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The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition

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THE MORALITY OF EVERYDAY LIFE is one of the more interesting books on ethics that I've read in a while. Thomas Fleming, a top paleconservative writer, contrasts an "ancient alternative" to the liberal tradition. The liberal tradition (growing out of Descartes, Locke and others) is characterized by certain assumptions: Individuals and governments are the central players in ethical considerations; moral behavior is a question on rational decision-making; moral principles must be applied with equal consistency to all situations.

Yet the ancient (and in fact almost universal) way of looking at moral questions is different. I have different obligations to different people. My duties to family and the world are not equal. Charity, as they say, beings at home. To the liberal "citizen of the world" this is provincialism at its worst. "[T]here is a consistency of tone, a certain universal high-mindedness that is impatient with distinctions and disdainful of irrational attachments. Sentiments of loyalty, because they are not entirely rational, do not yield their secrets to analysis or measurement." [p. 103.] People who profess a love for mankind first and foremost have the tendency to be cruel to their family and friends. It's easy to justify almost anything in the name of one's love for mankind. (A point made in Paul Johnson's suggestive, if problematic book, INTELLECTUALS.)

Dr. Fleming's book, as one might suggest by my brief description, is hardly rationalistic and abstract. There are plenty of examples from "everyday life" illustrating the arguments of the book. My only complaint is that I had hoped Dr. Fleming would have situated his ethical approach within the tradition advanced by writers of the Old Right. Richard Weaver and Robert Nisbet are mentioned once, and Russell Kirk not at all.

Dr. Fleming's book, The Morality of Everyday Life, presents seven essays that examine, in depth and detail, the unraveling of our culture and government. What's that, you ask? What do I mean, "unraveling of our culture and government? Well, okay, take a look around. We do know, for example, that the combined various levels of government costs us half our income, that our hard-earned wages that we use to feed, house, and clothe our families is being transferred, by government fiat, to people we don't even know (not to mention the funding of certain, select corporations and fulminating academics), and countless other inane programs. Programs which are proven and utter failures, such as the $6 trillion war on poverty, environmental restrictions taken to an absurd level such as prohibiting oil exploration in a barren wasteland. Or how about the disintegration of the family and acceptance of degenerate sexual lifestyles? Or perhaps we could examine the countless times in our society when innocent people are convicted for simply protecting their homes and families.

These are just a sampling of the problems Dr. Fleming seeks to explore in his book. Dr. Fleming argues that since the birth of classical liberalism in the seventeenth century, a century that gave us "universality, rationality, individualism, objectivity, and abstract idealism," Western Civilization has developed a flaw in its ethics, moral behavior, and thus in the construction of its state apparatus. He points out that the two primary political philosophies, liberalism and conservatism, have both embraced a "farsighted" or "long view" of human life. The problem, then, is that both political "positions (liberalism and conservatism)" in order to engage this farsighted, idealistic, perspective of mankind (modernity) have in the very act of "freeing themselves from the shackles of particular circumstances and traditions" introduced an ethical virus that eats away at the traditional duties and obligations of the individual while disenfranchising the very foundation of human society, the family.

This sort of "one size fits all" thinking that government and society are pushing us towards is at once, both dangerous and absurd. For example: a man murders a storekeeper during a robbery. In a one size fits all society, the woman who kills her abusive husband in self defense would receive the same punishment

In his essay "Hell and Other People", Fleming describes the eighteenth century and the philosophies of "Voltaire, Kant, and (later) the New England transcendentalists" as the time when the concepts of "universal brotherhood, international law, and world government reemerged." The twentieth century saw the idea of a "just state," or government that is committed to "economic equality," the idea that one is to "sacrifice private life to public good," (can you say "eminant domain"?)not to mention the onslaught of self-righteous who are constantly interfering in the private lives of citizens. So the state has become the vehicle of moral certitude and each of us, through the wisdom of the state, is to take his place as "deputies" in providing for the necessary expansion in order that it might provide, among other things, largesse to the "underprivileged," justice for all, and, of course, the ever elusive, equality.

Dr. Fleming does not, however, stop at just revealing the problems, but details how America, as a people, can reverse the trends he has cited. I will stop short of discussing Fleming's outline and leave that to the reader to discover. This is an exceptional work from a brilliant author.

Monty Rainey
www.juntosociety.com

Mr Fleming is one of the best philo-lit writer/thinkers on the scene today. His CHRONICLES magazine is must reading, especially if you are inclined to disagree with the so-called right. Over the years he has helped educate me in the true sense of the word, something for which college had no time. I heartily recommend anything he writes, and especially this, which next to Wendell Berry is the best reading material I have encountered over the past few years.

A Conservative Classic

Like many great books, this book has gone largely unnoticed by the current establishment. History, however, will correct this, I believe, as this is probably the best work in political philosophy in the last 45 years. People definitely will be reading and discussing this book 300 years from now.

This book can be appreciated by both layman and academic alike, and while naturally appealing to conservatives it will also will please learned liberals and thoughtful environmentalists.

I saw a review of this book in a conservative publication and was intrigued enough to buy it. The book is a series of seven essays, of which the first five were very thought-provoking and contained some excellent discussion. I would recommend the book on the strength of these alone. The basic idea is that we have stronger ethical obligations to those close to us. Fleming also emphasizes that in the messiness of human existence hard and fast rules that will allow a person to always make the correct decision are nearly impossible to come by. Fleming makes a good case for these points, and I think he is convincing. I loved Fleming's lines "moral certainty belongs only to saints and homicidal maniacs" and "men and women are not unidimensional figures cut out of cardboard by a philosopher's scissors."

I especially liked Fleming's comparison of wealthy nations providing food aid to the Third World to a lifeboat, in which we have an obligation not to take on more passengers either as immigrants or consumers. I agree that it is ethically permissible to refuse aid to societies that do nothing to reduce their population. In my opinion, any charity that provides food or medicine to poor people but does not provide birth control or other means of reducing population has a lot to answer for. I also liked Fleming's application of the same principle to taxes. When the money for yet another hare-brained income transfer scheme is coming out of what I earn for my family, don't expect me to like it.

Fleming wants the foundations of conservative ideas questioned also, which I think is excellent. For example, Fleming discusses the Christian commandment that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. Since no ordinary person possibly can or does love his neighbor this way, it seems pointless to base an ethical system on this. Objective points of view, taken to their natural extremes, will inevitably turn us into monsters who will kill for some higher cause or other. I liked Fleming's line that "one sign we are dealing with a superstition is the unwillingness of the believer to question basic assumptions," which he applies to Christianity. I've seen far too many Christians in precisely that position.

In the last two essays Fleming seems to get bogged down, though there are still some good points made. In the essay "The Myth of Individualism" Fleming argues that we should put less emphasis on the individual and more on community. That's fine as far as it goes, but arguing that our society's problems really come from seeing ourselves as individuals struck me as taking this idea further than his evidence will support.

In the last essay "Goodbye, Old Rights of Man," Fleming occasionally seemed to me to be contradicting much of what I had agreed with in the earlier essays. For example, he talks about abortion as killing real unborn children to promote an abstract quality of life. This strikes me as exactly the sort of hard and fast rule that he said was inadequate to deal with the messiness of human existence. I agree that you shouldn't abort a child for trivial reasons, but then you shouldn't have a child for trivial reasons, either. Is it wrong to abort a child if there are already too many children to properly care for in the family? If the parents have serious genetic defects? What if the local community is starving? What if the local community would starve if the population doubled? I agree with Fleming that today's obsession with rights has gotten out of hand; but it's not only the liberals who sometimes take this too far.

Fleming has a tendency to make sweeping statements irrelevant to his argument, without providing any support for them. For example, he calls today's environmental havoc, such as pollution, the residue of Western liberalism. He dismisses all of American art, and the theory of evolution, with the same casualness. Well, I'm a scientist who believes in evolution. I'm a little surprised that Fleming doesn't, given that evolution is all about the sort of messiness and contingency Fleming is writing about. I would suggest pairing this book with something on evolution, such as Stephen Jay Gould's book "Wonderful Life".

Fleming's ideas can be taken too far, which Fleming seems unaware of. It is all very well to be concerned first for our own families, but taken to an extreme the result is nepotism and corruption. The Renaissance popes are the classic example of this, but it is a serious problem in many countries. In the Philippines even the proper handling of church funds is nearly impossible, because people feel that if their families ask them for money they must give it, even if the money is not theirs. Nepotism is a problem in the U.S., as shown by the political career of George W. Bush, a man whose sole qualifications for office appear to be his famous father and an uncanny ability to remember people's names. Too much ignoring of abstract principles like equality can lead to disaster too: look at what happened to the ancien regime of pre-revolutionary France, and to the Russian czars.