Can You Fight For an Ideal?

I spend a fair amount of time wondering whether "ideas" count as real things, as I have written about elsewhere in this blog (Things and Ideas, Degrees of Being, et al.).  So it was a matter of considerable interest to me to read about the following exchange between Margaret Thatcher and British politician Enoch Powell:

On one occasion, just before the Argentines invaded the Falklands, Mrs. Thatcher spoke about the Christian concept of the just war and Western values. "We do not fight for values," said Powell. "I would fight for this country even if it had a Communist government."
"Nonsense, Enoch," snapped Maggie. "If I send British troops abroad, it will be to defend our values."
Powell stuck to his guns. "No, Prime Minister, values exist in a transcendental realm, beyond space and time. They can neither be fought for, nor destroyed."

(From SteynOnline).  Now, Thatcher is known for having once said, "There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families," so this conversation, if it occurred, runs contrary to some of her opinions.  Nevertheless, it does not seem completely impossible, nor do I expect anyone, including public figures, to be 100% consistent.

In one sense, Powell is certainly correct:  to the extent that values exist, they are ideas and therefore do not exist, like material things, in space and time.  On the other hand, the importance of ideas is that we see their images in the real world and have real-world implications.  How interesting would a triangle be if there were no triangular-shaped objects in the material world, and if we could not draw all kinds of interesting conclusions (such as calculating the height of a tree from its shadow) based on things we have learned from triangles in the abstract?

Similarly, political and moral ideals are important because we associate them with the kind of society we want to live in.  They are, however, rather harder to translate into practical terms than triangles.  I mean, we support our society partly because we like our values, and we oppose other societies because their values are contrary to ours, but when it comes to fighting, how important are those values compared to, say, not getting shot in a battle?

This also calls to mind my recent post about the Civil War, in which I argued that Southerners were, by and large, fighting for their homeland rather than fighting for slavery.  As one Union officer put it, "We are fighting for the Union...a high and noble sentiment, but after all a sentiment. They are fighting for independence and are animated by passion and hatred against invaders."  "Independence" is a value, too, but one with more immediate implications than some of the other values.  In fact, I would argue that it is difficult to see the potential loss from separation of a part of the Union; it is abstract to a very high degree.  Perhaps that is why, over the course of the war, so many in the North saw their motivations shifting toward emancipation.  It is hard to kill people in the name of keeping them in the Union, much easier if you are fighting to free the slaves.

Getting back to Powell, what I find interesting about his statement in particular is the fact that he talks about fighting for "this country."  A country is also an abstraction.  It consists of individuals, of course, which are not abstractions, but which individuals belong to the country is a matter open to debate.  If Scotland declared independence and went to war with England, which "country" would he fight for?  What if the Midlands went to war with the South?  What if there was a coup and France invaded to support the overthrown government?  You see, this could go on indefinitely.  "Democracy" is more abstract that "country," but only in degree, not in kind.
There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/margaretth165648.html
There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/margaretth165648.html
There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/margaretth165648.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Science and Philosophy, Part I: Hume and Popper

I've been listening to a lecture series on philosophy recently, and, even though I haven't gotten past the Greeks yet, it has reminded me of a number of issues that trouble me about science. I want to take the opportunity to express my concerns here. Along the way, I will probably oversimplify philosophy a great deal -- not on purpose, but rather because I have only a simplistic understanding of it. I welcome responses to clear up my misconceptions. One of my issues with science is the famous idea of Karl Popper that it can never establish positive claims, only falsify wrong ones. The history of this goes back to David Hume, the 18th century Scottish sceptic. He shook up the philosophical world by claiming that science could never prove anything through induction -- that is, drawing conclusions about physical laws based on observations. The classic illustration is the sun's rising. Even though the sun has risen every day for our whole lives, and for countless human l...
Read more

Country Music

I noticed a long time ago that there isn't much difference between the sound of country music and rock music nowadays. If I'm surfing my radio and I come to a station playing jazz, classical, or rap, I recognize it right away; but if I come to a country or rock station, I often can't tell which it is until the song is half over. Country songs often have screaming guitars that would fit equally well in a hard rock song, and only a minority have a recognizably country instrument such as a fiddle or a banjo. All the same, no one could listen to a country music station for more than a few minutes without realizing that it is definitely not a rock station. What are the differences? There are some stylistic differences. Country songs are more likely to have a boogey beat or certain western-sounding bass lines. They also tend to be more formulaic: if you can't predict how a country song ends, you probably don't listen to much country music. But those things aren...
Read more

My privileged life

I have just read the article Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Level , and the comments, and the follow-up and its comments.  The author claims that straight white males (SWM, for short) don't like being told they are "privileged," so he is going to try to explain their advantages in terms they understand.  He then very condescendingly compares their lives to playing a game on the easiest difficulty level, whereas people in other categories have it harder, and black lesbians are playing on the hardest level of all. I understand that this is a metaphor, or an analogy.  I understand that it is not supposed to be a perfect model of reality.  There are, however, several reasons why I think it is a very poor and misleading metaphor. First of all, using the gaming-difficulty metaphor implies that SWMs have an easy life.  No one plays at the easiest level unless he is a total noob, and only college students with lots of time on their hands play at the hard...
Read more