18.7.10

THE SERVETUS PRINCIPLE:

First of all, this is funny if you've ever been involved in a Calvinist/non-Calvinist debate (I've been on both sides).

Second, I've noticed an odd trend in popular arguments about morality, or, rather, how to understand and respond to immoral behavior. Rather than accept a moral criticism as legitimate, the person or people targeted will often attempt to discredit the one placing the blame by bringing them into rough moral equivalency (i.e. "you do it, too"). The hidden premise to such argumentation is the idea that one cannot engage in the assessment of the relative good of people or institutions unless one is in no way guilty of moral shortcoming, especially the same shortcoming. At its most absurd form, it looks like this, which I have called the Servetus Principle:

One instance of a (morally) impermissible behavior by one person or group is (morally) equivalent to the institutional acceptance or widespread practice of the same behavior by another.


So named because it is often deployed to make John Calvin equivalent to the Star Chamber and both equivalent to the Inquisition, with the idea that any Calvinist criticism of the relationship between religion and the state is a kind of disingenuous argument. But it's the same idea one encounters when teaching just war theory: you would be surprised how comfortable students are with the idea that almost any behavior in war is acceptable so long as the other side did it first (so a one-time bombing of civilians justifies a concerted effort to bomb civilians in response, etc). And, as I mentioned, I've seen it come up in a surprising variety of contemporary arguments over immoral behavior.

No comments: