Introduction
Aphorisms: ethics
Ethics: theory, practice and notation
Can virtue ethics be salvaged?
Conjugates and excess baggage
Outweighing
{theme} theory
Jeff McMahan: a philosopher goes to war
Smoking
Introduction
This is an outline of a very few issues: a very concise statement of my approach to some influential ethical theory and the application of {theme} theory. This isn't an introductory treatment. I don't explain, for example, the meaning of 'virtue ethics,' 'consequentialism' and the 'hedonistic calculus.' I don't attempt to give reasons for offering a contribution to ethical theory at a fairly high level of abstraction, so much at variance with the concrete and polemical tone of some of the pages which deal with ethical controversies.
Ethical discussion would benefit enormously by a replacement of natural language for one purpose above all and I introduce (in the column to the right) a symbol, the 'outweighing symbol,' >, which, together with the concepts and symbolism of {theme} theory, can not only introduce much greater clarity into ethical discussions but suggest new approaches to ethical theory and practice. From my page Introduction to {theme} theory:
'Natural language is recognized as a cumbersome and inadequate means of expressing most mathematical argument,. Symbolic notation very often supplements or replaces natural language in logical argument. The information expressed in tabular form, in rows and columns, is superior to continuous prose as a means of expressing information in many cases, allowing comparisons to be made easily. Tabular display is used in truth tables, the rows showing possible assignments of truth values to the arguments of the truth-functions or truth-functional operators. Philosophers occasionally make use of diagrams. There are a number of examples in Derek Parfitt's 'Personal Identity' (1971). Even so, most philosophical argument is in continuous prose. I think that symbolic notation as well as very concise but non-symbolic expression has great utility and can often replace or supplement philosophical prose.
'The symbolic notation I propose for the expression of some concepts has very little in common with Frege’s ‘Begriffsschrift' (1884) : less rigorous but with a far wider application-sphere (the examination and generalization of ‘application-sphere’ is one of my aims.) I do share Frege’s ambition, expressed in the Preface to the Begriffsschrift, ‘if it is one of the tasks of philosophy to break the domination of the word over the human spirit by laying bare the misconceptions that through the use of language often almost unavoidably arise concerning the relations between concepts and by freeing thought from that which only the means of expression of ordinary language, constituted as they are, saddle it, then my ideography, further developed for these purposes, can become a useful tool for the philosopher.’ Frege’s ideography was difficult to implement. I have taken care to use only symbols which are typographically ready to hand.'
The discussion on this page should preferably be read in conjunction with the discussion on other pages, much more concrete, concerned with ethical controversies - bullfighting, the death penalty and ethical controversies to do with feminism, amongst others. The aphorisms below give further clues to my distinctive approach to ethics.
From my page Aphorisms which gives most of the aphorisms I've written:
At the furthest reaches of morality: the Nazis who shot babies, gassed babies or set fire to buildings in which babies were burned alive, who would have felt revulsion if they had been ordered to boil babies alive. Probably, a few of them would have refused to obey.
The evil of aggressive, militaristic states has often been defeated by military action and deterred by the military forces available to democracies. When has the evil of aggressive, militaristic states ever been defeated or deterred by pacifism?
A good cause may have to triumph over the methods used to promote it and the arguments used in its defence.
'You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, but if you ever lacerate my back, I'll lacerate yours.' (Usually only the first part is given.)
Ethical purity - as unlikely and ineffectual as political purity.
'You just can't do that!' is easier to implement than 'You just can't be that!'
What we enjoy the most, what we are best at doing, what we are expected to do and what we ought to do may be very different matters.
The person who doesn't neglect any duties and obligations is as constrained as an invalid.
It's impossible to walk in unspoiled surroundings without causing some damage to the surroundings, but moral perfectionists are mistaken who see no difference between this damage and the severe damage which would be caused if we used heavy machinery. But moral action must sometimes be severely damaging.
The dog lovers who destroy the unwanted dogs they're unable to rehome are to be admired, not the dog lovers who give their dogs expensive hair-trims and shampoos, the best of everything.
Ethics: theory, practice and notation
This section makes use of {theme} theory. See my Introduction to {theme} theory and the brief discussion in the column on the far right.
My approach to established ethical theory is pluralistic rather than monistic, in line with the thinking of W D Ross rather than the two most influential monistic theories, deontology and consequentialism. I see good reason for preferring consequentialism to deontology, but regard even the most developed and sophisticated versions of a hedonistic calculus as generally unhelpful in guiding a decision procedure. Nietzsche's criticism of Kantian philosophy (including, of course, deontology) was unformed - he could airily dismiss Kantian philosophy by describing it as 'Königsbergian' (referring to the place where Kant resided.) My own reaction to Kantianism could be summed up in a word, too, only slightly more adequately, perhaps - but I offer no amplification here. I'd describe it as a form of scholasticism. Philosophers generally aren't neo-Thomists, and they have found reason to reject the philosophical edifice of St Thomas Aquinas without giving detailed reasons, or any reasons at all, for opposing particular arguments in the Summa Theologica. Philosophers more often than not aren't neo-Kantian either, and again - although to a lesser extent - not by finding reasons to reject the philosophical edifice of Kant. In the case of Kant's ethical theory, its application can provide reason for suspecting it - for example, the celebrated case of the armed man and the need to tell the truth regardless of consequences.
Virtue ethics, including Aristotelian virtue ethics, should have a central place in any pluralistic ethical theory, I think. (This 'central place' should be quite congested, not occupied by one grand principle.) Life and death issues, issues to do with suffering and the reduction of suffering are central to the application of ethical theory - but so too should be a host of 'virtues' which go beyond these issues. A complete case can be built against bullfighting which makes no reference to the suffering of the animals - to do with anti-virtues of bullfighters and bullfighting supporters, such as their distortions and illusions. I provide documentation and argument at various places on the page Bullfighting: arguments against and action against.
Even so, the objections to virtue ethics are very great and have been inadequately explored, despite the vast attention which virtue ethics has come to receive. I discuss some difficulties in the section Can virtue ethics be salvaged? I think it can, but only by giving prominence to some features of the world not recognized by Aristotle or the philosophers who have written footnotes to Aristotle, including extreme contradictions, conflicts and paradoxes.
A further reason why I see the need for a pluralistic rather than monistic view of ethical theory is that I consider that a theory can have a high degree of adequacy in its application to mundane ethical decisions and a much lower degree of adequacy in life and death decisions. I'm influenced strongly here by Roger White's discussion of metaphor in his 'The Structure of Metaphor: The Way the Language of Metaphor Works.' Roger White finds reasons as to why some treatments of metaphor (such as the one presented in the book by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, 'Metaphors we live by', which I find exceptionally useful and interesting) have inadequate adequacy for complex metaphors to be found in literature, for example in the writing of Donne and Shakespeare. The examples which George Lakoff and Mark Johnson cite include, for example, 'He's head and shoulders above everyone in the industry. (This illustrates 'Significant is big.') My own theory of metaphor and {theme} is intended to have adequacy in explaining simple examples such as this and developed literary metaphor.
It has sometimes been supposed that the ethical concepts and analytical techniques involved in this ethical dilemma have much more extensive applicability: an Oxford don at high table asking himself, 'Shall I or shall I not take another of these delicious creamy desserts?' It will be apparent - or it can easily be shown - that the ethical necessity in this dilemma is much greater: adult sailors in a lifeboat, no food and no hope of rescue in the short term, medium term or perhaps long term, asking themselves, 'Shall we or shall we not kill and eat the cabin-boy to keep ourselves alive?' Unlike the examples from literary metaphor, this makes no greater demands on richness and complexity of mind, only on very different attributes of mind.
Although I refer to ethical necessity above, this is one instance in which I don't subsume ethical necessity, together with logical necessity, in a generalized necessity, in which ethical necessity and logical necessity can achieve {separation} by {resolution}. If some ethical choices seem the outcome of necessity, then this can only so in a fully deterministic ethical world, such as the 'necessitarianism' of Spinoza.
I find the concept of the 'first approximation' valuable but I use instead a linked concept, that of the 'starting point.' Epistemologically, G E Moore's defence of the common-sense view of the world has merit, I think, and should serve as a starting-point, but with no imposition of {restriction}, such that the common-sense view of the world is treated as beyond doubt.
It would be an ethical common-sense view, one which deserves to be a starting point, that if someone is starving, he or she would be morally justified in killing insects or worms to stay alive. I'd defend this choice without the least hesitation. It would be also be a starting point that if a vegan is starving, he or she would be morally justified in killing a chicken. I'd defend this choice without the least hesitation, but many vegans would disagree, and some of them would perhaps disagree too, about the legitimacy of killing insects or worms.
These examples don't illustrate a version of ethical necessity, in view of the potential objections - even if these objections are ridiculous. I make use of the {theme} {ordering} to allow the expression of very much greater preferability - although this falls short of absolute ethical necessity. An action which is very much preferable has prior{ordering} and the action which is very much less preferable has post {ordering}.
Power politics and military action are further application-spheres. If a far more powerful state, A, defeats in war a far weaker state, B, then militarily, in the case of this specific military action which resulted in victory (without any implication of ethical superiority, outweighing in the ethical application-sphere, of course), (A) > (B).
An actual military success and an ethical judgment belong to markedly different spheres (My approach is non-pacifist, without any judgment that all military victories are unethical). I distinguish the 'actuality-sphere' from the 'trans-sphere,' which has various sub-spheres, including the evaluation-sphere and the possibility-sphere.
What has happened in history, eg the defeat of Nazi Germany, belongs to the actuality-sphere. The evaluation-sphere includes the judgment that the defeat of Nazi Germany was ethically very desirable, the judgment that the coming to power of the Nazi party was very undesirable. The possibility-sphere includes the consideration that Britain might have been invaded by German forces during the Second World War.
Comprehensive and systematic indication of spheres requires extension to {theme} theory. Application-sphere is indicated by the use of ':-' as in {restriction}:- (success) but, using this example, often, it's necessary to indicate the sphere of success, which may be aesthetic, scientific, financial ... {resolution}:- (aesthetic) ® (architectural, poetic etc)
{themes} have {sub-themes}. For example, {modification} has {/reversal}, which can also be stated in the form {/reversal} has {modification}. Expressing the matter in the very concise and economical form which my symbolic notation offers, « :- Ô ~ ® D / (sense). The {theme} and {sub-theme} can also be given in the form {modification/reversal}. This schema can be extended to include categories which are not {themes} or {sub-themes}. In most cases, these will be established concepts which are generally given declaration, by the use of the declaration indicator Dn or by using declaration brackets, / ... /. In many or most cases, it will be obvious that established concepts are used and the declaration can be omitted. The {non-thematic} component is appended to the {thematic} component. The {non-thematic} component may be arranged in systematic or semi-systematic form and if so, a system similar to the one used for computer directories, sub-directories and files is employed. These refer to successive stages of {resolution}. A simple example, showing the {non-thematic} element of the compound term placed outside the brackets { ... }:
{restriction/ordering}/aesthetic/poetic
I use 'element' for the two components of the dyadic compound term, {thematic} and {non-thematic}, but an element of a compound term is obviously seen to be a compound in itself after practice of {resolution}. So, {restriction/ordering} is a compound term which can undergo further {resolution} to give two element terms, {restriction} and {/ordering}.
Can virtue ethics be salvaged?
The application of hedonistic consequentialism and virtue ethics leads often to strikingly different results. What lessens hedonistic utility tends to decrease virtue but also to increase it. It tends to increase the range of virtue, to increase the maxima and minima of virtue. The Second World War is definitive: the minima, extremes of barbarism, the maxima, almost unsurpassable heroism, unselfishness, resourcefulness, determination, endurance, kindness, compassion.
A morose and selfish individual, or an individual who is deranged or warped for that matter, may be exceptionally ingenious and hard-working and devise new treatments for a disease. Work which is enormously beneficial may involve the sacrifice of the individual's personal development.
On my page on Feminist ideology, I discuss the achievement of the navvies who built the canals and railways in this country at the time of the Industrial Revolution, and what can be considered some serious failings as judged by some ethicists of the time:
'Men of Iron,' the superb book by Sally Dugan, is mainly concerned with the audacious work of the engineers Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Robert Stephenson (she also does justice to the genius of their fathers, Marc Brunel and George Stephenson).
'She writes of the navvies' work, 'Maiming or mutilation came with the job, and navvies were lucky if they escaped with nothing more than the loss of a limb. They worked using picks and shovels, crowbars and wheelbarrows, and their bare hands; the only other aid they had was the occasional blast of gunpowder. Some were blinded by explosions; others were buried in rock falls. All led a life of hard, grinding physical toil, tramping from one construction site to another in search of work. Their reputation for violence and drunkenness made them a frequent focus for missionaries and temperance society members, as well as turning them into the bogeymen of folk myth.' Elizabeth Garnett was the secretary of the Navvy Mission Society and might have been expected to give a harsh verdict on their uncouthness and worse. Far from it. 'Men of Iron' quotes her words: 'Certainly no men in all the world so improve their country as Navvies do England. Their work will last for ages, and if the world remains so long, people will come hundreds of years hence to look at it and wonder at what they have done.' '
The virtue calculus is no more straightforward than the hedonistic calculus. Both are essentially unworkable. The calculus in both cases involves nothing which can possibly be compared with money, which can be added and subtracted. Like is rarely compared with like.
In my conception of virtue ethics, very great importance is attached to {restriction}, {separation} and {contrast}. Human versatility is recognized as subject to great {restriction}, in general. People who are exceptionally determined, oblivious of their own comfort, able to confront difficulties and to find ways to overcome them, hard, not soft, are very likely to be lacking in the softer virtues, such as understanding of human frailty, forgiveness of human weakness - although there are remarkable instances of {adjustment}.
The 'perfect gas law' of Physical Chemistry is an approximation. It becomes increasingly exact as the pressure of the gas approaches zero. A real gas behaves more like a perfect gas the lower the pressure. At high pressures and low temperatures, deviations from the law become very marked. This is due to molecular interactions. The fact that theories become less useful or inapplicable under certain conditions is certainly true, I would claim, of ethical theories, including theories of virtue ethics.
Virtue ethics was formulated in conditions of comparatively low {restriction}, the 'Aristotelian conditions.' It continues to be most successful in the analysis of similar conditions. Virtue ethics becomes inapplicable, unusable to a large extent in various conditions of high {restriction}.
The Greek slaves worked to death in the silver mines at Laurion, not in the least working in conditions of low {restriction}, the workpeople who had practically no time or surplus energy for anything beyond work, and people in many other categories, of course, have been to a large extent beyond the scope of the theory.
Strenuousness, can be regarded as an underlying virtue, required for the practice of all others. Strenuousness is required for very many forms of work, or for seeking work, and many forms of work, or seeking work, require specific virtues, but otherwise, many people are and have been not in the least interested in strenuousness. It's recognized that athletes and some other groups have to be strenuous to have any chance of success, but the need for strenuousness is often overlooked. When circumstances change drastically, as in times of war and other crises, then people who were unstrenuousness show themselves capable of {adjustment}.
There's marked contrast between the impressive intellectual energy which Aristotle devoted to systematization and exploration of concepts in the Nicomachean Ethics and the disappointingly conventional view of the ethical world, not sufficiently subject to empirical checks against reality. The same can be said of a significant part of the modern literature concerned with virtue ethics, such as Daniel C. Russell's 'Practical Intelligence and the Virtues.'
The refinement of concepts and, in the case of the Nicomachean ethics, the system-building sometimes lead to dereliction of duty - the duty of the virtue ethicist to refer to reality, to check the soundness of claims and statements against reality.
Some claims to be found in 'Practical Intelligence and the Virtues' are astounding and show that claim-checks haven't invariably been carried out. In Chapter 2, 'Right Action for Virtue Ethics,' there is this (P. 48, omitting the citations of the original):
' ... virtue ethicists need not - and indeed most do not - think of virtuous persons as morally perfect persons.'
The existence of 'morally perfect persons' should surely be out of the question and a virtue ethicist should surely treat every claim to the contrary as completely unfounded. (I think that the check against reality which makes this demonstrable in the case of non-divine persons is applicable to Christ.)
The existence of 'virtuous persons' is not a defensible claim either, I'd maintain, or the thesis of the 'unity of the virtues,' discussed in Chapter 11 of 'Practical Intelligence and the Virtues.' In a footnote (P. 335, the author explains that he uses 'the weaker thesis that to have one virtue is to have them all.' He also explains that he isn't concerned with the stronger thesis that 'all the virtues are the same,' although he thinks 'it is worth taking seriously.' The thesis that all the virtues are the same surely isn't worth taking seriously.
People whose lives are full of self-chosen possibilities, subject to comparatively low {restriction}, can cultivate, aspire to, work at and practise a wide range of virtues but successful practice is more often than not subject to high {restriction}.
In a review in the 'Times Literary Supplement' of 'Intelligent Virtue' by Julia Annas, (No 5725 / 5726) Rosalind Hursthouse, another very prominent philosopher in the field of virtue ethics, writes of ' "the skill analogy" which figures in Plato's early Socratic dialogues. The idea is that virtues are, in many ways, analogous to practical skills such as playing the piano, or tennis or golf, or being a competent plumber or electrician or cook ... Annas's point is that we need to learn practical skills, and the same goes for virtue. As parents know only too well, we are not born good [an astonishing generalization, as if parents can be assumed to be reliable moral arbiters] though quite possibly, as with some skills, some of us are born with a greater aptitude for learning to be kind or brave than others. Moreover, practical skills have to be learnt by practice - we acquire the skill of playing the piano by playing it, we become builders by building. Again, the same goes for virtue; we become generous by doing generous things, and brave by doing brave ones. Unfortunately, it also goes for vice. We become cruel and selfish by doing cruel and selfish things and, as Annas points out, our characters start being formed by those who bring us up from very early on, for good or ill. So this simple analogy with practical skills (that we need to learn virtue by doing virtuous actions) immediately highlights the importance of moral education from that early age.'
Moral education from an early age only guarantees a 'moral adult,' (leaving aside the difficulties in defining and finding such a person) if 'moral engineering,' (with a linkage with social engineering) is feasible. There are more than enough falsifying instances to make this doubtful. If there is a frequently reliable or frequently unreliable linkage between early moral education and the development of a moral adult. the linkage between a complete lack of early moral education, a brutal upbringing and the development of an adult who is no paragon of virtue is far better attested. Children subject to horrific abuse may becomes adults who are ready to brutalize any children they may have. My page 'The death penalty: reasoned revulsion' uses an argument against the death penalty which I call the risk of executing the damaged - the atrociousness of executing people whose childhood was of this kind.
Rosalind Hursthouse gives an objection to the view of 'the unity of the virtues,' which she describes, sweepingly, as 'the ancient Greek claim.' She explains that this claim is 'the idea that the virtues are not independent but imply each other and are unified by practical intelligence.' She writes that 'On the face of it, the skill analogy seems to support the contrary view; surely one can be honest and kind and still be a coward, just as one can be a brilliant concert pianist and hopeless at cooking.'
If the practice of virtue is the practice of a skill, we can ask if there are inherent difficulties of a serious kind in the exercise of moral skill, with a linkage with the obstacles to progress in reading and in manual dexterity constituted by dyslexia and dyspraxia. Surely there are. I emphasize very strongly that this isn't to equate dyslexia, dyspraxia and other difficulties in practising non-moral skills with 'difficulties' in practising moral skills, where the 'difficulties' are often disturbing or even revolting.
Given the equanimity with which many members of many societies (this is to estimate the problem at its least incidence) have tolerated gross abuses, such as slavery and the gross mistreatment of slaves, lack of moral skill has often been far more in evidence than accomplishment. This consideration is in itself a powerful argument against virtue ethics.
For all of recorded history, there has been division of labour, since it's impossible for one person to have mastery of all skills. In modern conditions, where the number of skills is immense and many of them present enormous difficulties for the learner and often the practitioner, division of labour is fundamental. The variety of virtues, many of them intensely demanding, surely requires a degree of specialization, of a very different kind and for different reasons. It's possible to practise {adjustment} but often difficult to practise it.
When Rosalind Hursthouse's refers to the skill of piano playing, it's with awareness of the difficulties which moral life presents for human versatility, but I'd claim that the difficulties are underestimated, and on a massive scale. Living the moral life is more akin to putting on an opera production (mutatis mutandis, obviously) than playing the piano successfully, although the difficulties of the moral life can be illustrated by using an example from piano performance. A piano performance which is successful, in technical and artistic terms is more likely to be achieved than a successful opera production, at least if attention is confined to piano pieces which aren't amongst the most challenging. The many roles which are needed for an opera performance, successful or otherwise, have a linkage with the many moral roles of a single individual attempting to live the moral life. In the opera production, a tenor may be superb and the bass much less convincing, or all the solo roles may be excellent but the chorus may be disappointing. The tenor's voice may be superb, except in part of the singer's register, or the tenor's voice may be superb in most respects but not in the quality of vibrato. The tenor's singing may be generally superb but the tenor's acting may be weak - in one respect or more or most or all. The conductor may have multiple failings or fail in a few ways. Set-design, costumes and other aspects of the performance are likewise subject to {restriction}:- (success). Although there's universal agreement on many aspects of performance, such as the importance of tone quality, there may be disagreement about the degree of success.
The moral life often calls on diverse, sometimes very disparate skills, to be practised in unexpected ways, making not just immense demands but unachievable demands. Success in achieving one objective, if success is possible at all, may entail failure in achieving another objective which is just as valuable. Politicians are more likely than many people to find that attaining and sacrificing, commitment and neglect, success and failure often go together. The {ordering} which gives priority to one objective rather than another has as a further application-sphere the virtues which are called upon in pursuing one objective rather than another. Some virtues must be given prior-{ordering}, others post-{ordering}.
Conjugates in ethics are composites, like composite poems, composite metals. The components of an extended conjugate C are
e1 < > e2 (a, b, c ... n).
Smoking
Introduction
Essential background information is the fact that I've never smoked - not even once. Nothing here is in conflict with the fact that smoking is a major cause of premature death and ill-health. Anyone who smokes would be well advised to give up as soon as possible, if possible. Anyone who doesn't smoke would be well advised never to start. This page isn't so much a defence of smoking as a defence against some common attacks on smokers.
Is smoking one of the most important things about a person or one of the least important?
Surely, the answer has to be: one of the least important. A campaign in this country used the slogan, 'If you smoke, you stink,' but it's the advertizing campaign which stinks, not smokers, a campaign based on rubbishy values, on unexamined assumptions. If you disagree, try answering these questions. Some of them are based upon thought experiments or extreme situations - but these can reveal vividly the values of a person, the depth or superficiality of a person. So:
I myself am not too bothered by cigarette smoke, unless it's very dense. Given the choice between exposure to cigarette smoke and exposure to a mobile phone user's interminable, moronic conversation (all the more irritating because only half a conversation, of course), I'd far rather be exposed to the cigarette smoke. I'd claim that some people who complain about cigarette smoke are making too much of it, but I agree - non-smokers should not be exposed to cigarette smoke.
In the terms I use, fanatical opposition to smoking is a typical product of the mechanical mind, based on false linkages, automatic responses, a completely inadequate survey and distorted weightings (all, in this case, concerned with the question 'what are the most important things about a person?')
Strenuousness isn't highly valued now. The exceptions are few and include working out at the gym, some big business deals and athletics and sporting activity (but only if they attract massive sponsorship, massive television coverage and massive financial rewards.) And, very creditably, to be fair-minded, the courage and determination of ordinary people in the face of sickness and danger. These have a prominent place in the media. But the strenuous work of roofers, miners, writers, thinkers, scholars, scientists, mathematicians and others is generally of less account or no account at all to the public. There are many lazy non-smokers who condemn strenuous smokers.
There are large numbers of outstanding smokers, and large numbers of mediocre, dull, dismal, cold, unimaginative, retarded anti-smokers - as well as non-smokers and even anti-smokers who are anything but. George Orwell, a smoker, was uncompromising, honest, inquiring, morally courageous as well as physically courageous, and a writer of lucid prose which is sometimes searing, sometimes funny and very enjoyable, nearly always, despite its superficial 'plainness,' completely distinctive.
'Homage to Catalonia' is the unforgettable record of his courage, honesty and humanity during the Spanish Civil War. At the front, he was shot in the throat. Later, in Barcelona, he lived the life of a fugitive, in acute danger. At the close of the book, he mentions ' ... the smell of the trenches, the mountain dawns stretching away into inconceivable distances, the frosty crackle of bullets, the roar and glare of bombs; the clear cold light of the Barcelona mornings, and the tamp of boots in the barrack yard ... '
He was in acute danger at the front and later, in Barcelona, where he had to live as a fugitive, sleeping, on one occasion, 'in some long grass at the edge of a derelict building lot,' at a time when there was 'the horrible atmosphere of suspicion and hatred,' 'lies and rumours circulating everywhere' but he managed to leave the country and to cross the border to France. He writes, 'A winder what is the appropriate first action when you come from a country at war and set foot on peaceful soil. Mine was to rush to the tobacco-kiosk and buy as many cigars and cigarettes as I could stuff into my pockets ... It was several days before I could get used to the idea that you could buy cigarettes whenever you wanted them.'
From a medical view of George Orwell written by George Ross:
'A heavy smoking habit probably also contributed to his gaunt appearance. Perhaps due to his childhood respiratory illnesses, Orwell developed bronchiectasis, a condition characterized by perpetually dilated bronchi and fits of coughing.
'In 1938, Orwell went to a sanatorium because he was coughing up blood, and was eventually diagnosed with tuberculosis. The peripatetic author could have been infected in his childhood in India, as a police officer in Burma, as a soldier in Spain, or "during years of tramping, poverty, and vagabondage" in France and England, according to author John Ross, MD, of Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston. His treatment consisted of simple bed rest and good nutrition - both of which improved his health enough for him to be discharged several months later.
'Eight years later, depressed by his wife's death, Orwell moved to a windy and damp Scottish island. His health worsened significantly just as he was working on the first draft of 1984. Fever, weight loss, and night sweats sent him to the hospital, where he underwent "collapse therapy," a treatment designed to close the dangerous cavities that form in the chests of tuberculosis patients. Orwell described his experience with collapse therapy in detail, and the treatment "may have influenced the depiction of the tortures of Winston Smith in the Ministry of Love" in 1984, according to Dr. Ross. "But the truly frightening thing was the emaciation of his body. The barrel of the ribs was as narrow as that of a skeleton: the legs had shrunk so that the knees were thicker than the thighs, the curvature of the spine was astonishing," Orwell wrote, perhaps drawing on his firsthand knowledge of the wasting effects of tuberculosis.
'Orwell's poor health and apparent infertility (based on his own musings in his letters as well as the medical evidence linking some respiratory ailments to infertility) probably contributed to the despondency in his writing. "Orwell himself told his friends that 1984 would have been less gloomy had he not been so ill--it was a very dark, disturbing, and pessimistic work," Dr. Ross said. The author's severe illness "gave him a tremendous amount of focus," perhaps by making him aware of his own mortality.
'George Orwell died in 1950, ending a life plagued by sickness. That sickness, though, contends Dr. Ross, "made him a better and more empathetic writer, in that his sense of human suffering made his writing more universal."'
All this will be incomprehensible to many anti-smokers, those who find any artistic or spiritual benefits of suffering impossible to conceive. I maintain that language isn't complete and is far from perfect, so that it's often necessary to use a word where another word, a replacement word would be far better. For lack of a better word, I use the word 'spiritual,' even though I'm an atheist. The contrast between the spiritual benefits of suffering and the humanitarian urge to reduce suffering, the understandable instinct to avoid personal suffering, is stark, but necessary. (Another example of the spiritual linkage between suffering and artistic achievement - this at the highest level - comes from the late Beethoven, as in, for example, the slow movement of the Quartet Opus 132, titled, 'Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesen an die Gottheit, an der lydischen Tonart,' 'the thanksgiving of a convalescent.')
There are doctors, like Dr Ross, quoted above, who have deep insights, and doctors who are shallow. In general, the emphasis in medicine on good health rather than poor health is not just understandable but obviously necessary - but may be a source of bias and {distortion}. The phrase 'a healthy mind in a healthy body' is one of the most trite of all trite phrases. Very often, a choice has to be made. This is a consequence of {separation}. If you have to choose, do you approve more of the person in perfect, glowing health who is bland, humdrum, limited, very severely limited, or the person of depth and intense compassion whose body is wracked by coughs? (Perhaps the result of smoking)?
I imagine an anti-smoking campaigner of a limited sort who reads Orwell and misses the humour of 'Down and Out in Paris and London,' its unforgettable depiction of the abyss of poverty and only becomes interested - in a prim and censorious way - when he finds a comment such as 'Boris slept the night at the house of a cobbler, another Russian refugee...Meanwhile, I had eight francs left, and plenty of cigarettes...'
When George Orwell met Henry Miller before going to Spain to fight for the republic, Henry Miller was scornful of the idea of defending democracy. Alfred Perles gave George Orwell's reply, 'that...where the rights and very existence of a whole people are at stake, there could be no thought of avoiding self-sacrifice. He spake his convictions so earnestly and humbly that Miller desisted from further argument and promptly gave him his blessing.' (Quoted in Bernard Crick, ('George Orwell: a life.') But there are anti-smoking campaigners who wouldn't be impressed, oblivious to almost everything in 'Homage to Catalonia' except comments such as 'The shortage of tobacco was the worst of all. At the beginning we had been issued with a packet of cigarettes a day, then it got down to eight cigarettes a day, then it got down to eight cigarettes day, then to five. Finally there were ten deadly days when there was no issue of tobacco at all.' This gives them their chance to show 'superiority' to someone who can be regarded as no more than a poor nicotine addict. Simple issues which can be grasped very easily are usually given more emphasis than complex issues which need thought. See also my page which is critical of some aspects of the green movement: Green: immature, unsophisticated, or gullible.
By what right does a non-smoker feel superior to Joe Simpson, the author of 'Touching the Void?' In 1985, he and Simon Yates set out to climb the remote west face of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. It was 1985 and the men were young, fit, skilled climbers. The ascent was successful, after they had climbed for over three days. But then Simpson fell, and broke his leg badly. There was no hope of rescue for them. They had to descend without any help. Yates was lowering Simpson on the rope but lowered him into a hidden crevasse. He couldn't hold him and was forced to cut the rope. Simpson wasn't killed by the fall, He managed to drag himself out and drag himself down the mountain, dehydrated and injured, until, at last, he reached base camp.
From the same book, 'Heavy smoking had never affected my performance in the Alps, but I was forced to agree that it might be wise to stop during this expedition. The risks of high-altitude sickness and pulmonary oedemas, about which we had heard so much, were all that helped me through a few days craving tobacco.'
I write about the courage of mountaineers in the page on bullfighting.
Ian Hamilton ("High Tar Hamilton") was a poet and editor of 'The Review 'and later 'The New Review.' Quotations below are from 'Another Round at the Pillars: Essays, Poems and Reflections on Ian Hamilton,' edited by David Harsent. 'The Pillars' is 'The Pillars of Hercules,' a pub in the same street as the offices of The New Review.
Editing a magazine which publishes poetry or literary fiction or both is intensely demanding. Of course, it offers no or next to no financial 'reward' for the exercise of sensitive artistic judgment and all the other qualities which literary editing demands. It can lead to confrontations with the bailiffs (although at the offices of the New Review, these were avoided with the exercise of imagination), or even to bankruptcy.
Blake Morrison: 'Some of his best friends were rich and famous (or have since become so), but for him the literary life meant rent arrears, spent advances and coffee jars filled with pennies - the pram in the hall and the bailiff at the door.' Julian Barnes, writing of 'The New Review:' '...the magazine was sustained far less by public money [An Arts Council subsidy, money well spent] than by the devotion of an impoverished staff. Most literary magazines are like this, of course.'
The non-financial difficulties can easily be underestimated, but shouldn't be - having to decline the work of someone who's been published by the magazine in the past, perhaps many times, someone who may be a personal friend, because of pressure of space in the magazine, or because now the work isn't quite as good. In general, people hate having to disappoint others. An editor has to do that time after time.
Ian Hamilton's critical standards were exacting. Colin Falck quotes him on 'the poetry of the tradition:' 'Today, I think many poems are being written by people who have no poetry in their heads...they don't know where they are when you present them with a poem by Hardy or Frost. They're not prepared for the immediate sense of difficulty or strangeness because they have no background in poetry. If it doesn't hit them in the face or make them laugh it has no value for them.'
Ian Hamilton was a very heavy smoker. Peter Dale: '...speaking of nights, Ian regretted that you couldn't smoke while sleeping.' Colin Falck writes of his 'by-now-serene indifference to his own bodily welfare.' Non-smokers who aren't short of money and who spend most of their free time viewing, reading or listening to undemanding pap, whose only strenuous 'leisure activity' is, perhaps, working out at the gym, haven't earned the right to sneer at Ian Hamilton the smoker, and his demanding vocation.
Tadeusz Stepniewkski, anti-Nazi
I have a book, a very important one in what I call Humanitarian History, Martin Gilbert's 'The Righteous: the unsung heroes of the holocaust.' This isn't a book about grey areas. It depicts clearly, unforgettably, two different kinds of people: those who saved Jews, or did everything they could to save Jews, taking huge risks, the risk of summary execution - for their families as well as themselves - or of being carted off to a concentration camp - and those who did the dirty work of informing the authorities, finding hidden Jews, executing them and executing the people who had risked their lives to hide them. The photographs in the book are matter of fact but moving in the extreme. So, we have a photo of two Dutch farmers, Willem and Johannes Bogaar, 'with two of the Jewish children whom they hid on their farm.' Is it important to you that you should know whether these two farmers were smokers or non-smokers? I don't know the answer, but the answer, of course, is completely unimportant. In the case of one of the heroic people described in the book, the answer is known: Tadeusz Stepniewkski, a member of Zegota, the Polish Council for Assistance to the Jews, is actually smoking in the photograph! There was no country, of course, in which the penalties for helping Jews were more extreme than in Poland. Does Tadeusz Stepniewski seem diminished now that you know that he smoked? Did he 'stink?' Don't you think now, if you didn't think so before, that to use a word like 'stink' is disgusting?
And what of the Jews' persecutors? Would a member of the Einsatzgruppen - the groups who shot men, women and children - and babies - become less loathsome in your sight if you knew that he was a non-smoker rather than a smoker? Are you favourably disposed to him, because he 'didn't stink?' The Germans who executed fifteen people in the town of Wierzbica, including a two year old girl, when they learned that three families in the town were hiding three Jews, the Germans who executed a Polish woman, together with her one year old child, for hiding Jews at Pilica in Southern Poland, the Germans who executed ninety-six villagers at Bialka for helping Jews, the German who hanged a Polish peasant for selling an egg to a Jew, hanging the Jewish mother at the same time, at Sosnowiec, the Germans who executed Dr Roger Leforestier, of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon for providing medical care for Jews - whether these Germans were smokers or non-smokers is irrelevant. The village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in France, and its surrounding area acted heroically. Mordecai Paldiel: 'Almost all the people of the plateau were involved in saving these Jews, and no one said a word.' (Quoted in 'The Righteous.') There's a world of supremely important values where smoking isn't of negligible importance but of no importance at all. Do you agree or disagree?
Claude Lanzmann's film 'Shoah' is extraordinary: nine and a half hours in length and surely one of the most important documentaries of all time, on the worst horrors of all time, the Holocaust. (For all that, the film has flaws - the criticism that the film neglects the suffering of non-Jewish Poles and neglects Polish action on behalf of the Jews, is justified.) The achievement of Claude Lanzmann is qualified by these flaws to an extent, but not in the least by the fact that he (and his translator) are seen smoking again and again in the course of the film.
Roofers
Roofers who smoke can serve to represent so many others: people who are completely unknown whose work - whose achievements - are liable to be completely discounted by anti-smokers. Not all strenuous and difficult activities are physically demanding activities, but many are. Roofers carry out physically demanding work at a height in almost all weathers. Anti-smokers who work in comfortable conditions without aching muscles - or without strenuous non-physical demands - aren't entitled to sneer at them.
The ban on smoking in public places in this country is essential but not of supreme importance. Nobody should have any condescending pity for any smokers huddled outside buildings, imagining that they must be lacking in will power. Years ago, I attended a string quartet concert - Beethoven Quartet Opus 59 No. 2, Bartok's 4th Quartet and Haydn's Emperor Quartet, Opus 76 No. 3. And a short time later a recital given by the cellist of the same quartet and a pianist: Beethoven Cello Sonatas Opus 5 No. 1 and Opus 102 No. 2. The young cellist has a wonderfully accomplished technique, a very ardent yet mellow style of playing. After the second concert, as I left, she was outside the building having a cigarette. She obviously had the will and the self-discipline to acquire the exacting technique of the cello, and the artistry to use the technique wonderfully well. I think that any anti-smoker who claims that she's nothing but a poor smoker has lost the right to be taken seriously.
Link
A Web site which campaigns for smokers. The extensive set of links it provides is fair-minded. It includes anti-smoking sites and sites which help smokers to stop smoking as well as pro-smoking sites.
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