Once, just past Saint Barnabas's Church, on a bright day, an old man walking in front of me stopped in his tracks as a hearse passed us by on Snakes Lane East. I still remember his gesture to this day: a simple and elegant doffing of his hat (or was it a cap?). But the essential gesture...
Now, what motivated this person to do such a thing? This already sounds like an odd way to put it and smacks of bad faith or as if one was trying to explain something to someone who was from a foreign land and who didn't understand the norms of the society he or she was in.. What reason did this person have to act in that way, in what we all recognize as a moral way? You're inclined to say out of some sense of duty but then you might think that such considerations appear to be 'mechanical', as if imposed from the outside, as it were (aside: criticisms of Judaism or Islam as being too ritualistic, too bound by the law, also seem to stem from the view that there's a radical disjunction between the "inner" self and the body, the act, the world).
If not that, then might we temper our view a bit and say: as a mark of respect? But how, it might be asked, can there be respect for someone who isn't really a 'person' any more and not someone you may even know? An impartial notion of respect does sound a bit weak.
We can dismiss at once the notion that he did this because it made him feel better or happier. Can pleasure ever be a reason? Yes, of course! But it seems mighty odd to conclude from that that it is always the only reason or that it always trumps other reasons? In fact, pursuing this line of thought, there's something not quite right about thinking that the reason the old man doffed his cap outweighed other considerations, other reasons to act (for example, he may have been in a hurry to buy some food for his granddaughter). Doesn't the reason we're after rule out the possibility of weighing up reasons? Is it not the case that that the man did not even think that the other things were reasons at all! Which is not to say that he was just forgetful or thoughtless, or lazy in his reasoning. But by excluding other reasons to act from consideration, things that wouldn't even have crossed his mind, was he merely acting out of instinct? Are we wrong to attribute reason to his actions in the first place or is that being unreasonable?
Was the old man really just repeating an action he'd seen his father, grandfather doing, all those years ago, when it was more likely that the dead body would be pulled by a horse rather than a car? How important is memory here? To learn something off by heart. Was he, by doing this act, placing himself in the web of connections that have defined him, his community, his traditions? Why should we think of this as an individual act independent of the world he lives in, distinct from the relations to other people, dead, alive and unborn? What, after all, is the normative force to his action? Why do we approve of his action if we're not at the same time convinced that this is how he (and we) ought to act? What is the pull of morality and why does it come across as a requirement, a demand, as a lack of choice?
Now, what motivated this person to do such a thing? This already sounds like an odd way to put it and smacks of bad faith or as if one was trying to explain something to someone who was from a foreign land and who didn't understand the norms of the society he or she was in.. What reason did this person have to act in that way, in what we all recognize as a moral way? You're inclined to say out of some sense of duty but then you might think that such considerations appear to be 'mechanical', as if imposed from the outside, as it were (aside: criticisms of Judaism or Islam as being too ritualistic, too bound by the law, also seem to stem from the view that there's a radical disjunction between the "inner" self and the body, the act, the world).
If not that, then might we temper our view a bit and say: as a mark of respect? But how, it might be asked, can there be respect for someone who isn't really a 'person' any more and not someone you may even know? An impartial notion of respect does sound a bit weak.
We can dismiss at once the notion that he did this because it made him feel better or happier. Can pleasure ever be a reason? Yes, of course! But it seems mighty odd to conclude from that that it is always the only reason or that it always trumps other reasons? In fact, pursuing this line of thought, there's something not quite right about thinking that the reason the old man doffed his cap outweighed other considerations, other reasons to act (for example, he may have been in a hurry to buy some food for his granddaughter). Doesn't the reason we're after rule out the possibility of weighing up reasons? Is it not the case that that the man did not even think that the other things were reasons at all! Which is not to say that he was just forgetful or thoughtless, or lazy in his reasoning. But by excluding other reasons to act from consideration, things that wouldn't even have crossed his mind, was he merely acting out of instinct? Are we wrong to attribute reason to his actions in the first place or is that being unreasonable?
Was the old man really just repeating an action he'd seen his father, grandfather doing, all those years ago, when it was more likely that the dead body would be pulled by a horse rather than a car? How important is memory here? To learn something off by heart. Was he, by doing this act, placing himself in the web of connections that have defined him, his community, his traditions? Why should we think of this as an individual act independent of the world he lives in, distinct from the relations to other people, dead, alive and unborn? What, after all, is the normative force to his action? Why do we approve of his action if we're not at the same time convinced that this is how he (and we) ought to act? What is the pull of morality and why does it come across as a requirement, a demand, as a lack of choice?
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