Some Thoughts on Sensitivity Ethics

A number of interactions and observations online lately have me thinking about sensitivity to others' feelings as an ethical duty. By chance these both arise from the intersection of fantasy worlds and women, though I don't mean to suggest that the women are responsible: in at least one case, it seems to be entirely or almost-entirely men fighting with each other about the portrayal of women. 

One of these has to do with an interpretative theory I have about the scene in the Lord of the Rings where Eowyn and the Witch-King of Angmar fight.* I will describe only at the end and after the jump as I have observed that it upsets some people. You can read it if you want, or not. The point is that some people, both women and men who think themselves to be standing up for women, strongly object to this theory. I advance it only because I think it is the correct view of this particular scene, not as part of a broader agenda to speak about the role of women in Tolkien, and especially not to speak about the role of women in general. Yet some women, especially feminists who love Tolkien and for whom this is Tolkien's redeeming moment, strongly object to this theory. Men (who, I believe, mostly want the attention of these women) often also stridently object to it without showing an ability to produce strong evidence against it. 

The other one has to do with a group on FB that is for people who grew up playing D&D in the 70s and 80s. It is chiefly a place for nostalgia among what are now middle aged or older men, and my own nostalgic love of the old books and works is strong enough that I continue to show and and look at it even in spite of the several problems I shall describe.** One of the things that people are often nostalgic about is the artwork they remember from these works, on the covers of books, or in allied works like Conan and Red Sonja comics. This occasions regular, indeed almost endless, objections as those works often posed women in improbable forms of maille armor, chain, scale, or otherwise. There is both a Woke group of older men (one imagines bald men with grey ponytails, but perhaps that is unfair) and a Christian*** one who objects to such displays as being an affront to the virtue of chastity. Given the demographic -- 70/80s D&D players -- there are almost no women involved, just as there were almost none involved back then. They can't seem to shut up about it and leave it alone, neither the side that likes to post the old artwork, nor either of the sides that object to them. 

I did see one fellow post this morning the obvious and somehow beside-the-point objection that the portrayal of Conan in this art is at least as unrealistic as anything offered for Sonja or whatever female. This is the old Barbie/He-Man thing we've discussed several times (the third link is to an early discussion with Cassandra, which by-the-way also references Eowyn; she was also present in the second one; the first one is my most recent thinking on the subject). It's true that if anything the Conan/He-Man art is even less realistic a portrayal of what a strong man like Conan would look like, a man who spent his life in practical action and not gymnasia. There would probably be a useful discussion to be had there if in fact -- as some feminisms sometimes assert -- the ultimate desiderata were standards that were gender-neutral and would apply to everyone exactly equally. I am of the considered opinion that no one wants what that would practically entail, and also that men and women end up being so different finally that even aspiring to such a standard amounts to wishing that the other sex would stop being so much like itself (i.e., that ironically this approach, intended as anti-sexist, ends up entailing a different sort of sexism, a refusal to accept either men or women or both as an acceptable way to be human). 

It remains true that some women really are bothered more by the pictures of scantily-clad beautiful women than men are by pictures of scantily-clad heroically muscled men. I know some in person who are made intensely uncomfortable by seeing a woman they think is more beautiful than themselves, especially arrayed in such a way as to be attractive to the men around them. Several of these women, in my carefully unvoiced opinion, have nothing to worry about in the comparison:  but they don't see themselves through my eyes. They see themselves through the eyes of self-doubt tinging towards self-loathing, and are unable to realize what beauty they themselves happen to possess. As far as I can tell, men see in Conan art a kind of aspirational goal they find inspiring  to their own athleticism even if it is not strictly attainable. 

There are multiple positions about why this might be so; it may be that society has unfairly pushed self-consciousness about physical appearance on women, as is often claimed; it may be that Conan-type physiques aren't sexually attractive, and thus don't trigger the same sort of issue in their male observers anyway. (Against this is the fact that at least some of the noteworthy artists who popularized Conan's appearance were gay; in favor of it is the fact that boyish men are consistently rated as more attractive by women than big muscle men, just as a three-day beard seems more attractive to many than a mighty godlike beard.) 

None of that is to the point of this essay, which is about sensitivity as an ethical duty. We shall leave aside why this seems to be true, and go along with that it seems to be true.

Traditionally in the West, both truth-speaking and keeping people from feeling uncomfortable were considered ethical goods. However, they were ethical goods of different kinds. Speaking the truth was a moral duty; considering the emotional comfort of others was a social duty. Since Socrates, Western philosophy has asserted the supremacy of the moral over other duties. Thus, the Western ideal has been for centuries that one should speak the truth even if it caused substantial social disruption. This is old enough to have various forms of Latin epigrams, both ancient and Medieval: "fiat iustitia et pereat mundus; fiat justitia ruat caelum." 

In the Modern era, Kant is the flag-bearer for the model that moral duty, arrived at through practical reason, must entirely determine the permissible range of action: all social considerations are secondary. That is not to say they are not important: Kant would have you be courteous and polite. However, you can never lie to be courteous: never, not even to save a murderer from finding his victim, because lying is demonstrably (according to Kant) a violation of reason and therefore necessarily immoral. Certainly you can't lie to make someone feel comfortable. 

Our current moment has decided that much or possibly all of morality is really socially constructed. As such, the ancient distinction between moral duty and social duty collapses. To make someone uncomfortable is on the same plane as lying; and lying could be preferable in many cases if it avoids discomfort (see the link above under "West" for a discussion of how that very ethic plays out in Japan and China). All moral duties are then subject to a barter system with other social goods: and the medium of exchange is social approval, not practical wisdom arrived at by reason.

As a result, it turns out that these disputes can never be settled. One side may locally shout down another, asserting dominance; but even that is always subject to revision should another side become strong enough to re-open the question. 

Worse, of course, a large number of things that we have long thought of as genuinely immoral become licensed should they also be popular. That is obvious enough not to require much working-out here. 

Ultimately it is unclear if reason retains the strength to reassert its ancient primacy over our moral and ethical systems (if, indeed, we still have both moral and ethical systems instead of just one social credit system). Unless it can be done, the way forward is one of endless, repeated, pointless disputes over how people feel about things, with the only alternative being the successful and permanent exercise of main force by a dominant group. Either oppression or strife is the future, unless reasoned philosophy is able to regain its ancient position of respect.

Nevertheless, I observe that the trend is in the other direction. A new school of ethics has emerged, in fact, for the first time in centuries: "Care Ethics," i.e., an ethical system built around the idea that 'showing care' is at the core of ethical behavior. The older models were virtue ethics -- Aristotle's and Plato's forms being well-known here -- utilitarianism, and deontology ('the study of duty,' of which Kant is a good exemplar). All of those were founded on practical reason, and therefore reason has its ancient place in each of them. Increasingly that is under attack, and the results are apt to be dire. Ironically given that the goal of these systems is said to be care for others and therefore social harmony,***** they are committing us to that future of strife or oppression. 

* The standard reading is that Eowyn satisfied the exception to the Witch King of Angmar's prophecy that he should be killed by no man; she, as she says, is no man, and she strikes him through the head with a weapon and he dies. I think that is at least incomplete, and that Eowyn's actions are at least not sufficient and maybe not necessary to his death. Consider this passage:

I tend to read that as saying that it was the hobbit's stroke that broke the spell that kept the Witch-King in his body, and that Eowyn's final stroke may not have even been necessary to destroying him. This is a very strongly Tolkien move, if I am correct. First, it harmonizes exactly with the larger theme of The Lord of the Rings, which is about an evil enemy who can only be killed by a singular magic object being employed in just the right way. The Ring was a weapon that alone could destroy Sauron: and if it were used in the wrong way, by overthrowing him, it would only substitute one dark lord for another. The Barrow blade, forged in Angmar precisely the right way to destroy the particular undead magics of the Witch King of Angmar, is thus a foreshadowing and underlining of the theme of the whole work. 

Second, a hobbit is also no man. The Witch King having his attention drawn to one way in which the prophecy might have been wrong misses the way that is actually sneaking up behind him with the magic sword that alone can kill him. This doubles the force of the misinterpreted-prophecy theme, so that Tolkien doesn't just borrow from Shakespeare (as from Beowulf and many others), but sophisticates the themes he borrows (as with Beowulf and the others as well).

Eowyn still plays an important role in this conflict even on my view; she takes down the Witch King's mount, and distracts him so that the hobbit-borne Barrow sword can be brought to bear. Her actions are bold and courageous. If my reading is correct, though, Eowyn is not the one who killed the Witch-King. Indeed, the text cited seems to suggest that she couldn't have killed him because she didn't have the right tool. Just as Aragorn and the army of Gondor ultimately can only distract Sauron so that the hobbits can sneak to Mount Doom with the Ring, Eowyn's courage distracts the Witch King so that a hobbit with the right magic can sneak up and do the fatal work. 

** The group is, I gather, in some danger of being disallowed by Facebook on account of excessive automated findings of encouragement to violence and violent activity. These findings are of course findings of descriptions of D&D battles between knights, wizards, orcs, and such. The Machine is blind and humorless, and yet people keep handing over more and more power to it. 

*** The Christian virtue of chastity is of an ancient and honorable account, with many excellent philosophical defenses and defenders. I do, however, note the irony of it coming up censoriously in this particular debate. All of these people experienced as hostile the wild Christian censoriousness about D&D in the 1980s: it was supposedly going to drive them mad, or into devil-worship, or witchcraft, or whatever else. Plainly it didn't even dissuade many of them from becoming censorious Christians of the very sort who used to bedevil their community in the grand days of yore. It is indeed a rich irony to see this of all communities striving against itself over trying to purify a space devoted to 70s and 80s D&D from anything that might offend a maximal Christian ethics. 

***** It is worth noting that this effect of Wokeness on our popular philosophy moves it toward the Eastern sphere, where maintaining social harmony has been a core duty since antiquity. Against this has to be set the obvious empirical truth that Wokeness does not in fact even attempt to maintain any sort of social harmony, but sparks fights and strife everywhere it goes. It is thus less Confucian than Maoist. Another source of strife in the D&D group is that the company that owns D&D has decided in its next edition to stop describing fantasy races like elves as races, and will now refer to them as species. This ought to be of no matter, since elves and dwarves don't really exist and thus are neither races nor species; which inaccurate word one uses should be a very small matter. Yet while the change disturbs some members of a community gathered for reasons of nostalgia, it is publicly, repeatedly, constantly celebrated by the Woke faction of oldsters as a way of putting those others in their place as racist no-goods, just as they love to shout them down as sexist no-goods for enjoying the same book covers they liked in 1975 or 1982. If maintaining social harmony is a serious ethical duty, it is one against which the Woke ideologues who proclaim it as such are themselves the chief and most extravagant violators.