The UK leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, has repeatedly called for the Prime Minister to resign over allegations that he attended parties at 10 Downing Street which were illegal under lockdown laws his own government brought it. So when it emerged that Starmer himself was under investigation by Durham police for allegedly breaking the rules too, what was he supposed to do? It seems obvious: the only way to avoid rank hypocrisy was to say that if found guilty, he would do the honourable thing, which the Primer Minister so dishonourably had not.
When he did just that, however, he was accused of putting ‘deeply inappropriate’ pressure on Durham Police, who now knew that their decisions could have political repercussions. The British Witchfinder General, the Daily Mail, also sneered that his statement was ‘strong on self-righteousness’. But what was he supposed to have done? It’s hard to believe that the Mail et al would have praised him for refusing to resign whatever the outcome of the investigation.
We discussed this absurd situation as part of Simon Kirchin’s Philosophy Takes on The News podcast. What interested me was how normal it has become to take any behaviour that has any trace of virtue and dismiss it as an insincere pose. The result is that you’re you’re either doing the wrong thing or the right thing for the wrong reasons; damned either way.
The most evident manifestation of this new culture of suspicion is the way in which people are frequently accused of ‘virtue signalling’. Anyone doing good or voicing support for a worthy cause is accused of doing so simply to make themselves look good and curry favour with their peer group.
We need a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between the benefits and motivations of manifest virtue. Imagine a spectrum with insincere displays of virtue at one end and sincere, private virtue at the other. At the wrong end we find virtue signalling properly-called, when people do or say things not out of any moral conviction but to earn kudos. One reason this is so pernicious is that is encourages people to jump onto moral bandwagons without thinking about whether they might be misguided. The desire to appear to be on the right side of a debate trumps the desire to find out what the right side really is.
People’s motives are usually mixed and few virtue-signal without any care for what is truly virtuous. Move along the spectrum I described and you soon reach that portion I call ‘virtue broadcasting’. Here, people genuinely are motivated to do the right thing, but, boy, do they let others know about it. These noisy vegans, recyclers, electric car drivers and solar-panel owners are annoying, but it is not true that they do the right thing only or primarily to virtue-signal. Maybe they should be a little less sanctimonious but if they make us feel bad for not being as upright ourselves, that exposes our shortcomings more than theirs.
Further still along the spectrum are people who make no effort to publicise their good deeds but their goodness is evident anyway. Call this ‘virtue modelling’. Unless you’re a hermit, it is impossible to live well and for no one to notice. In many traditions such mortal exemplars are celebrated, and rightly so. Nelson Mandela didn’t fight apartheid to get famous but it is good that he received all the recognition he did.
At the far end of the spectrum we have the ‘virtue disguisers’, people who do good entirely privately. Many assume this is the best way to be good. In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus said, ‘When you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.’ Only these virtue disguisers completely avoid the benefits of being seen to do good and that seems to imbue their deeds with a kind of moral purity.
There is something admirable in not seeking recognition for one’s beneficence. Many of us dislike the way patrons get their names plastered over museums and concert halls and like it when others don’t seek the same recognition. But morality is about the regulation of social life and so there are benefits in goodness not only being done, but being seen to be done. Moral exemplars provide role models and gently shame us into trying harder ourselves. They show that being good is a choice and shake us out of any complacency that we might have that it is only for saints.
That’s why I think even virtue broadcasters should not be criticised, at least not much. Their boastfulness may count against them but it doesn’t begin to cancel out the credit they deserve for doing the right thing in the first place. Indeed, even some pure virtue signalling might be welcome: isn’t it better that people do the right thing for the wrong reasons than they don’t do the right thing at all?
When we get too worried about whether someone is virtue signalling we focus too much on peoples motives, which are in any case hard to fathom, and too little on what matters most, which is acting well. It seems to me like a convenient way of dismissing those who have principles instead of examining our own.
News
My next online Café Philosophique discussion exclusively with supporters is on May 29 at 8pm British Summer Time. Join now from £5 a month for this and myriad other benefits, for me as well as you.
I’ve just started a new column for Prospect magazine under the banner of ‘philosopher-at-large’. The first is on the thorny ethics of dealing with dictators.
I reviewed Noga Arikha’s excellent The Ceiling Outside: The Science and Experience of the Disrupted Mind for the Wall Street Journal. ‘While interweaving her mother’s story, Ms. Arikha builds her chapters around individual case studies, evoking the work of Oliver Sacks, among others. She gently advances the thesis, more by showing than by telling, that “the sense of self is profoundly anchored in our body” and that this embodied self doesn’t exist without other people. She asserts that “the mind is inherently relational, not isolated,” and her six pages of acknowledgments suggest that she means what she says.’
I’ve appeared on Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable with Justin Brierley several times over the years and was back to discuss developing virtue with Dominic Done. The ecumenical nature of the discussion was somewhat undermined by their choice of teaser clips at the start, in which Dominic says inspiring things about Jesus and I seem to be making a concession! Stitched up in the editing room by a bunch of Christians! Who would have thought it?
I’ll be at the How the Light Gets In festival in Hay-on-Wye on Friday 3 and Saturday 4 June. Do say hello if you’re there.
I continue to host the Royal Institute of Philosophy podcast Thinking Hard and Slow, ‘Mind-expanding long-form philosophy talks and discussions that are both rigorous and accessible. Recorded live from our annual themed lecture series, special lectures and our big debate.’ The latest episode is one of the best: The Ethics of Anger and Shame with Owen Flanagan.
A reminder that if you buy books online, you can avoid the tax-dodging giant and buy through my affiliate shop which gives 10% to independent bookshops and 10% to me.
On my radar
The Zoe Science and Nutrition podcast can be a curate’s egg but if you’re a coffee drinker you’ll love hearing all the reasons why the black nectar is good for you on multiple counts. It’s even high in fibre, which was news to me.
Another podcast discovery is Fake Psychic on BBC Sounds in which ‘Vicky Baker investigates the stranger-than-fiction story of Lamar Keene, a renowned psychic who confessed to being part of an underground network he called the “psychic mafia”.’
I watch very little TV drama (that’s a confession not an attempt at virtue broadcasting) but we’re even prepared to put money into the Murdochs’ hands to see series three of the HBO adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s Naples Quartet, My Brilliant Friend. Its brutally honest depiction of human nature verges on the misanthropic, yet it remains deeply humane.
That’s it for this week. Until next time, if nothing prevents, thanks for your interest.