Joseph Levine is an awful human being

What makes someone an awful human being? Apparently, this is a philosophical question.

Joseph Levine, a professor of philosophy writing  in the New York Times, chooses to use his rhetorical abilities to defend the tweets of Steven Salaita.

He writes (I apologize for quoting such a lengthy excerpt, but it is necessary):

While many of Salaita’s critics in the media accused him of anti-Semitism, the main issue seems to be — at least in the language of the university’s explanation of it’s action — whether Salaita’s tweets violated a norm of “civility” that is supposed to govern academic and political dispute (at least within the academy). I am not concerned here with the question of whether or not it was right to rescind the offer; to my mind, it was wrong — a straightforward violation of intellectual and academic freedom. Rather, I want to explore the notion of “civility,” particularly as it relates to one of the controversial tweets.

Here is the tweet in question:

Let’s cut to the chase: If you’re defending #Israel right now you’re an awful human being.
11:46 PM – 8 Jul 2014

At that point, Israel had begun intensive bombing of Gaza, and quite a few civilians had been killed, including children. (By the time a cease-fire went into effect in late August, according to the United Nations, more than 2,100 Palestinians had been killed, over two-thirds of them civilians, among whom almost 500 were children; 11,000 Palestinians were wounded, 20,000 homes were destroyed, and 500,000 people over all were displaced. During this period 70 Israelis were killed, 64 of whom were soldiers, and one of whom was a child.) So, was this tweet an illegitimate breach of civility? I believe not in the end, yet I must confess to some initial ambivalence on the question. Here is how I resolved that ambivalence.

First, let’s separate some issues. One question concerns a moral evaluation of Israel’s actions themselves, and the other concerns an evaluation of the moral character of those who supported what Israel did. I myself am in complete agreement with Salaita about the first question. I can’t mount a full defense of this position here, but let me just say that careful attention to the actual sequence of events over the summer, alongside the vastly disproportionate violence visited on the trapped and totally vulnerable Gaza residents, renders the Israeli claim that they were acting in justifiable self-defense completely unreasonable. Note that holding and expressing that opinion was not by itself supposed to be a breach of civility. Rather, it was taking the next step and publicly indicting the moral character of those who supported the bombing that was the culprit.

Next, we need to determine whether what he said in the tweet is true — on the assumption, again, that the bombing was itself morally condemnable — and, in addition, whether it was a breach of civility to say it. Obviously, these two issues are intimately related. Imagine how you would react to someone who spouted overtly racist or anti-Semitic sentiments. Would civil engagement over the question be the appropriate response? Clearly, your judgment that you were dealing with a person of objectionable moral character would color your reaction as a decent person. Obviously, if Salaita had been tweeting instead about supporters of the 9/11 attacks as “awful human beings” no one would have been upset.

I locate the source of my initial ambivalence at precisely this point. While I shared his moral outrage at Israel’s actions, I balked at taking the next step and severely indicting the character of those who disagreed. I resolved my ambivalence by reasoning my way to the following twofold conclusion regarding the claim in the tweet: The claim itself is not true, but it ought to be, and that is the deeper truth that legitimates the breach of civility.

Why isn’t it true? Why doesn’t it follow from supporting morally monstrous actions that one is oneself a moral monster? Because the moral evaluation of character depends not only on what one does but also on the epistemic context in which one does it. In particular, we normally apply what we might call a “reasonable person” test. If a reasonable person, given the information available to her, including the evaluative perspectives available to her, could act a certain way, then even if what she does is in fact morally condemnable, that condemnation doesn’t carry over to her character as well.

By the information available I just mean the obvious — what she’s likely to know about the facts of the situation. But one brings more than just an opinion about the facts to bear in making a moral evaluation; one evaluates the facts from within a moral perspective, a system of values and a scheme of interpretation of the facts in light of those values. A person does not derive her moral perspective on her own, but develops it over time through her social interaction with parents, teachers, other role models and her wider social circle. This is why we judge racists today much more harshly than those who lived long ago; we expect more today.

Returning to Salaita’s tweet, we can now see why I claim it’s not true. Think about the average person who supported Israel’s attacks this summer. Someone who gets most of her information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the mainstream media, and generally identifies with the reigning ideology of current American political culture, will find severe moral condemnation of Israel’s actions difficult to accept. When most people around you, people who in their daily lives exhibit relatively virtuous character, espouse a certain point of view, it is difficult to entertain the possibility that they are radically mistaken. To the extent we take this into account, we are led to let people off the hook, at least with respect to our evaluation of their character.

But then this brings me to the second part of my answer: It ought to be true. Or rather, it ought to have been true, and I look forward to the day in which it is true. For if you let individuals off the hook in this case because they pass the reasonable person test, then you have to indict the social-political perspective from which such actions can seem moral and reasonable. No, these people aren’t awful, but what does it say about our society that we can support such an attack without being awful? What does it say that decent people can even entertain the kinds of excuses we hear (“but they were storing weapons near where those kids were playing”) without counting automatically as indecent?

...I can see two reasons for being so “uncivil” as to impugn his opponents’ moral character. First, there is just the need to express outrage at the state of our discussion on this matter. While the people targeted by the tweet are not actually awful human beings, it’s about time we came to generally see things from the perspective from which they certainly seem to be. Having to listen to justifications for bombing children can wear you down, even if you know very well where it’s all coming from.

But more important, expressing moral outrage in this way — intentionally breaching civility by refusing to merely engage in calm persuasion — is itself part of the very process by which social-political perspectives shift. If it ought to have been true that only awful human beings would support this attack, how do we move society toward that point? One way is reasoned argument, no doubt. But it’s also important to exhibit the perspective, and not just argue for it; to adopt the perspective and provocatively manifest how things look from within it. When you do that, something like Salaita’s controversial tweet is likely to come out.

I assert that by Levine's own definition, he is an awful human being and I am morally obligated to say so.

Let's look at Levine's example of a person who does not deserve to be treated civilly: "someone who spouted overtly racist or anti-Semitic sentiments." This is a person of objectionable moral character and therefore no longer deserves to be treated with respect, rather he should be treated with contempt.

I would submit that someone who lies about a group of people and builds an entire argument about why someone should hate them based on lies is essentially a bigot, and does not deserve to be treated with respect. Hence, it is proper to call him an awful human being.

Levine says "careful attention to the actual sequence of events over the summer, alongside the vastly disproportionate violence visited on the trapped and totally vulnerable Gaza residents, renders the Israeli claim that they were acting in justifiable self-defense completely unreasonable." Even if we accept that fact - and I most certainly do not - Levine has deceptively changed the parameters of the discussion from what a reasonable person might have known on the night of July 8 to what is known now.

On July 7, Gaza terror groups shot about 60 rockets into Israeli civilian areas. Hamas claimed responsibility for dozens of them, and other groups claimed the rest. (Israel had killed 8 terrorists overnight July 6-7.)

By the evening of July 8, Israel had responded vigorously, and killed about 20 people in Gaza. At the same time, Gaza groups increased their own rocket fire, and shot rockets towards Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as well.

This is what was known as of the evening of July 8. Clearly as of that moment, Israel's actions could not be called "vastly disproportionate violence" by any measure of the term.

Based on that information, which is the only information that was available, Salaita said that anyone who defends Israel is an awful human being. Levine is going beyond that, saying that anyone who doesn't think that such a person is an awful human being is lacking in moral character (or is, at best, brainwashed by the media - which is quite condescending.) He justifies this position not based on the state of knowledge as of the time of the tweet, but on his (still false) ex post facto feelings about the entire summer war.

Is this kind of deception that Levine is engaging in considered moral in his philosophical universe?

Given that he has not given any alternative action that Israel could do to defend itself, then we must conclude that Levine believes that:

A)  Israel has no right to defend itself from rocket fire, and must allow its own citizens to be terrorized, injured and killed without response, and/or

B)  Israeli actions are responsible for Hamas rocket fire, and Hamas has no responsibility for its choice to shoot rockets at Israeli civilians.

Both of those positions are fundamentally immoral.

For A), It is the basic duty of a state to defend its citizens, and it is immoral not to do so. For B), to regard Gaza militants as somehow lacking in normal human responsibility is to regard them as less than human, and therefore to be a bigot.

Since these are immoral positions, and as we have seen Levine is not above using irrelevant information to justify his position after the fact, Levine has proven himself to be an immoral person, and not deserving of respect. Or, in Salaita's words, he is an awful human being. And under Levine's rules I am obligated to say so.

Because I do not want to live in a world where Israelis, and only Israelis, are expected to stoically allow their friends and families to live under constant terror while their Jew-hating enemies plot to kill them. I do not want to live in a world where people with delusions of grandeur and in love with their own supposed philosophical brilliance resort to using deception to support their arguments because the actual arguments are so weak.  I do not want to live in a world where philosophy professors assert in major newspapers, without the slightest actual knowledge, that the Israeli army chooses to target women and children just for the sheer hell of it. I do not want to live in a world where blowhards can simplify an entire war into a sickeningly biased narrative of one side firing huge weapons only at innocent civilians for no reason. Ignoring context and ignoring facts is what is immoral, and that must be denigrated.

Since that is the moral world that I want to live in, I must say that Joseph Levine is a sickening human being.

And by his own standards, he must support me saying so.