes warranted. If someone is treated unfairly or is a victim of injustice, then it is morally appropriate that he makes this known. Although the designation ‘‘selfrighteous’’ is almost always meant as a condemnation or insult, we cannot conclude that the accusation is always justified. Some such behavior is morally neutral or may even be praiseworthy. But people who praise the behavior or are at least neutral toward it will not ordinarily call it self-righteous. Indeed, ‘‘justified self-righteousness’’ sounds like an oxymoron. Whether a claim of injury concerns the rights of someone alone, someone and a group with which a person identifies, or unrelated other individuals, would seem to raise no special moral difficulties. We need to assess the claim and the actions taken in support of it. The fact that the claim is made on behalf of ourselves or individuals in a person’s group does not raise special difficulties unless there is a demand to be treated differently from others in the same relevant circumstances. We ask whether the claim is valid, and then consider whether the demands made in support of it are appropriate or not. Claims of moral injury imply a measure of moral certainty. If we claim that our rights have been violated, there is a presumption that we know the nature and extent of the rights and that we are competent to recognize the present conduct as a violation of them. Moral certainty deserves an extended analysis in itself.6 Any assessment of a claim of moral injury, and the moral certainty which informs it, will depend upon the extent to which we share a similar moral understanding or can be persuaded to adopt it. The moral certainty expressed in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’’ is likely to be found admirable and inspiring by individuals encountering it today. It takes a real effort to realize just how controversial King’s position was in 1963 and to remember that the moral certainty he expressed so eloquently was viewed with suspicion. It will be helpful to work through an example that contains claims of injury and responses to such claims that may or may not be self-righteous. The following widely reported incident occurred January 2005 in a Toronto neighborhood park.7 During a community supper in the park’s rink house, a new mother preparing to nurse her infant inadvertently exposed herself to a group of men putting on hockey skates. A park volunteer rushed over and suggested that the mother might be more comfortable in the privacy of the spacious women’s washroom, where a chair was available. The nursing mother said she felt humiliated and angered by the incident, and sent an e-mail to a website for the park, asking for an apology and that the park staff and volunteers be better educated about the right of women to breastfeed. The right to breastfeed in public is protected by the jurisdiction’s human rights code, in this case the Province of Ontario. As it turned out, the volunteer who asked the mother to cover up was also in charge of the website. She posted the mother’s letter along with comments in her own defense. Eventually, after email comments from people around the world and much back-and-forth between the volunteer and the city councilor for the area, the Parks Department issued an apology to the mother.
6
See Judith Lichtenberg, ‘‘Moral Certainty,’’ Philosophy vol. 69, no. 268 (1994).
7
See Julie Traves, ‘‘The Bra-haha that Went Global,’’ Globe and Mail Saturday, February 19, 2005.
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The incident itself does not pose any very thorny moral problems. It would be a challenge to find another incident so emblematic of a tempest in a teapot that drew similarly heated international attention. In the city in which it occurred, breastfeeding is supported by the general public and the medical establishment, and the right to breastfeed in public is established in law. No doubt public breastfeeding may make some people uncomfortable, but their discomfort cannot be used as a reason to deny someone else a legal right. The mother in this story simply should not have been asked to cover up or remove herself, and the volunteer, when informed or reminded of the law, should have apologized. The mother’s initial claim and actions in support of it seems reasonable. She was knowledgeable about her rights, insisted on them, asked for an apology and requested that the park staff and volunteers be better educated. These actions constitute a claim for justice for herself and others in her position. Her claim was legitimate and the behavior in support of it seems proportionate. Her rights were indeed violated. She was made to feel bad and deserved an apology. She did not demand any special treatment that would not be given to any other nursing mother. Her request for an apology did not intend to inflame the situation or to harm anyone. One result of the discussion so far is that a distinction needs to be drawn between self-righteousness per se and ascriptions or accusations of self-righteousness. A common step taken by people who perpetrate or are complicit in moral harm is to belittle or ignore the claims made by individuals whom they have injured, especially when the injured individuals belong to traditionally oppressed or less socially powerful groups. Individuals righteously protesting their injury or oppression are condemned as self-righteous. The wronged party is then in the difficult position of having to defend not only the original claim of moral harm, but also the charge of being self-righteous. This is vivid in King’s ‘‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’’ where he has to defend both the appropriateness of his tactics in the fight for civil rights and his own role in the struggle. While the nursing mother’s rights were violated, in later comments to the press she expressed a view of her injury that seemed exaggerated. She remarked to a journalist that she was disappointed by people who tried to reduce the incident to a matter of hurt feelings rather than substantive rights: ‘‘Yes, my feelings were hurt. Rosa Parks probably had some hurt feelings too when she refused to sit in the back of the bus.’’8 Here the mother’s claim to injury seems excessive, and her comparison of her own situation to that of Rosa Parks is factually inappropriate and also unfortunate, to say the least. The mother was not arrested; her rights were violated a single time by a volunteer in the park, not repeatedly, and not by a person with formal authority. Nursing mothers are not a historically oppressed group. More crucially, demanding implementation of an already legally recognized right is very different from standing up to a long history of legally entrenched social and political oppression. The lazy invocation of the name ‘‘Rosa Parks’’ in an attempt to bolster someone’s own claims, is at least morally insensitive. In conclusion, the mother’s initial claim of injury and request for an apology were reasonable, but her later remarks about the incident were self-righteous and so 8
See ibid.
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morally suspect. We would find the mother self-righteous in the first instance only if we thought that the right to breastfeed in public should not be protected and that nursing mothers ought always to seek the permission of people around them before nursing. These antecedent moral claims would need to be defended before the charge of self-righteousness would be appropriate. Similarly, someone who was of the view that being asked to cover up while breastfeeding in a public place was indeed an ordeal similar to that endured by Rosa Parks would disagree with the assessment that the mother’s later claims of injury were self-righteous in their exaggeration of the harm she was done. Again, the disagreement over whether the mother was self-righteous or not reflects an underlying disagreement over deeper moral questions.
2 Self-Righteousness and Claims of Moral Probity or Improvement The little drama in the park had two main actors: the nursing mother and the volunteer who asked her to cover up. When the volunteer responded to the mother’s letter of complaint on the website, she did not apologize. Instead she defended her actions and insisted on her own moral probity. She was in favor of breastfeeding, she claimed, and indeed when younger had herself fought for the right to breastfeed in public. However she feared that certain users of the park would be made uncomfortable by the public display of a bare breast. She requested an investigation into the matter and a clear statement of the city’s position. Claims of moral probity or improvement are exceedingly common in public discourse. ‘‘I did not commit the crime,’’ say both the inmate who will be exonerated by DNA evidence and the CEO who is later convicted on the basis of forensic accounting or his own loose-lipped email messages to colleagues. ‘‘I am different now. I have changed so much that I no longer recognize the person who did these things,’’ say both the genuinely reformed criminal and the hopeless recidivist. When claims of innocence turn out to be true, we regret any punishment already endured and admire the speaker’s resolve. When such claims turn out to be false, we accuse the speaker of hypocrisy in addition to other sins. There are two situations in particular in which the accusation of self-righteousness is likely to be made. One occurs when we are uncertain about, or doubt, the truth of claims of moral probity. The other occurs when the claims strike us as true or at least plausible, but their expression is inappropriate or misplaced, or their manner of expression is too fervent or insistent. Again, the aptness and moral appropriateness of the charge of being self-righteous are matters of judgment and depend in part on the acceptance or rejection of the underlying moral principles, and even on cultural norms. A denial that sounds passionate or exaggerated in a posh gentleman’s club may sound low-key or halfhearted in a college dorm room. Whatever the motivation of the park volunteer was when she asked the nursing mother to cover up, it would certainly seem that her behavior subsequent to the incident could be fairly characterized as self-righteous. Her avowal of past activism on behalf of nursing mothers was entirely beside the point. The relevant issue was not what kind of a person she was, but what she had just done. Without knowing the
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city’s position or the relevant law, she insisted on the rightness of her actions. Even after having been reminded of the law and informed of the city’s policy, she refused to apologize. In raising the possibility that certain members of the public would be disconcerted by public breast exposure and so their comfort level in using park facilities lowered, she attempted to claim for herself the moral high ground. Her principal concern in responding to the nursing mother seems to have been to be seen to be in the right. If she thought it was a priority to resolve the issue or assuage hurt feelings, she would have not refused to apologize. Indeed her request for an investigation, if granted, would have further inflamed the situation and caused additional stress to the nursing mother. By repeatedly defending her actions, the volunteer made an implicit claim that her moral stance was correct and that ensuring access to the park for people who might be offended by public breast exposure was more important than the rights of women to breastfeed unhindered. She displays a certainty about the moral issues which is not warranted. In her exchanges with the nursing mother and later with city officials, she offered very little in the way of defense for her views. She did not claim ever to have spoken to anyone who was made uncomfortable by public breastfeeding. She was not able to indicate any record of complaints, formal or otherwise, about the practice. Even if evidence of such complaints existed, further argument would be required as to why one person’s discomfort should trump another person’s legal rights. She offered no such arguments.
3 Moralizing Judgments Directed Against Others The volunteer’s failure to apologize to the mother when reminded of the law and informed of the city’s policy betrays her view of the nursing mother and her supporters. The park volunteer stands as an example of a common form of selfrighteousness: claiming for ourselves the moral high ground and maintaining the righteousness of our conduct. This third form of self-righteous behavior might be called sanctimonious self-righteousness. Whether intended as such or not, it can constitute an implicit judgment of the beliefs and actions of others. This is so because the moral high ground is so steep and narrow that only a few people can occupy it at once. If one person is on the high ground then others can be only somewhere beneath, perhaps on very distant slopes. Even in the event that we really do occupy the moral high ground and are reasonably certain that we do so, there are nonetheless good reasons, both pragmatic and intrinsically moral, to refrain from moralizing self-righteousness. When we publicly judge others, explicitly and forthrightly with our words or implicitly by our actions, this has social and political implications. Examples are not difficult to conjure. We need only think of the vegetarian at a dinner party who loudly avows opposition to factory farming; the political supporter who argues that voting for the opposing candidate is tantamount to treason; the person in line at the express check-out who frowns and mutters disapproval at the shopper with more than the permitted number of items in his basket; or the restaurant patron who,
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loudly enough so that others will hear, makes unfavorable comparisons between the conduct of her own children and the conduct of other people’s children. In our moral lives, it is sometimes appropriate and even required that we express our moral commitments and our disapproval of actions we find immoral. But while justice sometimes demands that we voice our moral outrage or endorsement, justice or decency also sometimes demands our silence.9 Some people will find this claim to be paradoxical. If we are right about an important moral issue and confident that we are right, it might seem reasonable that we should do everything possible to communicate this to others. Yet we have ways of speaking that suggest otherwise. We might agree with others about an important issue but wish that they would not be so self-righteous in expressing their views. While it is difficult to know just when our moral commitments are better made explicit or not, some considerations can be offered. There would seem to be at least three reasons why we might want to refrain from sanctimonious self-righteous behavior. First, self-righteous behavior is likely to be detrimental to individuals who engage in it, in that it may block genuine moral learning and development. When we act in a self-righteous manner, we presume that our moral views are sound. It is one thing to offer our considered views on moral questions in a spirit of dialogue and exchange. It is another to presume that we are correct and that others must be mistaken or uninformed. Such an attitude is betrayed by the actions of the park volunteer. This concern about self-righteousness resonates with the theological understanding of self-righteousness as inimical to repentance. People who are convinced that their views are correct will not repent because they see no need to do so. This concern has relevance in secular contexts as well. Anyone who hopes to become a better person or to gain a better understanding of particular moral questions would do well to keep an open mind about his or her moral fallibility. The incident in the park is again telling, since the person who took authority upon herself turned out to be more in need of moral and legal education than people she attempted to instruct. The need to keep in mind our own possible moral error leads to the second reason why sanctimonious self-righteous behavior is better avoided. There are many moral issues over which informed and good-willed adults can legitimately disagree. Most of us realize that people with whom we disagree on specific issues are not always fools. Self-righteous adults not only presume that their moral stance is correct but also presume that they are in a position to instruct other adults. However this is condescending. Condescension evokes resentment and hinders harmonious social relations. As Nagel has argued in a slightly different context, the boundaries between what is publicly exposed and what is not exist for a reason. Reticence is a condition of civilization. Finally, when we engage in sanctimonious self-righteous behavior, we presume that the transgression in question is severe enough to warrant a public judgment. Judging others, even in intimate contexts, has consequences and can entail social and political implications. Aftereffects for the person judged may include 9
See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle (Grinnell, Iowa: The Peripatetic Press, 1984), 1137a32–1138a3, pp. 96–99.
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discomfort, embarrassment, shame, anger, and even humiliation. These feelings may be appropriate, if the moral transgression has in fact been severe. The person behaving in a sanctimoniously self-righteous manner assumes that she understands the situation well enough, is in possession of the relevant background information, and is an adequate judge of human misdeeds so as to pronounce judgments upon others. These are large assumptions. It is likely they are seldom fulfilled. Sanctimonious self-righteous behavior can be seen as a form of moral hubris. A person guilty of such behavior makes one or more of three different kinds of unwarranted presumption. He presumes that his moral judgment is sound when the views he espouses are in fact controversial, or touch on an area where there is legitimate moral disagreement. As well, he presumes that he has the moral or social superiority to instruct his fellow citizens. In addition, he presumes that the transgression in question is severe enough to be publicly condemned on the spot. Only urgent or grave immorality or injustice seems to warrant acting without careful reflection on the presumptions just outlined. Sanctimonious self-righteousness behavior would seem rarely to be appropriate. The place in moral life of non-sanctimonious moralizing, in the sense of public moral preaching or pronouncement, is trickier to delineate, as this is both a rhetorical and a moral question. Sometimes the answer depends on context and social role. Teachers moralize to their students. Doctors moralize to their patients, reminding them that their duties to their friends and relatives include maintaining their own health. Judges may moralize at sentencing, explaining punishments that might otherwise appear excessively harsh or lenient. Pastors moralize to their congregants, who are, after all, present voluntarily. When a person’s role does not explicitly call for the correction of others and the immorality at issue is less serious and pressing, the answer is murkier. It is possible that a spectator, reflecting on some public immorality, decides that a confrontation is appropriate. Legitimate and reasoned disagreement is possible with respect to appropriate actions to be censured at an appropriate time and place. Still, even when a situation and role call for moralizing, some sensitivity is required. We do well to reflect before correcting others.
4 In Defense of Excessive Moralizers While some moral issues admit of reasoned disagreement, we should not lose sight of the fact that there is real moral evil and injustice in the world. To speak up against moral evil, even when our protest is unlikely to have any effect, can be praiseworthy. The failure to speak up against genuine injustice can sometimes be attributed to cowardice, laziness, or complacency. Instead of criticizing moralizers for their self-righteousness, we ought to be grateful for their persistence in speaking out. If everyone is silent out of a misguided sense of propriety, others may not be aware of the problems, and it will be difficult to secure change. Thomas E. Hill Jr. offers a pertinent example in his discussion of symbolic protest. This is protest against injustice that will likely fail to lead to an amelioration of the injustice. Hill argues that while we might regard such protest as pointless,
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self-righteous, or even reprehensible, we also often find such protest to be morally praiseworthy. His example concerns a liberal businessman at a racist dinner party: ‘‘Invited by business acquaintances, he is shocked to find that the conversation on all sides is openly and grossly contemptuous of certain minorities on grounds of racial bias alone. The guests try to outdo one another with tales about how they manage to circumvent equal opportunity laws.’’10 The businessman protests politely, only to be met with cynical laughter. He wonders whether to finish the dinner quietly for the sake of business interests or walk out in protest. As selfrighteousness has been so far characterized, the liberal businessman here does not behave in a self-righteous manner. Polite protest, silence, leaving the table, and calmly expressing a dissenting view need not be excessive or misplaced. Some philosophers may agree but say that the liberal businessman does not do enough to discourage the racism of his colleagues. He should protest loudly and vehemently once his polite protest fails, they may claim. Moralizers may occasionally step on a few toes, it might be argued, but this does not matter in the greater scheme of things, given how much is at stake. To caution against self-righteousness is not to advocate moral quietism. Sometimes it is necessary to state our views, take a stand on an issue, and point out injustice loudly and vehemently. Sometimes we are justified in giving offense, depending on the severity of the problem to be faced and the likely foreseeable consequences of our protest. It is difficult to say whether the liberal businessman is in such a situation. It seems doubtful that a loud and vehement protest would have a salutary effect on his dinner companions. His calm protest and pointed silence might be just as effective, because it is harder to dismiss. It is worth remembering that the way in which a moral principle is communicated can be as important as the fact that it is communicated at all. Although this is a matter of style, it is not a matter of mere style. Some of the greatest philosophical moralists from Plato and Aristotle through John Stuart Mill have also been masters of rhetoric and keenly attuned to it in their writings. The way in which a moral principle is communicated can influence the willingness of an audience to absorb it. People who are condescended to, who are made to feel morally inferior, or who are humiliated are unlikely to be well-disposed toward the source of their enlightenment, even if they do come to change their minds about the moral issue in question. The greatest moral teachers, including great religious leaders, have taught as much by example as they have by precepts. Some philosophers might argue that these concerns about self-righteousness are pragmatic rather than intrinsically moral. How someone protests against injustice is a matter of good manners or etiquette rather than a substantive moral issue. One danger of self-righteous behavior is that it risks shifting emphasis from the injustice that is protested to the agent who is protesting. If the liberal businessman mounts a loud and vehement protest, expressing his own more enlightened views, he might, intentionally or not, draw attention, not to the evil of racial injustice but to his own moral superiority. Giving the liberal businessman the benefit of the doubt, we can assume that his protest against racism is sincerely motivated and that he does not merely want to show himself to be more enlightened than his colleagues. If he is 10
Hill, op. cit., p. 84.
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thoughtful, he will not express his views in such a way that risks doing so. But this is just another way of saying that if he is thoughtful, he will not engage in selfrighteous behavior. How we treat each other, including when we judge, when we share our judgments, and the stance we take to our own moral commitments are difficult and important matters that go to the heart of our moral lives. The big questions of morality with life-or-death consequences are relatively rare in most of our lives. Yet we all have to deal with other people on a daily basis. Some of them engage in conduct that we would prefer they refrain from, and some of them engage in conduct that we find deeply objectionable. How we respond to such conduct is a challenge at the heart of social life and as such is anything but trivial.
5 The Etiology of a Moral Error We began with the observation of the paradox that self-righteousness is both widely condemned and widely practiced. Certainly some of the people who are annoyed by self-righteousness in others are at the same time guilty of it themselves. It is clear that self-righteousness is a temptation that many of us find difficult to resist. A psychologist might explain the propensity to self-righteousness in terms of reactionformation and an individual’s fear of being discovered as guilty of whatever moral error she denounces. This kind of explanation may be correct, but it does not speak to the source of the moral error that is logically prior to the psychological condition. Self-righteousness would not be a credible psychological strategy if it did not convey something very deep with respect to moral thought. Behind self-righteousness are two different kinds of false but seemingly plausible assumptions. First is the assumption that only morally pure individuals can offer sound moral judgments or that only individuals who occupy the moral high ground have access to the moral truth. This is similar to the assumption Francis Bacon makes in his scientific methodology when he claims that only pure and unbiased observers can make genuine scientific discoveries.11 Both assumptions are false. The truth of moral or scientific claims stand apart from the characters of their enunciators. The same kind of error is at play whenever a fallacy ad hominem is committed. The questionable assumption embodied by such fallacies is that some feature of a speaker’s character or past actions makes it impossible for him to know the truth about some matter. While it is easy to see the error in paradigm cases, its liveliness and longevity shows that it is not always easy to discern and avoid. The second kind of error has to do with what we might call the temptation of moral certainty. Many of our decisions are made under conditions of uncertainty. Whether we should plan a picnic depends on the weather at some later date. Which program of study will lead to a lucrative career depends on the state of the economy several years later. Whether a particular house would be a wise purchase depends on the absence of structural flaws that a house inspection fails to uncover. If there is 11 See Francis Bacon, The New Organon eds. Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
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anything that we can be sure of, we might like to think, at least we can be sure of our own moral convictions. But this is to mistake the nature of moral thinking. We may be sure of our convictions, without being sure of how to apply them in various kinds of real-life situations, and without being sure about whether to correct others when they fall short. This uncertainty and tentativeness does not make us moral backsliders but indicates that we are aware of the complexities of moral life. The error made by moralizing self-righteous individuals is to misunderstand the nature of moral fallibility. They believe that they must present themselves as pure and without error before their claims will be taken seriously by others and in order that their claims will be justified. In their quest for an excessive and impossible moral certainty, they fall prey to moral hubris.12
12 For comments, suggestions, and discussion of earlier drafts, I am especially grateful to Robert Hanna and Ian Jarvie, and also to Wendy Donner, Jay Drykyk, David Elliot, Rockney Jacobsen, Randal Marlin, an anonymous referee, and Thomas Magnell, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Value Inquiry.
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