Monday, April 04, 2005
(1:24 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Blogging and Moral Formation
Certainly we've all praised the potential of blogs to bring people together, to spur conversation in unexpected and highly productive ways, to regenerate the public square itself in an age of postmodern relativist consumerism. I don't think that we've sufficiently addressed the possibility that blogs can help to make us better people. One of the primary means of doing this is in the comment sections, where people who otherwise would never have met often take a serious and concentrated interest in the moral formation of other commenters.In many cases, this takes the form of remedial instruction in the norms of human conversation. While this may not seem to be a matter of moral formation, learning to speak rightly is the very essence of learning to live rightly with others; as Levinas says, "Language is justice." And so one must be instructed, patiently but firmly, to speak in the most adequate way.
Moral instruction of such a sophistocated kind cannot, of course, abstain from a consideration of motivations, of the formation of the soul itself. Thus, when one avoids a particular argument that a fellow commenter takes to be especially pertinent, choosing instead to focus on an argument that is in their opinion much easier to dispatch, that other commenter -- concerned not simply with the advocacy of ideas, but rather with how it stands with a fellow commenter's soul -- will be unsparing. "Is it not the case," asks this concerned moral teacher, "that your failure to address this point stems not simply from laziness, not simply from a desire to divert one's attention from the computer toward other tasks, not simply from a feeling of having already said all one has to say in response to this very serious argument -- but from your unwillingness to let go of these cherished ideas?"
Indeed. It hits close to home, as one says. Here I am, jealously hording my cherished ideas, holding fast to them as though they were some kind of life raft -- and in so doing, I do a disservice not only to my moral worth as a person, but to the very ideas themselves. If you love something, let it go, as many a country song has said -- in this case, if you truly love your ideas, you should let them go, submit them to the highest degree of criticism, even, in the mode of God the Father, abandoning them unto death. Unless an idea falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a seed. But by confronting this scathing critique, by releasing the seeds of one's ideas into the broader commenting community, one receives back a hundredfold. One might even -- end up agreeing with one's interlocutor! If one subjects one's ideas, one's unhealthy attachment to them, to a sufficient degree of "honesty" -- not just "intellectual honesty," but genuine moral honesty, coupled with the humility indispensible to a real encounter with the other as other -- one may well end up with correct opinions, correct not only in their content, but in the mode of attaining to them. What a privilege! What a humbling honor that someone would provide this opportunity, and to a perfect stranger at that!
Thus I argue that comment threads on blogs remain our last best hope of forming virtuous communities of moral excellence.
