On betrayal and the obligations of virtue: Observations on moral philosophy from Seneca (because of course, Seneca)

 I have been thinking about betrayal lately.  To be sure, many Jews around the world, and in America in particular, have been thinking about betrayal.  To place the topic in a broader context, most Jews consider themselves liberal in both the classical and modern, American sense, "progressive" in the 21st Century rather than 19th/early 20th Century sense, and most have never voted Republican in their lives.  They have supported every civil rights cause and every minority group in their political lives, thinking of themselves as part of a "coalition of the other," Jews being the quintessential other.  What many 21st Century Jews are only starting to understand is just what it means to be the quintessential other.  It means being so other that the other others don't consider us other.  To be a true outsider is to be such an outsider as to be excluded from the group of outsiders who sneer at the in-group together.  Under the new and dominant paradigm of political thought, we are the whitest of the white, the hyper-oppressors.  I call us Schrodinger's Other.  Too white to be other, but too other for the actual white supremacists.  We are precisely as white as you need us to be to hate us and want to kill us.  American Jews have believed themselves to be part of the coalition of the other, welcomed within the fold of the other, politically aligned, and all that.  We have stood with the causes.  And now, faced with a true, denotational genocidal enemy whose founding document states its genocidal intent, which commits the worst atrocities against us since the fall of Nazi Germany, where are the other others?  Where are those whose backs we have had?  Cheering them on.  So many Jews feel betrayed.

Less than 24 hours from a dinner in which the topic was discussed at length, again, I felt the sting of a more personal betrayal from one I considered a personal friend.  The details are unimportant.  I am one person on a planet with 8 billion people, I do not matter, nor do the details.  Principles matter.  Like Aristotle-- more Aristotle, I apologize-- I believe that there are many varieties of friendship, but one can have few friends of the truest kind, and to be betrayed by one whom one believed a true friend is troubling.  It means the person was not a true friend.  Yet Aristotle's near-contemporaries teaching at the Painted Porch would simply say the other's actions are not within my will.  That is life, life happens, and my choice is how I respond.  Move on, get over it, even though one's reactions will range from hurt to anger to feeling used.

And let us use that as a point of discussion for moral philosophy, turning as so often to Lucius Seneca, who read Aristotle, of course, but was more of a Porch-dweller, and I am trying to figure out how to make a joke about racism without making the racist comment and hence invoking racism, and I cannot do it, so I shall move on.

When betrayed, part of the sting is the feeling of having been used.  Taken advantage of.  Being a chump.  Given, and having that sacrifice unacknowledged, that debt unacknowledged, without reciprocity.  For Aristotle, true friendship is not a utilitarian relationship.  It may be confused with a utilitarian relationship because it has utilitarian value.  Good people help each other.  Yet, they help each other not out of any expectation of a return, but merely for the sake of good.  If you help another for the expectation of a return, that is a lesser kind of friendship, for Aristotle, and there is an old, racist term for that kind of "giving," which you probably do not use, and perhaps do not even remember depending on your age.  We have mostly expunged it from our collective lexicon, ugly as it was.

Since "giving" with the expectation of a return is not true friendship, it puts us not in Nicomachean territory, but in Seneca's territory.  Seneca wrote about two important concepts-- the benefits we bestow on others, and the gratitude owed in return.  We speak, then, not of friendship in Aristotle's terms, but of generosity and gratitude, and the attendant moral obligations in other kinds of relationships.  If we are not friends, so be it.  What are our obligations?

Seneca believed in the importance of giving, but not merely a random, haphazard distribution of all one's worldly possessions, nor a devotion of all one's time, energy or resources to others.  If you want philosophers who argue for total abnegation of the self, you can find them, but Seneca was more balanced.  Given his wealth, it would have been hypocritical for him to tell you to give everything away, much less to do so randomly.  But how?

You should seek to give to those worthy, and part of worthiness is more than need, but moral worthiness.  The two are not synonymous, at least in Stoic thought.  In modern, woke ideology, need and worthiness are identical, since power and moral virtue are defined as inverses of each other.  Not so, in Stoicism.  Seneca wrote of the importance of gratitude as a virtue, and hence the need to assess whether or not a potential recipient will demonstrate gratitude.  Gratitude is both a moral requirement, and to Seneca, a practical demand.  Imagine a world with no gratitude.  No one would display generosity in the provision of benefits, so to accept a benefit without gratitude is to disincentivize the provision of benefits to others.  Thus, your moral imperative for gratitude is not only for the virtue itself, but for the effect on the world if those who can provide benefits are met with ingratitude.  If I give to you and you are not gracious, will I bestow benefits on others?  Perhaps not, or perhaps less so, the world becomes less kind, less generous, and hence you have an obligation not merely to me, but to the world to be gracious, according to Seneca's argument for generosity.

What, though, does gratitude mean?  Gratitude is defined by several features.  It must be proportionate to the benefit, but also evaluated in the context of the capacity of the recipient of the benefit.  At some point, you have almost certainly taken home leftovers from a restaurant, but come across a homeless person, and just given the leftovers to the homeless person.  What is expected and within the capacity of the recipient of the benefit is a simple "thank you."  No more, clearly, but no less, morally.

If you do something for a person with more, Seneca says, the person who can do more to repay the benefit has a moral obligation to do so.  Failure to do so is not only a failure to meet a moral requirement, but an injury to the world by telling those who provide benefits that the world is a place of ingratitude, and in such a world, benefits will not be provided.  In Aristotle's terms, you are not a true friend, but that is to be expected anyway, as one has very few true friends.  Yet my generosity to you will be poorly met.  You're on your own.

The closer the recipient of the benefit, one notes, the more of a betrayal ingratitude is.  And that is merely ingratitude.  What if instead of mere ingratitude, the recipient of the benefit turns on the benefactor?  Worse betrayal.

Yet of course, Seneca warns in the strongest possible terms against vengeance.  Do right because it is right.  Consider, though, the question of whom you find worthy of a benefit.  As I start to think more about a philosophy that I reject-- objectivism-- Seneca provides some guidelines for an alternative and a response that I find more compelling.  I do think I will try to return to Atlas Shrugged, horrifying as that thought is, but consider.  What are you willing to give?  There is no obligation to give to the point of self abnegation, yet I do believe that generosity is morally good.  The problem is posed by ingratitude and betrayal.  Rand's answer is simple and simplistic.  Also, near-sociopathic.  Don't give, sell.  If you don't give, there is no betrayal in ingratitude.  There is only the invisible hand of the market.  Is the invisible hand an important principle?  Yes, and there is a point that if you do not give, you cannot be betrayed nor met with ingratitude, but that kind of argument is why objectivism may be described as a rationalization for sociopathy.  The question, though, is how much one gives?

Seneca answers the question in part, leading the way to a conclusion.  If you give to those worthy, you will be met with gratitude, not betrayal.  This will be true more often than not, and the more effectively you manage your giving, the less ingratitude and betrayal you will meet.  To turn objectivism back around on itself, or at least to tilt towards Stoicism, it is on you if you gave too much to the wrong person.  Own your mistake.  Had you given wisely, you would have met with gratitude and repayment of a kind that would meet your own conditions.  You made a bad investment and lost in the deal, like a stock that went down that you thought would go up.  That would be something closer to Aristotle's utilitarian friendship with a sequential exchange.

What you must ask, then, is who is worthy of a benefit, and how much you can give without feeling exploited if met with ingratitude?  If you give to one prone to ingratitude, you made a poor choice, and if you overextended your benefits, that is no different from overextending your investments, finding yourself illiquid when the investment turns south, and you should have maintained liquidity.

What will I do for you?  That must depend on your honor, and the cost relative to my resources.  If you are dishonorable, or I overestimate your honor, I have made a mistake, and likewise if I extend my beneficence beyond what my liquidity permits, to the point that ingratitude and betrayal will be too costly, the mistake was mine.  If, on the other hand, what I give is within the range that I can safely lose, then even if you are dishonorable, then ingratitude will not sting of betrayal, or at least not so much.  If I spend $15 on a bottle of fountain pen ink (Pilot's Iroshizuku series is outstanding, in my opinion, and in my pen right now), and it just isn't smooth, I shrug at the loss of $15.  If I spend closer to a grand on a fancy fountain pen and I do not like it, I will feel much worse, and lose money when I resell it.  The same principle applies.  What I can do for you without the risk of feeling exploited depends on my resources, and I must consider that, taking into account the possibility of ingratitude and betrayal.

My obligation, then, is generosity to the point at which I can shrug off ingratitude and betrayal as the cost of living.  The more cautious I am in selecting whom I benefit, the more generous I can be.

The lessons of Seneca, filtered through my own notions.  Go read Seneca, On Benefits in particular.  I am filtering his ideas through my own hodgepodge of notions, lacking the wisdom to form any coherent moral philosophy of my own.  I'm just trying to sort out a few things using the ideas of those far smarter and wiser than I am.

Let us apply.

American Jews have supported every civil rights movement in American politics.  I will clarify that the modern DEI movement and new leftism are not civil rights movements.  They deviate from prior movements by substituting the principle of equality for equity, substituting equal treatment under the law with preferential treatment based on what Latina feminist, Elizabeth Betita Martinez called "the oppression olympics."  MLK is now the villain, and Coleman Hughes is now banned for trying to resurrect the "I Have A Dream" speech.  (If you are unfamiliar with the reference, look into the saga of his TED talk.)

My purpose is not to write yet another excoriation of modern, leftist identitarianism.  Rather, my observation is that American Jews supported the civil rights movement, go into most shuls and see how strong support is for the LGBTQ community, and reflecting, have we been right?

For the most part, I will say yes.  I can quibble on the margins, and say that some shuls have gone too far left, some not enough, depending on the shul.  There is no central hierarchy in Judaism, as in Catholicism, so there is no official position set by a Jew-Pope, but from desegregation to gay marriage and smaller policies on the margins, the broader American Jewish community got it right, and got it right before the rest of America.

For any expectation of return?  The bestowal of a benefit?  Was it the bestowal of a benefit, or merely an act of virtue for the sake of virtue?  If the former, then gratitude is required.  If the latter, then is gratitude truly required?  Here's the problem.  There is no gratitude demanded, as such, if we did right for the sake of right.  There is only gratitude demanded, as such, for a benefit bestowed rather than a moral obligation.  Ingratitude is always improper, but gratitude is only demanded, as such, for a benefit rather than an act of moral virtue.

The reaction that many American Jews feel right now is a reaction of betrayal, as though gratitude is required.  We have done for you.  We have had your backs.  In our time of need, where are you?  That construction fails, though, if we did right because it was right.  If I defend the innocent because it is right, rather than as benefit, then gratitude is appropriate, yes, and indeed expected morally.  Seneca would say that gratitude is required.  But am I owed?  Am I betrayed without gratitude in the same sense as if I had bestowed a voluntary benefit?

No.

We have done right because we believe in right, and to act as though we need repayment for having done right, for the sake of right, undercuts the very claim to virtue.

And who's we?  I am not old enough to have marched in the '60s.  Would I have?  I honestly do not know.  I have never been one for joining, much less uprising.  Would I have sided with MLK?  I believe so.  Would I have joined the freedom riders?  I can tell myself stories about having that kind of courage, and for all the crap I have said about Joe Lieberman, he did have that courage.  He may have been a better man than I am, at the end of the day.

Yet this is the Doug Stanhope joke about national pride.  Two drunks, making reference to America saving France in WWII.  That was not us, personally.  Stanhope tells it better, of course.

Who's we?  I did not march, not having been born yet, and by the time I came of age, it was the glory era of the 1990s, which was honestly pretty awesome.  Our causes were a joke, all things considered, and perhaps that's why Generation X is the apathetic, slacker generation.

What am I owed?  What are we owed?

I understand the feeling of betrayal, but there's a bit of a Stanhope problem.  It mostly was not us, and that is before getting back to the question of whether you do what is right for a return.

If you do, then it is not for virtue.

Suppose you do.  Suppose you expect return.  I return to my principle that if you bestow a benefit upon one with a risk of ingratitude, beyond your capacity to withstand betrayal, you have made a mistake.

Have we, Jews-- and at this point, it is "we"-- learned no lessons from history?

There are individuals who can be trusted, but the reason the line from "National Brotherhood Week" is funny is that it's true.  It was true then, and it's true now.  American Jews really expected America, and the coalition of the other to have our backs.

No group has our backs.  Individuals?  Yes.  Groups?  No.

I'll admit complacency.  I clued in before most Jews, watching the left break bad and seeing the anti-Semitism bubble up before most, but for a long time, I thought the left had Jews' backs, and that America had Israel's back.

No.  Is that betrayal?  In a sense.  Ingratitude?  Yes.

But the moral obligation is to do what is right because it is right.  Can one imagine going back to 1964 and opposing the Civil Rights Act because modern race-hustlers side with Hamas like the useful idiots they are?  How sickening would that be?  To side against gay marriage because leftist idiots march with signs saying "Queers for Palestine," where they throw "queers" from the roofs of buildings, instead of Israel, where as Robert Earl Keen sang, the road goes on forever and the party never ends (which OK, is not quite what the song means, but I couldn't resist the line, and dude, go where the party is and where we want you to be happy, welcome and safe)?

That is the problem of ingratitude here.  The political stances of the American Jewish community and the actions of the American Jewish community have been right because we have done right for the sake of right, rather than out of expectation of return.  Not an Aristotelean friendship, but neither a Seneca benefit.  That does not mean gratitude, in a sense, is inappropriate, but the virtuous man does not act virtuously for recognition or gratitude, but rather for the sake of virtue.

Do we feel betrayed?  Boo-hoo.  That mostly wasn't us, and it was not me.  I wasn't a freedom rider, not having been born yet, I wasn't on the marches, that was before my time.  What am I owed?

Virtue, not out of direct gratitude, but because all are required to act with virtue, yet I do not control anyone but myself, and all I can control is my response to your actions.  If you do not act according to the mandates of virtue, how do I respond?  If you take the wrong side in domestic, identitarian politics, you act wrongly, but not in failure to return a benefit because we did not bestow a benefit, and I did not bestow a benefit.  I was not alive, and my forbears acted under the mandate of virtue, not for generosity.  If you take the wrong side in a war, my forbears were not wrong to have taken the right side in civil rights, that position having been mandated by virtue rather than given beyond the mandate of virtue as generosity, as benefit.

When one feels betrayed, one thinks retroactively, and one reevaluates one's actions.  Even the actions of one's forbears.  Virtue, though, demands that one do right, and an act is only a benefit, in Seneca's terms, if it goes beyond the mandate of virtue.  Indeed, there is something deeply crass about acting virtuously, and then asserting that it was a benefit.  The recipient has a virtuous obligation of gratitude, yes, but a demand for repayment for an act mandated by virtue misses the point of virtue, made even worse if the act was the act of one's forbears.

For "we" Jews to say that you owe "us," then, goes beyond crass.  Betrayal?  Of whom and for what?

I'm sorry to my fellow Jews, but they owe us nothing.  What they owe is to virtue.  They fall short, yes, but that is not a debt to us, and that is not a betrayal of us.

Do right because it is right, but expect and demand nothing in return.  Should gratitude be observed in response?  Yes, but if the act was done for virtue rather than benefit, then the absence of gratitude must not cause you to reevaluate your actions.  If the act was a benefit, then you were betrayed.  Reevaluate.

If you truly did right because it was right, then you need no repayment, and if it was not even you, then what payment do you demand?  It is to others to act virtuously.  They will not, because it is a day that ends in -y.  Which also means a day on which people hate the Jews.  What's new?

Do right anyway.

Eric McFadden, "Another Day (In A World Betrayed)" from Delicate Thing.