How do you recognize a military coup in Egypt and remain silent when the

[Igel]

26. One must distinguish between hypocrisy and failure.

It's like distinguishing between a and an untruth.

Both are necessary to avoid wholesale collapse of any attempt at morality. Both involve an other-based definition, because the listener's perception isn't what's at stake.

I can say that my wife is at the store and be lying. Perhaps I know she's elsewhere but wish for you to believe she's at the store to save face or for some other reason. Or perhaps I honestly believe she's at the store and am incorrect--perhaps I've been deceived, perhaps her car broke down and she's walking home. In each case what I'm saying is untrue; in one case it's a lie, and in the other it's a simple untruth. Intent and speaker knowledge matters, not what the listener decides, based on emotion or attitude, the speaker must mean. We tend to decry untruths from those we don't like as lies; we tend to assume out-and-out lies by those we do like are mere accidents.


Hypocrisy is imposing on another a rule or moral precept that you do not believe holds in your case. Ways can be found to make something technically not hypocritical. A UN resolution, for instance, often works, but that presupposes a purely formal, amoral view of what law and codes of behavior are. There is no "principle" behind morality except it's what those with power (or a majority) say is moral for the moment. This week we are inclusive and that's moral because we say so; next week we round up all the Japanese and put them in internment camps and that's moral because we say so. It's a thin reed as far as support goes.

Failure is not upholding your moral views, possibly through weakness or even through self-deception. The distinction can be subtle: I've known people who condemn others for drinking while drinking themselves into oblivion. In some cases the next day in some cases the condemners beat themselves up for falling off the wagon and acting like asses; in other cases, the attitude is that they've earned the right to be lushes but the kids haven't. One's weakness; the other is hypocrisy. Humility is necessary for refraining from issuing the easy judgment--"hypocrisy vs weakness" is a hard judgment, "do I dislike the person or like him" is the easier question to answer and is substituted for the hard question. Again, we tend to accuse those we don't like of hypocrisy; those we like we tend to think of as having a moral failing.

Neither makes the moral precept void. There's nothing about a hypocrite saying, "Stealing is wrong" that suddenly makes stealing right. If stealing is wrong, it's wrong no matter who says it's wrong. We use an ad hominem argument to avoid having theft condemned for one of two reasons: We want to defend the current thief or we want to condemn the person speaking. In the case of Crimea, some want to defend Russia; others really are indifferent to Crimea, Ukraine, and Russia, and just want to condemn the US for something still stuck in their craw. Again, we have a difficult question and instead of dealing with hard thinking we substitute an easy one: What do I want to do?

Critical thinking is hard thinking.