The Primacy of Ethics and the Ethics of Authenticity, Hossein Dabbagh

Let me say the last word right at the outset. I believe in neither the primacy of culture, nor the primacy of politics, nor the primacy of economics. It is true that in many cases culture takes precedence over politics, and cultural issues appear to be more fundamental. For example, according to the well-known saying, “rulers are born of the people,” one can argue that for better politics, one must begin with the culture of the people. But right against this argument, someone could sound the trumpet from the other end and say: it is well known that “people follow the religion of their kings” or “people resemble their rulers more than their fathers.” That is, it is politics and rulers that influence the culture of the people, so one must begin with politics. Perhaps one could even step beyond the culture/politics dichotomy and show that in some instances, economics prevails over culture. Saadi was right when he said, “At night, when I tie the knot of prayer / I wonder what my child will eat in the morning”; as long as people’s livelihood is in straits, no one seeks culture. Moreover, those who beat the drum for the primacy of politics might be able to show that under certain conditions, until political issues are resolved, the economy will not get moving, and until the economy gets moving, culture’s turn will not come. But perhaps a fourth matter could also be conceived, namely that phenomena such as politics, culture, economics, or even religion do not necessarily always and everywhere have precedence and superiority over one another, and only have a dialectical relationship with each other. That is, these phenomena enter into a field of dialogue and competition with one another, some give and take occurs, and ultimately, whatever emerges victoriously from the field becomes primary. You might ask, what is our criterion for this give and take, and according to what standard does the competition take place? My answer is one thing: ethics. What, in my belief, is of importance here and can resolve the dispute among these phenomena is ethics. It is ethics that has priority over culture, over politics, and over economics.

John Rawls, the renowned American political and moral philosopher, has spoken eloquently about this dialogue and give and take. According to the method he calls Reflective Equilibrium, we can achieve a kind of justification among our various beliefs. According to Rawls, we generally seek reflective equilibrium, or loosely speaking, coherence-based reasoning, among our principles, beliefs, and judgments with varying degrees of generality. In fact, to achieve justification, our general principles and judgments must cohere with the rest of our particular beliefs and judgments. Rawls thought that for coherence-based reasoning, we have no fixed point from which to begin and by which to measure things. But in my belief, contrary to Rawls, we can consider self-evident propositions and moral intuitions as the primary standard and criterion, and place the point of departure there. Now, it suffices to apply Rawls’s argument, instead of to various beliefs and principles, to various phenomena such as politics, culture, economics, and religion. These phenomena themselves consist of propositions from which our beliefs are formed. Thus, the conflict between the primacy of politics, culture, and economics resembles a court where ethics is the judge. Ethics decrees where primacy belongs to which phenomenon.

But someone might object that culture, according to a general definition, also includes ethics. For example, most anthropologists consider culture to be a set of beliefs, art, morality, law, customs and habits, or even the religion of a society. On this assumption, one who holds to the primacy of culture seems to carry ethics along with it as well. But this objection, in my view, does not carry much force. Following numerous moral philosophers such as Bernard Williams, Geoffrey Warnock, J. L. Mackie, David Gauthier, and T. M. Scanlon, one can distinguish between two types of ethics. One type of ethics (Ethics) is used so broadly that it encompasses all tastes, personal beliefs, and even self-centered ones. But the other type of ethics (Morality) is much narrower and concerns objective and rational principles that have one essential requirement: that morality must relate to the “other.” In the present sense, morality belongs to behaviors that have a relation to the other and affect others: “Let no one in your land be troubled / If you seek only your own comfort.” With this distinction, one can easily see that even within the heart of cultures, there are behaviors that are ethical in the first sense but are considered improper in the second. It is this second sense of morality that, in my belief, has primacy and is generative of authenticity, and can be largely path-breaking and helpful in the conflict between politics, culture, economy, or even religion.

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The Primacy of Ethics and the Ethics of Authenticity

A note by Dr. Hossein Dabbagh, at the request of Sedanet | March 2016

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