“Wittgenstein made the wonderfully enigmatic remark: “I work quite diligently and wish that I were better and smarter. And these both are one and the same.” Really? One and the same thing – being a smarter human being and a better person?
I am, of course, aware that modern transatlantic usage has drowned the distinction between ‘being good’ as a moral quality and ‘being well’ as a comment on a person’s health (no aches and pains, fine blood pressure, and so on), and have long ceased worrying about the manifest immodesty of those of my friends who, when asked how they are, reply with apparent self-praise, ‘I am very good.’ But Wittgenstein was not an American, and 1917 was well before the conquest of the world by vibrant American usage. When Wittgenstein said that being ‘better’ and being ‘smarter’ were ‘one and the same thing’, he must have been making a substantial assertion.
Underlying the point may be the recognition, in some form, that many acts of nastiness are committed by people who are deluded, in one way or another, about the subject. Lack of smartness can certainly be one source of moral failing in good behaviour. Reflecting on what would really be a smart thing to do can sometimes help one act better towards others. That this can easily be the case has been brought out very clearly by modern game theory. Among the prudential reasons for good behaviour may well be one’s own gain from such behaviour. Indeed, there could be great gain for all members of a group by following rules of good behaviour which can help everyone. It is not particularly smart for a group of people to act in a way that ruins them all.
But maybe that is not what Wittgenstein meant. Being smarter can also give us the ability to think more clearly about our goals, objectives and values. If self-interest is, ultimately, a primitive thought (despite the complexities just mentioned), clarity about the more sophisticated priorities and obligations that we would want to cherish and pursue would tend to depend on our power of reasoning. A person may have well-thought-out reasons other than the promotion of personal gain for acting in a socially decent way.”
- Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice
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Being a smarter human vs. Being a better person
Jocelyn Ling
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What would life be...
Jocelyn Ling
“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”
- Vincent van Gogh
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The World As It Is
Jocelyn Ling
“Rebellion — which is different from revolution because it is perpetual alienation from power rather than the replacement of one power stem with another — should be our natural state. And faith, for me, is a belief that rebellion is always worth it, even if all outward signs point to our lives and struggles as penultimate failures. We are saved not by what we can do or accomplish but our fealty to revolt, our steadfastness to the weak, the poor, the marginalized, and those who endure oppression. We must stand with them against the powerful. If we remain true to those moral imperatives, we win.
I am enough of an idealist to believe that the struggle to lead the moral life is worth it.”
- Chris Hedges, The World As It Is
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Degree of Comparison
Jocelyn Ling
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
