One does not ordinarily hear the notion of virtue summoned in a discussion about opinions (in the simple sense of having them or not), yet there is an important relation to be noted between these two things. Many a reasonable person refrains from engaging in the controversial issues of their day, eager as they are to stay far away from impassioned disagreement, and perhaps more eager still to avoid committing to a view only to turn out to be wrong. There is good reason for such an approach: topics on which people widely disagree can be a source of unwarranted drama, a destructive force within relationships, and a path to ideological commitment that leaves one with a firm set of beliefs and no way out, once the ego has become involved in defending them. Such neutral parties may like to think of themselves as cognitively flexible, able to see the merit on both sides of a debate, and consequently make agreeable companions to a range of opinionated friends. Other neutral nellies may simply lack interest in the affairs of the world, believing that there is no point in attempting to learn about a topic and come to a conclusion that many others will disagree with anyway. These individuals are disengaged in a less deliberate way, steering clear of public discourse out of insecurity or accepted ignorance. They are unwilling to put any effort into forming an opinion; into asserting themselves as free-standing individuals. Both of these types live in fear of being challenged, of having others push back against their assertions, and thus live to protect themselves from self-doubt and conflict with others.
On the other end, vast swaths of people who 'have an opinion' do not actually have an opinion at all: they merely regurgitate the somewhat intelligent-sounding views of those around them, spewing platitudes about complex social issues and attaching their egos to the passion contained in the argument. These types often use their poorly formed opinions as a way to assert a kind of pseudo-enlightened, holier-than-thou attitude whenever the opportunity arises - and this tends to happen rather frequently when the opinion in question is on a pertinent topic. This tendency rests within all of us, of course, as a basic manifestation of our evolved tribalistic psychology. The difference lies in how actively each of us resists the urge to 'pick a team', so to speak, and begin defending its honour with vigour and passion. Some people are mostly reasonable and open to new information on the opinions they hold, while others are almost entirely ideological, taking on a predetermined set of opinions that fill them with fire and provide a sense of identity and purpose. These individuals are those whose entire sense of self is intertwined with a particular world view, and who will therefore behave most dramatically in situations of dissent. For them, an opinion being challenged is equivalent to an attack on their very sense of self, and so it is understandable that a strong reaction is elicited. But let it be noted that the majority of us probably enact this artificial opinionatedness on some topics while adopting a more reasonable or neutral view on others, such that the people we meet are not immediately cast into the crude categories of self-adjacent or other-adjacent, in-group or out-group. (At least this is my optimistic belief). I maintain that for most of us, though perhaps less and less every day, the world is not black-and-white but appears chiefly in shades of grey.
So, where does virtue figure in these various opinionated modes? I will take for granted that most readers recognize the moral implications of the second opinion-status described above, where one's tribal inclinations get the better of one and lead to a superficial commitment to one side or another on a given issue. I will also assume that we each have the self-awareness to identify at least one occasion on which we ourselves have adopted such an approach, committing before carefully considering the potential merits of each side and believing the choice to be so obvious that such deliberation is deemed unnecessary - even damaging - to engage in. In doing this, one oversimplifies their adversaries' views, feels justified in condemning them as ignorant and/or evil, and almost inevitably begins mentally to remove them of their status as human beings equal to oneself. It leads to a dangerously oversimplified view of human nature and the problems we face, and fuels the ego-driven emotional wreckage that immoral persons are reliably made of. In holding opinions as a source of identity defined by that which it is not, rather than by that which it is, the individual organizes their psyche in a war-like manner where their entire being is on the line in situations of conflict, and where change and compromise have passed beyond the realm of possibility. This is a death-like way of being in a sense articulated beautifully in the Tao Te Ching:
"Human beings are soft and supple when alive, stiff and straight when dead. The myriad creatures, the grasses and trees are soft and fragile when alive, dry and withered when dead. Therefore, it is said: The rigid person is a disciple of death; The soft, supple, and delicate are lovers of life. An army that is inflexible will not conquer; A tree that is inflexible will snap. The unyielding and mighty shall be brought low; The soft, supple, and delicate will be set above."
Let me note here that the necessity of being flexible in matters of opinion is not to be taken as an admonishment of having firm principles. We need to have principles as the moral and practical basis from which to live our lives, as a source of direction and of meaning. Moreover, these principles may carry profound value for individuals and communities, and this is not to be cast aside in the name of remaining open to alternative views. The purpose of principles, though, is to guide one through life in the best way possible, such that some good comes of our existence. Their purpose is not to provide an excuse to be rigid in one’s convictions to the point of looking down upon those whose principles differ, nor are they to be used as a yardstick for moral virtue so that we may compare amongst ourselves. The need for principles ought to motivate a desire to refine them into the best source of guidance possible, not a desire to be the one who ‘got it right’. This is the point I wished to make with regards to treating opinions as provisional positions rather than as a source of identity. This is to say nothing of the colossal dangers that come with expressing a view with which one is not fully acquainted simply to appear informed. Promoting ideas one does not genuinely support or understand, yet becoming responsible for them in expressing them as if they did, is an abominable but shockingly widespread form of immoral behaviour. Treating opinions like mere accessories to be used to augment a false sense of self-righteousness is perhaps the pinnacle of vice, leading to some very dark places indeed.
What I would really like to elaborate on, though, is the immoral nature of the first opinion-status described above: that of non-commitment. Make no mistake, I am a strong advocate for remaining flexible in one's positions as a topic becomes more and more deeply understood, and for continuing to demonstrate as much flexibility as one can muster even after developing a somewhat firm position. Furthermore, I believe it is wrong that we expect opinions to be permanent, like destinations one arrives at and never leaves. Mere opinions are just that - opinions - not hard-and-fast convictions. We must practise enough humility to admit that even our most closely-held beliefs could change, radically or moderately, in response to new information. The ego has no place in opinion, though the self is importantly implicated, as I will discuss further on. Such was the attitude Socrates took to the extreme in his resolution that he knew nothing at all, which he carried out through a keenness to discuss things openly and extensively in order to get at the truth (or as close to it as possible). My contention here is that there is a critical difference between non-commitment as a philosophy in-and-of itself, and a balanced approach to tumultuous topics where one accepts a particular view provisionally, with the project of refining this view as time goes on always in mind.
Of course, we humans are hardly capable of being so restrained as to plainly refuse to commit to any beliefs until all the details of a topic have been explored exhaustively. Not only is this something of an impossible goal, but it is not even in the interests of virtue to bring such an approach to salient issues. We must accept a degree of uncertainty in the knowledge we consider ourselves to have if we wish to live successfully in the world and avoid falling into a purely nihilistic, or hubristic, state. For this very reason, opinions ought always to have the form: "this is what I think, for now" if we wish to save ourselves from utter humiliation upon being proven wrong at a later date, and if we wish to regard ourselves as rational and humble people. Avoiding hubris in matters of opinion relies on a commitment to resist tribalism and remain open to dissent. This foundation crucially requires keeping the ego at bay so that we are able to receive criticism without it shaking our (superficial) sense of self and prompting defensiveness. Conversely, avoiding radical skepticism or just plain meaninglessness in its many manifestations requires actually having an opinion to begin with. We must assert ourselves in the world in order to be a complete person; without doing this, we are lacking a distinct sense of self and risk disappearing altogether in a fundamental sense. Taken as the inverse of overconfidence, meaninglessness strips us of all attempted knowledge and in so doing removes our very foundation for being in the world. The result is a kind of death without actually dying - a form of remaining dead by way of failing to assert a Self when one had the chance. In matters of opinion, then, we are left with an appealing middle path between arrogance and meaninglessness: the path of provisional opinion, genuinely believed in but never settled absolutely and for all time.
This brings me to the chief argument I wanted to make: refusing to have an opinion is an exercise in cowardice and laziness that undermines the very foundation of what it means to be alive. The aforementioned element of uncertainty in knowledge is not to be taken as a free pass to exist in a purely uncommitted state where one refuses to engage in matters of opinion and to adopt a particular view, even if only tentatively. Being uncertain and flexible in the views we hold is fundamentally different from failing to adopt particular views in the first place, thereby choosing to exist in a vacuum of meaning. To exist in such a manner is to live as a dead person; it is not only to be ignorant, but to accept and fall in love with one's own ignorance, having no desire to escape it. It is to be an undifferentiated, unthinking, cowardly, virtually non-existent shell of what might appear superficially to be a person, but in fact is not. It is to refuse to be a living, breathing, self-asserting human being. To be unopinionated in this sense is thus to choose not to be a person at all. And such a state is, in every important way, the antithesis of virtue.
I should clarify that by ‘virtue' I mean having a character and a life that has chosen an absolute meaning for itself, such that there is a concrete ‘good’ at which one is aimed and an established set of commitments through which one realizes this aim. To be virtuous is to model oneself after the good, to promote and embody it to the greatest extent one can manage. The inverse is drifting about aimlessly with no direction or meaning, and it is from this state that what we commonly understand as ‘vice’ typically develops. It is virtually never the case that vice is deliberately pursued as an end in itself, but far more common that it comes to be in an individual when he or she lacks some clear and worthy aim to work toward. Without an accepted concept of the good, and of the meaning of all sorts of other important phenomena, one is left empty and vulnerable to any number of terrible ideas taking over and occupying one’s soul - bad ideas, cruel ideas, ideas not purposefully taken on but randomly received by a wide open soul, a soul available for taking over because it lacks any devotion to the good. To remain uncommitted to a particular point of view on any such important matter is thus to choose not to be good - to purposefully be the opposite of good through failing to commit to a definition even of this basic term. More generally, in neglecting to have an opinion, one evades the responsibility we have to live out our existence in as resolute a way as we can. Echoing Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist principles of intentionality and bad faith, our responsibility as conscious beings is to make meaning out of things in the world - to form an opinion, in other words, and to assert it confidently. Evading this responsibility by claiming not to be the consciousness that we are is to operate in bad faith, which is rightly construed as immoral if we take ‘the good’ to reside in fulfilling our duty as human beings, and accept that our duty is to make meaning of the things we encounter in the world. The freedom of our consciousness is worth nothing if we fail to do anything definite with it, to decide on one thing over another and to act accordingly instead of drifting about like a feather in the wind.
Bad faith may be compared to the death-like modes of being discussed previously, wherein we either assert identity with some particular view in a superficial, egotistical manner, rigidly clinging to a specific meaning as though the world depended on it, or we claim to be an absolute non-identity, a disembodied consciousness with no sure thoughts or opinions; a ‘being’ with no real being-in-the-world. To avoid bad faith and to live in an authentically life-like manner requires that we assert a Self through making genuine meaning out of things, by committing to particular opinions while not taking them to be absolute or universally true by virtue of our having arrived at them. Meaning is flexible and transient, accepted in one moment but open to being recreated completely in the next. We do ourselves great harm by attempting to make ourselves permanent through identifying with a singular meaning, or by attempting not to exist at all by identifying with nothing. These two modes of bad faith are, as expressed by Sartre, in direct contradiction with the existentially authentic life. If we are to exist in the world as a definite Self, we must choose ourselves, we must have opinions, and we must be both adaptable and discerning enough to avoid the two modes of vice elaborated throughout this piece.
Expanding from the relatively small-scale matter of opinions, there is an analogous point to be made about committing to a particular path in life over and above ‘keeping one’s options open’ and feeling liberated by the presence of such extensive choice. An abundance of choice is not a good thing in and of itself without the sense of responsibility to actually choose amongst the choices, to commit to one among many and produce something valuable and profound out of this chosen course. Failure to choose, to commit, results in a pervasive emptiness of spirit and flatness of experience that is the enemy of a virtuous life. Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote of the youth of his day: “By dint of feeling itself free, exempt from restrictions, it feels itself empty. An ‘unemployed’ existence is a worse negation of life than death itself. Because to live means to have something definite to do—a mission to fulfil—and in the measure in which we avoid setting our life to something, we make it empty.” It is an incontrovertible fact of life that we must choose a particular mode of existence, including our character traits, opinions and values, the people we surround ourselves with, and the passions we fill our time with. Carving out these specifics from a sea of possibility is the fundamental activity we exist to engage in. To the extent that we fail to do this, we fail to be a complete person.
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