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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Mark Sanford

In defence of hypocrisy

28 Sunday Jun 2009

Posted by Amod Lele in Morality, Politics, Virtue

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Bill Bennett, Front Porch Republic, hypocrisy, James Matthew Wilson, Jeremy Lott, Mark Sanford, race, William Vallicella

Recent news of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford’s affair provides an appropriate occasion to discuss a topic that’s been on my mind lately: hypocrisy. When social conservatives like Sanford or Bill Bennett get caught in vice, the charge immediately hurled at them is hypocrisy; this is said to make their crimes far worse than those of, say, Eliot Spitzer, who wasn’t that kind of moralizer in the first place. But I want to make the case here that hypocrisy is really not so bad.

A defence of hypocrisy is not original to me. There are plenty of right-wingers who’ve defended hypocrisy in these sorts of situations: William Vallicella blogged about it a while ago, Jeremy Lott wrote a whole book about it, and most recently James Matthew Wilson‘s defence of hypocrisy at Front Porch Republic was where I heard about Sanford’s adultery in the first place. But these men do not share the ideals of those who usually attack hypocrisy, and I think the point might be more persuasive coming from a left-leaner like me. I oppose Sanford’s and Bennett’s sexual politics, and I think their behaviours were unjustifiable; but I want to claim that these two criticisms are and should be mostly separate.

Put it this way. Suppose a man preaches anti-racism, tells all his friends they must avoid racism, donates to anti-racist causes; but himself refuses to hire black people or associate with them professionally. Now imagine a man who acted the same way toward black people but advocated doing so — a man who said that black people are unreliable and should not be hired or associated with. The first man is a hypocrite, the second man is absolutely not; the second man is sincere, and true to himself. But is the second man then better than the first? I don’t think so. In both cases the serious wrongdoing is the racism, not the hypocrisy. I might say, actually, that the hypocrite who preaches anti-racism is at least a bit better than the consistent man who doesn’t; the first is doing some good. Moreover, one can point out the inconsistency between his behaviour and his ideals, in a way that helps his behaviour change for the better. It’s much harder to change the man whose bad ideals match his bad behaviour.

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