When I started cycling in 2015, it became clear that diet was important, specifically protein. So, I gave up vegetarianism to improve my protein intake. Indeed, I racked up impressive mileage in months thereafter. But a few years later, in 2019, I became vegan again after a braai. I looked at my plate and there was a mountain of meat, which seemed wrong. A few years later, this time in 2023, I was on a cycling trip from Musina to Cape Town. Again, finding protein was hard. This was especially so because I was hosted at people’s homes. Burdening them with my dietary issues seemed unjustifiable, especially given that protein was much needed. So, I ate meat opportunistically. After the journey, I became a vegetarian (no longer vegan) with a few exceptions.

My exception to meat-eating is now social. I generally do not eat meat. However, I eat meat when I am at a braai, when out with friends or when I am a guest. Note, however, that my complicated relationship with meat is not philosophical, it is just a reflection of my being a complicated person. Some philosophers would argue that my relationship with meat is complicated precisely because I lack an underlying ethic.

In this newsletter, I will share two such ethics: first, I will discuss Peter Singer’s account of animal welfare and how he says we should treat animals, and by extension, how we should think about eating them. Then I will discuss Paul Taylor’s radical view regarding how humans ought to relate with all living things, not just animals.

Peter Singer: The Animal Welfare Movement

In the 1970s, America was undergoing a cultural revolution of sorts. All the hippies were out of the closet, experimenting with LSD, challenging status quos and pushing boundaries in many ways. Among the threads of this mass movement emerged the idea that it is chauvinistic to treat animals and the environment as if they belonged to us (humans).¹

This view collided with the long-standing Christian idea that God created man in his image and said, “Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”² Perhaps an argument can be made that this was a further manifestation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s prophecy, that “God is dead” and that we killed him. In effect, Nietzsche was saying the moral Northstar of humanity was dead. In light of this, humanity risked descending into the chaos, which was the case for the first half of the 20th Century, unless other moral principles are created or found (somehow).

It is in this spirit, I speculate, that philosophers of the 60s and 70s sought to create, among others, an ethic for the environment. Among the proponents of this new ethic was Peter Singer. In his book Animal Liberation (1975), which has not only sold millions of copies but has revised our intuitions on the treatment of animals, Singer argues that the only morally relevant property for moral consideration is the capacity to suffer.³ Given that all sentient beings suffer the same way, it follows that the same suffering of one being ought to draw the same moral consideration as the same suffering of another being.

In effect, sticking a knife into Johnny, according to Singer, should draw the same moral consideration as sticking it into Sam, not because they share any factual characteristics, but only because they will suffer in the same way. Given that all sentient beings feel the same pain as humans, it follows that sticking the same knife into a cat or a cow ought to draw the same moral consideration as with Johnny or Sam. In this regard, both humans and non-humans have the same moral standing, grounded in pain and suffering, and worthy of equal consideration where equal pain and suffering is concerned.

Importantly, Singer does not say we must treat all sentient beings the same way. Pigs must be treated differently from humans because they are characteristically different. However, where moral considerations are concern, they must be regarded in principle the same way.

The implication is that harming other creatures (with the capacity to suffer) without giving them due consideration is wrong. For instance, keeping animals in cages (to feed humans) causes immense suffering to them and this is wrong according to Singer. Also, keeping animals to, as it were, steal their products (like eggs, milk or honey) is also wrong because they suffer as a result. Thus, Singer advocates not only a vegan diet but a vegan lifestyle.

Respect for the Nature

Some philosophers take an even tougher stance than Singer. Enter Paul Taylor who holds that it is not just animals that have moral standing, but all living things, plants included have it.⁴ So, Taylor says, in effect, that plants and animals deserve the same kind of respect as humans. I will examine his argument in what follows. But first, I want to lay the groundwork for environmental ethics that undergirds Taylor’s thinking.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are the last person on earth and that you have a bomb that can destroy the planet. Suppose further that the bomb is so powerful that all life would die instantly without inflicting any pain or suffering. In other words, you do not have to worry about Singer’s concern for pain and suffering. Also, you don’t have to worry about the fact that humans benefit from the environment because you are the last person on the planet.

It strike me (and Richard Routley, the philosopher who came up with this thought experiment) that there would be something wrong with blowing up the planet.⁴ It seems if one were to shift one’s perspective from a human-centred view of nature and think as a member of the environment, a case could be made against blowing up the planet. This suggests that there is something about the planet that has value that I worth preserving or perhaps just leaving alone.

Taylor’s project is to explain the nature of this intrinsic value and how we ought to relate to it. On his account, the all living things are best understood (morally) as a teleological centre of life. Telos refers to the study of ultimate aims. Thus, the way to understand living things is in terms of the fact that they all aim at something: they aim at living and not dying, they aim at achieving their biological potential, and they aim at multiplying. From this view, living things can be harmed or protected in terms of their telos. In other words, a living thing has a welfare justified in terms of life going favourably or unfavourably for it. In relation to moral agents, like humans, we can make life go well or poorly for living things in relation their telos. That is to say, living things have an interest and we can treat them according to it, and not according to our interests. Another way of framing it is to say all living things are ends in themselves and should not be used as a mere means.

Thus, we see that Taylor draws heavily on Kantian logic. The full justification for his claim is quite dense and complicated. If you are a nerd like me, you can read on, but if not, you can skip to the next section for the broader discussion, more related to the topic at hand.

To truly appreciate Taylor, we must first understand the philosophical framework from which he draws, Kantian Ethics. According to Immanuel Kant, widely regarded as among the most important philosophers in recorded history, morality is grounded in rationality. This means there are properties in a rational being that have intrinsic value; they have something about them that is valuable for and by itself and whose value requires no further justification. For Kant, this is The Good Will.

To explain the Good Will, Kant offers the analogy of the shopkeeper, of which I will take liberties in rendering it. Suppose there was a shopkeeper attending to an incompetent customer, perhaps a child or a tourist. The shopkeeper would be obliged to treat the customer fairly, that is, sell the goods at the regular price and give them the right change because it is right to do so. In other words, if the shopkeeper treats the customer fairly because of fear of being found out or any other prudential reasons, he would not deserve moral praise. To this end, an act can accord with the morally right thing to do without being morally praiseworthy. An act is morally praiseworthy if it is done out of duty to do the rationally right thing to do.

The Good Will is the property in rational beings that makes it possible to do the right thing for its own sake, regardless of prudential considerations, inclinations or preferences. In light of this, it is the nature of rational beings to set ends (or goals) out of personal inclinations – or to have hypothentical imperatives. In other words, moral agents are free to do anything they want. However, surely there are things that are morally wrong to do. Kant proposes that those things that are morally wrong violate the principle of rationality. In other words, doing them is necessarily irrational.

Some things, however, can be rationally wrong but not morally wrong. So, the things that are morally wrong are those things that are not only irrational, but undermine the rational capacities of other beings as well. In other words, they disregard the fact that other beings have hypothetical imperatives deserve the right to pursue them. It seems, therefore, that although all rational beings can hold hypothetical imperatives, there must be a limiting principles that prevent Agent A from undermining Agent B. Kant calls these principles, The Categorical Imperative.

Under the Categorical Imperative, autonomous moral agents can do anything they want provided they do not undermine the humanity in themselves and others or use others as a mere means. In this regard, humanity refers to properties in rational beings that are good for their own sake, perhaps The Good Will. The possession of these properties imply having an inalienable value that must be respected. Using others as a mere means refers to disregarding the fact that they can also set ends, that is, they act for their own sake as well. In other words, one must recognise that a rational autonomous moral agent is not just a thing: first, moral agents have intrinsic value because they possesses the the Good Will, second, they deserve respect because they are self-legislating (that is, they set ends for themselves)

In short, we respect other rational beings not because of what they are in this instance, but what they are capable of as autonomous beings. Taylor latches onto this capacity to become. However, he takes issue with Kant limiting moral standing to rational beings. This would imply, drawing on an earlier analogy, that animals and plants do not have intrinsic value. In other words, there would be nothing inherently wrong with the last man blowing up the planet.

So, Taylor revises Kant’s grounding of moral standing on rationality. Instead, Taylor proposes the idea of a teleological centre of life. Teology refers to the study of ultimate aims. Thus, Taylor refers to the observation that all living things tend towards fulfilling ultimate aims: they aim at living (and not dying), they aim at reaching their full potential as biological entities, and they aim at maximising their prospects of procreation. This telos, inherent in all living things including humans, is the grounds for having interests, a welfare, well-being or a good. I will refer to these properties as a welfare, but careful not to imply any mental state or attitudes inherent in beings that possess these properties.

Thus, we have an ethic grounded in the mere fact of being alive. At the risk of repeating myself, I will clarify further the grounds for this ethic. How is it that the mere fact of being alive warrants respect? Taylor says being alive entails having two properties, wellbeing and inherent worth. I have already touched on what wellbeing is, but what is important is that it induces moral considerability by a normal functioning moral agents. One of way of explaining this is with an analogy. Supposing you are walking past a street and a dog unexpectedly barks and gives you a fright. In this case, you have the capacity to react frightfully, but the fright is triggered by the dog because of how it sounds. In other words, the dog’s bark has an inherent property that, when encountered by a being with certain capacities, creates a certain effect. So, similarly, an entity with a welfare (grounded as a life-centred telos) brings about a certain considerability in a functioning moral agent.

A moral agent that encounters an entity with a welfare necessarily views such an entity in terms of there being a right and wrong way to treat it because embedded in the welfare is the fact that a state of affairs can go right or wrong for the entity. The distinction Taylor draws, although in passing, is that when a moral being causes a change in the welfare of an entity then we can speak of such an intervention in terms of harm or promotion, that is, we can speak of it in moral terms. It seems, although not explicitly mentioned by Taylor, that the coincidence of intentionality (as a property) in the moral agent and the welfare (as a property) in a living entity creates the conditions for moral judgement.

Here, I understand intentionality in Kantian terms, that is, the capacity to set ends. Welfare is the property that entails viewing an entity possessing such a property in terms of right and wrong. It follows that to view an entity in terms of right and wrong because of the properties inherent in the entity is necessarily to assume a disinterested posture. In other words, suppose I want to kill that chicken and eat it. Because the chicken has properties whereby my encounter with it makes me view it in terms of the good of (or for) the chicken inherent in the chicken for the sake of the chicken, then I must at least consider whether killing the chicken is the morally right thing to do. In other words, the chicken has a dignity (or a value) that warrants respect (or taking it seriously).

Now, we are back to the Kantian formulation of ends: act always to respect humanity and never to use others as a mere means. Indiscriminately killing the chicken would be to disrespect it, according to Taylor. But so would ripping out flowers from a flower bed. On the face of it, it seems one can take a strong view that any harmful (or counter productive) interaction with living things is impermissible. This would imply that harming plants to eat them is just as bad as harming a human being.

But in Taylor’s defence, he does not speak strictly in terms of impermissibility. Taylor, rather, advocates for the respect for nature. I take it he means taking nature seriously, acting appropriately in relation to nature, and never simply using it as a mere means. In other words, one ought to adopt certain attitudes in relation to nature, which Taylor articulates as follows: (1) seeking to promote the good of organisms for their own sake, (2) presuming that it is a duty to promote the good of organisms for their own sake, (3) having positive or negative feelings in relation to life going well or poorly according to organisms.

Back to the Chicken. Perhaps Taylor does not prohibit killing the chicken and eating it. On the other hand, Taylor urges us to appreciate and take seriously that the chicken is about to give up something intrinsically valuable. Therefore, for arguments stake, suppose it has just laid eggs; or perhaps it has little chicks following it around. It would follow, in such circumstances, that the chicken deserves additional consideration befitting its conditions. Of course, this applies to all living things, forests, the fish in the oceans and the animal kingdom as a whole.

Taylor wants us to believe that we are not as special as we might think; we are not the top of the food chain. Instead, like all living things, we are members of the biotic family. As such, we ought to realise that nature, of which we are full members, deserves as much respect as we give members of our species.

Discussion

These accounts support the initial objection that the Christian idea of lording over nature leads to chauvinism. If we believe we are superior, as argued by Roughtley, we believe that we can do with nature what we please. But it is quite obvious that we cannot do with nature as we please. In the first instance, without nature we will also cease to exist. That is, we are wholly dependent on nature.

But philosophers do not want to regard nature only for its instrumental value, they argue that aspects of nature have intrinsic value, which is justifiable in terms not unique to humans. For Singer, all animals with the capacity to feel pain have the same moral standing as humans – that is, they have a welfare and an interest grounded in sentience. In light of this, Singer argues that like interests ought to count for like consideration. If it feels pain then it is a member of the moral community; if it suffers then it deserves in principle the same moral consideration.

Taylor, takes it a step further in arguing that what humans find morally relevant in other humans exists in all living things. Moral relevance, according to Taylor, is grounded in being a teleological centre of life – in having a welfare and tied to that, inherent worth. It follows from this account that all living things have moral standing that is fundamentally the same as humans. Like wise, it is incumbent on us especially as moral agents to revise our sense of superiority and recognise that nature deserves as much respect as we do for its own sake.

So, we arrive at the conclusion we are not lords of nature, as construed in the Bible. Perhaps that passage is better understood in terms of stewardship. both accounts argue that it is wrong to kill animals for fun in the same way that it is wrong to kill another human being for fun. According to these thinkers, if I am take liberties, picking flowers (for Taylor) and slaughtering farm animals (for Singer) is no different from murder and we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, if not for disrespecting nature, certainly for speciesism.

Conclusion

When it comes to diet, both Taylor and Singer are vegan. Taylour exited the meat-eating club in spectacular fashion by declaring that, “As of today I will never eat animal products of any kind. Never again will an animal have to die in order to keep me alive.” Singer, on the other hand, said, “Our future selves will consider meat eating to be barbaric,” I guess in the same way that we think slavery is barbaric.

What’s your take?

References

[1] Routley, R.S. (2013) ‘Is there a need for a new, an environmental ethic?’, Proceedings of the XVth World Congress of Philosophy, 1, pp. 205–210.

[2] Bible. (n.d.). The Holy Bible, Genesis 1:26–28.

[3] Singer, P. (2009) Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement. Updated ed. edition. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

[4] Routley, R.S. (2013) ‘Is there a need for a new, an environmental ethic?’, Proceedings of the XVth World Congress of Philosophy, 1, pp. 205–210.

[5] Taylor, P.W. (1981) ‘The Ethics of Respect for Nature’, Environmental Ethics, 3(3), pp. 197–218. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics19813321.

[6] Dillon, R.S. (2022) ‘Respect’, in E.N. Zalta and U. Nodelman (eds) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fall 2022. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/respect/(Accessed: 6 November 2024).

Juxtaposed with this view is often the idea that our accomplishments reside on the other side of the proverbial mountain of suffering. Those few who succeed, it is said, realise their success because they pierce the hymen of pain and, as it were, endure the suffering that follows. On this account, success is roughly construed as effort + resilience.

This formula implies that success is borne of our agency; that it is up to each individual to create success for themselves, supposedly by putting in the effort and having grit. However, one cannot ignore decision-making as a significant contributor to success (or failure). It strikes me as uncontroversial to suggest that decisions can turn the fortunes of one’s life. Elsewhere, I quoted Dr Mark Lamberti who lists four kinds of decisions that inevitably pivot one’s life: who you marry, religious choices, career choices, and where you live – I will call these meta choices. On the face of it, this list is not exhaustive, but it is a fruitful start. For instance, one is most influenced by the person one marries. If not directly, definitely in terms of the constraints and possibilities that follow from having children, growing together, sharing values and grappling with extended family matters. The same can be said about the other meta choices, that they have a profound impact on one’s life.

It seems, therefore, that decision-making is crucial in how one’s life turns out. This opens up the idea that one’s agency – setting ends and pursuing them with means – is not sufficient for success. In other words, success is not entirely self-determined. If it is the case that decisions affect our lives, it follows logically that not only the decisions one makes affect one’s life. Indeed, the decisions made by one’s partner, boss or even state governor can significantly impact one’s life. At a macro level, we bear witness to the decisions made by heads of state that result in wars, say, in Gaza and Ukraine. It can be argued that the citizens who suffer the consequences of war have little to do with the politics that cause the wars. Thus, one’s circumstances, and to a large degree one’s success, result from forces far beyond one’s agency.

In keeping with the initial catalogue of meta choices, one can argue that people affected by wars or any such circumstances that make life miserable ought to exercise their agency, say, to move to another country or region. Also, to use another example, one who finds oneself in an abusive relationship ought to find another partner, and so on. I argue, to the contrary, that it is naive to think that such people willingly endure their circumstances. In wars, for instance, movement becomes restricted. In instances where they can move, the displacement brings other challenges such as inhabiting an area lacking infrastructure or public goods. Even in the case of abusive relationships, it is not obvious that one can simply dislodge oneself from a complex social environment, perhaps with children, family, emotions, hopes and so on. So, I further defend the idea that our circumstances result from forces far beyond our agency.

Now we are in the murky waters of victimhood and privilege. A victim, in this instance, grapples with an unwanted situation without having caused it. In reference to the example above, civilians in a warring state are victims because they have little to do with its cause and it can be argued that they have little sway, except if they organise, in how the war turns out. Privilege, on the other hand, refers to advantages that one enjoys without having brought them about. One need only point to the apparent inequality in South Africa – not only among blacks and whites but among the black elite and the black poor to appreciate the effect and extent of advantages that some enjoy without having brought them about.

Perhaps it is worth talking more about privilege. Some might argue that an entrepreneur, for instance, who built a business through sheer will and determination has exercised their agency to bring about their good fortunes. But consider that they exercise their agency within a fertile context, one with laws, opportunities, social capital and so on. So, this is not to bash the exercise of agency, but to recognise fundamentally that one’s agency is perhaps best regarded as a gentle contributor rather than a serious determinant.

At this point you may want to point to individuals who cross the circumstantial (or social mobility) divide, that is, they are born poor and end up rich, or they are born rich and become poor. Surely, these individuals disprove my thesis that our circumstances are better understood in terms of forces beyond our agency. These individuals, it might be argued, did something that changed their circumstances. They moved, they married well, they chose the right religion, or maybe they chose the right career. Allow me to offer two defences:

First. In a podcast, the respected businessman born to humble circumstances, Sizwe Nxasana, admits to having gained significant advantages from Black Economic Empowerment (B.E.E), the bundle of laws and regulations that (are supposed to) give black South Africans advantages over their white counterparts in the aim of redressing the past.³ His fledgling accounting firm at the time, he admits, was assisting small-time doctors and other black businesses. However, it has since grown to a large firm with an international footprint. He attributes his initial success to the economic and political shifts that created opportunities resulting in large contracts from the state. This opened even more opportunities where, for instance, he became the CEO of one of the largest banks in South Africa.

Of course, I cannot take away from his capabilities once at the helm, that is, his ability to learn quickly, think at a high level, build relationships, and add value thereby realising the potential in the opportunities. However, the opportunity itself depended entirely on a context which, I argue, was outside his sphere of agency. In other words, he could not have single-handedly created B.E.E. and the political environment, chosen the right career, met the right people, and bought about all the conditions that influenced his colleagues to consider him for the opportunities in the first place. He, and many others, were born at the right time, with the right skin colour, and fortuitously chose the right career.

In other words, he and many others were lucky. On the face of it, luck might appear to undermine what I have already mentioned as inherent skills to materialise the opportunity. But my idea of luck was best articulated by Warrant Buffet in an address at the University of Florida:

You don’t know if you are going to be born black or white, rich or poor, male or female, infirm or able-bodied, bright or retarded. All you know is you are going to take one ball out of a barrel with 5.8 billion (balls). You are going to participate in the ovarian lottery. And that is going to be the most important thing in your life, because that is going to control whether you are born here or in Afghanistan or whether you are born with an IQ of 130 or an IQ of 70. It is going to determine a whole lot. What type of world are you going to design?

Even those who work much harder to achieve their goals (not to suggest that the B.E.E elite did not work hard), I argue that if they were in a warring state, for instance, they could not have even dreamed of such opportunities. In other words, the context in which one exists significantly impacts the potential that one realises in oneself. This context, I argue, is largely outside one’s sphere of influence.

Second. I am further seconded by The Hamilton Project, a study in social mobility by Greenstone et al. The study shows that children of families in the top 5 income percentile see significant growth in family income throughout their lives. On the other hand, children in middle-income families hardly see any real changes, and those born in the lowest 35 income percentiles experience a worsening of family fortunes over time.⁴ In other words, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and not much happens in the middle. The study further shows that children in high-income families and those in low-income families do not have real differences in intellectual capacities. What shapes their lives are the opportunities to which they are born and of which they have access. This evidence further strengths my claim that access is largely due to circumstances outside our control, or that our context determines our circumstances more than we think.

I am not refuting effort and resilience as important ingredients in one’s success. However, my project in this newsletter was to show that one’s agency is only a contribution to one’s success. Furthermore, it can be argued that one’s agency is a small contribution to one’s success considering the forces that can impact one’s life. So, we are better off understanding our lives as shaped by the forces far beyond our sphere of influence and agency.

The ancient greeks seem to have understood this idea. Their belief in a constellation of gods, like the god of war, the god of love, the god of fortune (and so on) seems to portray a reality whereby the locus of control is mostly external to oneself. This view, of course, no longer appeals to us. We rather conceive of a world where we are in control of our fate and we direct our lives to a desired end. But maybe something can be said about espousing a life where one is partially in control, or perhaps largely not in control.

Here I imagine two leaves falling from a tree. One falls on the ground next to the tree and the other is whisked away by the wind and falls into a stream. Without effort attributable to it, the leaf that fortuitously fell into the river flows and covers unimaginable distances. If it were human, it would revel in its success and maybe fashion itself as a teacher, preaching about its success on social media. But may, just maybe, we are leaves on a great stream of destiny, aiming towards ends of which we have little to do in bringing about and maybe even conceiving.

Reference

[1] Haden, Jeff (2022). Can’t Overcome the Navy SEAL 40 Percent Rule? Embrace the Mindset of High Achievers. Inc Magazine. https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/success-persistence-seal-40-percent-rule-high-achiever-mindset.html

[2]: Loper, Chris (2018). Mental Toughness. Becoming Better, https://becomingbetter.org/mental-toughness/

[3] Penuel Mlotshwa (2024) ‘The Konvo Show: Penuel In Conversation with Sizwe Nxasana, Sizwe & Co, Telkom CEO, First Rand CEO’. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvlJjX3y8zY (Accessed: 29 October 2024).

[4] Greenstone, M. et al. (2013) ‘Thirteen Economic Facts about Social Mobility and the Role of Education’, Brookings, 26 June. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/research/thirteen-economic-facts-about-social-mobility-and-the-role-of-education/ (Accessed: 27 June 2020).

In today’s newsletter, I will reflect on various approaches to answering these crucial questions. I will begin by proposing that humans have the unique capacity to think about thinking (meta-cognition). Then, I will survey popular ideas related to self-identity and how to live well. Finally, I will examine the mechanism that allows us to think about thinking.

Reflection & Meta Cognition

Humans can think about thinking. This ability makes it possible for us to relate to the world not only as we perceive it but as we ought to perceive it. For example, in the Sahara Desert, there lives a people called the Tuareg. They are nomadic and travel thousands of kilometers every year in search of food and water to survive in the desert. Due to the scarcity of water, it is a rule that wasting it is punishable. Furthermore, denying someone a drink of water, even a stranger, is sometimes punishable by death.

In this example, the tribe relates to water primarily as a vital substance, as do we. However, due to its scarcity, they also relate to it in normative terms. They have rules that govern how one ought to relate to water. This implies that they not only think of water as essential for survival but also consider how one ought to think about it.

Of interest to today’s topic is this ability to think and then think about thinking, thereby creating rules about how one ought to relate to a thought. I claim that this extraordinary cognitive ability is the reason we are capable of questioning our identity and what we stand for. However, before delving deeper into the inner workings of this mechanism, I first want to address certain assumptions.

Identity Around The World

Notions of identity are treading on radical territory. Some people believe, for instance, that their sex is not determined by their biology. On this account, identity is something that one creates, regardless of one’s circumstances or biology. I am tempted to say this is an extreme libertarian view, although “libertarian” is a political term. Nevertheless, I mean to suggest it is a view that presupposes individual freedoms and the unrestricted expression of those freedoms as essential for personhood. Without the freedom to self-determine and self-direct, one is denied something essential; one is denied the status of personhood.

An alternative account is found in African and Chinese thought. In the philosophy of Ubuntu, one identifies oneself not strictly in terms of freedom (although I am not denying that freedom is important) but more in terms of one’s capacity to relate to others (Metz, 2012). On this account, freedom is important insofar as it makes it possible for one to relate to others harmoniously. Arguably, this was the evil of Apartheid—it destroyed people’s capacity to relate to each other by forcefully and violently separating them. Nevertheless, it follows that personal identity, in this view, lies in one’s capacity to relate to others, rather than being strictly about self-definition and self-direction.

Taoist (ancient Chinese) thinkers hold that the world is constantly in flux—like this today and like that tomorrow. Therefore, the way to lead a good life is to be like water, constantly adapting and having no particular attachments to any state of affairs (Tao Te Ching, ch. 5, ch. 8). The Buddhist way of life is somewhat similar, although it has a different starting point, articulated in the Four Noble Truths. They hold that (1) life involves inevitable suffering, (2) suffering is caused by attachments, (3) there is a way to release attachments—i.e., there is a way to live without suffering, and (4) this is achieved by following a particular way of life called the Eightfold Path. Both accounts recommend releasing one’s attachments as fundamental to leading a good life. It follows that their sense of identity involves “putting things down” rather than having the right to hold on to them, as in the first, dare I say, Western account.

So, we have three frameworks for identity. The first is about freedom and the rights that come with it. The second concerns the capacity to relate to others. The third involves giving up attachments and, in some sense, hollowing out one’s ego. Note, however, that all these frameworks are expressions of thinking about thinking. They involve a perception of the world and an attitude toward that perception.

Thinking About Thinking

It seems, therefore, that thinking about thinking involves at least two stages. First, one perceives the world and identifies it as it appears. For instance, I see an apple and identify it as a fruit. Suppose, however, that I eat the apple, and a voice booms from above, announcing that I have committed a grave sin. Suddenly, I relate to the apple not only as a fruit but also with the added belief that it is wrong to eat it.

It seems the first stage involves identifying something, and the second stage involves constructing meaning from that identity. Take, for instance, a toddler who sees a fire. They identify it as a distinct object, separate from others. Then they stick their finger in it and get burned. From that point on, they establish a relationship with the fire—there is now meaning involved in their understanding of fire. This implies that meaning is established through interaction with a thing.

In light of this, a thing has two distinct identities. The primary identity is shared among all who possess the same observational faculties. The second, what I will call the normative identity, concerns how one ought to relate to a thing. In the second case, we see something not merely as an object, but in terms of how one ought to relate to it. As a result, we cast judgments based on the difference between how one relates to a thing and how, at least in terms of the normative principles one holds, one ought to relate to it.

In other words, we have now established: (1) a primary identity, (2) a normative principle related to that identity, (3) an interaction, and (4) a judgment of the interaction based on the normative principle. We have an apple (1), a sin in eating the apple (2), Adam who eats the apple (3), and a judgment of Adam as having sinned for eating the apple (4).

Revising a Personal Identity

The previous section gives us a few tools for working with personal identity. First, we have an experience of the self as being alive and having certain capabilities (1). Second, we reckon with the world and, whether through experience or inculcation, adopt certain attitudes or normative principles about how one ought to behave (2). Then, we act according to or contrary to the normative principles we hold (3). From this, we judge ourselves (and others) in terms of those normative principles (4).

I think something is missing in this framework. Suppose one holds the normative principle that the ends justify the means. In other words, it does not matter what one does, so long as one achieves their goal. Then, on a fateful day, one decides to rob a bank to feed a hungry village. In this case, robbing the bank is merely a means to an end that will benefit many people. Suppose, further, that during the robbery, one kills a pregnant bank teller who tried to press the panic button. It may be, as demonstrated in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, that the consequences of an act can force one to revise the principles held before the action. In this instance, one might debunk the notion that the ends justify the means.

In other words, step 2 is not fixed. Also, step 4 is not merely a judgment of oneself (and others) in terms of the normative principles held, but it is both a judgment and an evaluation of the normative principles themselves. In other words, personal identity is iterative: (1) one identifies as oneself, (2) one holds certain normative principles, (3) one acts according to or contrary to those principles, (4) one not only judges (3) but evaluates (2).

I claim that judging (3) alone is a process of self-correction. However, revising (2) is revising one’s identity; it is a process of acquiring, giving up, or substantially changing what one considers to be true about the world, thereby adopting new normative principles. This leads to, in no trivial way, detaching from an old self and assuming a new self whose worldview and actions are fundamentally different.

Conclusion

Two weeks ago, I asked my professor to what end we do philosophy, and I did not quite get the answer. I subsequently stumbled upon the idea that philosophy is about understanding and shaping our intuitions. With a better and more refined understanding, one can live better.

Unlike the sciences, whose purpose is to create and refine knowledge, philosophy does not promise to create anything. Of course, a lot has come from philosophical thought. However, I claim that these “innovations” or additions to life were the consequence of refined intuition rather than a concerted effort to create something.

This is somewhat true of today’s topic. Personal identity is something we reckon with by intuition. Everyone has a sense of who they are and what they stand for. But sometimes, crisis forces us to revise who we are and what we stand for, which is a difficult process to go through. Today’s newsletter did not try to provide a guide on how to develop a personal identity. Rather, the goal was to examine the process and offer a possible understanding of what happens when we revise our identity.

The insight is that personal identity is a product of thinking about thinking. In particular, one’s attitudes toward life, as in the normative principles one holds, form the bedrock of personal identity. Changing these principles is changing one’s identity.

Until next week.
Vusi.

Writing today’s newsletter made me realize how little I know about money. As it stands, I am not satisfied with the conclusions drawn, and I will do more research and write about this subject some other time.

Nevertheless, in a fascinating talk about Artificial Intelligence, Stephen Fry (2024, 54:50) quotes an American philosopher, Daniel Dennett, who said money is among the few foundational human inventions, “the agreed control of which no one disputes.” Whether you are a communist, a capitalist, Chinese, or South African, the one thing everyone agrees on is that money is important and having it is useful.

I will use this as a starting point. Money is an invention.

Part One: The Theory of Money

As a rule, all inventions serve a purpose. Therefore, what is the purpose of money? A common narrative is that money succeeded the bartering system by solving the double coincidence problem. This is when each party must have what the other wants for a trade to happen. By acting as a durable store of value, money made it possible for each party not to worry about the goods the other party wanted. Money acted as an intermediary, allowing the other party to accept it and then spend it at a later date on what they wanted. In this regard, money is an intermediary commodity traded for goods deemed to have equivalent value.

Recent studies hold a different view. They argue that money is not a commodity (de Bruin et al., 2023, p.4). If it were a commodity, it would have intrinsic value. If it were exchanged for an ounce of gold, it should, in principle, be able to buy another ounce of gold. However, this is not the case.

A trade assumes that the goods given are worth less than the goods taken. If I gave you R10 for a loaf of bread, it assumes that the bread is more valuable to me than the R10 given. In other words, you would not, in turn, want to take the bread back for the same R10. In this regard, money does not have the same value as the goods for which it is traded, which undermines the claim that it is a durable store of value.

An alternative view regards money as a tool for keeping track of promises. Suppose I borrowed your bicycle and promised to return it. Instead of promising with words alone, I gave you a token that represents my promise: a rare photo of my great-grandfather with a note saying that if something happened to me or I did not return the bicycle, you could present it to my brother, who would redeem it.

Notice what just happened. First, I issued a credible promise. Second, I made that promise transferable. This captures the essence of the credit theory of money. Anything with the joint features of creditworthiness and transferability is money.

Going back to our example, suppose further that the person holding my tokenized promise was hit by a bus and their nephew found the promise. Likewise, the nephew could redeem the promise by presenting it to my brother. However, the nephew, not wanting a bicycle, could tender the token to their neighbour for furniture. Likewise, the neighbour could tender the token to yet another person and it may well be that the token changes hands without eventually returning to my family.

This demonstrates the basic principle of the credit theory of money, that it is a transferrable promise. In the next section, I will show that transferability is implied in credibility, meaning the real value of money is in its creditworthiness.

Part Two: Making Money

In the commodity theory, money is like gold, and it is exchanged for other goods using the same bartering principles. Supposing that you had apple trees, it follows that after a while, regardless of how much you love apples, you would value them less because you could not eat all of them. You would look for a neighbour, say, with bananas and trade with them. The principle, as shown earlier, is that a trade happens when the goods given are assumed to be less valuable than the goods taken. Likewise, a trade happens when the money tendered is assumed to be less valuable than the goods taken.

It seems, therefore, that the person who produces goods in exchange for money and does not, in turn, spend it, accumulates it. This paints the image that accumulating wealth is a function of industriousness and frugality—working like a slave and living like a pauper.

I can accept this image, but to what end? One can argue along the lines of the intrinsic value of work—that is, working is itself valuable. However, few people, let’s say someone working at a toll gate, could say that their work has intrinsic value. Most people endure work precisely because it allows them to do other things. Therefore, the image of a wealthy slave-pauper is untenable.

Now, I turn to the credit theory of money for a possible account of making money. On this account, credibility and transferability are money. It follows that a credible person who declares, in such a way that others believe them, that x is money has in fact created money. This account follows John Searle’s (1995) idea that money is a constitutive rule. In his seminal work, The Construction of Social Reality, Searle presents an account of different kinds of rules that shape society.

First, there are regulative rules. These are rules that regulate actions. For instance, one can regulate how one behaves around the dinner table. Note, however, that the action can exist even without the rule, and the rule serves only to shape or direct the action in a particular way. This is in contrast to constitutive rules. Constitutive rules not only regulate but also create permissible actions. Take the rules of chess. Without them, the game itself does not exist. Seen this way, playing chess is participating in an otherwise completely made-up social reality.

For Searle, money is the same thing—it is a constitutive rule, which exists only because people accept it and participate in the resulting game in much the same way that we accept the rules of chess. This view is accused of not accounting for the realism of money (Maki, 2020). Some scholars argue that money exists because of the structure of the world in a real sense, and not because of the rules we impose on society as claimed by Searle. In other words, there is a sense in which money can not exist in a society like ours. All we deal with in finance is a formal notion of money, but it exists in non-formal ways which nevertheless permit social activities like trade and accounting in all societies. Therefore, the constitutive theory of money is insufficient.

I will not go any further in examining the ontology of money. However, I hope you can appreciate that it is complicated. What I find fascinating is that money is used intuitively even if it is not understood. It is somewhat similar to the use of one’s limbs by intuition, even without knowing about bones, nerves, cells, tissue, and so on that constitute the limb.

Going back to the credit theory of money, the way to make money, on this account, is to merely declare that this is money. This is, in effect, what governments do. Of course, this is provided that others believe you and that the token said to hold the promise is transferable. It follows that a token may be transferrable, as with a precious stone like gold, but if it is not deemed creditworthy, that is, someone else will accept it in exchange for something else, and it will not hold value. In other words, creditworthiness precedes transferability.

On this account, we can understand why currencies gain and lose value. It is not so much the demand, in the commodity sense, that changes. Rather, the value of money reflects the creditworthiness of a currency and how transferable it is. Thus, an unstable country (or even an unstable business or family) loses its claim on creditworthiness, thereby losing its capacity to attract money.

Conclusion

Looking back, I came into this newsletter with a naive view of money. I thought about money only in terms of the commodity theory—that is, it is a store of value, a unit of account, and so on. The little reading I’ve done shows that money is far more complicated than I initially thought. More than that, various scholars have different views of what it is, all of which are worth consideration.

What matters is that how one views a thing is how one relates to it. A friend recently got a pit bull, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought, that’s it, my visits will be limited henceforth. However, having spent time with the dog and having watched it grow, my view of pit bulls has changed. This is the same realisation I have about money. Perhaps I have no idea what it is, and spending more time with it will help.

Anyway, thank you for reading.

Until next week.
Vusi.

P.S. I am fascinated with the idea that one can simply declare that this is money and so it becomes money. On this account, cultivating credibility seems to be the most important thing to do. I find that this account is consistent with the reality that it is easy to raise money when one is credit-worthy. In a deeper sense, creditworthiness is reputability in making and keeping financial promises.

What I did not appreciate is that labour is only a means for acquiring reputability. There are other means, especially when one does not have the required reputability to attract a said amount of money, to raise it by borrowing other people’s reputations. This is fascinating and I will explore it in an upcoming newsletter.

References

de Bruin, B. et al. (2023) ‘Philosophy of Money and Finance’, in E.N. Zalta and U. Nodelman (eds) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2023. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2023/entries/money-finance/ (Accessed: 19 September 2024).

Mäki, U. (2020) ‘Reflections on the Ontology of Money’, Journal of Social Ontology, 6(2), pp. 245–263. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2020-0063.

Searle, J.R. (1995) The construction of social reality. New York : Free Press. Available at: http://archive.org/details/constructionofso00sear (Accessed: 22 September 2024).

Aside: The Socratic Method

I am using the Socratic Method to address this topic. This is a way of examining assumptions by questioning them in various ways. For instance, it is accepted that friendships are reciprocal; that they are a give-and-take relation. However, when does reciprocity become transactional? What about giving and expecting nothing in return? Surely, giving-and-not-taking is also a necessary condition for friendship. If this is so, it seems friendship is paradoxical: in some sense, it is a give-and-take relation, while at the same time it is a give-and-not-take relation. How do these assumptions fit together?

This is the nature of The Socratic Method, it reveals complexity where it was previously not assumed to exist. Legend has it that Socrates, the old philosopher, roamed the streets asking people what seemed like silly questions. After probing, however, it became apparent that many of his interlocutors were laden with assumptions they could not justify. This included assumptions about justice, love and whether the gods existed.

Today we celebrate Socrates for his courageous enquiry into topics that shape our view of life and the method used. However, Socrates himself was sentenced to death by poison precisely for the reasons we celebrate him today. He was accused of corrupting the youth by leading them to questioning the existence of the gods of the time. When given the chance to renounce his views and his method, he defiantly drank the poison in his prison cell among friends, arguing that a commitment to truth is more important than the preservation of one’s life. At any rate, the eternal soul, he argued, would be truly liberated once unhinged from this temporary body. And so he drank and died.

Friendship and Intimacy

Intimacy is often thought of in an erotic sense. But as you can guess, I do not mean it strictly in that sense here. I draw on Laurence Thomas (1987) who holds that intimacy is a kind of mutual self-disclosure: a way of exposing oneself to the other in such a way that builds a strong connection of trust.

This is not the same as a confession, where one shares one’s deepest and darkest secrets, say, with a priest or a stranger. The difference in this case is two fold: First, confessions are self-regarding. We confess to lift burdens from our conscience, as it were. Second, confessions work precisely because there is no future for which to account. In friendship, however, one exposes onself with the intent to build trust, which implies care for a shared future. It follows that care for a shared future is a necessary condition for friendship.

But why is this so? To what end is care for a shared future necessary for friendship? Bennet Helm (2023) writes that a friend is obliged to intervene when they see the other acting strangely or not in keeping with their best interests. Take the example of a super drunk friend insisting on driving themselves and their children home. It is intuitive that a friend indeed ought to refuse that their friend drive home. This is an intervention on the grounds of abnormal behaviour. Also take a friend who has never drunk a drop of alcohol in their lives who suddenly starts drinking. Similarly, a friend ought to at least intervene by voicing their concerns. This is intervention on the grounds of abnormal change in interests.

It follows that such duties can only be plausibly acted upon if there is care for a shared future, achievable through intimacy. This is to say, the role of intimacy is to lay the foundations for caring for a shared future to the extent that one has the power to act on a friend’s behalf if the envisaged future is threatened by abnormal behaviours and interests. It follows that friends act as stabilizers in each other’s lives, intervening where necessary for the sake of the other. It might be a stretch, but it seems plausible to infer that a friend, insofar as they ought to act in one’s best interest when they see anormalies, is an extension of onself.

The End of Friendship

Now I draw on Roger Scruton (2017, 80), in his book On Human Nature, where he distinguishes things from stuff. He says water is stuff and so is gold. One might have a gold ring, which is a thing insofar as it is a different thing from, say, a gold chain. However, this is only incidental. The gold ring and chain can be melted back to their original stuff and made into another thing without a sense that anything is essentially lost.

There are other kinds of things, however, that seem permanently lost when their constituent parts are dissolved. Animals, of which we are, are things of this kind. We are made of stuff, including water and other minerals, but unlike artefacts like rings we cannot be taken apart and put together again, argues Scruton. If Vusi is divided or dissolved then Vusi is permanently gone because more than being a thing, Vusi is an individual. On this account, individuality acts as a veil that wraps around the thing, such that tearing the veil to get at the thing irreparably destroys the individual.

Some philosophers object to this notion, arguing that if an imaginary machine were to disassemble every single atom of an individual and reassemble it perfectly, as it was, the same individual would emerge, in tact as it were. In other words, the individual emerges from the assembly of parts in the same way that, as it were, the soul of a car emerges from its arrangement of mechanical parts. Scruton agrees with this insofar as a melody emerges from an arrangement of notes. However, he adds that once unleashed, the melody takes on a life of its own, residing in a different real of souls and minds. In other words, the individual is not merely a wrapper around stuff, it is also transcendent from its constituent parts – it also lives on beyond its parts as a kind of spirit.

Now, drawing on the previous assertion that friendship is the extension of self, it seems (if we are to draw on Scruton’s notion of individuality) friendship is an affair, somewhat similar to that of two stars caught in each other’s orbit. When the mutual orbit is destroyed, that is, when the shared care for the future is severed, each become disorientated and move in random directions, possibly crashing into each other. Nevertheless, the feeling of a loss of self is evident in the end of friendship. The end of friendship is the end of a version of self.

Conclusion

It follows that the beginning of friendship is the beginning of a new version of self. This leads us to the next topic, defining one’s mission and purpose in life. It seems that without a clear mission or aim, one is apt to enter into dodgy friendships that take away rather than add to one’s purpose I life. But is it even possible to define a mission. If yes, then how do we account for “life happening” in ways that disrupt our mission in life. Does one have to change their mission when life happens? Also, if one is to accept a mission, it implies that there must be a time when one changes it. On what grounds are these occasions acceptable?

Let’s examine these questions in the next newsletter.
As always, have a great week ahead.

Vusi.

A flourishing friendship is equally powerful. For instance, Apple owes its existence to a friendship between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Google is a product of a friendship between Sergei Brin and Larry Page. Likewise, the friendship between Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela moved South Africa in a particular direction.

This brings us to today’s topic. What do I mean when I say Jabu is my friend and what are the limits of such a claim? What do I owe him and what does he owe me? In other words, what is the nature of friendship?

Preamble

A growing frustration with this newsletter is that the topics are getting bigger and I feel more inclined to write longer pieces. However, this defeats my goal of writing a newsletter consumable in one sitting. Nevertheless, as I grapple with the balance between saying enough and leaving out enough, I find comfort in the idea that this newsletter is not meant to present answers. If anything, it is a means to present new questions and hopefully reveal new avenues for exploration.

Now, I turn to friendship, guided by perspectives from various philosophers and scholars. I discuss friendship as a form of love; the limits of friendship in romantic relationships; and reciprocity in friendship.

Love in Friendship

Friendship is a kind of love (Helm, 2023). But what kind of love is it? Ancient Greeks gave us several categories of love, including philia, eros and agape. “The difference is that eros is a kind of passionate desire for an object, typically sexual in nature, whereas ‘philia’ originally meant a kind of affectionate regard or friendly feeling towards not just one’s friends but also possibly towards family members, business partners, and one’s country at large (Liddell et al., 1940; Cooper, 1977a)“. Common among these two kinds of love is that they depend on the qualities of the object to which the love is directed. I feel erotic love towards you, perhaps, because you are shapely or handsome and so on; I feel philial love because you are kind, helpful, honest and so on. Either way, philia and eros are contingent on the qualities that one possesses.

Agape is different in that it creates value in the loved object: my feeling of agape towards you is additive in itself by receiving it. Agape is best seen in parents’ love towards their children. For instance, there is no doubt, even if one had never met their father, let’s say, that such a love is missing in them. In the Christian conception, it is somewhat similar in that a relationship with God completes the soul, so to speak. Thus, agape at least adds to the loved one in some way.

Some philosophers think friendship is a kind of agape love because more than merely appreciating another’s characteristics, a friend creates value in the other person. The value might be in orientation towards life, in access to resources, or having good company. Either way, the love from a friend provides value in a way that one cannot provide for oneself. In light of this, we can conclude that friendship is additive and that friends add to each other in some fundamental way. Friendship is best described by agape love.

Romantic Relationships and Friendship

This is possibly a topic for a separate newsletter. But briefly, it is not controversial to say a friend is not a romantic partner even though a romantic relationship entails friendship. Where do we draw the line? On the face of it, it seems this line is at the point of a physical union or eros. But why is this so? Is it even so?

Phrases like “friends with benefits” occupy the spirit of our time, implying a salient difference in friendship, physical union and having a romantic relationship. One who holds this view rejects the suggestion I made earlier, that the boundary between friendship and romance is merely physical. Instead, they would typically say sexual relations do not imply any romantic commitments. Of course, those of a more traditional persuasion would disagree with this. Nevertheless, this view suggests that something else is required to transition a relationship from a friendship to a romantic kind and that the missing link is not sex.

I speculate that it has to do with the kinds of feelings that one has for the other: a kind of emotional union in addition to a physical one. But of course, as I will show later, this is unclear because friends also have an emotional union. What then differentiates relations of a friendship kind as opposed to romantic ones? Perhaps a more important question is what do we mean by romantic?

It is not my intention to write about the nature of romantic relationships (although it is an interesting topic in itself. I will cover this topic and marriage elsewhere). Therefore, I will not dwell too much on this topic except to suggest that the lines are not as easily defined; although I claim that one knows by intuition when one has crossed the line. My job as a philosopher [in training] is to enquire into the nature of such intuitions.

Giving and Taking

It is not uncommon for friendships to collapse under the weight of one party “taking taking taking” without reciprocity. It seems, therefore, that another necessary condition for friendship is giving and taking. However, this is yet another area that seems clear on the face of it but complicated with analysis.

Suppose I invited you to my birthday. Reciprocity suggests that you ought to invite me to your birthday as well – fair enough. Suppose further that I came to your birthday bearing gifts. Again, reciprocity suggests that you too ought to come to my birthday bearing gifts. As you can see, we quickly arrive at a problem of means and transaction. What if I do not have the means to buy you gifts, at the very least, the kinds of gifts that match yours? Am I in contravention of the transaction of friendship?

With that said my sensibilities for friendship reject a strictly transactional arrangement. Nevertheless, if we stick to the principle of reciprocity, strictly, as a giving and taking and also commit it as necessary in friendship, then we must assume that it is not limited to giving and taking things of the same kind. In other words, you might give material things such as providing the means for us to go out, and I might provide good company that makes it worthwhile to go out. In this arrangement the giving and taking persists albeit with goods of a different kind. This seems plausible and accounts for the real differences in means and dispositions among people.

We can also think about giving and taking over a long period: that is, one party gives and at some other time the other party gives. In this instance, I draw on a video of Mark Lamberti: imagine a pendulum swinging over long periods from one side to the other. One party gives and gives and gives, and at some point, the pendulum swings and the burden befalls the other. This way of thinking is not transactional in the short term sense, but the principle of reciprocity nevertheless prevails.

The principle of reciprocity runs at the risk of becoming transactional if employed expectantly. But a one-sided relationship can hardly qualify as a friendship either. In addition, the exchange cannot be accounted for because it is not of goods of the same kind nor extent. Therefore, accepting reciprocity as a necessary condition for friendship remains intuitively sound but warrants further examination.

Reluctant Conclusion

In the interest of keeping this newsletter relatively short, I must reluctantly conclude because I have not scratched the surface of the nature of friendship. Perhaps I will continue next week.

Nevertheless, today’s newsletter, which is no surprise to anyone, shows that friendship is complicated. One inclination is to say, on the appreciation of these complications, that it is better not to have friends at all, and to treat each individual as an occasion for enjoyment or to achieve ends, be they mutual or otherwise. This view fails on account of Kantian logic, which categorically states that one ought not to use others as a mere means; one ought to think of others as ends in themselves. Therefore, to think of others in an occasional or instrumental sense only lends itself to using them as a mere means, which disregards their intrinsic value embodied in humanity and undermines one’s own sense of dignity as well.

Well, as I write, I have made up my mind to write a second instalment, continuing with a survey of friendship. Next, I will explore intimacy and the limits of friendship.

I will leave it here for now and wish you a great Sunday.

With Warmth
Vusi.

An increasingly disturbing trend is seeing people sitting at intersections with their babies and toddlers, not even begging anymore—sometimes breastfeeding. This is particularly gut-wrenching for me, even though, like many others, I do nothing to help. Instead, I look at them with mild disdain for using their children as a means to an end.

Recently, I walked into a shop at a petrol station to buy bread. It was in the evening, and as I entered the store, a young man approached me, tapping his belly and asking that I buy him a loaf of bread and milk. I was startled for a moment and proceeded into the store. This was a different situation from the street dweller. He singled me out to help with something as trivial to me as bread. In some sense, it was like the situation presented by Peter Singer, in his famous essay Famine, Affluence and Morality. In the essay, he paints a picture of a child drowning in shallow water and makes the case that it would be immoral to ignore the child’s plea for help. The principle of his argument is that one has a duty to help another person when the help can be given without at the same time incurring anything of comparable cost.

To be honest, I did not respond to him; I merely passed him by, which is concerning in itself. Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist buying a loaf of bread and milk for him. I even picked up a tin of fish and something else—I don’t remember what it was. I left the store with two plastic bags, one for him and another for my family. Of course, he showered me with gratitude and blessings. But our union ended soon after the exchange, kept alive only by the tentacles of memory and now immortalized in this newsletter.

On Begging

Perhaps begging can be examined through Kantian ethical theory. Immanuel Kant, widely considered the greatest philosopher since Socrates, says it is the nature of a rational being to set ends (or goals) and pursue them. If anything, our ends are charged by the hydraulic force of our survival instincts, like hunger. But we also have a will that intermediates between ends and actions. This seems to be a distinguishing factor between humans and animals. They cannot help but respond to their instincts, but we can.

In other words, to possess rationality is to possess the capacity for autonomy—the capacity for self-legislation. Begging, on the other hand, is a state in which one’s autonomy is undermined. It is an admission of one’s incapacity to self-legislate and, therefore, a display of one’s insufficiency. It is an appeal to the humanity in others to do what one cannot do for oneself.

Drawing on James Keller’s idea that “a candle loses nothing by lighting another,” I think about the transaction between beggar and giver as that of two lit candles. Then, for whatever reason, one candle is blown out. Begging is an appeal to the other candle to light it, but done with the understanding that it loses nothing in the process. In this scheme, humanity is a strange thing. When it is intact, it is infinite. Hence, refusing to give from an infinite reserve is absurd and draws moral blame. Put another way, if I have infinite money, what reason can I give for refusing to give you any amount? Begging and giving, therefore, is a transaction among souls in the currency of humanity—from one that is complete and loses nothing in completing the other.

Duties of Beggers and Givers

In some traditions, begging is a privilege reserved for the holy and admired by the rest of society. Buddhist monks, for instance, do Takuhatsu, a form of crowdfunding, to use a modern term, to sustain their spiritual journey. Giving to them is a recognition of their courage to renounce worldly attachments and pursue a life of enlightenment. In Christian traditions, the church is the one that begs on behalf of society and collects tithes. Finally, the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage of 800km throughout Spain, depending on nothing but the hospitality of strangers, is another demonstration of holiness in the beginning. In all cases, the beggar is holy, and the act of giving to them strengthens one’s capacity for compassion and humanity. It is, as it were, a way of growing the light of humanity by lighting others.

On this account, the young man at the store was practising Takuhatsu; although, strictly speaking, monks do not ask people for help—they do not actively solicit. They dress in their traditional garments, stand in public, and wait for people to come to them. Perhaps this fine line of allowing the giver to choose to give is what keeps begging holy. However, crossing the line—that is, denying the giver their autonomy—becomes an abuse of the privilege to beg. If I beg you for food, for instance—sticking to Kantian theory—I am challenging your autonomy. I am effectively saying, “I am like you but lacking something you could not bear to lack. Therefore, ignoring me makes you a bad person.” Although true to the extent that human needs are universal and we have a duty of benevolence to others, an aggressive solicitation is an invasion of the giver’s autonomy, revealing itself as guilt or disdain in the conscience of the giver; but either way, spoiling the sanctity of the occasion.

Perhaps this can be said about begging in general, that standing at an intersection and presenting oneself as a beggar is itself an attack on another’s autonomy, using guilt as a weapon. If this is the case, then all forms of begging are filthy blackmail, which I do not believe is true. There must be something about the church and about those monks, and traditions such as the Camino, that makes the beggar-giver relation morally good.

Although I do not have cogent answers right now, it seems that respect for one’s autonomy, to draw on Kantian ethics again, is the answer. Perhaps I should expand a bit more: One of Immanuel Kant’s rules is that one ought to act so as to respect the humanity in oneself and others and never to use others as a mere means. This is how autonomy is ultimately respected, both in oneself and others. As suggested earlier, begging is a recognition that this self-legislating mechanism (that of setting ends and following them with means) is broken, resulting in a disruption of one’s sense of humanity. Begging is an appeal to the humanity in others to help.

It strikes me that the giver can do one of two things: set ends for the beggar or help them achieve the ends they have set for themselves. In the first instance, setting ends for others is a theft of their humanity. After all, no matter what they do to achieve those ends (even if they achieve them), in effect they will be achieving ends set by another; that is, they will be living someone else’s life. The latter option of assisting someone achieve ends they set for themselves seems more morally sound. However, still respecting the autonomy of the giver, it is from a duty of benevolence, to use Kantian language, that the giver, as it were, becomes the candle that lights another without losing anything in doing so.

Begging is a cry for help and there is nothing inherently wrong with it. However, begging must come with the recognition that others reserve the right to choose to help, and it must not be done in a way that undermines this autonomy in others. Therefore the beggars must, as far as possible, not only have respect for the humanity in themselves but in others as well. In addition, the giver ought not to set ends for the beggar; this would be a theft of their humanity. The giver must also not parade the giver because this would be to use their humanity as a mere means. The giver must give with the understanding that the beggar will do with the gift what they choose, even if such choices are not acceptable to the giver.

Conclusion

Now we understand why the women who use their children to solicit the humanity in others draw more disdain than sympathy. By dehumanizing themselves, that is, by parading their children they are attacking the autonomy of the potential giver and, as it were, forcing them to commit an act of humanity. They are saying, “If you do not help me, you are evil.” This is a violation of the rules we have discussed.

And so I disagree with Edmund Burke that evil triumphs when good people do nothing. Evil triumphs when good people are forced to do good. The act of force, where good is concerned, turns the good into a dark force that steals what little humanity exists in those to whom the good is intended.

Before I examine the situation, what are your intuitions? Should Johnny give up the bike or is Ben wrong? In almost every movie, the good guy always wins and the bad guy loses. Thus, we grow up believing that we are entitled to justice. When someone does something bad, something equally bad must happen to them. In this post, I will argue that there is nothing natural about justice. We are better off accepting that the world is fundamentally unjust with pockets of justice here and there.

Now, back to the scenario: My first intuition is to side with Johnny because he got the bike first. In other words, the principle of first possession gave him a right. The concept of “rights” can fill libraries with academic research, essays and books. However, I follow the definition by Ronald Dawkin, that a right is a trump; it is the power to override claims to the contrary. Therefore, if we establish that Johnny has a right to the bike based on the principle of first possession, then we are saying regardless of Ben’s claim or brute ability to take the bike, he is not entitled to it. Furthermore, if Johnny cannot defend himself, other children ought to weigh in to help him protect what is rightfully his. A right is a trump and it invokes moral responsibilities.

Notwithstanding Benny’s size and brute strength, his counterargument is that he was playing with the bike the previous day. Therefore, if we insist on the principle of first possession as legitimising a right, then Benny’s actions against Johnny are a form of justice, that is, a way of enforcing a right. The question emerges, therefore, whether little Johnny would ever be entitled to the bike. The simple answer is no unless Benny lets him play with it or gives it to him. Thus, the principle of first possession gives Ben original title and a claim on the bike as his property. In other words, it can be argued that Ben owns the bike.

Of course, the broader consideration is that the bike belongs to the school and the children only have use rights. To this end, Ben is not entitled to it as he so claims. Nevertheless, this demonstrates how shallow our intuitions are regarding potentially complicated problems. Now, imagine little Johnny was a small country and big Benny, a large one. Imagine further that there was no overlord (or playground teacher) to claim original possession and therefore the power to determine usage rights. In other words, the rights of the small country, assuming it had a legitimate claim against a more powerful state, even on this simple principle of first possession, could only stand if it could defend itself.

It seems justice is only possible under two circumstances: Firstly if one can prove a legitimate claim to a right, and secondly if one can defend it. In a modern society, we outsource the first part to lawyers and the second to the police. However, lawyers only operate within the framework of the law and they cost money. This means if you cannot afford a lawyer or your interests are not protected by the law, you will not enjoy justice in a modern society. Secondly, if the state is inefficient in enforcing the law, your rights will not be enforceable. In other words, even if the laws are passed in your favour, nothing will effectively change.

It is not uncommon for these two conditions of justice to go unmet. Most of us have private security or alarm systems, for instance. This implies that the state cannot sufficiently defend our rights. Yet, there are no tax rebates for doing the state’s job. We are effectively paying for the same service twice. Most people in abusive relationships do not speak out because they cannot articulate their right to dignity. Even in marriages, rights are often not clearly articulated. For instance, if you are married do you have a right to go on a weekend away with friends? Remember, if you state it as a right, then it means you need not ask for permission or seek consensus. It is an entitlement that the other party must accept. Rights are trumps.

If we accept, therefore, that injustice is a product of grey areas between interest and rights, and that the inability to defend legitimate rights is also a source of injustice, then we can conclude that justice is better regarded as an ideal, something to aspire towards, rather than a social imperative. In other words, do not be upset when you are wronged. That is just how the world works. Try, instead, to promote the just cause, not because the world will eventually become just, but because it is an ideal worthy of one’s striving.

With that said.
Enjoy your Sunday.

On The History of Mother’s Day

Today is Mother’s Day. Have you ever wondered where this occasion comes from? My digging points me to the 16th Century when people returned to their mother church on the 4th Sunday during Lent. The day was called Mothering Sunday and celebrated by reconnecting with old friends who had left the countryside. Children picked wild flowers to decorate the church and some were given to their moms. Eventually, the tradition changed from giving flowers to giving gifts. Importantly, as far as I understand it, this was not an occasion for mothers only. It was an occasion to reconnect with long-lost friends and family who were baptised at the same church.

During the early 1900s, Anna Jarvis in the U.S. organised a memorial for her deceased mother and invited members of her church to attend and celebrate their mothers. The audience was encouraged to wear a pink flower if their mother was living or a white flower if they were deceased. Likewise, the memorial service became a tradition and was eventually picked up by the American President, Woodrow Wilson in 1914. He decreed the second Sunday of May as the day to observe mothers.

Following the cultural dominance of the United States since The Second World War (1940s), Mother’s Day has become a day most of the world observes, including us in South Africa. There is a growing concern that Mother’s Day, as are other significant holidays, has become commercialised. People observe the day by gifting their mothers and partners instead of observing and honouring their motherhood, critics say. In other words, we have become materialistic and fallen prey to believing that buying a gift is the same as honouring someone. Of course, this raises the question, “what is honour?” I will not address the question in today’s newsletter.

On Motherhood

For obvious reasons, I am not qualified to speak on behalf of motherhood. However, let me share a personal experience that I believe epitomises motherhood. When I was 11 years old my mom and dad’s relationship was strained. My sister and I moved to Mamelodi (a township in Pretoria) with my mom and lived in a back room – a shack in the back of someone’s house. We spent the first few days if not weeks loitering around the yard because we did not have a school. Eventually, I was sent to a farm school in Cullinan called Pepps Edendale. To get there, we had to catch two taxis and then walk about a kilometre to reach the school’s gate.

Sometimes it rained. On those days we collected the rainwater, boiled it in the morning and bathed. Then we put on raincoats and off we went. Two taxis and a kilometre. Although it was not on my mind then, my mom caught three if not four more taxis to town. She was an entrepreneur, working for herself – I guess for us – as a seamstress. My sister must have been with her throughout the day. If I am not mistaken, she eventually went to a daycare. We seldom talk about those days.

During those trying times, my mom often said “Ayikho indlovu eyasindwa ngumbobo wayo [no elephant ever found its trunk too heavy].” Now that my trunk has grown, sometimes too heavy for my liking, I turn to those words with reverence. I am not only lucky to have been raised by a great elephant, but I am doubly lucky to have married one. In ways that unmarried men will never understand, when all is lost I realise through my wife that I am sufficient. Life can be preserved with a shield alone but never with a spear alone. Therefore, I say to you, Happy Mother’s Day.

A praise poem for my mother

Thosi lezulu elagcwalisa imilambo
Mrabho omila bangawuboni.
Uyikguru ekhamba kancani bayibabaza sele ifikile
Indlovu eyazithwalela yathwalela nabanye
S’khuni esathezwa sabhala ukuvutha,
basiphosela phezukwendlu sabamba amasenge wakwaSindane
Mnyango onganas’bambo,
ovulwa ngabanen’hliziyo ezimhlophe k’phela.

A praise poem to my wife

S’khuni esivutha ebusuku nemini.
Taka elithela ebusika nehlobo.
Skhukhukazi esafukamela ikomo nekonyana.
Mafuya zabantu, inga wena utjhejwe ngubani na?
S’hlangu sentjhabatjhana, S’dleke samaHlokohloko.
Mathula bemonile, owakhihliza is’lilo kwamila utjani.
Mlambo’banzi owakhukhula abesana nentjhijilo zabo,
wavuka ekuseni amuhle.

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Enjoy your day. Happy Mothering Day.
Vusi.

My studies in Applied Ethics are getting complicated. We started Axiology, which is just a fancy word for the study of value. In axiology, we ask what is value. How are things valuable differently? What makes them valuable?

Needless to say, today’s seminar did not end in the lecture hall. We continued for 2-hours in the parking lot. The burning issue started when I proposed what I regarded as a simple argument, which my professor and a fellow student found appalling and came guns blazing. For context, the argument was about how the moral status of a human being changes depending on what they are involved with.

I have to start with some technicalities: A moral agent is a being that can freely make choices, act on them and defend them using logical reasons, such that they would require another person to do the same under the same circumstances. For instance, if we say it is wrong to lie because it is wrong to mislead other people, then we must not only forgo all opportunities to lie, but we must demand of other people to do the same.

I take it many people would agree with the above. After all, this is what we teach our children – to never lie. Now, suppose that we are in Rwanda in 1994 during the Genocide. Suppose, further, that you are a Tutsi member – part of the tribe that was killed en-mass by the Hutus. Suppose further that your child is regarded as Hutu (for reasons we will ignore in this thought experiment) and that you are taking refuge at your child’s home. Soldiers storm the house and you run into hiding. The soldiers see that your child is Hutu and is therefore spared. However, they ask if she is hiding any Tutsis in the house. Is your child, as you raised them, obliged to tell the truth knowing that the soldiers would kill you if they found you?

(I only use the example of the Rwanda genocide for awareness purposes. It has been 20 years since the genocide and Rwanda is a completely different country from what it was then and widely regarded as one of the cleanest and well-run countries in Africa. I hope to visit the country soon)

Anyway. This example reveals that we often hold principles without thinking them through. For instance, the principle that it is wrong to lie is only uncontroversial under certain circumstances. But as you have seen, it quickly becomes debatable and maybe even wrong in different circumstances. Philosophers are interested in principles that remain true and defensible – as we say – in all possible worlds.

With this background, let’s dive into today’s newsletter.

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QUESTION: Are employees a means to the company’s ends (even though we openly deny it and pretend it is not the case with employee wellness programs etc)? When working for a company, are just tools at the end of the day?

This was the subject of a 2-hour long debate in the parking lot with a classmate. I will spare you the fireworks and share only the claims. Then I will share my opinion.

THE CLAIM:

When you accept employment, you agree to become an instrument in the advancement of the company’s ends in exchange for money. If the company fulfils its obligation of paying you a salary then you must fulfil your obligation to the company, at least to the point that even if you prefer not to be at work, you must nevertheless go to work. And if you cannot be at work, you must not only report but prove that you were unable to go to work, say, with a doctor’s note.

If you accept this claim you are accepting (at least) that the company can legitimately override your personal preferences. In addition, your obligation to the company means there are things for which you will accept punishment if not done. It follows that your moral status as an employee is different from a non-employee and the difference is that you are now a means to the company’s ends. In other words, you are a tool.

Another way of looking at this claim is to say companies do not hire people they hire the skills that people possess. It just happens that those skills come with people. The person, however, despite having the skill, might not be able to discharge it (for whatever reason, be it due to health or willingness). Hence, wherever possible, companies prefer machines over people because machines do not have the potential burden except breaking down, which is far more predictable and manageable.

This claim holds the view that employees are a means to a company’s ends. Wellness programs, beautiful buildings, professional conduct, dress code, titles, team building sessions – all of them are a means to improve employee productivity. They are just gimmicks to make people feel good; the real objective is to make them produce more work.

THE COUNTER:

You are looking at an image of Phineas Gage. He worked for a railroad company as a construction foreman in the mid-1800s. He was loved by his colleagues and was often lauded as a gentleman, friendly and helpful. One afternoon they were tasked with blasting rocks. At the time, one had to drill a small hole into the rock, put gunpowder in the hole, stomp it with a rod, add a detonator cord, and then stand a few hundred metres away from the rock and blast. On this fateful afternoon, however, Gate routinely stomped the gunpower and caused a spark, which exploded sending the rod through his head.

He lay on the floor squealing and squirming. His colleagues, shocked, gathered around him and were convinced that he would die. So they waited. But he did not die. They carried him to the nearest clinic where doctors were just as shocked and attended to him, first pulling out the rod from his head and then calling other doctors to see a miracle – a man with a pole in his head but still alive.

After a few months, Gage recovered and was sent home. Everybody was not only happy but surprised that he made a full recovery. When sitting with him, however, he would suddenly snap and want to harm or even kill whoever he was sitting with. Then suddenly he was fine again, warm, fuzzy and talkative. Gage’s injury ushered in neuroscience as we know it today. It was established that he damaged his pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain we use for high-order reasoning. He was healthy but crucially, he was no longer able to stop himself from causing harm. Therefore, he was no longer a moral agent because he could not exercise choice.

This story is important to keep in mind as we unpack this counter claim.

The counterargument is that moral agency is a prerequisite for entering into an employment agreement. If one is to become duty-bound to a company, it is only because they are moral agents otherwise they would not be able to fulfil their duties. For instance, Phineas Gage was more than capable of working before his injury. However, post-injury (where his brain was damaged) he was no longer capable of upholding any obligation, and could no longer be an employee of any company. To say someone is a means to an end is to strip them of moral agency, particularly their ability to make choices, which is in itself immoral.

Therefore, employees are always moral agents with full moral status + additional obligations to the company. In other words, the company must first recognise that employees are moral agents before pursuing its functional/operational demands; this means a company cannot demand an employee to do something immoral even if the immoral act would serve the company’s ends. An employee ought not to steal, for instance, even if it would benefit the company.

MY OPINION

What’s your take? Are you in defence of the claim or the counterclaim? Although I have not tested this, I think most people will argue for the latter. Employees never lose their moral status. If anything, moral agency is the foundation of all agreements as is shown through Phineas Gage’s tragic story.

Okay. I will argue for the former – that moral agents give up some of their agency when they enter an employment agreement. Furthermore, I will show that this happens more commonly than we think. I will not argue that employees do not have moral agency at all. Rather, they have a different moral status which excempts them from being held accountable for certain actions of the company. This is only possible because their moral responsibility is removed from them and placed elsewhere.

Here goes: Suppose a war breaks out with a neighbouring country. In defence of the country, it is decreed that all able-bodied young men of 18 years + become soldiers. They duly receive training and go to the battlefield. These young men would now be obliged to kill an enemy soldier as part of the act of war. They will be obliged, at the same time, not to kill civilians. If, in the act of war, they choose not to kill as a soldier or they kill a civilian they would have contravened their duty and have done something immoral. In other words, by becoming a soldier, a person acquires a different moral status where they are obliged to fulfil the ends of a moral authority.

The crucial parts are that a) There is a moral authority; b) there is an agent; c) the agent is obliged to the moral authority thereby acting on behalf of the moral authority.

a) In a company, the moral authority is the boss. If we follow the chain of command, the moral authority of the company is the board at least to the extent that if the company is said to have done something immoral, it is the board and its executives that are held accountable not the employees (the agent). b) There are obviously agents in the company. Most relevant to this topic are the employees. c) the agents are obliged to the company and act on its behalf, sometimes even wearing its uniform and required to follow a code of conduct of some sort.

I am showing that there is no material difference between a soldier and an employee. Yes, what they do is different. However, the principles under which they act are the same. Soldiers are to the army, what employees are to the company. If you accept this proposition, then you must also accept the following implications. If the employee chooses not to act so as to advance the ends of the company, the company is obliged to punish or dismiss them. In other words, there are certain freedoms that the employee (same as a soldier) that they give up. For the employee, these freedoms include the use of time, the restriction of trade and the dispensation of one’s skills in aid of the company. But only that, accepting that the company may train the employee in other skills and demand for their discharge.

The employee is in essence an agent of the company. Crucially, I am not saying they are a moral agent. I accept that they do not lose their moral agency generally speaking (to the point of the counterclaim) to the extent that the employee can always resign. However, while the employment is in effect, they are an agent of the company, however, the morality is transferred to the company (through its chain of command). If the employee is injured on duty, the company is responsible for them. Likewise, if the employee insults a customer, let’s say, then the company is liable. Yes, the company may (internally) discipline the staff members or even dismiss them. However, that is secondary to the initial responsibility placed squarely on the company.

All of the above, as I have said, is possible because in an employer-employee relationship: the moral agency (in terms of acts pertaining to the company’s ends) is held by the company and the agent only acts in service of it. This is different from director members (or board members) who are fiduciaries and are therefore moral representatives of the company – they do not enjoy the moral exemption that employees enjoy.

CONCLUSION

Today’s newsletter is slightly technical; perhaps more than I wanted it to be. Nevertheless, the point is that employees are means to a company’s ends; they are agents when acting on behalf of the company but not full moral agents because some of their freedoms are given to the company. This makes the company the principal moral agent.

To be honest, I would rather not hold this conclusion because it opens up a can of worms. However, part of our training as philosophers is to be able to strengthen an opposing case and make it impossible to crack. And then try to take it apart. Crucially, this must all be done with reason and logic alone.

The problem with this view is that (now I am adding one more technical term – utilitarianism). A Utilitarian is one who holds that moral agents must act so as to maximise the greatest good for the greatest number. If the CEO of the company is a utilitarian, which many are, then they are obliged to maximise the output of their employees. At best this is done through employee development and wellness programs. At worst this is done by pushing employees to breaking point – by paying them less and working them more. Crucially, if an employee no longer performs, a utilitarian will have no problems with replacing them so long as that will not cause greater harm than the good that will come from replacing them.

The greatest problem is that we become mere tools in the great economic machine. Most people feel this way, hence they seek fulfilment elsewhere – be it through hobbies or starting other businesses. Most people cannot wait for the weekend and take a break from beings cogs in a machine. In claim that this feeling is not out of place because this is exactly what they are. I do not claim that this is right – no – I claim that this is the status quo.

What then is to be done?

Until next week.
Vusi Sindane