The Sanctity of Moral Law
By Hans J. Morgenthau
I am indebted to Bernard Rappoport, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the American Income Life Insurance Company of Waco, Texas for calling this to my attention by running it, in an adapted form, in The Texas Observer as a public service message.
In November 1959, Hans J. Morgenthau, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, published an article in The New York Times Magazine defending Columbia University for dismissing instructor Charles Van Doren for his part in the "Twenty-One" quiz show scandal. The article prompted a flood of anonymous letters from Columbia students, all of whom opposed Van Doren`s firing. The following is Morgenthau`s response to the students, which ran in the December 2, 1959, issue of The New Republic. It is as timely today as it was then.
You are stung by my assertion that you are unaware of the moral problem posed by the Van Doren case, and you assure me that you disapprove of his conduct. But my point is proved by the very arguments with which you try to reconcile your disapproval of Van Doren`s conduct with your petition to rehire him. Your concem is primarily with the misfortune of an attractive teacher, your regret in losing him and the rigor of the university`s decision. You support your position by five main arguments: The confession has swept the slate dean, Van Doren will not do it again, his teaching was above reproach, academic teaching is not concerned with substantive truth and the university acted with undue haste. These arguments, taken at face value and erected into general principles of conduct, lead of necessity to the complete destruction of morality.
If confession can undo the deed, no evil could ever be committed and no evil-doer ever brought to justice. If wrong could be so simply righted and guilt so painlessly atoned, the very distinction between right and wrong, innocence and guilt, would disappear; for no sooner would a wrong be committed than it would be blotted out by a confession. Confession, even if it is freely rendered as an act of contrition and moral conversion, can mitigate the guilt but cannot wipe it out.
The argument that the morally objectionable act is not likely to be repeated assumes that the purpose of moral condemnation is entirely pragmatic, seeking to prevent a repetition of the deed. Yet while it is true that according to the common law a dog is entitled to his first bite, it is nowhere written that a man is entitled to his first murder…or his first lie. The moral law is not a utilitarian instrument aiming at the protection of society, even though its observance has this effect….Oedipus did not think it was all right to marry his mother once since he did not do it again. Or would you suggest that evil-doers like Leopold and Loeb should have gone free because it was most unlikely that they would repeat what they had done?
The arguments of the good teacher and of teaching not being concerned with substantive truth go together. You assume…that the teacher is a kind of intellectual mechanic who fills your head with conventionally approved and required knowledge, as a filling station attendant fills a tank with gas. You don`t care what the teacher does from 10 a.m. to 9 a.m. as long as he gives you from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. the knowledge which he has been paid to transmit. You recognize no relation between a teacher`s general attitude towards truth and his way of transmitting knowledge, because you do not recognize an organic relation between transmitted knowledge and an objective, immutable truth. Yet the view that knowledge is but conventional-one conception of truth to be superseded by another while seemingly supported by the radical transformations of physics, finds no support in the fields of knowledge dealing with man. If it were otherwise, Plato and Aristotle, Sophocles and Shakespeare…could mean nothing to us, except as objects for antiquarian exploration.
[The argument] that the trustees of Columbia University acted with undue haste is the most curious of all, and it gives the show away….You look for reasons which justify your unwillingness to transcend that three-cornered relationship among yourself, your teacher and your university and to judge the obvious facts by the standards of morality rather than adjust them for your and your teacher`s convenience. You are sorry about losing an attractive teacher and you hate to see that teacher suffer; nothing else counts. But there is something else that counts and that is the sanctity of moral law.
All men-civilized and barbarian-in contrast to the animals, are born with a moral sense; that is to say, as man is by nature capable of making logical judgments, so is he capable by nature of making moral judgments….Civilized man shares with the barbarian the faculty of making moral judgments, but he excels over him in that he is capable of making the right moral judgments, knowing why he makes them. He knows-as Socrates, the Greek tragedians…the Biblical prophets and the great moralists and tragedians of all the ages know-what is meant by the sanctity of moral law.
The moral law is not made for the convenience of man, rather it is an indispensable precondition for his civilized existence. It is one of the great paradoxes of civilized existence that…it is not self-contained but requires for its fulfillment transcendent orientations. The moral law provides one of them.
You will become aware of the truth of that observation. For when you look back on your life in judgment, you will remember it, and you will want it to be remembered, for its connection with the things that transcend it. And if you ask yourself why you remember and study the lives and deeds of great men, why you call them great in the first place, you will find that they were oriented in extraordinary ways and to an unusual degree to the things that transcend their own existence. That is the meaning of the passage from the Scriptures, "He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it."
This connection between our civilized existence and the moral law explains the latter`s sanctity. By tinkering with it, by sacrificing it for individual convenience, we are tinkering with ourselves as civilized beings, we are sacrificing our own civilized existence.
The issue before you, when you were asked to sign that petition on Charles Van Doren`s behalf then, was not the happiness of a particular man nor, for that matter, your own, but whether you and your university could afford to let a violation of the moral law pass as though it were nothing more than a traffic violation. Socrates had to come to terms with that issue, and he knew how to deal with it. You did not know how to deal with it. And this is why you hide your faces and muffle your voices. For since your lives have lost the vital contact with the transcendence of moral law, you find no reliable standard within yourself by which to judge and act….But once you have restored that vital connection with the moral law from which life receives its meaning, you will no longer be afraid of your own shadow and the sound of your voices. You will no longer be afraid of yourself. For you will carry within yourself the measure of yourself and of your fellows and the vital link with all things past, future and above.
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The following articles provide background on Charles Van Doren and the "Twenty-One" game show. Links were not a part of the original article in CET.
http://www.pbs.org/w gbh/amex/quizshow/peopleevents/pande02.html
http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/sep99/30a.html
http://encarta.msn.com/index/conciseindex/BF/0BFE4000.htm?z=1&pg=2&br=1
