Ruthlessness in Public Life

Ruthlessness in Public Life

Description

The great modern crimes are public crimes. To a degree the same can be said of the past, but the growth of political power has introduced a scale of massacre and despoliation that makes the efforts of private criminals, pirates, and bandits seem truly modest. Public crimes are committed by individuals who play roles in political, military, and economic institutions. (Because religions are politically weak, crimes committed on their behalf are now rare.) Yet unless the offender has the originality of Hitler, Stalin, or Amin, the crimes don't seem to be fully attributable to the individual himself. Famous political monsters have moral personalities large enough to transcend the boundaries of their public roles; they take on the full weight of their deeds as personal moral property. But they are exceptional. Not only are ordinary soldiers, executioners, secret policemen, and bombardiers morally encapsulated in their roles, but so are most secretaries of defense or state, and even many presidents and prime ministers. They act as office-holders or functionaries, and thereby as individuals they are insulated in a puzzling way from what they do: insulated both in their own view and in the view of most observers. Even if one is in no doubt about the merits of the acts in question, the agents seem to have a slippery moral surface, produced by their roles or offices. This is certainly true of several American statesmen responsible for the more murderous aspects of policy during the Vietnam war. Robert McNamara is president of the World Bank. McGeorge Bundy is president of the Ford Foundation. Elliot Richardson was secretary of defense under Nixon during the completely illegal bombing of Cambodia which went on after the Vietnam peace agreements were signed. He then became attorney general and was widely acclaimed for resigning that office rather than comply with Nixon's request that he fire Archibald Cox for demanding the White House tapes. His highly selective sense of honor has served him well: he has since been ambassador to Britain, secretary of commerce and ambassador at large, and we shall hear more of him. Kissinger is of course a highly esteemed figure, despite the Christmas bombing of 1972 and all that preceded it. The judgments I am presupposing are controversial: not everyone agrees that American policy during the Vietnam war was criminal. But even those who do think so may find it hard to attach the crimes to the criminals, in virtue of the official role in which they were committed. Few old anti-war demonstrators would feel more than mildly uncomfortable about meeting one of these distinguished figures, unless it was just because we were unaccustomed to personal contact with anyone as powerful as the president of the World Bank. There is, I think, a problem about the moral effects of public roles and offices. Certainly they have a profound effect on the behavior of the individuals who fill them, an effect partly restrictive but significantly liberating. Sometimes they confer great power, but even where they do not, as in the case of an infantryman or police interrogator, they can produce a feeling of moral insulation that has strong attractions. The combination of special requirements and release from some of the usual restrictions, the ability to say that one is only following orders or doing one's job or meeting one's responsibilities, the sense that one is the agent of vast impersonal forces or the servant of institutions larger than any individual—all these ideas form a heady and sometimes corrupting brew. But this would not be so unless there were something to the special status of action in a role. If roles encourage illegitimate release from moral restraints it is because their moral effect has been distorted. It will help to understand the distortion if we consider another curiosity of current moral discourse about public life: the emphasis placed on those personal restrictions that complement the lack of official restraint—the other side of the coin of public responsibility and irresponsibility. Public figures are not supposed to use their power openly to enrich themselves and their families, or to obtain sexual favors. Such primitive indulgences are generally hidden or denied, and stress is laid on the personal probity and disinterest of public figures. This kind of personal detachment in the exercise of official functions is thought to guarantee their good moral standing, and it leaves them remarkably free in the public arena. No doubt private transgressions are widespread, but when they are inescapably exposed the penalty can be severe, for a delicate boundary of moral restraint that sets off the great body of public power and freedom has been breached. Spiro Agnew will never be head of the Ford Foundation. The exchange seems fairly straightforward. The exercise of public power is to be liberated from certain constraints by the imposition of others, which are primarily personal. Because the office is supposedly shielded from the personal interests of the one who fills it, what he does in his official capacity seems also to be depersonalized. This nourishes the illusion that personal morality does not apply to it with any force, and that it cannot be strictly assigned to his moral account. The office he occupies gets between him and his depersonalized acts. Among other things, such a picture disguises the fact that the exercise of power, in whatever role, is one of the most personal forms of individual self-expression, and a rich source of purely personal pleasure. The pleasure of power is not easily acknowledged, but it is one of the most primitive human feelings—probably one with infantile roots. Those who have had it for years sometimes realize its importance only when they have to retire. Despite their grave demeanor, impersonal diction, and limited physical expression, holders of public power are personally involved to an intense degree and probably enjoying it immensely. But whether or not it is consciously enjoyed, the exercise of power is a primary form of individual expression, not diminished but enhanced by the institutions and offices on which it depends. When we try, therefore, to say what is morally special about public roles and public action, we must concentrate on how they alter the demands on the individual. The actions are his, whether they consist of planning to obliterate a city or only firing in response to an order. So if the moral situation is different from the case where he acts in no official capacity, it must be because the requirements are different.

Source Publication

Public and Private Morality

Source Editors/Authors

Stuart Hampshire

Publication Date

1978

Ruthlessness in Public Life

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