Abstract
Hypocrisy is a ubiquitous feature of moral and political life, and accusations of hypocrisy a ubiquitous feature of moral and political discourse. Yet it has been curiously under-theorized in analytic philosophy. Fortunately, the last decade has seen a boomlet of articles that address hypocrisy in order to explain and justify conditions on the so-called “standing” to blame (Wallace 2010; Friedman 2013; Bell 2013; Todd 2017; Herstein 2017; Roadevin 2018; Fritz and Miller 2018). Nevertheless, much of this more recent literature does not adequately address the question, “what is hypocrisy?” In this paper, I develop and defend an account of hypocrisy as vicious, value-expressing inconsistency. I show how this account solves some traditional and some novel philosophical puzzles concerning hypocrisy and affords a deeper understanding of the features of hypocrisy emphasized by other prominent accounts.
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Notes
My account shares much in common with Turner’s (1990) account, according to which someone is hypocritical just in case she manifests a “disparity pair” that expresses values. Turner acknowledges that since “cases of changes of mind do not properly count as cases of hypocrisy,” his account does not give sufficient conditions for hypocrisy (Turner 1990: 266). I will argue for an additional condition: that the inconsistent pair reflects badly on the agent in virtue of manifesting at least one of a handful of moral vices or attitudes characteristic of these vices.
Cases of supposedly inconsistent actions typically fall under this type of inconsistency. For example, it seems hypocritical for a person to secretly donate to a corrupt oil company for business reasons, and also publicly donate to a wildlife conservation organization. One way of understanding this case is to see the public act of donation to the conservation organization as an expression of a normative commitment that is inconsistent with donating to a corrupt oil company. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for The Journal of Ethics for this point.
See the case of Petroleum Polly below.
“Actualism” should not be understood as excluding dispositional attitudes, which are attitudes an agent actually has, but rather dispositions to acquire attitudes or to behave in certain ways. For actualist views, see Isserow and Klein (2017), Wallace (2010). For dispositionalist views, see Fritz and Miller (2018, 2019b), Rossi (2018). Complicating this distinction is the fact that many dispositions to behave and acquire attitudes are grounded in actual attitudes. For example, on Fritz and Miller’s view, the hypocritical blamer’s differential blaming disposition is grounded in an attitude of unequal regard. However, this attitude is not essential to hypocrisy as such. Hence, regardless of the categorical ground of the disposition, on Fritz and Miller’s view it is the disposition that remains essential to hypocrisy, and so the view counts as “dispositionalist.” Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for The Journal of Ethics for pushing me on this point.
It may be objected that if Wanda is merely disposed to want to do the same thing as Jane, then Jane would lack justification for attributing hypocrisy to Wanda. In response, the dispositionalist can reply that whether or not Wanda is a hypocrite does not obviously depend upon Jane’s actual attribution of hypocrisy to Wanda or her possession of sufficient evidence for that attribution. It might also be objected that if Wanda knows she would have done the same thing, she must know it on the basis of some past action or attitude; but in that case, her hypocrisy involves actual attitudes or actions, rather than dispositions. However, I believe Wanda would be equally hypocritical (i.e., disposed to behave hypocritically) even if she did not know that she would have done the same thing. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for The Journal of Ethics for bringing these objections to my attention.
Bloomfield (2018: esp. 78) makes a similar distinction between acting hypocritically and being hypocritical, although in his taxonomy a person who is hypocritical is what I call a “hypocritical person”.
Thanks to Robert Audi for this point.
Isserow and Klein (2017) correctly point out that hypocrisy does not always amount to a full-fledged character trait. Bloomfield (2018) and Fritz and Miller (2019b: 556) plausibly argue that because dispositions can be fine-grained, a dispositional account of hypocrisy is not committed to this claim.
Compare this claim with Henry Sidgwick’s claim that “[i]f therefore I judge any action to be right for myself, I implicitly judge it to be right for any other person whose nature and circumstances do not differ from my own in some important respects” (Sidgwick 1981: 208).
Normative Universality is compatible with various forms of agent-relativity, including internalism about practical reasons, which Normative Universality can accommodate by counting psychological states of the agent among the “relevantly similar circumstances” referenced in its consequent. For example, if some reason for S to φ is dependent upon S’s having an attitude A, any agent R will have a reason to φ only if R has an attitude of the same type and with the same content (e.g., a desire to φ).
My conception of “commitment” is different from Shoemaker’s in that his “commitments” are restricted to those judgments the agent would endorse under good conditions for reflection (see Shoemaker 2015: 49).
Hypocrisy can also involve the expression of only commitments or only cares. Both members of the inconsistent pair may express a commitment or care, or only one.
In light of Fritz and Miller’s (2019a) discussion, this claim requires some qualification. Fritz and Miller now say that a UDBD is necessary for one’s blame to be hypocritical, but not for hypocrisy per se. In this section, I argue in effect that even this qualified claim is false. However, if having a UDBD is not necessary for hypocrisy, then it is apparent that the absence of a UDBD cannot be what distinguishes weakness of will from hypocrisy in general.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for The Journal of Ethics and Chad Van Shoelandt for pressing me on these points.
One way of describing the case is that although Haggard is disposed to blame both self and others, he is not disposed to blame self and others to an equal degree. My reply to this suggestion can be found in Rossi 2020.
See Statman (1997) for a probing discussion of hypocrisy and self-deception.
See Holton (2001) for discussion of willful ignorance and its relation to self-deception.
This case in some ways resembles David Runciman’s veiled description of George W. Bush (or perhaps Tony Blair): “If, say, one were a democratic politician sincerely believing that another regime posed a threat to national security because of its weapons program, and also recognizing that maintaining the sincerity of one’s convictions was crucial to persuading the public of the threat, then one might seek to insulate that sincerity from reasonable doubts, by deliberately avoiding any evidence that might raise such doubts. In this way, the politician remains sincere…But the politician is still a hypocrite” (Runciman 2008: 172).
Crisp and Cowton might claim that out-of-character hypocritical acts are so-called because they are the kind of acts typically performed by hypocritical persons (1994: 347).
This is not a wholly original view. Grant (1997), Kittay (1982), McKinnon (1991), and Szabados and Soifer (2004) all understand the hypocrite as a person who represents herself as better than she is. Kant (1999) partly equates hypocrisy with false humility. Lynch and Fisher (2012) depict the “pure hypocrite” as someone who either desperately wants to be virtuous, or who believes himself to be a “Force for Good.” In either case, this kind of hypocrite regards himself as better that he really is, perhaps as a result of willful ignorance or self-deception.
Some might want to allow the possibility of blameworthy but morally permissible behavior, so that the mere fact that Franck’s behavior does not violate a moral obligation does not entail that he is not blameworthy for it (see, e.g., Capes 2012). If so, we can add to this second alternative that Franck’s behavior does not manifest attitudes or character traits in a way that would make it blameworthy.
See Cassam (2019: esp. Ch. 6) for an application of a similar distinction to an account of epistemic responsibility.
Shoemaker (2015, 75–76) argues that the capacity to cite a distinctive kind of reason is required for answerability: namely, relevant contrastive reasons for this as opposed to that.
Whether we label such critical responses blame or mere criticism is largely a matter of conceptual regimentation. For example, Cassam (2019: 139) seems to argue that criticism of this kind is not blame; Shoemaker (2015) and Watson (1996) classify them as different types of blame. Importantly, however, the responsibility skepticism articulated by philosophers such as Pereboom (2014) or Strawson (1994) concerns accountability-responsibility (see Caruso 2018 for discussion). Thus, my account is not vulnerable to the objection that if no one is morally responsible for their actions because no one possesses the requisite control over their actions or character, then no one can engage in hypocritical behavior. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for The Journal of Ethics for raising this issue.
Thanks to David O’Brien for suggesting this argument.
I would like to thank the participants in the Murphy Institute’s faculty seminar in which this paper was discussed for their incisive comments. Particular thanks are due to David O’Brien, Chad Van Schoelandt, and David Shoemaker for their probing questions. I would also like to thank Robert Audi for his helpful feedback on an early draft of this essay, and two anonymous reviewers for The Journal of Ethics for their wonderfully constructive criticism.
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Rossi, B. Hypocrisy is Vicious, Value-Expressing Inconsistency. J Ethics 25, 57–80 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-020-09340-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-020-09340-4