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The good that lies at the heart of each of us

by Simon Longstaff

In his beautifully written book, A Common Humanity: thinking about love & truth & justice, the distinguished Australian philosopher, Raimond Gaita, considers (amongst other things) the root of the phenomenon of 'racism'.

Racists deny the capacity of some to experience the inner life of a fully human person. They deny that the objects of their denigration can know the full weight and depth of the human condition. It is this denial of the full humanity of others that leads racists to conclude that those they denigrate cannot be wronged, cannot be harmed as 'we' can be wronged and harmed. At the deepest level, the racist denies that another person has a soul that can be lacerated. Raimond Gaita borrows this idea of a soul that can be lacerated from the French philosopher, Simone Weil. She writes:

What is it, exactly, that prevents me from putting that man's eyes out if I am allowed to do so and if it takes my fancy? ... What would stay [my hand] is the knowledge that if someone were to put out his eyes, his soul would be lacerated by the thought that harm was being done to him.

At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crime committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all else that is sacred in every human being.

Beyond talk of racism and the distinctive evils that it gives rise to, there lies the core issue that Raimond Gaita would have us address – the great wrong done whenever we fail to recognise, in others, our common humanity. Unfortunately, this failure is becoming more widespread. As its influence spreads so we see the emergence of new forms of entrenched and unyielding hostility between different segments of society. Unfortunately, virtue has no permanent home in this area. For example, even Amnesty International has inadvertently demonstrated just such a failure to accord the most basic form of respect to other human beings.

A couple of years ago, Amnesty launched a campaign, directed at business, in support of basic human rights. One poster carried the following caption, “Torture is Bad For Business”. At one level, this slogan is a masterpiece in copywriting – clearly targeting the business community at a point that is bound to command attention.

However, important questions must be asked of those who endorsed the publication of this poster. For example, do people in Amnesty seriously believe that the business community will only respond to the evil of torture if it has an adverse impact on the bottom line? Did Amnesty intend to imply that people in business are incapable of appreciating the full horror of what it might mean to be tortured? Did they mean to suggest that people in business do not and could not conceive of what it means for one's soul to be lacerated. If this was the intention of the poster's authors, then they would seem to have denied the full humanity of those working in the world of commerce.

Of course, the lapse of judgement evident in Amnesty International's choice of slogans pales into insignificance when compared to the actions of those operating in the fields of business and government who torture others in the name of profit and power – or simply ‘turn a blind eye’. At a different level, there are plenty of people in business who label their antagonists as 'do-gooders', 'greenies', 'lefties', 'anarchists' and so on. To apply such labels to anyone who dissents from your point of view is to fail to see others as we see ourselves – complex characters (neither all good nor all bad) driven by a mixture of motives; many of which would hold good across the board.

The point to be made here is that there is no monopoly on virtue in this arena. People of vastly different persuasions seem to share the common trait that they are rather too keen to paint their opponents in shades of black and white – creating a series of minstrel's masks for our times.

The antidote to this is simple; we need to become far more conscious of the things that we share in common and then appeal to each other on that basis. After all, each of us has to contend with the basic realities of birth, death, love and loss. We all share a common concern for the kind of world our descendants will inherit. Indeed, are we not the same as our neighbours – a point driven home by Shylock in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice:

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

A society driven by dissension based on a belief in the fundamental differences that separate people is unlikely to flourish. Indeed, it is bound to falter as injustice is heaped on injustice.

This fact, more than any other, should be taken into account when considering how best to conceive the role of business in society. That is, we need to abandon the idea that people in business operate outside of society or that they are some kind of ‘necessary evil’ that produces wealth or opportunity.

We need to stop putting people in business into some kind of moral ghetto – reserved for those 'less virtuous' than ourselves. Instead, I believe we need to appeal to people in business on the basis that they are at least as good as we are. We need to draw them out by making clear that they are an organic part of society, that they are accepted as such and that they are encouraged to embrace the opportunity to make our world a better place in which to live.

In return, people in business need to abandon their defences and genuinely engage with those who challenge their point of view. All too often to disagree is to risk being labelled 'the enemy'.

To see the full humanity of another is to recognise that we share the same depth of feeling that makes us equally suffer the wrongs done to us. It is also to recognise that each of us has the same capacity to celebrate what is life-affirming and truly good.

We might hope that each of us finds more and better ways to speak to this in others. Then the air of faction and opposition might give way to a spirit of co-operation in which each of us is challenged by another's perception of the good that lies at the heart of each of us.

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