Dear Roger Scruton
11th March 2000
The relevance of a person's private conduct to his or her fitness for public office is once again making the news. Should it matter that a candidate for mayor of London, New York or Paris, may have reneged on promises given to the women (or men) in his (or her) life and, very possibly, have lied to them into the bargain? I remember David Mellor's then mother-in-law being quoted as saying that a man who cheated on his wife could not be trusted not to cheat on his country; similar doubts have been expressed about Steven Norris's trustworthiness were he to be elected mayor of London. Most of my French friends regard these Anglo-Saxon attitudes with a mixture of incredulity, amusement and-it has to be said-some worldly-wise contempt.
This apparent cultural difference has often been remarked on. Before jumping to generalisations, however, we need to ask whether the notion of personal integrity may not itself vary significantly from one culture to another. After all, there are many games based on the ability to deceive, but nobody thinks any the worse of the most successful players of, say, poker, in any of the other areas of their lives. And whether we, in our Anglo-Saxon culture, approve of it or not, deceiving one's partners in domestic or sexual intimacy might be regarded as a game which has no bearing on how a person is to be trusted or judged in the "more serious" public spheres of his or her life.
It is commonly assumed that if moral rules exist at all, then they must be of universal application; and that any such rules as may apply to politicians must do so irrespective of the context or culture to which they belong. In fact, however, it would seem that there is a deep cultural relativism at work here; individuals tend to adopt their own culture's prevailing assumptions, and hence not only to judge others' behaviour, but actually to behave themselves, accordingly. Thus, if an "Anglo-Saxon" man cheats in his private life, he may indeed be the sort of person who may be ready also to cheat in his public capacity; while there may well be no justification for making the same assumption in the case of a Frenchman or an Italian. So while the British and the Americans on the whole may be right to judge the trustworthiness of their own public figures partly on the basis of their "private" behaviour, the French may be equally justified in taking this to be essentially irrelevant.
No doubt there will be all sorts of exceptions to these general cultural "rules." It may even happen that individuals brought up and publicly active in one culture will come to internalise the prevailing assumptions of another. But good generalisations are not necessarily invalidated by the existence of exceptions.
Alan
Dear Alan Montefiore
13th March 2000
However, it is right to remind you that your French friends are intellectuals, and that French intellectuals typically look on everything with incredulity, amusement and contempt-not least the prejudices and pieties of ordinary Frenchmen, whom they characteristically dismiss as roturiers, paysans or (most damning of all) bourgeois. And French intellectuals are not known for their integrity either in private or in public life: consider the hypocritical response to Le livre noir du communisme, and all that this says about the posture of French intellectuals towards the insignificant millions who have been sacrificed on the altar of their doctrines.
The advocates of "authenticity" and "commitment" who have dominated French intellectual and political life since the second world war are interesting cases to study. I am thinking of Sartre, of course, but also of Althusser and Foucault-who between them, in their private lives, managed to encompass just about every kind of crime. I don't know what the opposite of integrity should be called-"disintegrity" perhaps. The most blatant cases of disintegrity in the modern world have not been the bribe-taking civil servant or the philandering politician, but the anti-bourgeois intellectuals who, while enjoying the comforts and freedoms supplied by private property and the rule of law, have stirred up hatred and disaffection towards the habits and institutions which make their lifestyle possible.
But to return to Anglo-Saxon attitudes. In your chapter in the book you edited with David Vines (Integrity in the Public and Private Domains) you say many wise things. You make it clear that sincerity is not enough-"the sine qua non which guarantees nothing," as Stravinsky said. There is a "wholeness" which is part of what we mean by integrity, and part of what we Anglo-Saxons desire in our public figures. This ideal is important-you cannot easily find wholeness in the public sphere if it is absent from the private. Nor do I think the ordinary French citizen would disagree. Wholeness of a kind was exemplified by General de Gaulle, both in his private life and in his public policies. It enabled ordinary Frenchmen to identify him as a figurehead, and to bestow on him the trust that they had withheld from the political process ever since the war. All subsequent French leaders have lived off the moral capital that De Gaulle invested. Mitterrand was able to conceal his corruption and libertinage behind the majesty of an office which, but for De Gaulle, would have had no majesty at all. And I suspect that the ordinary Frenchman would share my view that the affairs of the nation are best entrusted to someone who exemplifies what is best in the national character, not only in public, but also in private life.
Roger Scruton
Dear Roger
15th March 2000
I agree that integrity is closely associated with a certain kind of "wholeness." But first may I enter a protest against your reckless generalisations about French intellectuals? As it happens, by no means all my French friends are intellectuals. Nor, indeed, are all French intellectuals "anti-bourgeois" left-wingers; and of those who might be counted as such, many may be reckoned to be people of exemplary integrity in both their public and private lives. Moreover, neither of us would find it too difficult to think of examples of Anglo-Saxon intellectuals of whose private lives you would vehemently disapprove-even though they may have committed nothing resembling an actual crime (any more, to my knowledge at any rate, than did Foucault or Sartre).
In any case, a comparison of the private morals of French and Anglo-Saxon intellectuals is only distantly pertinent to my main point, which concerns the relevance of people's private morality to any judgement on their likely integrity in a public capacity. We may agree, I take it, that we can acknowledge integrity in persons of whose attitudes and principles we nevertheless disapprove. Not only are men and women of integrity not necessarily easily likeable; they may show their integrity in their principled service to causes which we may may find repugnant. But the crux of our disagreement turns on your assertion that "you cannot easily find wholeness in the public sphere, if it is absent from the private." According to the hypothesis that I was trying out, the truth of this claim may be relative to the culture with which we are concerned.
On the face of it, this would appear to be a question to be settled by actual case histories. It is not so simple. For one thing, where one person sees consistency and wholeness, another may see only inconsistencies and incompatibilities. This is an aspect of all interpretive judgements of character. But there is another issue concerning judgements of integrity. To take a remote analogy: a saloon car may be regarded as a "whole" of a certain sort, but we would not necessarily think of basing our estimate of the reliability of its engine on an examination of the quality of its upholstery. This is not to say that there are no contexts in which it might be appropriate to do so. Suppose that you lived in a country where customary standards of quality control were such that it was safe to assume that if any one aspect of a car was first-rate, then all others would be equally good; in such a case, people could confidently assume that if the upholstery was up to standard, then so, too, would be the engine. But in other countries, it might be that quality control for engines and upholstery were entirely independent; in which case the assumptions natural to the first country would not hold.
We are all familiar with such discrepancies in the case of human beings-even in Anglo-Saxon culture. Some people are outstanding all-round athletes, equally gifted at, say, cricket, football and tennis; others may be champions in some sports, but mere honest competitors in others. More to the point, we may find athletes who would not hesitate to take performance-boosting drugs, but who might be completely trustworthy in all their personal relations. You, and perhaps most of our compatriots, may prefer people to operate according to the same standards in all the diverse aspects of their lives; but we know that not everybody is like that, and we should recognise that other cultures may not even demand it of them. You and I may not approve of a country's most prominent politician seeking under-the-counter funding for his party, but others may find him to be even more deserving of their trust qua politician, precisely because of his readiness to take any measure in order to further what he takes to be the long-term interest of his party and country.
As for your guesses about the reactions of ordinary Frenchmen to "wholeness," the evidence is somewhat conflicting. There were certainly those who regarded Bernard Tapie's brushes with the law with embarrassment and disapproval; but popular opinion seemed more inclined to regard his exploits as a heartening example of what ordinary people might be able to get away with in their endless struggles with the establishment. But what about the continuing grassroots admiration-Conservative and Labour alike-for the buccaneering Jeffrey Archer and the maritally enterprising Steven Norris, who can hardly be said to provide you with the sorts of example which you might wish to hold up to any potential future Sartre?
Wholeness is all very well, and on balance, I prefer it. But that does very much depend on how the "whole" in question is constituted. People may display the utmost integrity in defence of the most coldly inhumane policies. Better a warm-hearted hypocrite than a sadist of the utmost integrity. And there can also be wholes whose parts hold together not so much by their mutual harmony as by a strong mutual attraction of conflicting elements.
Alan
Dear Alan
18th March 2000
Virtues are what we look for in others, because they are the signs of their social utility. Courage is useful in a soldier, not necessarily to himself, but certainly to those whom he defends. Justice is likewise useful to others, if not to oneself. Our question is whether you can show these useful qualities in public life without also showing them in private. And I doubt it. Moreover, I do not think that my doubting it is merely a reflection of Anglo-Saxon culture. My doubt stems from thinking; a Frenchman could share it-and the Frenchmen I tend to get on with generally do.
Of course you are right to suggest that there are many Frenchmen who see Bernard Tapie's scrapes with the law as displaying a kind of virtue. But, as you also suggest, there are many Anglo-Saxons who think of Jeffrey Archer and Steven Norris in a similar way. My response to this is to say that such people are wrong. Their tendency to make these mistakes is culturally influenced. But that they are mistakes seems to me indubitable. History and culture have led to the French having a different attitude to law from that of the English. Our common law tradition has led to the widespread belief in the law as independent of the state. English law is (or was, until the EU) the defender of the ordinary person against his oppressors, standing in judgement over executive power. The Code Napol? makes the law part of the state, and an instrument of bureaucratic power; not surprisingly, therefore, the French often see no real reason to obey it.
But those cultural factors have no bearing on the question of human virtue and its indivisibility. I am persuaded by the Aristotelian position, which is that what constitutes virtue is an objective matter, independent of cultural differences, and that virtue is indivisible. I would expect Ken Livingstone's lack of prudence in politics to be reflected in his private life, just as I would expect Steven Norris's untrustworthiness in private matters to bear on his public behaviour. Such judgements are sometimes wrong; but they are our only guide to the behaviour of other people, and it is only on the assumption of the indivisibility of vice and virtue that we have the faintest idea what we are doing when we bestow on ordinary mortals the right to govern us.
I don't believe that there can be a sadist of the utmost integrity-or rather, if there can be, then "integrity" is not a virtue. I would venture this brief definition of integrity: virtuous character, including the ability to resist temptation.
Roger
Dear Roger
20th March 2000
We are teetering dangerously towards the brink of agreement. I do, however, have a reservation about bullies. I have no general view as to whether a cowardly or a courageous bully might be the better person overall; which might be the more useful would depend on the uses to which one wished to put him (or her) and on the circumstances. (The psychiatrist Malcolm MacCulloch said about Myra Hindley in the Guardian: "There are lots of people with very tough personality types who do great and brave things... Under other circumstances they might be labelled as abhorrent psychopaths and do dreadful things. It's really a question of whom you meet and what happens in the circumstances.")
On more substantial matters, we seem now to agree that cultural factors may well lead to different peoples developing different attitudes towards the law and the state, and hence towards public and private virtue. But in your view, "those cultural factors have no bearing on the question of human virtue and its indivisibility." So what are we disagreeing about? You and I seem to agree about what we regard as morally more admirable; we would both prefer people whose integrity in both private and public matters goes together to make up a morally more comprehensive "whole." We also agree that cultural factors may have a bearing on what people may think about human virtue. But you say that you are persuaded that "what constitutes virtue is an objective matter, independent of cultural differences." Yet if, as you also say, "virtues are what we look for in others, because they are the signs of their social utility," then surely we have to recognise that what may be socially useful will depend on the nature of the society. So if integrity is a matter of having a virtuous character, and if, objectively speaking, a virtuous character is one that is socially useful, it will still be the case that what constitutes a virtuous character will depend on the cultural context. And the differences between one context and another may well suffice to explain why there may in the one case be a close correlation between private and public virtue, while in the other there is not.
That said, even the British are beginning to admit to being more European. I was struck by a recent comment by Libby Purves in The Times: "I am more interested-morally, ethically, every way-in Steven Norris's attitude to London transport than to women's legs. Let him save his own soul; it is where his actions weigh on thousands of others that we should demand morality." There is only a short step from being ready to make separate judgments about a man's private and public character to ceasing to regard the one as being any reliable guide to the other. And in a context where this is widely taken for granted, there is bound to be less effective pressure on people to bring their private and public standards of behaviour into line with each other. To do so may be socially useful in some contexts, but socially destructive in others.
A final thought. In our society there are still those who regard a practising homosexual as leading a morally unsatisfactory private life and that accordingly he is not to be trusted in public life either. Of course, in a society where to be a practising homosexual is to lay oneself open to blackmail, the inference may be correct. But where homosexuality is accepted as a possible way of life, there will be no such opening for potential blackmailers to exploit.
In a society where everyone took the same view as Libby Purves, there may be those with a moral view about what a London mayor's attitude to women's legs should be, and others with no such view. But all may agree as to what his attitude to public transport should be, without supposing that the former is likely to have any bearing on the latter.
Alan
Dear Alan
22nd March 2000
I am still unhappy with the element of cultural relativism in what you say. When I described virtues as "socially useful" I did not mean this to be a complete definition; and I accept that what is useful in one society may not be useful in another. I meant to point to the utility of virtue to a whole community, in advance of the conditions that distinguish it. Courage is useful to all communities everywhere, given that we are inevitably surrounded by dangers. Justice and prudence likewise. Variations in circumstances and culture may lead to different virtues being pre-eminent. But I am most of all impressed by the agreement about vice and virtue which we encounter in the literatures of the world. In Tartuffe and Les Pr?euses Ridicules, Molière put before us archetypes of vice which are immediately recognisable to English readers, while French medieval romance set a standard for the whole of Europe. Cultural differences are to be treasured partly because they open our eyes to the amazing uniformity of the human condition, and lead us to find in the midst of the most exotic communities the familiar objects of praise and blame.
I take your point (or rather, Libby Purves's point), that Steven Norris's attitude to London transport is more important, when it comes to his candidacy for the position of mayor, than his attitude to women's legs. On the other hand, if we want to know what kind of man he is, then the legs begin to take over from the wheels. And, in the long run, what kind of man he is will determine how he will behave in office. Many western intellectuals endorsed Lenin's seizure of power in Russia because they approved of his attitude to social and economic problems. But Bertrand Russell, observing Lenin's cruel laughter at the fate of peasants who had attempted to resist him, saw into the heart of the man and warned us to beware. My own view is that people would have a much wiser attitude to the EU if they saw it not in terms of short-term policy proposals, but in terms of the corrupt and megalomaniac personalities urging us to accept them. I think we should be more and not less willing to make moral judgements, and less and not more willing to set them aside in the interests of political expediency.
Roger
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