Topics Ethics

Question I am particularly concerned with the concept of hypocrisy. If Dr. Johnson tells me not to smoke because smoking is bad for my health, yet Dr. Johnson himself is a chain smoker, does that reduce his credibility? Why does the US that condemn other countries for human rights violations, when our soldiers kill (or have killed) innocent civilians in Iraq, Vietnam and Afghanistan? How about the judge who sentences someone to 10 years in jail for a crime that he also secretly commits?

Accepted:
November 11, 2007

Comments

A nice triplet of examples!

Let's say that a person is hypocritical just in case s/he (a) publicly endorses a normative position (such as a moral principle or value or norm or end) as valid for all and also (b) deliberately contravenes this normative position.

Your physician may not be hypocritical on this account. Yes, he deliberately contravenes the instruction he gives to you. But he may not be endorsing this instruction as valid for all. Here are some possibilities: (1) He endorses the instruction as valid only for those who seek to be in good health, he assumes that you are among these people (why else would you be going to the doctor?), and he is not himself among them. When charged with hypocrisy, he then responds that he is no more hypocritical than a travel agent who advises you to spend a few days in Paris even though she would never travel overseas. (2) He may endorse the instruction as valid only for those who are still young or as valid only for those for whom quitting would not be a nightmare. He may then deflect the charge of hypocrisy by pointing out that he would follow the instruction himself if his circumstances were relevantly similar to yours. "So why did you smoke when you were my age, then?," you may ask him. Even if his reply is that he foolishly continued smoking even though he knew the health risks, this does not, I think, make him a hypocrite. People change their views, and it's not hypocritical to express a new view one genuinely believes in even if one also acted against this view in the past (e.g., it is not hypocritical for a former racist to speak up against racism now). So the above definition must be refined by adding that (a) and (b) must occur at or around the same time, must not be separated by a relevant change in the person's normative position.

Your second case can be made a little sharper by focusing on specific US officials. Imagine someone who works for the US State Department and is asked to write a human rights report about Indonesia. Her report, endorsing certain human rights and condemning the Indonesian military for systematically violating them, is accepted and published. I don't think this makes her hypocritical: She is not involved in US human rights violations and does what she can to reduce them -- e.g., by including in her report how arms delivered by the US to the Indonesian army play a crucial role in the human rights violations she describes in her report. Is the official acceptance of her report rendering "the US" hypocritical? I find it clearer to talk about specific officials here. Take President Bush, for example, who has caused thousands of people to be tortured horribly: at Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo Bay, and also -- much worse -- at many "black sites" at unknown locations and through "extraordinary renditions" to "friendly" countries like Syria (the Arar story), Yemen, Jordan, and Egypt. On the UN International Day in Support of the Victims of Torture, Bush is reported to have said: “The victims often feel forgotten, but we will not forget them. America supports accountability and treatment centers for torture victims … We stand with the victims to seek their healing and recovery, and urge all nations to join us in these efforts to restore the dignity of every person affected by torture” (June 26, 2004, www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/06/20040626-19.html). This strikes me as a good case of hypocrisy insofar as Bush presented himself as endorsing accountability with respect to torture, as well as treatment centers, healing, recovery, and restoration of dignity for torture victims, while also working hard to ensure that there would be no accountability with regard to all the torture he was deliberately causing and authorizing, and no treatment centers, healing, recovery, and restoration of dignity with regard to the many victims of such torture.

Your third case again raises interesting difficulties. The judge may be applying the law without endorsing it, or may be endorsing it as a useful instrument of public order without endorsing it as generating genuine moral duties. To illustrate the first case, take a law against homosexuality. The judge believes this law to be unjust and works to change it to the extent he can. He is also a practicing homosexual. But his legal philosophy is such that he feels himself bound to apply the law as it is. In this case, the judge is not hypocritical. He is not publicly endorsing the normative position he is personally contravening. To illustrate the second case, take a law against possession of heroin. The judge thinks this is a good law because most citizens would not know how to handle heroin properly, and it is just not feasible to exempt the few who do. But our judge also believes that this law does not impose a genuine moral duty, certainly not on those few who can handle heroin properly. Believing himself to be among this number, he tries heroin. He is not a hypocrite, because he does not endorse the position that it is always wrong to break the/this law -- only the position that it is permissible to punish those who break it.