[Odyssey] Conditions for a Good Society

The modern age is an age of anxiety.

Charles Taylor, a leading philosopher of communitarianism, identifies three sources of anxiety in modern society: the loss of meaning in life (the disappearance of moral horizons), the dissolution of life’s purposes before pervasive instrumental reason, and the loss of freedom and self-determination.

One characteristic of this modern anxiety stems from value relativism. If there is no absolute truth, and if our differences are all recognized as equally valid, then on what basis can we claim “legitimacy”? Problems that could once be resolved through the will of God are no longer susceptible to such solutions. In an age when we are God and God is us, each individual becomes both the subject and bearer of his or her own destiny.

But this declaration is too harsh. Even as adults, we still retain infantile psychological tendencies. We want to depend on others, and we feel comfortable when there is something that seems able to protect us. Nor is that all. We want recognition. Even when our abilities are lacking and what we possess is insufficient, we do not want to be excluded or discriminated against by others. From these desires arises our longing for a sense of belonging to a group. Individuals want to belong somewhere, and they want to live while being recognized within the community to which they belong.

From this, we find ourselves unable not to accept the concept of “social rights” in addition to the “rights of liberty” championed by modern liberalism. This is because the fate of individuals who must live together within a single political community cannot be “atomistic,” as modern Enlightenment thought proclaimed. Such atomistic individualism is no more than a methodology that understands society as an order modeled on nature, based on the proposition that “nature is composed of individuals.” Aristotle argued on this point that “what we should imitate from nature is salt, which does not decay even among things that decay.” Insofar as what ought to be cannot be derived from norms, there is no flaw in Aristotle’s ethical proposition.

The Dangers of a Rationalist Society

If we can agree up to this point, the odyssey of liberals now encounters a formidable monster. If everyone has the freedom to decide for himself or herself what constitutes a happy life, that implies moral relativism, and as a result we have no reason to take interest in or feel obliged to help the hardship and misfortune of others. Such an attitude may be “right.” But how should we answer the question of whether it is “good”? When a liberal must make a decision and “what is right” and “what is good” compete, which should take priority? What is interesting is that to judge “what is right,” we need not reason but belief. Such belief concerns “self-evident principles.” Belief in self-evident truths appears in the form of justice. The Crusaders and Islamic armies fought because of the self-evidence of the God in which they believed. World War I broke out because of the self-evidence each country attributed to national sovereignty. In the past, Japan regarded the annexation of Joseon as self-evidently right, while for those who longed for Joseon’s independence it was self-evidently wrong. In the end, self-evidence rests on “belief that requires no proof,” and to say that it is grounded in belief is to say that it is a matter of worldview and values.

By contrast, the judgment of “what is good” follows not from belief but from rational judgment. In the prisoners’ dilemma, what is good for the two prisoners is derived through rational game theory. We examine and test things in order to make a situation better. If good gives us happiness and bad gives us suffering, then what counts as good and bad is not settled by belief but must be determined through examination. This is because the question of how to reduce suffering and how to increase happiness is a matter of rational solution.

At this point, we can reach a tentative conclusion. When we claim that something is right, we presuppose that by doing so we can obtain good results, and such rightness must be able to guarantee goodness. Therefore, if we must live together with people who hold different values and ideologies, the way to live harmoniously with them should not be to assert “rightness” but to demonstrate “goodness.” In other words, in a society composed of individuals who do not want to be excluded and who want to be recognized, and in the political community formed by such individuals, the society liberals should pursue may not be a Righteous Society but rather a Good Society. Such a good society does not exclude people’s desire for recognition but seeks to integrate it.

The legal philosopher Hans Kelsen’s remark remains valid: “The source of all disorder is not tolerance but intolerance, and the highest moral ideals have been gravely damaged by the intolerance of those who supported them.”

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Original title: [오디세이] Good Society의 조건

Author: Jeong-seok Han

Date: 2021-01-13

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=5&idx=23407