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Is it better to suffer than to do wrong?

Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 1:48 pm
by MadArchitect
At the beginning of "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship", Arendt talks about how writing "Eichmann in Jerusalem" upended some of her central notions of political action and morality.
Hannah Arendt wrote:I had somehow taken it for granted that we all still believe with Socrates that it is better to suffer than to do wrong. This belief turned out to be a mistake.
What do you think? Is it better to suffer than to do wrong? Or is a little immoral behavior justifed if it spares you some personal suffering in the long run?

degrees of immorality

Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 3:00 pm
by Why
...well when you put it that way... ;-)

A "little immorality" goes a long way.

I would choose the suffering over the wrongdoing in most if not all cases. Even to the extreme that if I were diagnosed with a certainly fatal illness that could perhaps be cured by heroic means (transplant, extended drug regimen, excision, etc) I would choose to pass. Of course to say that and to actually take that path in the face of death...I may just be kidding myself. Who knows. I am not one to choose my own comfort over another's suffering though, that much I do know about myself. But, I wouldn't give someone my kidney and I wouldn't choose to execute someone if I were called upon to make that decision.

Re: Is it better to suffer than to do wrong?

Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 7:15 pm
by Mr. P
MadArchitect wrote:At the beginning of "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship", Arendt talks about how writing "Eichmann in Jerusalem" upended some of her central notions of political action and morality.
Hannah Arendt wrote:I had somehow taken it for granted that we all still believe with Socrates that it is better to suffer than to do wrong. This belief turned out to be a mistake.
What do you think? Is it better to suffer than to do wrong? Or is a little immoral behavior justifed if it spares you some personal suffering in the long run?
Not to pester with semantics again...but who defines the 'wrong'?

Mr. P.

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 4:51 am
by MadArchitect
For the sake of argument, let's just go with whatever you'd call wrong. Take, for example, any particular form of theft that you'd consider unambiguously wrong. Is it better to suffer than to engage in that particular kind of theft?

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 9:42 am
by Mr. P
MadArchitect wrote:For the sake of argument, let's just go with whatever you'd call wrong. Take, for example, any particular form of theft that you'd consider unambiguously wrong. Is it better to suffer than to engage in that particular kind of theft?
If my family were starving and no effort to procure work was proving fruitful...your damn right I would resort to theft. I, uh, guess that answers the question.

Is it different if we phrase the question: "Is it better to let others suffer than to do wrong? I mean, we kill in times of war, self defense and all that...but yet we consider killing wrong. Is it still wrong in the contexts mentioned or does it become not wrong?

Mr. P.

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 1:06 pm
by MadArchitect
Yeah, I would say that's a different question -- letting others suffer versus suffering yourself. That definitely changes the moral dynamic of the question.

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 1:16 pm
by Mr. P
MadArchitect wrote:Yeah, I would say that's a different question -- letting others suffer versus suffering yourself. That definitely changes the moral dynamic of the question.
Which is very interesting to me. We seem to have this need to make the individual suffer...and that if an individual tries to assuage the suffering, it is somehow wrong. I wonder how much this is derived from the human need to form societies/civilizations...or is it a sympton of the formation of society/civilization?

Hmm...sorry, this may be getting off topic. I have the book btw, but have not cracked it yet...

Mr. P.

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 6:28 pm
by MadArchitect
misterpessimistic wrote:We seem to have this need to make the individual suffer...and that if an individual tries to assuage the suffering, it is somehow wrong.
I'm not really sure what you mean by that. Can you elaborate, or maybe give a concrete example?

Incidentally, it might be relevent to note something said by Arendt later on in the same essay.
Thus the Talmud holds, as I was told during a recent discussion of these matters: if they ask you to sacrifice one man for the sake of the community, don't surrender him; if they ask you to give one woman to be ravished for the sake of all women, don't let her be ravished.
What does everyone think of that? It seems like a principle that a lot of people would object to. If you could avoid some likely threat to everyone in your neighborhood by offering up one unwilling victim as a scapegoat, would you do it? Better yet: Would you feel morally justified in having done so?

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 8:09 pm
by Mr. P
MadArchitect wrote:
misterpessimistic wrote:We seem to have this need to make the individual suffer...and that if an individual tries to assuage the suffering, it is somehow wrong.
I'm not really sure what you mean by that. Can you elaborate, or maybe give a concrete example?
No concrete examples...just a general feeling/observation. I mean, the fact that this thread is named for the question that it is points to what I said...and then when I rephrased the question to not benefit the individual, but a group, you even admitted it changed the dynamic. Why?

Take the issue of suicide. If a person commits suicide to escape pain only to the self, they are considered (for the most part) as cowards and charged with a crime in our society (specifically America). Yet if that person, and you will have to accept my poor example at face value, by killing themselves would save a group, they would be called heroes.

Again, I cannot point to any concrete examples that would help here except for stating that I have seen this theme in my life and it made enough of an impression in my mind that this thread brought it out. Maybe it is because I was raised Catholic. The character of Jesus and all the martyrs are poster boys for self sacrifice for a group, as opposed to the self.

As for the quote you posted:
Thus the Talmud holds, as I was told during a recent discussion of these matters: if they ask you to sacrifice one man for the sake of the community, don't surrender him; if they ask you to give one woman to be ravished for the sake of all women, don't let her be ravished.
I think this is slightly different from what I am talking about, although I agree with Arendt on this. This thought speaks to others causing the surrender of a person for the good of the group...not the person choosing surrender themself for the good of the group. We should not be in the practice of offering sacrificial lambs for our own self preservation. Of course this, as with everything like this, can become muddled with situational variation.

Mr. P.

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 9:28 pm
by MadArchitect
misterpessimistic wrote:... and then when I rephrased the question to not benefit the individual, but a group, you even admitted it changed the dynamic. Why?
Because so long as you're only talking about your own suffering or benefit, your choice is still a voluntary matter. But once you start making decisions for other people, then you draw in a slew of complications to the basic dynamic of whether or not it's better to suffer. For one thing, if you're deciding something on their behalf, their moral culpability is questionable, to say the least.
We should not be in the practice of offering sacrificial lambs for our own self preservation.
I don't think Arendt is talking specifically about self-preservation on this one. Take her second example, offering up one woman to be ravished in order to prevent others from suffering the same fate. Now imagine that the person making the choice is male, and doesn't have anything in particular to gain from the decision one way or the other. He simply thinks that it would be moral to have one woman suffer than to expose all other women to the threat of suffering.

These are, of course, hypothetical extremes. You can make the principle a lot more specific if you apply it to the idea of the draft. If you assume that our country has, at times at least, fought wars in order to protect American citizens from the threat of worse violence, then the process of drafting non-volunteer armies is equivalent to the notion of sacrificing the few for the security of the many.