THE DANGER OF BEING PERFECT AUTHOR: AVITUS. LEONARD. NGANYIRWOHI There is no perfect family. We have no perfect parents, we are not perfect, do not get married to a perfect person, neither do we have perfect children. We have complaints about each other. We are disappointed by one another. Therefore , there is no healthy marriage or healthy family without the exercise of forgiveness.
BY POPE FRANCIS
The danger of being perfect by Avitus Leonard, Nganyirwohi
THE DANGE R OF BEING PERFECT LIVING HAPPY,HEALTHY,WHO LE AND DISCOVER THE POWER WITHIN YOU
AVITUS LEONARD, NGANYIRWOHI
THE DANGER OF BEING PERFECT TYPED, BY AVITUS BLOG(www.avitusleonard.wordpress.com)
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The danger of being perfect by Avitus Leonard, Nganyirwohi
AVITUS BLOG
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CopyrightŠ by Avitus Leonard.Nganyirwohi All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For more information visit AVITUS BLOG(www.avitusleonard.wordpress.com)
For more information about soft copy and hard copy please contact, Avitus Leonard. Nganyirwohi +255682155368 or visit www.avitusleonard.wordpress.com
The names of all persons other than family members and public figures mentioned in this book are nom de plume.
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To my beloved one Edina and my hero I find more reasons to love you every single day, and I am so blessed to be your love. Thank you for believing in me and encouraging me daily. You challenge me to come up higher and to see the best in every situation, and I truly am a better person because of your love. You are my best friend and my knight in shining armor. I will always love you.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The wisdom in all matters, gained through long and varied observation of life of writing this book has stretched me and helped me to grow in so many ways. The truth is, though , it is only through God`s grace and the people, he put in my life that this book become the reality. There are so many people who helped me and to whom I owe my appreciation and gratitude. First, I want to thank Robert moris, br. Valentine olajo, silvesta, Br. Reagan .I.C ,Br. Simon, Br. Tembo and everyone at Rosminians fathers in lushoto for encouraging me a lot about the life after been rejected to go further in the journey of religious vocation, sometimes I feel that I was perfect whereby I was wrong in some senses. So their encouragements and also their believe in me was one of the important mission in my life to present God`s message of hope, love and compassion to our word through determining their inner power. I also want to thank my Rector and my Formator Fr. Massawe at Rosminians formation house gare, also I would like to thank Sr. romana, Sr. Cajetan, Sr. happy, Sr. ester, Sr. blanka, Fr. Francis, Fr. Polycapal shayo, Fr. Nchimbi, Fr. Mwanzia, Fr. Nkosango, Br. Mulla, Br. Njuguna, Br. Jackson ngussa, Br. Mathias paul and etc for their friendship and loyalty. When stay in faith, God always brings the right people across our paths at the appropriate time and season. I want to thank my family, my father Mr. Leonard. Kahangi and my Mother Mrs Alfredina kahangi, my brothers fr. Eladius, Mr. evodius, Mr. Ignatius, Mr. antidius, Mr. Evelius, my young brother Livinus and my sisters Mrs. Dativa, Mrs ivetha and Mrs Asella. For their creativity and brainstorming sessions into my life. I was blessed to be born and raised in a faith filled home. My family not only loved me dearly and provided for all my physical needs, but more important, they instilled in me the faith and values that I possess to this day. My mother Mrs. Alfredina Kahangi is my best friend. She has always believed in me and expected the best for me. As a little man. My father Mr. Leonard Kahangi is the rock-steady and secure, I am thankful for the foundation he provided and for always being there to pick me up when I fell.
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I dearly appreciate and want to thank my all friends, my classmates both from Rubya mseto primary school , Mzinga secondary, Institute of Judicial Administration-Lushoto and also at Rosminians formation House-Gare who m for more than couple of years have embraced me, encouraged me, and gone out of their way to show their love to me. They are my dear friends and true reflection of God`s love. I am thankful that I have been surrounded by a loving and supportive families in all my life. Whereby they treated me like their own brother. And I want to extend a special thank you to my sisters in law and my brothers in law. Whose lives inspire not only me, but thousands of others as well. Finally, and most important, I want to thank My Lord and my Savior, Jesus Christ. He is my everything.
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INTRODUCTION
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I wrote this book in the hope that it will help us to achieve new levels in our life and to discover the gifts, abilities and also power within us that are just waiting to be uncovered. In the page ahead, I want to share some foundational truths that will help us to realize the depth of these valuable power within us. I have the incredible opportunity in my life to meet so many people who share stories about their lives with me. We talk about our families, our good times and bad times, our relationship with our partners and our God. Through many conversations I have found although most of these people are doing good and important things in their lives, they often feel overwhelmed emotionally, physically and spiritually. The book strictly concerns the term perfection and it is very meaning and also how does the public takes that concept . So in that sense in summary perfection is mistake of being perfect or sometime doing something perfectly. Perfectionism involves putting pressure in something in order to meet a certain high standards in the society which sometimes powerfully influences the way we think about ourselves and our sense of self-worth. Perfectionists are those people who strive to meet a certain high standards in everything they do. Today a lot s of people are very committed in their lives to meet their very high standards which automatically become contrary to their wishes. People have got a lot of stress, while others committed homicide others suicide and sometimes others becomes avoiders of every situation in life. They take longer to do a task and won`t just give things ago. Perfectionism can make life difficult for the people around them. Perfectionism makes the person to avoid certain situations because they fear not being able to perform well enough in them. They consequently set their standards higher and higher until they get to a point where they simply can`t achieve that standard.
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Sometimes there a lots of dimensions of perfectionism which sometimes put us on a risk when we fails to meet a certain high standards in life; Parent expectations, these seems to be a common feature of perfectionism, when we try hard to live up to our parents expectations. This could be because we grow up in households where our parents give us love on condition that we meet their expectations. These children try to do everything perfect to avoid being rejected by their parents. Concern over mistakes, perfectionist get more upset over mistakes than other people because they are scared that others will think badly of them. As a result perfectionists are less likely to seek help in rectifying errors and have a stronger urge to cover up mistakes. Excessive concerns over mistakes can put people at risk of phobias and mood disorders. Personal standards, setting high standards that feel compelled to meet is a common trait of normal and neurotic perfectionists. The setting of high personal standards is thought to contribute to the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. Parental criticism, seeking to appease your parents is often accompanied by the worry that your parents will criticize your achievements. As children these people may have punished for making mistakes. Consequently, they also develop the sense that they will never meet their parents high standards. Doubting of actions, feeling uncertain when a job is finished is a common feature of perfectionism. As a result, these people are often reluctant to give up on tasks and sometimes need to be hold to leave it alone now. Doubting can also make perfectionists by indecisive. Last dimension of perfectionism is organization, perfectionists tend to be fussy and exactly about whatever they do. They also have a preoccupation with making everything neat and tidy. This is not a direct cause of perfectionism but does affect how perfectionists try to achieve their high standards. So then the danger of being perfect can results to depression, alcoholism, social phobia, coronary heart disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder(OCD), Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder(OCPD), suicide, anorexia nervosa, writer`s block. So the best way which can help us to achieve our goals is though determining our best things in life. We have to know exactly whom we 8
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really are inside, we have to know our limits, we have to have faith and also we have to feed our faith with the word of wisdom that it is possible. According to LEO TOLSTOY says that an arrogant person consider himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person`s main task in life becoming a better person. We have to remember that there is no any perfect moment, we have to create the right moment into our life. God is only perfect because he does not lack anything good, does not have any limitations in wisdom, knowledge and understanding or abilities such as intelligence, memory capacity, power and etc. All in all above everything about God is infinite, that is to say he does not exist in time like we do, to him the future and the past are as real as present. So when we say that God is perfect , we shows the big the respect that no one can be better or greater than he is. So through that we can clear our doubt that no any human being can be perfect in this world either here on earth or even in heaven, remember that we were created as human being and not God, we will always be finite beings. The title of the book `` THE DANGER OF BEING PERFECT`` is trying to show some spirituality aspects plus the truth about finite beings or about our living in this world. We must remind ourselves everyday that we are not here by accident, we are created as the image of God and our lives are of full purpose, there is no any person is better than any one also there no any one perfect than any one. So our full purpose involves bringing good and adding value of the people around us. Being the imago dei( image of Go) the human being or human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self- possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. Life is more than food and the body is more than clothes, life is all about generality of living within the given society where you belong. The power to distinguish reality, imagination, dreams or illusions and to focus on the things which are valuable to any human being is within us. Sometimes we become wrongs when we consider ourselves perfect in everything and fails to acknowledge the merits of our body and our life. People involves in abortion because of other people`s expectations or others criticism, while 9
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others remains in power for all of their lives which sometimes results to civil wars because of concern over mistakes or doubting of actions. So we have to remember that our life style paints a picture and our children put their own frame around it. So if we paints a picture which will be harmful to our children always such blood will affect the all generations within our families. People may not hear your words today, but may go to observe your life in future. Our life is significant, we are a part of God`s eternal plan, we have a pivotal role to play in history, we may not be in the spotlight, but we will be rewarded for every person we may encourage for every act of kindness. Loving our life starts here with essentials, understanding our important and out importance knowing we are going to add value to the world around us. Sometimes past fear push us from our destiny which results our life negative. We encourage ourselves to let no fear to paralyze us and also to keep us away from our goals in life. Our victory starts into our minds, when we know that we have power within us to change our life from bad life to valuable life which can make our children to be proud of. I always believe that one day I will die, even my generations will be no longer exists in this world, but my words, views, opinions, suggestions and my writings will never die, only hope I have is our God and don`t be afraid of anything, if anything you do determines humanity, rights and freedom of other people. Lastly, the truth is the truth per se.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDMENT Introduction
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Chapter One I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII.
Meaning Does perfection Exist? The concept of perfection due to Christian faith What does it mean that God is perfect or what is God`s perfection means? Additional views in perfection due to Christianity Perfection in Islam Examples of perfection o Treating parents with perfection o Being kind in greetings o Kindness and perfection during arguments o Perfection whilst listening o Perfection in studying o Perfection in marriage VIII. Does money amount to perfection or any other thing IX. They are ten ways of a person to be a good person but not a perfect person Who are you? Who is worth it? Never forget The invisible side unfortunately disagreements are a large part of human life The shunned phrase Bring the dead back to life The crow Gratuity Never lose sight X. XI.
The disadvantage of being a perfection in everything Perfectionism`s root
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XII.
The connection between the danger of being perfect and also lack of maturity in life Chapter two i. The problems with perfectionism ii. How social thinking influences perfectionism iii. The perfectionists in African Development iv. Abortion v. Rape/incest CHAPTER THREE Three Arguments for the term perfectionism- forthcoming in nous by MR DALE DORSEY from the Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta,4-115, Humanities center. What is perfection What is the structure of perfection as an account of welfare or well-being The essence-welfare link The agency Argument The intuitive Argument
CHAPTER FOUR
Perfectionism in Moral and political philosophy The perfectionism and value theory Two versions of perfectionism Perfectionism and pluralism Perfectionist ethics Consequentialism and deontology Elitism and inequality Self-regarding duties Perfectionism in politics The principle of stage Neutrality Respecting persons 12
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The harm principle Manipulation and independence Indirect Arguments Conclusion Bibliography/ References cited
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CHAPTER ONE
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MEANING Perfect means exclent or complete beyong pratical or theorectical improvement. And according to philosophical concept of perfect is perfection. So we have to deals with the concept of perfection, what does it mean in simple senses, the history ot the concept of perfection. Perfection means a state of completeness and flawlessness, the term “ perfection� is usually used to designate a range of diverse, if often kindred,addressed in a number of discrete disciples,notablymathematics,ontology and theology, physics, chemistry, ethics and aesthetics. The word perfection derives from the latin word known as perfectio and perfect from the word perficio means to finish or bring to an end. Many modern languagesnhave adopted their terms for the concept of perfection from the latin , the french (parfait), italian(perfectto) and in spanish (perfecto). The oldest defination of perfection fairly precise and distinguishing the shades of the concept , goes back to Aristotle. And also in the book of Delts Of The Metaphysics, distinguishes the shades of the one meaning but in any case three different concept. That is the perfect; 1. Which is complete-which contains all the requisite parts 2. Which is so good that nothing of the kind could be better 3. Which has attained its purpose. The first of these concepts is fairly well subsumed within the second, between two and the third, however arises a duality in concept whereby the duality was expressed by St. thomas Aquinas in the Suma Theological when he distringuished a twofold perfection, when a thing is perfect in it self , as he put it, in is substance and when it perfectly serves its purpose.
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The concept perfection has been reviewed, studied and answers have been proposed for many centuries. It has paradoxical answer if we attempt to apply its conceptal formalization to a material reality. Perfection exists as an abstraction of our minds but not contrary. Means that cannot be attainable in the physical world. Perfection is never quite realized , in the real world even the numbers have imperfections. For example e and )( to name two are imperfect numbers because have no complete formation. Perfection is contrived , if is were an aspect of reallty it could be discovered but not presicribed. I believe myself to the followings views that natural perfection does not exist and further that it is only a creation of our minds. If we consider ourselves and also to be conviced that perfection is a part of reality due to the philosophical argument then means that the conception is a part of reality. The conceptual existence to be considered some type of tangible reality must have sprung from some material existence, if we say that the concept of perfection has some tangible reality then we include also the concept or term of the word “nothing�. Which turned to or to have some or full principles of contradiction also full contrary to the meaning in a simple sense. Through in summary perfection is a chimera. It is one of human ideas that doesn`t exist. There is not a perfect thing, state or concept. The concept of perfection itself is flawed.
Luke 18:19 Why do you call me good? Jesus answered ; No one is good except God alone. What does it mean? Means that Jesus was not perfect in simple sense or literaly meanings? 16
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And what does Jesus teaches us through such answer? Some toxic views from different people, known as scholars have questined why our Lord Jesus Christ denies his divinity by rejecting the nation that is not good except God alone. So through that shows that our Lord Jesus Christ gives us a true meaning of a person to be perfect. Jesus fundamental lesson here is that no body is perfect in this world but only God in heaven is perfect.
God`s perfection means that God does not lack in anything good, does not have any limitations in wisdom, knowledge and understanding or abilities such as intelligence, memory capacity, power etc All in all above everything about God is infinite, that is to say does not exist in time like we do and for him the future and the past are as real as present. So when we just say that God is perfect, we just clear or shows that no one can be better or greater than He is. So through that we can clear our doubt that no anyhuman being can be perfect in this way either here on earth or even in heaven, remember that we were created as huma beings and not God. We will always be finite beings.
Does Christianity perfection means the same things as God`s perfection? God`s perfection is first all sinless, meaning that God does have a tendecny towards sin, since he has not sinned, he has no stains or hangovers of sin. So we have been justified and accepted by our God through virtue of his grace towards us on the basis of Jesus taking our place on the cross. 17
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In the scripture essential perfection belongs to God alone whereby Jesu assumes that the Heavenly Father is perfect(math 5:48). Paul speaks of God`s will as perfect (Rom 12:2). God`s perfection is an attribute of who he is as a person, not an ideal or theorectical postulate and it involves ethical qualities like justice and uprightness rather than properties that would indulge selfish human desire and pleasure. So the old Testaments asserts that God`s way is perfect, word of the Lord is flawless (2 sam 22:31, psalm 18:30) also that God is perfect in knowledge (job 37:16) God`s law is perfect also in the New Testament James speaks similarity that God`s law is perfect law that gives freedom (1:25)
Perfection is simply an ideal , something faultless. Deos perfection realy be classified as a manner? The answer is “ YES� In fact It is at the very core manner of islamic. The perfection of our deeds, actions and words are all considered part of islamic manners. The perfect of your actions and more you work to attain perfection, the more ALLAH loves you. The perfect deeds and perfectations means justice, the doing of good and liberality to kith and kin, and he forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice , and rebellion, he instructs you that ye may receive admonition. (TMQ 16:19)(1). In continuation the Prophet Muhammad said that ALLAH has written(ordered) perfection on everything means that once you kill, you should attain perfection when you are killing, and if you are slaughtering then you should attain perfection.(Authentic Hadidh, Narrated by Muslim, 1955) So if we attain perfection while slaughtering then we must aim to attain perfection in every other aspect of our lives. Also the Prophet continue to tell us that our intention of attaing perfectin is not enough alone, means that we must also consider in anythings due to the state of 18
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equipment for instance, the knife when you are slaughtering chicken, you must sharpen the knife and rest the animal, when you are studing, you must study well. However the intetion alone is not enough. We must have the first choice in the most appropriate time, place and lighting to get started. Page | 19
In the beginning, it was a very difficult time in perfecton to be as one of the Islamic core manner but when I ask you to be perfect in your daily life? Do you think that it will be a simple task? Remember that you will not even attain any perfection way in our daily life. For example Worship means that not every person will attain perfection in worship or prayers. The one who is perfect is God through his creation as proved under TMQ 32:7 He who has made everything which was created most good. He began the creation of man with nothing more than clay. In oberving the perfection of our creator, automaticaly notice on the sky-the amount of colors it constists of, look at the colors classification. So we must be perfect in every part of ourlives as ALLAH has created you perfectly
You might ask yourself through many questions to come before you concerning the great reationshop between worship and the concept of perfection. Sincely prayer is atype of worship but to a type of worship but to pray perfecly is the aim. In the famous Hadith , whereby JIBRIL(GABRIEL) came to PROPHET MUHAMMAD asked “tell me about the perfection? Then PROPHET replied it is to worship ALLAH as if you can see him then he could see you� narrated by BUKHARI 50/4777
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Means that shows the abilities and innovation of the ways perfection which can deal with them kindly for example in the way you look at them, tone of your voice, never raise your voice to them or to be sarcastic and smile at them often. Page | 20
You may be surprised that even greatings you should aiming for perfection. So you should understand that this manner is present in every aspect of our lives.
Be gentle even in the midst of an argument no matter what, Be gentle when there is difference in opinion. Forexample, if someone has a point of view that you disagree with, rather than say “ what is a stupid comment� as well mannered person would say I object without even adding any stupid comment. So such will makes the world of difference.
Those who listen to the word and follow the best(meaning) in it, those are the ones whom ALLAH has guided, and those are the ones endued with understanding as provided per 39:18 QURAN. Means that let your ears choose what you hear. Don`t listen to bad , abusive or meaningless talk.
Perfection in studying is another example and beware of thinking. It is okay as long as you pass. Remember that passing is not the goal but perfection is. Though means that you should think yourself just thikn about your efforts in studying. So all people should be exclent in anythings are you, unless you study well. That is how perfection can be applicable to you.
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If your wife mistreat you, you should also treat her well. This is the perfect companionshio. So to be kind to your wife in everything and from the start you should pick a suitable good wife. Avoid choosing her for her looks alone, just as you should avoid choosing her for her education alone. Page | 21
Additional to the youth is that if you are getting married, you have to consider her family, her mother and father, her faith also her manners, then you can look for anything else and this is how to perfectly look for a suitable partner.
We always wish to be perfect in everything like if you have money, status in the certain society then you believe yourself that you are perfect. Remember that you are cheating yourself, always arrongant people seems to be perfect because of money or status. LEO TOLSTOY, says that “an arrogant person consider himself perfect. This is the Chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person`s main task in lifebecoming a better person. The elemantary principles of the doctrine of faith between both religious such as Christians and also Islamic and any other religious faith wants us to go on perfection. Christians are called to repent to perfection and also Islamic faith , perfection has been seen to be the core manner to the Islamic Faith means that every Muslims must be perfect in everything and even the instruments which you are using. Forexample when you are slaughtering and even the knife you are using must be good and then rest the animal. The perfection which our Lord Jesus Christ wants us to be. Is the perfection which have divine grace within. That is why he say that we must be perfect as like our heavenly father. Remember that perfection does not exists, a person to be better is one of the calls. 21
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Who are you?
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The first step to become a better person in the society is to know exactly whom you really are inside. We are say we know who we are, but even those who are the most in touch with themselves have a certain amount of “front” or fake about their true interests or who they really are completely. To know your own true identity you must soend some alone time sometimes; Just listen to music Read books Blogs etc Think about what angers you and what makes you smile. Spend time with loved ones, and identity your defination of happiness into your very life. Now you can come up with way number two Who is worth it? This is the most important steps to become a better person in the society or any other community. You have to determine who I your life is worth hurting for? Everyone in yourlife will hurt you somehow eventually. It is primal responsilitities to decide whom you love and care about so much that you accept them, even through they hurt you sometimes. It is also important to pay close attention to what pain is too those around you cause, to now what pain is too unbearable and what pain is tolerable, even if all pain is far from pleasant. This portion of you or your soul is crucial to understand because there are generally two types of the people in the world. Those who let people walk all over them and take advantage of their bleeding heart, revealed on their sleeve, and those who are so scared of becoming those 22
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people that they push everyone away and shut out anyone who catches their glance. One is not more suitable than the other in either scenario. The ideal person finds the street between the two faulty boulevards. An unflawed being would from find that place deep down inside that allowed the perfect balance between being to cold to prevent being hurt and being to easy to hurt. NEVER FORGET Means that never forget to be thankful for what they are fortunate of. No matter your situation there is always something positive in which you may be overlooking. The betterness of anything stems from positive energy of a person concerns. Remember during the weakest most painfull moments to always refresh back your most prized fortunies, destroying all of your belongings however, who is standing beside you, wiping your tears? Someone you care about may have hurt you so badly that you have lost yourself, but who among your loved one is healthy and well taken care of? In times of pain and despair stay your mind of what is hurting you and focus solemny on what you are greatiful for . difficult is an understatement, however no one said being perfect is a breeze. THE INVISIBLE SIDE UNFORTUNATELY DISAGREEMENTS ARE A LARGE PART OF HUMAN LIFE No one enjoys it and we, human waste war too much time on it. Arguments are like any other negative part of life. Means that any other negative part of life. Means that they are way too easy to comeby, they bring us down and make us weaker people, and they are so simple to dwell on. There is no right or wrong way to fight or argue. And lets face it. But the one and only thing you can do as a better person is to find the strengh to take a step back and sicncerely consider their side and what they might be going through. But also a strong person to look at the mopposing argument ant try to make sense of it, always makes a better person to be strong. THE SHUNNED PHRASE To say you can`t is only equivalent to saying to won`t try. 23
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Achieving a good fulfilling an obligation or remaining committed to something has little to do with simplicity or difficulty. If you want something badly enough then it meant to be a stop at nothing attitude. Obstacles can be found in any situation, it is a matter of your willing. A better person never uses only I CAN`T but uses I CAN. It is only can make you strong in anything ď ś BRING THE DEAD BACK TO LIFE Here we are taking about a better person in every society and those who has the wish to be days to come. So the most thing is to transform whatever you want into whatever you like,more importantly, to alter negative energy into positive energy. To do so you must have the magical gears within. When ever you are at lowest or most livid, find ways to positively outlet your emotions. When angry with a spoude or any other person into your famliy, finds ways to postively outlet your emotions. And also practice your favorite activity means that just finds something which are more comfortable doing and very talented with. This may be a video game, a picture , a chore around the house or even more sensual activities. You will find the more rational. When finding a positive gateway you can think clearer, with more logic. These are things which a better person would have in common. ď ś THE CROW The crow is the representation of truth but in the modern stories crow has been known to be neither good or evil whereby other believe that it bring out what is hidden. So if you ever need to avoid a crow, then you cannot be a faultless soul lying and cheating go together, means that you most often cannot have one without the other. Lying is looked down upon in any religion. The good person never lies- ever yes I said never. No exceptions permitted. Lies bring negative energy from dimensions we are unware of completely. Lying creates illusions that are unnecessarry. Lying breaks people apart and leaves once close relationship in shards like glass. They everyday surround as people. It is the modern answer of the world to lie about something, if it is too hard to deal with. Mothers lies to their children, children, friends lie to their friends,wife lie to their husband, and government lies to their 24
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citizen, brothers lie to their brothers within the family. This shows that our world is so engorged with lies that it is entirely under what is the truth anymore. GATUITY Thank you is a simple word to say but has got a strong message and also a srtong courage to the person who help you. That is to say , you must say “ Thank you”. Any time to some one who helps you even to the person who abuse you or use abusive language towards you, it is a sign of wisdom in every to human being. So if any person hold a door for you. It is always important to thank them. Always try to finds a very good way to show them that you are appreciating them. Being outwardly thankful it crucial to being better person. NEVER LOSE SIGHT Never lose sight of what is so important in life. Always keep your main priorities in life. Don`t let phases or peers steers you away from what you believe or what never let negative forces pull you down. If you want something do it.Do not allow yourself to listen to people who don`t believe in you or toxic people. If you love someone, love him or her with everything in you. If you wish to achieve something , then put your whole heart into it. It how makes a person strong strength. There will always be forces and energies, alike with the primal goal of breaking dreams and blurring out.
If you believe yourself that to be best at everything, your perfectionist personal could be setting you up for a biggest fall in life. And PROFFESOR TRACEY WADE of the school of psychology at Flinders University in South Australia says tha the pursult of perfection can sometimes be our downfall.
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Many people in this world have got a lot of stress when they invite themselves to do things in the society inorder to e appreciated by such people but automaticaly become contray to their wishes. People have run away from their homeland, died,killed themselves, still properties because of seeking thr perfection in the eyes of the people. We never says it is enough in everything in order to avoid frustration in life. If you get little properties say it is enough when you get a little education says it is enough for me , if you appreciate and realy convice your self that you are done. I t is fine to have aspirations and also to set standards remember that pursuit of perfection can sometimes be our dangerous fall in life. Also Prof Wade describes that unhealthly perfectionism as high standards combined with brutla self-criticim. This can become worst because can lead to anxiety,depression and also eating disorders. Remember that there is a big problems to those people who consider themselves that they are perfect because when get caught in a cycle of self-blame and also criticism and if those ambitions are not met, it can be extremely damaging. They often feel that they are worthless because they have failed at achieving their goals.
So why people extreme perfectionist in everything? Because it is partly genetic and partly due to the environment we grew up in. some people just need to do rights things, but environment does not play a big part. Life today is much competitive , means that always people considers the manner. There`s nothing wrong with competition, but we forget our identity that is more then what we achieve. An obsession with being the best and brightest can often end up sabotaging your chances of success. And a perfectionism can turn people into avoiders. They take longer to do a task and won`t just give things ago. 26
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Perfectionism can make life difficult for the people around them. Also perfectionism makes the person to avoid certain situations because they fear not being able to perfom well enough in them. They consequently set their standards higher and higher until they get to a point where they simply can`t achieve that standard.
You may thinks or you may be surprised with above statement s that “ the connection between danger of being perfect and also lacks of maturity in life� That is to say that you may think that danger of being perfect cannot go together with lacks of maturity in life. Maturity means to be able to act in love and not just out of our strong feeling or certain drives in life. A mature person is able to genuisely love for what he or she is. Means that have their own guidelines for living without even to cause some dangerous trouble to others. Whereby they are basing only in true values such as justice, honesty,truth and also includes to be open in anything, love not having personal pride and etc. whereby the perfectionist lacks. Also mature people based in their choices and decision not merely. Mature people can be considered as modern people and those people who consider themselves perfect but only based on consider themselves perfect but only basednon the old fashion which become more worse once, they meet challenges with modern people. Always perfectionist people lacks a sense of mature within their minds because they consider themselves to be perfect in anything while they failure to consider that, they lacks maturity. If you see yourself that you are perfect remember that you are cheating yourself, may be you may be lacking maturity within. CORE ELEMENTS OF MATULITY INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIP 27
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Mature people not the perfectionists are much able to develop healthy relationship with other people because they consider their virtue to people like justice, love and etc, also mature people have positive attitude towards others and also can respond to others appropriately without causing troubles to others. Page | 28
CREATIVITY Always mature people have creativity and usually maturity people have their original ideals within themselves. Always makes things happen, believe themselves and also have self-confidence which makes them dare to face challenges and also to sort-out things. Mature people able to use their resources to fullfils their dreams, all tarents and all that a person is capable being and doing it and also put in action. So in that sense the concept of maturity has a great number in personal development. TYPES OF MATULITY I would like to put in jots some types of maturity in beliefs Physical matulity Taking about the physical structure of the person. Means to be able to undertake Adult responsibilities which is achieved by giving oneself years to reach phyisical maturity. Emotional matulity Means the feeling matulity, which is controled by such person wisely, settle difference amicably, face unpleasant situation with confidence. Feel secure and independent. And not depending on maturity to learn to attain to accept positive and negative feedback and graciously being objective about problem and also finds a proper way to overcomes negative emotions like anger, frustrations, stres, etc Mental matulity This type of maturity is realized when a person is able to set himself a right order of priorities in life and also sacrifice pleasures, reach future goals be organized and dependable. Handle difficult situations objectively be self-confidence. 28
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Mental maturity can be attained by leaving to face responsiblities but not to avoid them and looking for shortcut or excuses. Set realistics goals for oneself, builds self-confidence which greadly boosts mental activity. Social matulity Social matulity is a reality when an individual is able to; stand up for truth in any situations, admit his/her mistakes and apologies when appropriate; honour and keep promises; work amicably with others; give selflessly of one`s time,energy and resourcesfulness to others; practice acceptable social behaviour and resourse fulness to others; practise acceptable social behaviour and etiquette, it is in becoming involving with and helping others showing appreciation for others. Spiritual matulity Is a reality when a person is able to accept, what cannot be changed but work hard to change what can and should be changed, put others first; consider the deeper meaning of life. Here are some four hints of how to control ourselves due to perfectionist behaviours Focus on our whole life and recognize that different areas are important. These include friends, family, being a good worker, or student or being involved in our community. We should not define ourselves by a list of achievement. We should see our mistakes in context and as an opportunity to learn. We should broaden our self-determination, so when something goes wrong in one are, we whole life doesn`t come crashing down.
Five freedoms to exercise the basic powers that manifest human strengh. The power. To perceive things and being able to talk about them without fear or shame. Think and interpret Freedom to contribute our thoughts especially in making decision that will affect us Express emotions
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Freedom to share our feelings, being free to express our joys, sadness, anger, etc. ďƒ˜ Choose want and desires Freedom to have dreams and desires( Aspirations) without being discouraged or ridiculated. ďƒ˜ Be creative through the use of imagination Freedom to fall, we need to build an atmosphere of forgiveness and not of condemnation. Acceptance even when the mistakes are arledady made.
CHASTITY AND PERFECTIONIST If we are not chaste , we are nothing Chastity means purity of mind,soul and body,peaceful and it is the spiritual power which frees love from selfshiness and aggression. St .Ephrem to him means the life of the spirit(vita spiritus), by St. peter damian says it is the queen of virtues( regina vrtutum), by St Cyprian to him means the aquistion of triumphs( acquisitio triumphorum). Chastity changes a man into an Angel. Chastity makes an Angel of man. And to who has preserved chastity is angel and he who has lost it is a devil. The chaste, who live at distance from carnal plessures are justly assimilated to the Angels. The Angels are pure by nature, but the chaste are pure by virtue. Through the merits of this virtue `` says Cassian men are like unto Angels. And St. Benard asserts that a chaste man differs from an Angel only in felicity, not in virtue and although the chastity of the Angel is more blissful, that of man is stronger. St. Basil adds that chastity renders man like to God , who is pure spirit. Chastity is not more excllent than it is necessary for the attainment of salvation. But for every person is specially necessary. Even Plutarch writes,required purity in the priests of their false gods; because they thought that whatsover related to the divine honor should be clean. And the Athenian priests Plato says, that for the more effectual preservation of chastity they lived apart from the rest of the people. According to St. Augustine says ``o great misery among Christians! The pagans 30
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have become the teachers of the faithful. Speaking of priests of the true God, Clement of Alexandria says that the only that lead a life of chastity are, or should be called true priests. Let the priest be humble and piuos. That is to say that every person must be chastity, means is necessary to all, so in that sense we should humble and pious and also we must clean in order to be like our heavenly father. If we are not chaste , we are nothing. GUIDELINES FOR CHASTE LIVING
ATTITUDE SELF-AWARENESS SELF-CONTROL OBEDIENCE TO GOD`S COMMANDMENTS,RESPECT FOR MORAL VALUES AND COMMITMENT TO PRAYER
ATTITUDE We must control our thought patterns and develop positive attitudes towards the self, since we are created in the image of God, we should preserve our personal dignity, worth and self-esteem, each person is unique. Control what we ready Indecent books, pornographic magazines and novels feel a person`s sensual desires. We have to read the spiritual books, inspirarions books,magazines, histories which may contribute our growth. Here are some fews things to consider when we control ourselves
Control what we see Control our hearing Control what we say Controling where we go and also the company we keep Controling what goes to our bodies Controling our sense of sight
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In summary a chaste life style requires the application of the law of love .i.e Love of God, self and neighbour. Loving oneself means respecting one`s self – dignity and loving others means respecting their human dignity. Loving God means doing good and avoiding evil. All this adds up to purity of mind, body and soul. PRESERVING CHASTITY Great, then is the excellent of chasity but terrible indeed is the war that flesh wages against men in order to rob them of that precious virtue. The flesh is the most powerfull weapon that the devil employs in order to make us his slaves. St.Augustine says the combat for chastity is the most violent, because it is a daily combat, and because victory is very rare. We should not practise chastity unless we are careful to watch over ourself with diligence; for chastity is easily lost by the negligent. FLIGHT OF THE OCCASION The first thing is to avoid the accassions of sins against purity, we must say be far from those whose presence may entice us to evil. According to St. Philip Neri used to say that in this warfare cowards, that is, they that fly from the occasions, are victorious. Concupiscene, says Peter de Blois,`` is overcome by nothing more easily than by flight. The Grace of God is a great treasure, but this treasure we carry in vessels that are frail and easily broken. Man cannot of himself acquire the virtue of chastity; God alone can give it. We have not strength to practise any virtue, but particularly the virtue of chastity; we have by nature a strong propensity to the opposite vice. The divine aid alone can enable a man to preserve chastity; but this aid of God gives not to those that voluntarily expose themselves to the occasion of sin, or remain in it. In avoiding accasion of sins also we must preserve chastity through avoiding idleness and also it is also necessary to fly from bad company. St. Jerome says that a man becomes like the companions with whom he converses. We walk in adark and slippery way, such is the present life.
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MORTIFICATION It is necessary to practice the mortification of the senses. If says St Jerome, any one wishes to live in the midst of earthly delights and expects as the same time to be free from the vices that accompany pleasures, he decceives himself. So who wishes to practise this sublime virtue , it is above all, necessary to avoid intemperance as well in drinking as in eating. HUMILITY It is necessary to practise humility. Cassian says that he who is not humble cannot be chaste. St.Bernard and St.Augustine writes that charity is the guardian fo virginity, humility is the place of the guardian. Divine love is the guardian of purity, but humility is the house in which the guardians dwells. PRAYER But above all, to acquire the virtue of chastity prayer is necessary: it is necessary to pray and to pray continually. It has been already said that chastity can neither be acquired nor preserved unless God grant his aid to preserve it.
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CHAPTER TWO
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THE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF PERFECTIONISM Perfectionism is often mistaken for being perfect or doing something perfectly� many people assume that it must be a good thing. Other people think of being a perfectionist as being something negative and embarrassing. So is it a good or a bad thing? Perfectionism involves putting pressure on ourselves to meet high standards unrelenting standards which then powerfully influences the way we think about ourselves and our sense of self-worth. According to some of the researchers have shown that parts of perfectionism are helpful and parts are unhelpful. In order to involves setting appropriate goals and standard for our self, making it more likely we will achieve our goals and experience a sense of fulfilment, rather than feeling frustrated and blaming our self all the time for not getting perfect. There is a big difference between the healthy and helpful pursuit of excellence and unhealthy and unhelpful striving for perfection. This unhelpful striving for perfect can lead to a range of negative consequences. Examples of the negative consequences of perfectionism include; Low self-esteem Because a perfectionist never feels good enough about personal performance feelings of being a failure or loser with a Lessing of self-confidence and selfesteem may result. Guilt Because a perfectionist never feels good about the way responsibility has been handled in life( by himself or others) a sense of shame , self-recrimination and guilty may result. Pessimism
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Sense a perfectionist is convinced that will be extremely difficult to achieve an ideal goal, he can easily become discouraged, fatalistic, disheartened and pessimistic about future efforts to reach a goal. Depression
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Needing always to be perfect, yet recognizing that it is impossible to achieve such a goal, a perfectionist runs the risk of feeling depressed. Rigidity Needing to have everything in one`s life perfect or just so can lead a perfectionist to an extreme case of being inflexible, non-spontaneous and rigid. Obsessiveness Being in need of an excessive amount of order, pattern or structure in life can lead a perfectionist to become nit-picky, finicky or obsessive in an effort to maintain a certain order. Compulsive behavior over-indulgence or the compulsive use of alcohol, drugs, gambling, food, shopping, sex, smoking ,risk-taking or novelty is used to medicate a perfectionist who feels like a failure or loser for never being able to be good enough in life. Lack of motivation Believing that the goal of change will never be able to be ideally or perfect achieved can often give a perfectionist a lack of motivation to attempt change in the first place, or to preserve if change has already begun. Immobilization Because a perfectionist is often burdened with an extreme fear or failure, the person can become immobilized with no energy, effort or creative juices applied to rectify, improve or change the problem behavior in the person`s life, he becomes stagnant.
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Lack of belief in self knowing that one will never be able to achieve an idyllic goal can lead a perfectionist to lose the belief that he will never be able to improve his life significantly. According to Dr. Talbenshahar in his book�, the pursuit of perfect explains that there are two types of perfectionism 1. Adaptive 2. Maladaptive Adaptive perfectionist Work on developing their skills. Their standards are always rising and they approach work with optimism, pleasure and desire to improve. This is clearly a healthy type of perfectionism. Maladaptive perfectionist(pathological and delusional negative) Are never satisfied with what they achieve. If something isn`t perfect, they dismiss it. They may experience fear of failure, doubt, unhappiness and other painful emotions. Maladaptive perfectionists see mistakes as unacceptable as they think that these lead others to see them as incompetent. By contrast, people striving for excellence in a healthy way see mistakes are part of learning process and they accept them. THE PROBLEMS WITH PERFECTIONISM As well known that perfectionism does not exist, to understand ,I t is the triumph of human intelligence to expect, to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness. A person`s blind pursuit of perfection causes constant frustration and pain. If you are a perfectionist, by trying to achieve the impossible in every area of yourself, you set yourself up to face again and again. By demanding perfection in trivial endeavors as well as in matters of consequence, you can create a selfdefeating tyrant.
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Do not misunderstand the point for that professional or for the homemaker, whether you are a doctor, a teacher, a minister or a house wife- you should still expect much from yourself. The difference, however is that you should learn to establish priorities and to seek progress, rather than perfection. Should evaluate the activities and decide what is really important focus energies in areas where they will make a difference try to remain self-ware and honest in order to continue building self-esteem. This involves social responsibility, cultivating relationships with others is extremely important and working toward spiritual progress by applying principles learned from life and from God`s word is invaluable from the ordinary experiences of life, no one can be perfect in everyday world of work and relationships. God`s words teaches that spiritual perfection can never be obtained by working for it. Christian can only obtain it in Christ and his words, only by putting faith in the finished work of Christ can claim righteousness because, it is imputed righteousness, not only righteousness. Perfectionism can be a negative attribute, that is to say perfectionists always are hardworking, goal achieving and also very committed to their work. Those are people whom you know can rely on to get the job done right with essentially no margin error. They have been recognized for their lives and also have highest expectations of themselves and occasional of those around them. Perfectionist are seemingly no different than their high achieving counterparts; however a perfectionist differs in their motivation to achieve to stress and coping with failures. Reaching goals for perfectionist can be daunting pain fall and filled with anxiety. So being a perfectionist into our life and also into our career is going to hold us back. This mindset is very difficult can prevent you from challenging yourself, taking necessary risks and moving onto the next feat towards success.
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The problem with the perfectionism is that ,it stems from a fear of failure, when are critical of our self, that inner voice of self-doubt starts to creep up and keep us from challenging our self to progress towards our goals. Fear prevents us from making a move. We become afraid which make us to be unable to meet the highest expectations of our dreams. We decide to play it safe and stick to things we know we are good at, rarely subjecting our self to failure. Many perfectionists chose to stick to working jobs they have no passion for; despite their super skills, rather than achieving using them to push towards their ambitious. Instead of conjuring up an exaggerated list of all weakness and perceived pain staking failures that make us believe we can`t achieve focus all the reasons we can, our strengths, our strengths can and have taken us this far, and if challenge our self can build them while we continue to learn and grow our skills. Don`t undersell our self, we won`t reach our full potential if we hold our self back with negative thoughts. When we are not open to new experiences, we miss out on a lot of opportunities to discover new interests, people and passions. When we are closed off, these limits us place upon our self, bring unnecessary stress and make we miss out on what life has to offer more importantly, it reduces opportunities for creativity without experimentation. I was born around 28 years of age, I went different schools because I never thoughts or think of being a failure in simple way ,that is to say I never believe failure in my life. I completed by primary level education at mwanza in Tanzania then I joined the catholic seminary where I finished my form six ,then I joined for priesthood formation, since was one of my dream in my life. So then I was excepted to join the certain Congregation of Religious order in Nairobi-Kenya, I started my formation process at Kenya. Then I was sent to U.S.A for philosophy study. When I was in second year in philosophy my superior called me to kenya because he wanted to speak with me. Then I came back to Kenya for small talks with the superior. So then when I arrived in Kenya a got a chance to speak with the superior and then told me that am not supposed to go back to U.S then they told me to go back home, if any change they will contact me. So when I asked him he told me it is a divine providence. So I was much disappointed to hear such bad news in my life. Even I wanted to kill my self because in my life I didn`t believe to failure. 39
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(By a ex-seminarian second year in philosophy U.S.A) Refers to the short story above shows that there a lots of people who don`t believe in failure or rejections of not achieving their goals in life. Such man was frustrated according to him that one day he wanted to kill himself because he believes that his dreams have died. Such commitments of such man in his life was that he was perfect in anything. Sometimes when we look back over our life, we can see where we have missed out on some God given opportunities, we are saying in the same thing. But the word of wisdom says don`t live in negativity, regret, disappointed because of failures and setbacks. One dream may have died, but today aim dreaming a new dream. Sometimes we have gone through a loss and it looks like a dream had died, but if we will search our heart and dare dream another dream, we can see greats day up a head. If there are things in our heart that we have ask God to give us another opportunity and open our hear and mind, there is no reasons for us to be perfect and also let this driver to drive us into our life daily. Remember that we have been created by God to walk through difficult situations, since the day we were born. The overcomer showed upon the scene. Our existence in the earth is a threat to the plans of the enemy. When we look over our life , we can see how our adversary has been planning and plotting to take us out. There have been slots of episodes in our life that suggest that we should not be here. The spirit of depression, tried to shut us down Looking at our environment and thinking,” does it really get better this, while our greatness was hidden due to the mountains and obstacles in our life.
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The enemy could sense the anointing our life, he feared what we could become. The spirit is showing us that we were born with great resilience, we refuse to be boxed in. In fact, we don`t do well when people try to put their limitations on us. Always there have been a strong fighter living inside us that “ I’m not going like that” you have always believed that regardless of what it looks like, we are going to make our refusal to go along with the crowd has cost us dearly. We have been seen family members and friends turn their backs on us, simply because we refuse to remain stuck in the status quo. While we were building a future for our self, they was allowing their negative situations to control their lives. So they remain stuck in their own head. But there was always this little small voice within us remaining us we never have to stay stuck. One of the reasons that life cannot keep us down is that we are a giver. Our ability to give is destroying the spirit of our poverty in our life and in the lives of our immediate family members. Givers operate and think different than takers. The enemy is a taker. That is why takers always want us to engage in conversations and thoughts of poverty, lack and limitation. Givers care enough to fight their way out of any situation. The anointing on our life gives us the insight to recognize the power which we have over any adversity that tries to infiltrate our life. HOW SOCIAL THINKING INFLUENCES PERFECTINISMS I am 54 years of age and am 20 years of age since I run away from village. My family and villagers as well as society in general they considered me as a bad person because any thing bad committed in the village I was first suspected, whereby this things made me to be unhappy in all my life. So I run away from my village to the city whereby I joined a certain dangerous group in order to get money. So then I get money when I was in that group but I was not okay with the job but I believe my self that if I get money I will go back home and to show them that even me am a man, whereby such reason which I had was meaningless. The ends of it I was arrested and imprisonment around 5 years but after two years I was free because of the mercy of the president. When I was imprison my family gets such information even my all village they were happy for it. So up to now am in the city after being released from jails and I feel guilty to go back home even 41
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if I have money. So am not sure that if my family and villagers will welcomes me like a child or rather than to be seen like a devil. (Story narrated by a certain man lives in Dar es salaam-Tanzania) Social thinking means a situation in which explain people`s behavior in beliefs and attitude behind our explanation about or an individual behavior. Sometimes our individual behavior in the society seems to be negative to other people in the society also sometimes our social behavior seems to be negative to other people in the society around us. Other people opinion cannot become reality of our life, our family and society thinking have put us down in achieving our goals because we have been fighting in order to seek perfection in the society. We have to run out with people who dreams like us, people who think like us, and also we have to run out with people who can contribute our growth no matter what!. The biggest enemy in our life is our self because we let other peoples opinion drives our life and also we fails to examine our life as like Socrates “said that unexamined life is unfit life to live a man�. In that so we have to ask our self what we are doing, what kinds of person we want to be in future. Always in life we produce the results which we don`t like, sometimes we have been involving with toxic people whom they thinks to be perfect in everything which have end us to be top loser. Our circumstances, education background, sex and also our age is not one of the obstacles to our success. We have to value our self and also stop the games of blaming our self or others, it is not time of reflections of our past but we can use the past as one of stepping stone to change our history. The power to change our life is within our hands. Changing our direction in life , changing our toxic thoughts of people in history. It is time to think big, about our future in life but not contrary. The journey is not easy, before starting the journey our minds must stick and also must have the strong reasons. We have to find out what we want but not to let out for what we want. If we live in a fear to find out our dreams means we are not living we are alive. 42
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We have to feed our faith with the great words that “ it is possible”, we have to fight for what we want to be even if we have failed for something. The followings are the motivations ways points into our life. Self-master, we have to trust our self in any minutes or even in everyday into our life that we can no matter what. Develop your health plan, we have to live our life with energy, because without the good health we cannot do our works properly and also committed. Master inner conversations See yourself there, see your self a master of your life Develop your technical masters You must willingly be into action, don`t wait for the perfect moment, because perfect moment will never happens in life. Look for the people who can contribute your growth and also who can encourage you in life.
PERFECTINISTS IN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT When we talk about Development ,means the process that increases choices, it means new options, diversification, thinking about apparent issues differently and anticipating change( Christenson et .al.1989). development involves change , improvement and vitality a directed attempt to improve participation, flexibility, equity, attitudes, the function of institutions and the quality of life. According to Goran Hyden(1994) correctly points out that development is the product of human efforts. So in that sense development in the third world remains problematic with many of these countries making little or no progress towards improving the quality of life of the majority population. This is particularly so in the case of Africa. The African continent remains underdeveloped economy, with it is society still in translation. The political process is still in translation with many countries abandoning the perfectionists of our African leaders to remain in power for all their life in favor for democracy, sometimes African continents looks like we have the president for life. We have seen some of countries are in conflicts because of their political leaders to remain in power or other decided to change the Constitutions in favor of 43
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themselves in order to remain in power. Both executive, judicial and parliament in Africa have seen to be much incompetent in defending the democracy, both political leaders, government officers have turn the laws into wormwood, and also throwing justice to the ground, hates the man who dispensing justice and detest those who speak honestly, have been persecuting virtuous and take bribes. There is no wonder how the prudent man keeps silence, the times are so evil. We have to seek good and not evil, we have to hate evil, love good, maintain justice in the city gate. Sometimes statements of our African leaders make us sick like the followings; I cannot be removed from the power by piece of paper by president yoheri Museveni of Uganda. So such statements shows that here in Africa democracy is still very much on the agenda. Economically Africa has not fared better and in many respects there has been retrogression. African economy condition has remained critical. Per capital income has continued to fall, the export sector is depressed and the burden of debt remains most excruciating. Population growth is still very high and given the technological backwardness of the food and agricultural sector, Africa is becoming increasingly dependent on food aid and imports for the survival of its people. Perfectionists political leaders( political leaders who assume themselves better and perfect than others) is still the great evils in African Development in the sense of political scene like Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda, Congo, Angola, Libya, Central Africa Republic and etc. The proper understanding of people`s realities is crucial for the development process to make any meaningful progress in Africa today. That is to say development should include people, their cultures and their potentials. We have seen how development was geared in the wrong direction with the results that Africa is still experiencing so many problems today, while others worlds` population live affluent lifestyle. According to the 1993 UNICEF report in KamanziA(2010) state of the world`s Children there are seen deadly sins of development, most of which been committed in the previous decades of development;  Development without infrastructure  Development without women 44
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Development without empowerment Development without the poor Development without the do-able Development without mobilization
NOTHING IS LOST BY PEACE, BUT EVERYTHING MAY BE LOST BY WAR Through determining rules, regulations, laws and also the limitations of our Constitutions due to our African countries we can protect our people through peace, that is to say nothing is lost by peace but everything may be lost by war that people may lost their personal properties, their families, their countries the good example is Libya , Burundi, central Africa Republic and etc. Every political leaders has to determines the value of others through promoting peace. Peace is a value and universal duty founded on a rational and moral order of society that its roots in God himself. The first source of being, the essential truth and the supreme good. Peace is not merely the absence of war, nor can it be founded on a correct understanding of the human person and requires the establishment of an order based on justice and charity. Peace is the fruit of justice , understood in the broad sense as the respect for the equilibrium of every dimension of the human person. Peace is threatened when man is not given all that is due him as human person, when dignity is not respected and when civil life is not directed to the common good. The defense and promotion of human rights is essential for the building up of a peaceful society and the integral development of individuals, peoples and nations. Peace is also the fruit of love. True love and lasting peace is more a matter of love than of justice, because the function of justice is merely to do away with obstacles to peace. Remember that violence is never a proper response, always we determines that violence is evil regardless with our faith both Islamic and Christian faith, violence is un acceptable as a solution to problems, that violence is unworthy of man. Violence is a lie, for it goes against the truth of our faith, the truth of our humanity. 45
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Violence destroys what it claims to defend, the dignity, the life , the freedom of human beings. Seeking alternative solutions of war for resolving international conflicts has taken om tremendous urgency today, since the terrifying power of the means of destructive to which even medium and small –sized countries have access and the ever close links between the peoples of the whole world make it very difficult or practically impossible to limit the consequence of a conflict for this reason, another name for peace is development. We should be in a position to work together to resolve conflicts and promote peace, re-establishing relationships of mutual trust that make recourse to war unthinkable. There is a strong reason to hope that meeting and negotiating men may come to discover better the bonds that unite them together, deriving from the human nature which they have in common and that they may also come to discover that one of the most profound requirements of their common nature is this; that between them and their respective peoples it is not fear which should reign but love , a love that tends to express itself in a corroboration that is loyal, manifold in form and productive of many benefits. Always perfection does not even exist, some people around the world in every minutes are trying to finds this dangerous disease in their life in order to obtain status in the society. The best way we can be is through determining the value of human rights, whereby the movement towards the identification and proclamation on human rights is one of the most significant attempts to respond effectively to the inescapable demands of human dignity. In fact , the roots of human rights are to be found in the dignity that belongs to reach human being. The dignity, inherent in human life and equal in every person is perceived and understood first of all by reason. These rights are universal because they are present in all human beings, without exception of time, place or subject. Also are inherent in the human person and in human dignity. Human rights are to be defended not only individual but also as a whole,; protecting them only partially would imply a kind of failure to recognize them. The rights apply to every stage of life and to every stage of life and to every political, social, economic and also cultural situation. 46
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The promotion of full respect for each individual right, universality and indivisibility are destructive characteristics of human rights. The right to use force for the purpose of legitimate defense is associated with the duty to protect and help the innocent victims who are not able to defend themselves from acts of aggregation. In modern conflicts, which are often within a state, the precepts of International Humanitarian Law must be fully respected for the purposes of protecting the human rights in simple ways of avoiding perfectionist virus in our daily day activities. The principle of humanity inscribed in the conscience of every person an all peoples includes the obligation to protect civil populations from the effects of war. The minimum protection of the dignity of every person, guaranteed by International Humanitarian Law is all too often violated in the name of military or political demands which should never prevail over the value of the human person. A particular category of war victim is formed by refugees, forced by combat to flee the places where they habitually live to seek refuge in foreign countries concern for refugees must lead us to reaffirm and highlight universally recognized human rights and to ask that the effective recognition of these rights be guaranteed to refugees. Attempts to eliminate entire national, ethnic etc are crimes against humanity itself and those responsible for such crimes must answer for them before justice. The International Community as a whole has the moral obligation to intervene on behalf of those groups whose very survival is threatened or whose basic human rights are serious violated. In any decisions make, prudence must be possible and to make them with realism and a sense or responsibility for the consequences of one`s action. Prudence affirms the good as a duty and shows in what manner the person should accomplish it. It is a virtue the requires the mature exercise of thought and responsibility in an objective understanding of a specific situation and in making decisions according to a correct will.
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Sometimes our decision seems to be perfect because of circumstances or any other obstacles but we fails to recognize the best way of protecting the value of human rights, our acts or deeds to lacks prudence has lets us to falls in our life. For example:
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In 15/02/2000, it was a bad day in my life which I will never forget it up to date. The day which puts me in shocks and also full believing that God is not there for me, when I was facing such big problem in my life. Am taking like this because it a day when I was passing near by the street at night coming from my daily’s business and I was raped by four men which results to pregnancy. Such pregnancy was much punishment to me, because I feel guilt to my husband, my children and also my society as well. So I decided to abort it in order to avoid painful problems in my family and the society at large.
( Narrated by certain woman)
According to Ibrahim Lincoln , 1865 says that “ important principle may and must be flexible”. So that now what principle could possibly be more important than the principle that all human beings deserve the rights to live? In fact, if this fundamental right to life is denied , no other rights can exist. Every human being has the right to live even if the creature in the womb has the right to life. MEANING OF ABORTION Abortion means ending a pregnancy before the fetus(unborn child) can live independently outside the mother. Other meanings of Abortion is that an act of violence that a mother inflicts on her own child. Also Abortion in other meaning is an act of violence done by a mother being with intent to procure her own miscarriage unlawfully administers to take any poison or other noxious thing or uses any force of any kind. Abortion not even when pregnancy in the result a rape? Sometime we ask ourselves that does the concept of rape be the evil things in our society. The answer is “ yes” Rape generally is determined to be the mala prohibita things in the society especially Africa continents always once rape is existed or committed in our society that rapest seems to be the bad person in our society. 48
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So that is all about Rape now what if rape result and how does the child be taken to be in the society and does the abortion taken place because of rape? We can ask ourselves for many questions but without even getting the best answer to answer it. So because of that people can use the bad ways in order to over comes such problem. May be we may ask that does the person living inside the womb is a real as you and I. so through that the pro-born child must be treated equally and be given the same protection you and I enjoy under our Constitutions in Africa countries.
NOW LETS US DEALS WITH RAPE May be we may ask that once the child born because of rape can be determined as real child? It is wrong to discriminate the people who have been born because of manner in which they came into the world. Sadly , people who otherwise believe that pre-born child deserves the right to life to see a pre-born child conceived through rape as fully human. So through that we always rejects abortion in any circumstances. Now why do some people believe abortion can be justified in the case of rape? Sometime people do not consider the best ways of living concerning the real life of every person. Now lets go backs to such matter of abortion to remove the pain full evidence of that rape, if rape were resulted to pregnancy. Some questions asked by many people that; Will abortion erase the memory of the rape or heal the emotional and physical pain of the assault? Will abortion in effect, erase the rape of a woman?
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Hardly automatically Rape is act of violence inflicted upon a woman. She is an innocent victim and this knowledge may someday, help her come to the terms with the rape and rebuild her life. Also abortion on other hand is an act of violence that a mother inflicts on her own child. Through abortion, the mother becomes the aggressor and this knowledge may haunt her long after she has dealt with the rape. Abortion only re-victimize women who have been raped. Anyone who thinks abortion is justified for rape of victims should consider the followings; This new human being, who is uniquely the mother`s child may well be the only good, the only healing that will come to this woman from her rape experience. The woman deserves affirmation , love and time to recover from the assault. Her baby is not a monster and telling a woman that that the best option is to get rid of her bay soon as possible may only reinforce in her mind the ideal that she is dirty or a monster herself. In any pregnancy, the pre-born child stimulates hormones in the mother`s body to nurture the baby. These hormones often cause wide mood swings, which are especially influential to the mother who has been traumatized by rape and is aghast at the thought of being pregnant. The bonding between the mother and the child that often occurs in pregnancy hasn`t yet made the child seem “real” to the mother, real though the child is, and abortion seems to be quick fix. A woman often believes that she is some how tainted, dirty and dehumanized and knowns that many will see her either as pitfall and helpless or as disgusting and defiled. It has been reported that all women who have had abortions often deal with exactly the same psychological symptoms as the rape victim, depression, guilt, low self-esteem, uncontrollable sadness and withdrawal. The “quick fix” abortion solution is condescending and can only serve to reaf firm the sense of helplessness and vulnerability. Attitudes projected by others and not the pregnancy itself pose the central problem to the pregnant victim. When the trauma of rape is compounded by the trauma of
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abortion, it is hardly possible that abortion will lessen the emotional impact of the assault. Many people mistakenly believed that pregnancy resulting from rape is very common. For a number of reasons, however, only a small number of women become pregnant as a result of sexual assault. Why? Many factors affect female fertility. Not only does age affect it, but so does a woman`s natural cycle, which renders her able to conceive only approximately 4-6 days out of the month and severe emotional trauma, which may prevent ovulation factors affecting male fertility include sexual dysfunction, drug and also alcohol use. PREGNANCY RESULTS WITH INCEST. Incest according to the oxford advanced leaners 6th edition page 604 means that sexual activity between two people are closely related in a family for example a brother and a sister or father and daughter. According to penal code of Tanzania (CAP 16.R.E.2002) Includes the incest by male section 158(1) and also section 160 which include the incest by female. So through that incest is seen to be a crime in the society because according to its nature, involves two people who are closely related and having or doing what having sexual activity. So incest is an issue so emotionally charged that many people often have a difficult time speaking about it. Couple this time with resulting pregnancy, and some people who otherwise consider themselves pro-life because confused and compromise in their defense of the pre-born child`s right to be born. Incestuous relationship may be our customs, traditions. So when a young girl becomes pregnant through an incestuous relationship, the problem is not the innocent, pre-born baby, is the father, step father, uncle or older brother, who is the perpetrator of the crime of incest. Incest is a manifestation of a serious disorder within a family. When the incest is allowed to be covered up, it festers and grows and often passes from generation to generation. So in order to stop such activities in the society, the law as the instruments must provide or must protects such activities to be applicable. So the life of the pre-born child must be prevented.
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In the case of ROE v. WADE OF 1973 the supreme Court in U.S.A sanctioned a woman`s right to choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Since the ruling courts have upheld this decision, with certain modifications over the year. The decision to have an abortion is extremely personal and varies drastically from individual to individual. If you are considering an abortion, think carefully about what is right for you before taking action. This includes not just how you feed now, but how this might affect you in the future. Since the United States Of America Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that unborn babies could regally be killed so between 1 and 1.5 million unborn have been legally killed in this country every year. But no human legislature and no human court has final authority over what is morally right or wrong over 1.2 million soldiers died in all wars fought by the U.S.A .But there a lot of wars fought between peoples and also unborn babies, whereby a lot of unborn babies died in different locations legally and also illegally.
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CHAPTER THREE
THREE ARGUMENTS IN PERFECTIONISM BY DALE DORSEY DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA, 4-115 HUMANITIES CENTRE EDMONTON,ALBERTA, CANADA T6G2ES
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Perfectionism, or the claim that human well-being consists in the development and exercise of one’s natural or essential capacities, is in growth mode. With its long and distinguished historical pedigree, perfectionism has emerged as a powerful ante dote to what are perceived as significant problems in desiderative and hedonist accounts of well-being. However, perfectionism is one among many views that deny the influence of our desires, or that cut the link between well-being and a raw appeal to sensory pleasure. Other views include, for instance, the “objective list” view, 1. The so-called “restricted achievement” view, 2. And various hybrid views that combine an appeal to desire or pleasure with an objective standard of evaluation of those desires or pleasures. If, we attempt to deflate three important arguments for perfectionism in contrast with its competitors. Each of these arguments has appeared, in some form or other, in the historical record. Some have been given sophisticated and compelling restatements with the benefit of our contemporary conceptual apparatus. 3. Unfortunately, none have the power to support the claim that the good life is one that develops an agent’s natural or essential capacities. And though will focus only on three here, the failure of these arguments suggests general defects in a perfectionist view, and should be widely worrisome. The party will be organized as follows. Section 1. will provide a brief description of perfectionism in general. Section 2. we will discuss an important argument for perfectionism, given by Thomas Hurka, but also reflected in (some interpretations of) Aristotle: the essence argument. The second is found in the writings of Kant, T. H. Green, and is developed in its recent formulation by David Brink. This is the agency argument. Finally, we will discuss an argument that all perfectionists share, the intuitive argument: the argument that perfectionism, as opposed to its rivals, better conforms to our overall judgments of the goodness of lives. I argue that the essence and agency arguments do no independent work for perfectionism, but totally rely on the implicit assumption of the success of the intuitive argument. This result is untenable for the final argument. The intuitive argument cannot support perfectionism on its own. Or so I shall argue. 54
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1. What is Perfectionism? In understanding perfectionism, two questions are crucial to answer. Firstly, what concept is perfectionism a conception of? Secondly, what is the structure of this conception? First thing’s first. According to Hurka, perfectionism is an account of the “good life,” but in a moral, rather than prudential sense. It is the life that humans ought to seek regardless soft heir contingent desires of inclinations. This claim is also reflected in Kant.But rather than as a strictly moral demand, one might construe perfectionism as an account of well-being or the personal good. Hurka, however, resists characterizing perfectionism in this way. Well-being itself is often characterized subjectively, in terms of actual or hypothetical desires. Given this subjective characterization, perfectionism cannot concern well-being. Its ideal cannot define the “good for” in a human because the ideal is one he ought to pursue regardless of his desires. In my side, perfectionism should never be expressed in terms of well-being. It gives an account of the good human life, or of what is good in a human, but not of what is “good for” a human in the sense tied to well-being. Of course, it is up to the perfectionist to determine which concept his conception is to be a conception of. It is perfectly open to the perfectionist to reject perfectionism as a conception of welfare, for instance. But Hurka’s rejection of perfectionism qua theory of welfare is unmotivated. Indeed, he seems to suggest that perfectionism cannot be an account of welfare because welfare is subjective. But this is certainly up for grabs. Indeed, that welfare is subjective has been disputed not only by perfectionists, but others as well (including the objective-list and various hybrid views noted above). Nevertheless, Hurka’s rejection of perfectionism as a theory of well-being does not simply stem from his stipulation that a theory of well-being ought to be subjective. Rather, Hurka rejects the notion of “well-being” as a concept that stands in need of any specifying conception. According to Hurka, wellbeing is meaningless apart from theories of well-being, and apart from the notion, with which he identifies perfectionism, of a “good life” tout court. We should reject Hurka’s refusal to countenance well-being as a specific philosophical concept that permits of better and worse conceptions. Wellbeing appears necessary for other crucial normative concepts. Well-being 55
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maintains a strong link to inquiries about prudential reasons. It appears that we have prudential reason to do what is in our interests, what increases our overall well-being. We may or may not (depending on the specified conception) have prudential reason to live a “good life” tout court. Insofar as we have considered judgments about what is in our interests, or judgments about our prudential reasons, we will thereby have considered judgments about welfare. And it appears that many of our considered judgments about welfare are susceptible to a perfectionist analysis. Richard Kraut, for instance, notes that some of our “actual or hypothetical” desires appear not to be in accordance with our own well-being, including a compulsive desire to smash icicles. Perfectionism has a seemingly plausible story to tell: a life spent smashing icicles is not compatible with one’s nature qua human agent. In speaking of perfectionism here, then, I will assume that perfectionism forms an account of welfare or well-being. Second question. What is the structure of perfectionism as an account of welfare or well-being? Perfectionism is objective rather than subjective–on a perfectionist view, certain activities, achievements, etc., are intrinsically valuable in a way that does not depend on an agent’s responses (desires, etc.). But it would be a mistake to identify perfectionism simply with the claim that certain activities or achievements are good in themselves, such as excellent theoretic, aesthetic, or practical achievements. Though perfectionism implies this conclusion, defining perfectionism in this way would fail to distinguish perfectionism from the objective list view, which also embraces these particular activities and achievements as constitutive of a good life. The unique perfectionist claim identifies the good with the fulfillment of one’s nature: the good life for an x is identified by the core facts about what it means to be an x, by the core account of x-hood. For humans, perfectionism declares that the best life is determined by the core account of what it means to be human. Developing and exercising those properties or capacities that form what it means to be human yields a good life for a human. But in principle perfectionism could be applied to any creature. The best life for a cat depends on the sort of creature a cat is–developing and exercising those capacities that make a cat a cat is what makes for a good cat life. Perfectionism as applied to humans comes in different forms. Perfectionists differ on what precisely the relevant capacities are, and what precisely the relevant x is. 56
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For Hurka, the relevant properties are picked out by a restricted set of the necessary or essential features of humans. Hurka rightly notes that humans have a wide range of necessary properties, not all relevant to moral inquiry. So Hurka settles on those properties that are “essential to humans and conditioned on their being living things.”9 For T. H. Green, the relevant specification of the core properties will come via an examination of what makes humans moral, deliberative agents. These accounts can come apart. It is possible that what makes us moral agents is not an essential property of us qua human beings. George Sher’s account of perfectionism does not follow the above schema by the letter, but he suggests that the relevant elements that make a good human life good are those that fulfill “near-universal” and “near-unavoidable” goals. One might put this, however, in terms of the schema above. What it (nearly always) means to be human is to have certain goals. The fulfillment of those goals, then, will form the good for humans. So what are the relevant capacities and properties that form the account of a good life on a perfectionist account? Generally, perfectionists endorse the value of the development and exercise of our rational, deliberative capacities. For Hurka, the human essence will include both theoretical rationality and practical rationality. Aristotle holds a similar view, though he expresses it somewhat differently. For Aristotle, activity that is distinctively human is activity that expresses the “rational part of the soul,” or the part of the soul that has reason, as opposed to the appetitive parts of the soul. Hurka also believes that certain physical capacities can form relevant perfectionist achievements. According to Hurka, being physically embodied is essential to humans as living things Though Hurka does not go into great detail about these capacities, presumably they will include being free of disease, developing one’s strength and athletic capacities, etc. The value of our rational and deliberative capacities are also reflected in the account of humanity specified by Green. For Green, our capacity as moral agents allows us to deliberate about the structure of our ends. Rather than simply being dictated by our immediate desires, humans qua morally responsible agents have the ability to rationally deliberate about their desires, to conform their desires and actions to a conception of the good. On this picture, it is this rational, deliberative capacity that forms the account of the good on Green’s perfectionism. Green calls the achievement of these valuable states “self-realization”. Because moral personality consists in being able to deliberate about one’s ends, to subject them to rational and normative scrutiny, and because this version of perfectionism suggests that the 57
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account of x-hood is humanity qua responsible moral agents, this view yields that “a life of activities that embody rational or deliberative control of thought and action” is the perfectionist ideal. Thus a complete perfectionist account of welfare will include three separable claims: 1. Perfectionism: The good life for an x is determined by the core account of what it means to be an x. 2. Identification of the Core Capacities: The core account of what it means to be an x involves a specific set of capacities, {a, b, c}. 3. Fulfillment of the Core Capacities: A life lived according to capacities {a, b, c} involves certain specific activities {q, r, s}. All perfectionists share (1). Indeed, perfectionists mostly agree on the identification of the core capacities–(2)–although there is some variation. Aristotle identifies the core capacities as the activity of the rational part of the soul; Hurka suggests the core capacities are one’s capacity for theoretical and practical reason and one’s capacities as a physically embodied being; Green and Brink suggest that the capacity for practical reason–“deliberative control of thought and action”–forms the core account of a perfectionist life for a human. However, perfectionists appear to disagree significantly when it comes to (3). For Hurka, the fulfillment of the core capacities involves a complex, unified, and well-rounded life. For Brink and Green it is a life chosen as a result of one’s practical reason, that exercises one’s deliberative capacities, and that lives in accordance with the common good. The distinction between (2) and (3) might be illustrated by Aristotle’s perfectionism. Though his interpretation is controversial, Richard Kraut writes that, for Aristotle, the ultimate aim of human life, and the proper function of human beings, is to use reason well, and this goal can be reached in either of two ways: ideally, by leading a philosophical life and making contemplation one’s highest aim; but if that option cannot be taken, then we do best by fully developing the practical virtues and exercising them on a grand scale, in the political arena. This account of Aristotle’s view clearly represents the distinction between the three claims. The function of a human being is “to use reason well,” which forms the
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content of (2). One does this by living a life of philosophical contemplation or statesmanship; this is the content of the perfectionist life. The perfectionist life will be valuable, according to Aristotle, because it conforms to the unique function of human beings. Critics of perfectionism often fail to distinguish these claims, to perfectionism’s disadvantage. For instance, in a recent article Daniel Haybron has claimed to show that “perfectionism is false.”19 But Haybron’s strategy for defeating perfectionism is to show that virtue is distinct from well-being. But notice that one can be a perfectionist and avoid the claim that virtue is essential to well-being. One might simply say, for instance, that the development of one’s rational capacities can come apart from virtue; one could accept the perfectionist account of (1) and (2), but not (3). (Haybron’s most plausible counter-examples lend themselves to precisely this response: though the life is non-virtuous, it is good because it develops to an important degree the proper account of human nature or the realization of the agent’s self.20) Indeed, Haybron suggests that an account of well being in which “well-being consists partly in perfection understood not as admirability but as actualization–the fulfillment of one’s capacities, say, where this does not entail moral virtue” might itself be plausible.21 But if this is the case, it seems to me, Haybron’s view is compatible with perfectionism. This essay will address perfectionism at the heart of the beast. The question I will ask is as follows: why should we regard the core account of x-hood as essential to wellbeing? In other words, why should we believe (1)? The positions discussed here can be seen as providing answers to this question. The first argument, from Hurka, argues from the “top down”: the perfectionist capacities are valuable because they are identified by the human essence, which is itself a plausible indicator of value. The second argues that the core account is good because rational agents qua rational agents are committed to its value. Finally, all perfectionists share an argument from the “bottom up”: the capacities identified by the core account of xhood are intuitively valuable, and hence support perfectionism which identifies them as good. None of these arguments are satisfactory. 2. The Essence-Welfare Link Why should we accept that developing one’s nature is of welfare value? Hurka insists that development to one’s nature is good–perfectionism is true– because the proper account of nature is a plausible indicator of value. This argument runs from the “top down”: developing one’s nature forms an in 59
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20E.g., Haybron’s Genghis Khan case. This case shows a lack of virtue can be good, but it does not show that the life is good independently of the development of the character’s specifically human capacities. Furthermore, Haybron specifically issues an argument that questions the Aristotelian move from (2) to (3) (see pgs. 11-12). I find this argument plausible, but it is no argument against perfectionism; it is an argument only that perfectionists should refrain from identifying the content of the perfectionist life with the life of virtue. 21Haybron, 16.
dependently plausible ideal. Hurka writes: The goal of developing human nature, or exercising essential human powers, is deeply attractive. This is reflected in its widespread acceptance. The ideal is implicit in non-philosophical talk of living a “fully human” or “truly human” life and is endorsed by diverse philosophers. ... Some value contemplation; others value action. Some value a communal life; others value a life of solitude. If, despite these differences, these philosophers all ground their particular values in a single ideal of human nature, that ideal must have intrinsic appeal. Some of this appeal can be explained, if nature is essence. Because each of us is essentially a human, to develop human nature is not to develop some temporary or tangential property, such as being a lawyer or hockey fan. It is to develop what makes us what we are. Hurka’s move appears to be this: why should we believe that developing one’s nature is good? Answer: because nature is properly construed as essence, a being’s essential properties. And, says Hurka, there is an explanatory link between essence-development and goodness of lives: that some property is essential explains its value because developing one’s essence development is itself a plausible evaluative ideal. For short, I will refer to this as the essence-welfare link. I wish to distinguish between two ways there might be a connection between essence and welfare. The first is substantive: essence explains why some particular property is valuable. The other is trivial: essence merely happens to coincide with value, but is eliminable in an inquiry concerning why valuable properties are valuable. But there is some reason for holding that any connection between essence and welfare is merely trivial. To see this, consider the following worry: whether there is an essence-welfare link depends on what our essence is, and whether we believe that essence is good for the creature that develops it. This can be seen by noting several of the seemingly unintuitive aspects of the human essence. For instance, it appears that one essential 60
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property of humans is to take up four-dimensional space. Certainly development of this essential property fails to count in favor of the goodness of one’s life. Hurka appears ready to accept that a raw appeal to essence, of itself, is not enough to establish the plausibility of perfectionism. Hurka intends to give an account the essence that rules out evaluative trivial properties. Thus in order to state an account of perfectionism that doesn’t pick out neutral features as good, Hurka must restrict the range of essential properties to those properties human beings possess necessarily and that are conditioned on their being living things, as opposed to things generally. This rules out self-identity, taking up space, etc. Hurka writes: A perfectionist concept of nature assigns intrinsic value to certain properties, and these must on their own seem morally worth developing. A concept of nature may fail this test by not including some properties that do seem valuable. This flaw is less serious, showing at most that perfectionism needs to be supplemented by other moral ideas. It is more damaging if a concept of nature includes properties that on their own seem morally trivial–if it gives value to what, intuitively, lacks it. This is a telling objection to the concept. A morality based on the concept will be hard to accept because it flouts our particular judgments about value. According to Hurka, this is the “wrong properties objection.” Hurka seeks an account of the human essence that would yield the right properties. This will, according to Hurka, require us to restrict the range of the evaluative relevant necessary properties of humanity. But this move is telling for the plausibility of the essence argument. The reason that Hurka is licensed to restrict the range of essential properties that are relevant for an account of the good, and not restrict them further, appears to depend upon which properties are picked as independently valuable of themselves. If this is the case, the essence-welfare link appears threatened. The connection between essence and welfare appears trivial: the account of essence is tailor-made to deliver plausible verdicts about value. But the essence-welfare link requires not a trivial connection between essence and welfare, but a substantive, explanatory connection. If essence is simply tailor-made in this way, essence seems to do no explanatory work; in an explanation of value, essence-development appears eliminable. Hurka understands that his conception of essence is value-laden. But that essence is value-laden need not entail a merely trivial connection between essence and welfare (or value tout court, as Hurka prefers). Though an evaluative relevant account of essence must be adjusted to 61
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avoid trivial or bad properties, the appeal to essence can still support perfectionism if it can plausibly be maintained that essence-development is itself a plausible ideal independent of any adjustment in light of objections. Otherwise, an appeal to essence does no explanatory work: value is explained by our considered judgments, not by an appeal to essence. Hurka admits that in order to defend perfectionism via essence, it must be the case that the essentialist ideal is plausible independent of whatever consequences it might entail (for precisely the reasons I note here). But Hurka claims that his response to the “wrong properties objection” is simply fine-tuning of an independently plausible ideal. One might compare Hurka’s response to the “wrong-properties objection” with the Aristotelian response to similar complaints about the infamous function argument in the Nicomachean Ethics 1.7. Aristotle insists that the good for a human being is to be determined by finding the proper function–which might be glossed as “characteristic activity” of a human being. For Aristotle the function of a human being is a mark or indicator of value. Aristotle’s function argument has been vastly criticized. There appear good reasons to doubt a proposed function-welfare link. Indeed, there appears to be something of a slip between “the good for a human” and what it means for a human to be “doing well as a human.” Leaving this aside, however, one might believe that the unique function of human beings will include a wide variety of things, many of which are either neutral or downright bad. Bernard Williams notes, for instance, that “If one approached without preconceptions the question of finding characteristics which differentiate men from other animals, one could as well, on these principles, end up with a morality which exhorted men to spend as much time as possible in making fire; or developing peculiarly human physical characteristics; or having sexual intercourse without regard to season; or despoiling the environment and upsetting the balance of nature; or killing things for fun.” If these are properties picked out by the human function, they certainly appear to be the wrong ones. Defenders of Aristotle reply that Aristotle’s account of the human function is itself value-laden. Kraut insists that Williams mistakenly identifies necessary components of the human function (such as uniqueness of activity) as components that are sufficient for a proper account of that function. As Kraut suggests, what counts as part of our function must be unique, but it must also be, on reflection, good or choice worthy: “the human good must be something that we desire for its 62
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own sake.” Whiting insists that Aristotle’s notion of function is normative “all the way down”. Just as with Hurka’s view, however, one might wonder how much evaluative work an appeal to function is doing if the appeal to function is in eliminable value laden. However, as a way to rescue the appeal to function, one might argue that the appeal to function (or a wider appeal to “nature”) is an independently plausible ideal; this move is found in Julia Annas’ discussion of Aristotle. One might put this appeal in terms used to describe Hurka’s position: though function is value-laden, it cannot be eliminated because the development of one’s function is an independently plausible ideal; there remains a function-welfare link. I think this move is unsuccessful. Returning to Hurka, I deny that his strategy is simply fine-tuning of a prima facie plausible ideal. The appeal to human essence would not be plausible but for the fine tuning in which Hurka is engaged. Without this fine tuning, the appeal to essence would be a nonstarter. And if this is correct, there is no essence-welfare link. It seems to me that precisely the same should be said about the reconstruction of Aristotle offered above: the appeal to function is not plausible independently of our beliefs that the appeal to function delivers the right answers. How should we test my claim that an appeal to essence (or function– for the rest of this section I will refer to the essence-welfare link, although the points apply in both cases) carries with it no independent appeal? One relevant test is resistance to recalcitrance. Consider the extent to which we are willing to revise our beliefs about value in light of a recalcitrant belief about what is essential to humans and what is conditioned on their being living things. If such an appeal is a plausible indicator of value, we should believe that that appeal has at least some power to override recalcitrant intuitions. Imagine that we come to believe that the relevant essence yields some trivial property. For instance, let’s imagine that we come to believe that a disposition to develop hypothermia under cold conditions is essential to humanity. What pressure would there be to accept that property as good making? I contend: none whatsoever. Instead, the response (which models Hurka’s own strategy) would be to revise that account of human essence further, such that the trivial property is avoided. In order for an appeal to essence to play a role in a reflective equilibrium, it must have at least some resistance to recalcitrant beliefs. But an appeal to essence seems not to have no such resistance. More evidence: a claim about essence appears to have no ability to make even slight changes to our conception of value. Consider mortality. Let’s say that we come to believe that mortality is a valuable property of humanity, i.e., that because a life 63
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that stretched on too long would become dissatisfying, it’s better not to live forever. Assume that this is a settled matter. However, on any plausible view, length of life is not valuable in and of itself; extended life is good or bad based solely on what that life contains. In other words, it is implausible to believe that the length of one’s life is anything more than instrumentally good or bad. But suppose that we come to believe that mortality is part of the human essence in Hurka’s sense. (I’m uncommitted on this proposal.) On an essentialist view, mortality would not simply be instrumentally good, but intrinsically good, good in itself. But are we prepared to make even this comparatively small change (i.e., instrumental to intrinsic, but not “valueless” to “valuable”) in our beliefs on the basis of a verdict about essence? I find this far-fetched to say the least. A claim about essence appears to have no power to influence the value of mortality one way or the other. But if so, the essence-welfare link is not independently plausible enough to support a “top-down” argument for perfectionism. Notice that in making this argument I’m not imagining that our essence is different than it is. (As Hurka points out, one cannot evaluate a counterfactual involving essence.32) Rather, I’m imagining that we come to believe that our essence contains mortality, which perhaps it may not. But this is the relevant test: if we believe that there is an essence-welfare link, we ought to feel at least some pressure to revise our considered judgments about goodness or welfare in light of a contrary belief about essence. If we believe that essence yields a counterintuitive verdict, we ought to feel some pressure to accept that verdict. But it appears we are prepared to accept no such verdicts. The mere fact that Hurka’s account of essence (I hereby grant for the sake of argument) delivers the right properties does not settle whether the appeal to essence is independently plausible. That can only be settled under counterfactual epistemic conditions, conditions under which we believe that an appeal to essence directs us in unintuitive ways. Under such conditions, the appeal to essence wilts. I maintain that precisely the same could be said of Aristotle’s appeal to function. In this section I have argued as follows: in order for the essence argument to support perfectionism, there must be an essence-welfare link that is substantive and explanatory rather than trivial. But in order to avoid triviality, Hurka must claim that the appeal to essence maintains plausibility independent of any verdicts it might issue. But it appears that an appeal to essence does not maintain this level of plausibility. Hence any connection between essence and welfare can be trivial only. The only conditions under which the human essence (or function) is a 64
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plausible ideal are conditions under which we have already fine-tuned the notion of human essence (or function) to deliver the right verdicts. 3. The Agency Argument A further argument in favor of perfectionism takes as its starting point our status as moral agents. It then proceeds to show that any moral agent is committed to valuing the development and exercise of their deliberative and rational capacities. Because, as moral agents, we are committed to the intrinsic value of that which makes us moral agents, what makes us moral agents will form the proper account of our good. This argument, or the “agency argument,” as I will refer to it, has a decidedly Kantian flavor; similar arguments can be found in Kant’s writings. Like the essence argument, the agency argument is “top-down”: developing our nature is valuable because moral agents are committed to valuing it. The version of the agency argument I will discuss here is offered by T. H. Green. This argument is remarkably sophisticated and, it seems to me, there is much in it. For Green, moral personality means subjecting one’s desires and inclinations to deliberative control; rather than simply lunging for the delicious-looking pint of beer, a moral agent will inquire whether so lunging would be good and can control the desire to so lunge if the answer is no. For Green, developing one’s self as a moral agent is developing one’s self. Hence, Green’s perfectionism embraces the ideal of self-realization: It is in virtue of this self-objectifying principle that he is determined, not simply by natural wants according to natural laws, but by the thought of himself as existing under certain conditions, and as having ends that may be attained and capabilities that may be realized under those conditions. ... It is thus, again, that he has the impulse to make himself what he has the possibility of becoming but actually is not, and hence not merely, like the plant or animal, undergoes a process of development, but seeks to, and does, develop himself. Though Green’s text is to some degree hard to decipher, he appears to claim that humans, insofar as they are rational agents, will treat themselves as a proper object of the will. They will ask questions about what sort of life they ought to live. In so doing, they understand that they are not simply determined by forces of nature operating externally to their own deliberation, but rather by the operation of their practical deliberation. Hence, they will seek to become what they have the possibility of becoming, rather than what nature has dictated that they will become. One helpful supplement to Green’s understanding of self-realization above is his account of freedom or autonomy. 65
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Green’s view runs as follows: “From this bondage he emerges into real freedom, not by overcoming the law of his being, not by getting the better of its necessity, ... but by making its fulfillment the object of his will; by seeking the satisfaction of himself in objects in which he believes it should be found, and seeking it in them because he believes it should be found in them.” Thus, for Green, a moral agent will find his freedom and moral agency in making the “law of his being” an object of his will. And if“ the law o f his being” is to determine his life by means of rational and deliberative capacities, the moral agent will make the development of these capacities the supreme object of his will. I think Green is right to connect an account of the personal good with the objects a person believes are choice worthy. Surely achieving one’s good involves subjecting one’s desires to some sort of deliberative control; lunging after the pint of beer will not always be in an agent’s best interests, and insofar as one is a moral, deliberative agent, achieving one’s good will surely involve asking those sorts of questions and reigning in desires that violate an agent’s sense of what is good or valuable. And if I am a rational agent (rather than, say, a mere “actor”), I will be committed to scrutinizing my desires by the use of practical reflection. But from here the waters get a bit murky. So far, the agency argument has not shown why we must reign in our desires in a perfectionist way. The hedonist will seek pleasure because she believes that pleasure is good– she will subject her desires to a process of deliberative endorsement, endorsement based on her hedonist conception of the good. Green’s argument cannot establish that the “law” of an agent’s being, i.e., the relevant deliberative capacities, must be the object of the will, merely that what one thinks is good (which may or may not coincide with “the law of his being”) should be the object of his will. In elaborating Green’s argument, David Brink writes: But why should we think that the exercise of practical deliberation must favor lives that embody or exercise rational nature? Green, like Kant, is interested in the question what one would care about insofar as one is rational. Consider an analogy. Insofar as one is a wine connoisseur, there are determinate things one cares about. One cares about developing general wine competence ... and about the consumption and appreciation of fine wines by themselves and as parts of meals. Similarly, insofar as one is a rational agent, one cares about developing one’s deliberative competence and sensitivity to reason and one chooses environments, projects, and activities that allow scope for deliberative control of thought and action. In this way the exercise of practical reason can be the object of practical reason, much as 66
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the exercise of wine connoisseurship can be the object of the wine connoisseur.38 I might agree that practical reason can form an object of practical deliberation. But the question concerns why it must. The mere fact that, as a rational agent, I am committed to subjecting my desires to a regimen of deliberative endorsement does not entail that I ought to subject them to this or that regimen of deliberative endorsement. In order for the agency argument to establish perfectionism, there must be some mistake that the hedonist makes in treating pleasure as the ultimate object of her practical deliberation. A wine connoisseur is committed to developing wine competence. 3 But a rational agent is committed–if she is committed to this much–only to developing and deliberating in accordance with some conception of the good. It might be that I am a hedonist. I believe that the best sort of life for me would be one that is the most pleasurable, whether this is part of the core account of moral personality or not. I must still subject my desires to a process of deliberative endorsement: I will wonder whether my desires properly lead to hedonic fulfillment. Without doing that, I fail to be an agent. But, so far, I fail to see why the hedonist is wrong or mistaken in treating pleasure, rather than the development of her perfectionist capacities, as the object of her will. Of course, even the hedonist must recognize that the capacities that make one a moral agent are valuable. Brink is surely right to this extent: any rational agent must value the capacities that make her rational. Without them the hedonist will be unable to subject her desires to testing for hedonic satisfaction, for instance. The exercise and development of one’s rational capacities must be present in the autonomous agent, no matter what that agent’s conception of the good is. But notice that this claim need not imply perfectionism. One need only be committed, say, to the value of a sufficient threshold of rationality and deliberative capacity in order to exercise one’s ability to choose. Nothing so far has required that we develop our nature qua agents (in this case, our rational and deliberative capacities) to the greatest possible extent. It requires only that we develop our rational capacities enough to be able to subject our desires to deliberative endorsement, enough to decide which glass of beer would be most pleasurable, for example. But even granting this, we need not regard this sufficient threshold of rational agency capacity as intrinsically valuable in itself. The extent to which the hedonist is committed to valuing these capacities here is merely instrumental; it is only because having these capacities leads the 67
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hedonist to subject her desires to deliberative scrutiny in the pursuit of additional hedonic satisfaction that these deliberative capacities are valuable. Of course, they often do lead to such satisfaction. Indeed, they are likely necessary for such satisfaction. But this fact by itself does not entail that these capacities are intrinsically valuable or form a part of the hedonist’s good. The hedonist is a hedonist. In order to be a moral agent, the hedonist need not be committed to valuing as intrinsically valuable the core capacities of moral agency. She need only be committed to valuing them insofar as they help her achieve her own, hedonic, conception of the good. So it seems to me that the agency argument by itself is missing a premise. It is missing a premise to the effect that the capacities essential to practical reason must be central to our conceptions of the good–without this premise, the agency argument can establish only the requirement of deliberative endorsement, not perfectionism. One sure-fire way of supplementing the agency argument, however, is to appeal to people’s conceptions of the good directly. In other words, one might illustrate the sort of capacities that are essential to moral agency and moral personality, and attempt to convince agents that those capacities themselves ought to be in their conception of the good. But this is a different argument. This is an intuitive argument: it is appealing to the intuitive plausibility of having one’s conception of the good be a perfectionist conception of the good. Without this argument, the agency argument fails to establish perfectionism. Nothing about the core account of moral personality entails that moral persons must hold that the core account is itself intrinsically valuable. Whether they ought to believe such capacities are intrinsically valuable is a matter to be settled by consideration of those capacities themselves, not their status as essential to moral personality. 4. The Intuitive Argument The failure of the essence and agency arguments are similar in structure. Neither argument is independently plausible, independent, that is, of a direct appeal to the value of the perfectionist capacities themselves. The problem, however, applies to perfectionism generally: (1) in the perfectionist scheme seems implausible without a prior commitment to the value of the capacities picked out in
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(2). However, the failure of these arguments might not be seen as much of a defect of perfectionism. After all, these arguments were “top-down,” seeking to explain the appeal of(1)directly. But the rest ill remains the “bottom-up” argument: explaining the appeal of perfectionism by the appeal of the case-by-case verdicts of perfectionism. The argument from considered judgment is significant and powerful. If perfectionism can deliver verdicts that we can get behind, this should be evidence enough that the development of our natures forms the proper account of welfare. One perspicuous way of drawing out the intuitive plausibility of perfectionism is to compare it to a desiderative account of well-being, one that would license the quality of lives that many of us think base or unworthy of the human good. Brink, for instance, notes that we would not want our children to develop lives devoted to the dogged collection of laundry lint, grass counting, or various base or unchallenging activities. It is intuitive, according to Brink, to believe that such lives are bad though they might in fact be desired by, even pleasurable for, the person who lives them. But perfectionism, says Brink, has the proper answer: “perfectionism is well positioned to accommodate and explain the evident fact that intellectually and emotionally rich lives are unconditionally good and intellectually and emotionally shallow lives are unconditionally bad for a person with the normal range of intellectual, emotional, and physical capacities.” I will challenge the intuitive superiority of perfectionism below. My first response, however, is that without some argument that establishes the plausibility of (1) directly, such as the agency or essence arguments, the intuitive argument does no good for perfectionism. Without the “top-down” arguments, in other words, the “bottom-up” argument is powerless to support perfectionism. Assume that the development and exercise of our perfectionist capacities is as intuitive as you please. Perhaps we agree with perfectionism in every case in which it issues a verdict, and assume that these intuitions are stable. But evaluative theory is underdetermined by intuitive data. One needn’t be a perfectionist to agree about the value of these capacities. One could be an objective list theorist. Furthermore, one could be a pluralist of the sort suggested by Parfit, and developed in more detail by Robert Adams; one could maintain that the good involves the “enjoyment of the excellent.”40 One could, it seems to me, even endorse a form of hedonism, i.e., Feldman’s “desert-adjusted intrinsic attitudinal hedonism.”41 Indeed, these alternative views can recommend that a good life will necessarily include these intuitively good capacities; Feldman’s view, for instance, might suggest that 69
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intrinsically good instances of pleasure include only pleasure taken in the exercise of objectively valuable capacities. (The Parfit-AdamsFeldman hybrid views might be unable to accommodate an intuition–if it is an intuition–that perfection yields welfare even in the absence of pleasure. Even so, a standard objective list view can support all intuitive verdicts by simply designing the list in a way that fully captures these verdicts.) In order for perfectionism to be supported in light of the plausibility of developing one’s perfectionist capacities, it must be the case that perfectionism, i.e., (1), is itself more plausible than these competing alternatives. But this would require support–independent of the intuitive value of the perfectionist capacities–for the claim that developing what is in our natures is constitutive of our good. But given the failure of the previous arguments, perfectionism cannot make this claim plausibly. The plausibility of these arguments depend entirely on the value of the capacities they pick out. it appears as though perfectionism is just one among many theories that can accommodate the value of these capacities. Perfectionists might respond by noting that though (1) is not plausible independently of its particular verdicts, perfectionism possesses theoretical virtues lacked by these alternatives. For example, it might be suggested that though the objective list view can draw support from the intuitive nature of perfectionist capacities, the objective list view has theoretical defects that make accepting perfectionism plausible. Brink writes: “One form of objectivism is a list of objective goods, such as knowledge, beauty, achievement, friendship, and equality. Such a list may seem the only way to capture the variety of intrinsic goods. But if it is a mere list of goods, with no unifying strands, it begins to look like a disorganized heap of goods.” But any old theory cannot claim a victory on the basis of theoretic unity. I might unify disparate value judgments by writing them down on a piece of paper, and claiming that the “paper theory of welfare” gains points for theoretic unification: all and only those things written on my piece of paper are part of well-being. But this would be no victory whatsoever for the “paper theory”. The appeal to theoretic unity is only successful if the theory under consideration has explanatory power. The “paper theory” fails this test. Being written on a piece of paper is unlikely to explain why some particular thing is valuable. But perfectionism does little better. Whether developing our nature is good for us depends–it depends fully on what is in our nature, so construed. And if this is the case, perfectionism cannot explain why these capacities are good for agents. Perfectionism needs support that is independent of the intuitive argument, 70
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support it appears not to have. If the arguments given in previous sections fail to provide support for the perfectionist claim, i.e., that what is in our nature is intrinsically good for us, perfectionism is, at best, on a par with other objective views. Perfectionists, it appears, must rely on the intuitive support of the relevant capacities, but this intuitive support cannot support perfectionism uniquely. Thus even if we agree with the intuitive nature of these capacities, perfectionism per se can take no solace. But this still leaves the proposal that perfectionism accommodates our intuitions better than, perhaps not all rivals, but many. But should we agree that the development of these particular capacities is intuitive? I think the intuitive case is far from a slam-dunk. There is a large and growing catalogue of important counter-examples to perfectionism; by way of conclusion
I’ll offer a few here. A. Jerry Jerry strongly desires to be a lint collector, believing it to be a noble and worthy pursuit. However, he is hampered by living on a remote desert island devoid of laundry machines. Jerry thus fails in his goal, which causes him extreme misery and melancholy. Unable to fulfill his dreams, Jerry takes up irrigation studies, and is able to successfully irrigate his desert island from a small source of fresh water. Despite this, Jerry regards his life as an extreme disappointment. What should we think of Jerry? On a perfectionist view, Jerry’s life went better for having been lost on the desert island. Rather than taking up this base and unchallenging project of lint collection, Jerry took up the very challenging project of irrigating an entire island with limited water resources. On any perfectionist view worth the name, this sort of a life is better than a life of lint collecting. But is this really true? I am unlikely to convince any devoted perfectionists to the claim that Jerry qua irrigationst lives a worse life than he would have lived qua lint collector. In any event, it is not obvious to me that Jerry’s life is better for having been stranded. After all, lint collecting was no passing whim; he believed it to be a worthy pursuit. He actually lived a life that, by his own lights, was significantly worse. Though I’m not totally convinced that life as a lint collector would be better for him, I am also not convinced of the perfectionist suggestion. 71
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B. Ronald But perfectionism goes even further. For perfectionism, no matter how strongly a particular life is desired, or how strongly a particular agent believes that life valuable, that life can be bettered by another life that is better endowed with the development and exercise of perfectionist capacities. Take, for example, Ronald. Assume that Ronald is a committed subsistence farmer, a person who desires to live close to the soil, etc. Now assume that Ronald is offered the opportunity to become (and would be successful as) a theoretical physicist. But the subsistence farmer does not engage in his profession as a result of lack of options; Ronald is strongly committed to the value of living close to the soil, of evading the trappings of an industrial society. Furthermore, he is wary of the overwhelming drive of humanity to understand the deepest secrets of the universe. He regards it, and the development of the capacities that might lead to it, as a form of hubris in the face of the almighty. So he remains a farmer. This person may maintain some rational activities, of course. But assume, plausibly, that the extent to which the subsistence farmers life would be reflective of his rational capacities would be heightened as a theoretical physicist. (If this is not plausible, one can simply alter the case.) Nevertheless, it is plausible to believe that life as a subsistence farmer is better for this person than the life of a theoretical physicist. The perfectionist might respond by claiming that one important feature of the relevant perfectionist capacities is the capacity to enjoy or to regard as valuable the exercise of one’s rational/deliberative capacities. In other words, enjoyment of the excellent, as Adams puts it, is a further perfectionist capacity, which would be lost to Ronald and is lost to Jerry. One might also put this as a claim about choice: an important perfectionist capacity involves the use of practical reason to choose the life of perfectionist capacities. Hence one might think that even on a perfectionist view, Jerry’s life qua irrigationist is of lesser quality than one might believe. Response: enjoyment (or choice) of the excellent is one perfectionist capacity among others; a loss of enjoyment (or the failure of choice) can hence be made up for by the additional development of other perfectionist capacities. As Hurka notes about the choice constraint, “Even if autonomy has some value, it cannot have so much as to outweigh,” the value of, say, “all Mozart’s music.”The same should be said about enjoyment. And even lacking such further excellences, it seems to me, the perfectionist is committed to saying that Jerry’s life as an irrigationist is better 72
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endowed with perfectionist value than his life would have been qua lint collector. (Importantly, we can vary the cases in order to override the lack of enjoyment or choice on the part of the agents. For instance, we might insist that Ronald as a theoretical physicist discovers quantum gravity, or proves the existence of parallel universes, or discovers a feasible method of time travel, or something of this nature. Even in these cases, I regard Ronald’s subsistence farming as better.) argument could be blocked if responding adequately to one’s perfectionist capacities is an essential requirement of any life of perfectionist value. One might say that choosing a life one regards as good or worthy of choice is a necessary condition of perfectionist value. But I find it difficult to see how such a claim could be supported by perfectionism, insofar as perfectionism is construed as developing those capacities that are essential to our nature. Living a life that one regards as choiceworthy might be one way to develop our rational capacities, but it is not the only way. Hurka convincingly argues that “[t]heoretical and practical perfection both develop rationality, and do so in structurally similar ways. Both are products of natural selection, and nothing in their character or origins makes one more desirable than the other. Why should rationality C. Ronald and the Bugs Even if one grants the supreme importance of choice or enjoyment of one’s perfectionist capacities, however, any perfectionist view must say that if an agent is indifferent between lives of greater or lesser development of perfectionist capacities, the life with just slightly more perfectionist achievement wins out. Assume now that Ronald is presented not with the opportunity to become a theoretical physicist, but the opportunity to become a subsistence farmer on a slightly more challenging farm, i.e., a farm that not only has to be rid of boll weevils, but also stink bugs. Let’s assume, however, that Ronald is neutral with regard to the difficulty involved in ridding farms of bugs. On reflection, Ronald doesn’t care how many bugs he must eradicate. However, there is one difference for Ronald; the first farm and not the second has a very comfortable couch. The enjoyment of the couch for Ronald has no perfectionist value. We might characterize it, as does Richard Arneson, as a “cheap thrill.”45 Because Ronald is neutral between the challenges that each farm presents, and because the couch has no perfectionist value, perfectionism seems committed to suggesting that a life on 73
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the more challenging farm would be better for Ronald. Should we agree? My intuition says no. In fact, moving to a more difficult farm would be worse for Ronald, not just because it would cost him his comfortable couch–though this is a significant reason–but also because it is more difficult in a way that Ronald doesn’t value. If perfectionism is committed to the value of exercising one’s theoretical and practical rationality, difficult activities will have more value; difficult activities require a greater exercise of these capacities.46 I can understand the value of difficulty when that difficulty is sought after or prized. To the extent that one values her mountain climbing ability, she values her ability to perform difficult tasks, and the more difficult (K2, Cerro Torre) the climb, the more valuable the achievement. But perfectionism says that even in the face of pure agential indifference vis-a-vis perfectionist capacities, difficult activities are better. I in conduct, in how we change the world, count less than rationality in how we form our beliefs? Why should a structure of ends have less value than a similar structure of judgments?” (Hurka, 86.) Certain forms of perfectionism might require that a valuable life be regarded as choice worthy (perhaps Green’s emphasis on deliberative agency lends itself to such a view: living a life that one does not choose or does not value cannot be an exercise of one’s capacities qua moral, deliberative agent). But I hereby record my skepticism that this claim can be plausibly sustained. Hurka is explicit concerning the value of difficult activities. find this implausible on reflection, especially when an agent is not indifferent between two activities tout court (as a result of cheap thrills, etc.). I think we should have doubts about the intuitive welfare value of developing our rational and perfectionist capacities. My doubts are not dispositive: they do not show that perfectionism suffers from insuperable intuitive difficulties. But in light of the failure of perfectionism to draw support from even a rock-solid argument from intuition, any sense in which the argument from intuition is less than rock-solid should give us significant reason to doubt that the intuitive argument supports perfectionism. 5. Conclusion I have shown that three important arguments for perfectionism fail. Though my argument has not canvassed all possibilities, the arguments I offer here should have 74
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wide resonance against perfectionism of various varieties. Human nature under whatever description appears to be a poor explanation of value. Importantly, I have established that any perfectionist view faces a burden. It must show that the appeal to the core account of x-hood is, of itself, evaluative important. This is for two reasons. First, in order for any argument from intuition to succeed for perfectionism, there must be independent reason to believe that perfectionism (rather than the objective list view, for instance) explains and systematizes these intuitions. Second, because the argument from intuition appears to falter at several points, the appeal of human nature (or whatever x one appeals to) must be strong enough in itself to override the counterintuitive verdicts of such an appeal. I am skeptical that any perfectionist theory can manage this task, but I leave open the possibility that such a view might be found.
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CHAPTER FOUR PERFECTIONISM IN MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
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First published Tue Feb 13, 2007; substantive revision Wed Oct 10, 2012 Perfectionism has acquired a number of meanings in contemporary moral and political philosophy. The term is used to refer to an account of a good human life, an account of human well-being, a moral theory, and an approach to politics. Historically, perfectionism is associated with ethical theories that characterize the human good in terms of the development of human nature. Writers as diverse as Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, Marx, and T.H. Green are perfectionists in this sense. Speaking generally, perfectionist writers advance an objective account of the good and then develop an account of ethics and/or politics that is informed by this account of the good. Different perfectionist writers propose different accounts of the good and arrive at different ethical and political conclusions. But all perfectionists defend an account of the good that is objective in the sense that it identifies states of affairs, activities, and/or relationships as good in themselves and not good in virtue of the fact that they are desired or enjoyed by human beings.
The first thing to say is that an objective account of the good need not make reference to the good of human beings. Some people think that certain aspects of the natural world are valuable and would have value even if no human being existed. Others believe that great achievements in art and science have value beyond any effect that they have on the lives of human beings. Perfectionist views that affirm judgments of this kind are examples of what can be called nonhumanistic perfectionism. Perfectionist accounts of the human good, by contrast, are accounts that seek to identify the goods that contribute to the value of a life for human beings. The good life for human beings can be understood in at least two importantly different ways. On the first understanding, such a life is construed in terms of wellbeing. The best life for a human being is a life that goes maximally well for the person who leads it. On the second understanding, the good life for a human being is construed in terms of excellence or success. An excellent human life could, but need not, be a life that is best in terms of well-being, for it is possible that such a life requires a human being to make sacrifices in his own well-being for the sake of other persons or goods. Thus the notion of an excellent human life is broader than that of a life high in well-being. And since it is the broader notion, a general characterization of perfectionism should employ it rather than well-being.[1] 77
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Perfectionism, so understood, contrasts with both hedonism and desire satisfaction accounts of the human good. Let ‘X’ refer to an object, an activity or a relationship. Then, for the perfectionist, if X is good, then it is not good in virtue of the fact that it is desired, or would be desired under appropriate conditions, by human beings. Likewise, for the perfectionist, if X is good, it does not follow that X must be a pleasant mental state or causally related to one. Perfectionist accounts of the human good, of course, can allow that some goods are experiential, but they reject the hedonistic thesis that all intrinsic human goods consist in pleasurable sensations or attitudes.
Putting non humanistic perfectionism aside, perfectionist goods are components of an excellent human life. Historically, as noted above, perfectionists have related these goods to the development of human nature. For example, the development of rationality is often considered to be a perfectionist good because it is a capacity essential to human nature. Following Aristotle, a number of contemporary writers have sought to develop accounts of the human good along these lines (Hurka 1993, Foot 2003). We can use the term human nature perfectionism to refer generally to accounts of the human good that relate perfectionist goods to the development of human nature. Other writers, however, have characterized perfectionism without any reference to human nature. John Rawls characterizes perfectionism as requiring the maximum “achievement of human excellence in art, science and culture” (Rawls 1971, 325). Derek Parfit characterizes perfectionism in terms of the achievement or realization of “the best things in life” (Parfit 1986, 162). Here it is the existence of the objective goods, and not their relation to the development of human nature, that is highlighted. Similarly, other writers have identified perfectionism with the realization of a specified list of objective goods (Finnis 1980, Griffin 1986, Arneson 2000). We can use the termobjective goods perfectionism to refer generally to accounts of the human good that identify perfectionist goods without relating them to the development of human nature.[2] Proponents of human nature perfectionism must present an account of human nature. More precisely, they must give an account of the properties or capacities that are central to human nature and the development of which have value (Hurka 1993). By contrast, proponents of objective goods perfectionism must explain why some goods, and not others, are included. Objective goods perfectionists need not formulate an exhaustive list of these goods. They may believe such an undertaking to be misguided. But they should have something to say about what makes an alleged good an objective good, one worthy of pursuit (Sumner 1996, Sher 1997).
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The distinction between human nature perfectionism and objective goods perfectionism helps us approach an important question in value theory. Must perfectionists be monists, holding that there is at bottom only one form of life that is best for all human beings; or can they hold that there exists a plurality of equally good forms of life for human beings? The question is important, since it is very plausible to think that the best life for one human being may differ from the best life for another. Human nature perfectionism identifies the human good with the development of human nature. This looks like a monistic ideal, one that identifies a single form of life as best for all human beings. But, in fact, the ideal leaves many issues open. Let us stipulate that the best life for a human being is the life that maximizes the development of his nature. Then, it still could be true that for different human beings different activities and pursuits would best promote their good. This could be true, since different people may be able to best develop different aspects of human nature. Given their temperament and talents, some do well to concentrate on artistic pursuits, while others do well to focus on theoretical studies or athletic achievements. Moreover, even those who do well to focus on the same type of perfection, may find that some activities and goals serve this end better for them than for others. Finally, different tradeoffs between one's own perfection and the perfection of others may be rationally eligible and this too will contribute to the plurality and variety of modes of life consistent with the perfectionist ideal. The compatibility of objective goods perfectionism and value pluralism also can be established. One need only assume that some perfectionist goods are either roughly equal or incomparable in value (Finnis 1980, Raz 1986). Friendship and understanding, for example, may both be perfectionist goods, but they may not be comparable in a way that allows us to rank lives that realize these goods to different degrees. More generally, perfectionist goods may be combinable in different proportions, yielding a range of different types of life that are valuable and worthy of pursuit. The adjective “perfect� when applied to a human life suggests one that is maximally good or excellent, but if goods conflict and are incomparable, then a plurality of different types of life may have a title to that designation—or perhaps no life can be strictly perfect, but many can be very good. Nothing said here, of course, rules out the possibility that there really is only one way of life that is maximally best for human beings. The point pressed is merely that perfectionism is consistent with value pluralism. Put otherwise, if objective goods are plural and incomparable, as many recent writers maintain, then this fact about the nature of value does not undercut the plausibility of perfectionism, of either the human nature or objective goods variety. To be sure, a plausible 79
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perfectionism will recognize that pluralism has its limits. Perfectionist value theory seeks to identify goods and activities that human beings ought to preserve, promote and engage with. It implies that some ways of living are not valuable for human beings, even if they are fully embraced. Page | 80
Perfectionism as a moral theory directs human beings to protect and promote objectively good human lives. As such, it can take an egoistic or non-egoistic form. Egoistic forms of perfectionism are well represented in the history of moral philosophy. These theories direct each human being to perfect himself as much as possible, or at least to some threshold level. Egoistic forms of perfectionism need not be narrowly self-interested. A number of perfectionist writers have held that the good of others is a derivative part of one's own good (Green 1986; Hobhouse 1911). On such views, there is no conflict between one's own perfection and the perfection of others. Non-egoistic forms of perfectionism, by contrast, allow for such conflicts. They hold that each human being has a non-derivative duty to perfect others as well as a duty to perfect himself. Such views, at least in principle, can direct human beings to sacrifice their own perfection for the sake of others.[3] Whether it takes an egoistic or non-egoistic form, perfectionism is best understood as a moral theory that directs human beings to care about the perfection of others as well as themselves. This claim is consistent with recognizing, what is evidently true, that there are serious limits to our ability to bring about the perfection of others. These limits explain why some philosophers, most notably Kant, have held that we cannot have a duty to promote the perfection of others (Kant 1785). Many perfectionist goods require self-direction for their realization. We cannot compel another to develop her capacities, at least not all of them. Nor can we compel another to participate in valuable social relationships. This valid point, however, should not be overstated. We can work to ensure that others live under conditions that are conducive to their own self-development or their own realization of perfectionist goods. Indirect promotion may be possible where direct promotion is not. The fact that human beings cannot directly bring about the perfection of others is nonetheless important. It may explain why, in practice if not in principle, a plausible perfectionism would direct each human being to be more concerned with her own perfection than with the perfection of others.
The best life for a human being might be one that simultaneously best perfects himself and best perfects others. But this possibility is unlikely. Even if the conflict between one's own good and the good of others is not as sharp as it is often taken 80
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to be, there will, in all likelihood, be circumstances in which human beings must choose between their own perfection and the perfection of others. How then should this conflict be adjudicated within perfectionist ethics? Egoistic forms of perfectionism have a ready answer to this question, but non-egoistic forms must find a way to balance the conflicting demands. One natural response to this problem is straightforwardly consequentialist. Perfectionism, it can be said, requires that we pursue the greatest development of all human beings at all times (Hurka 1993, 55–60). So understood, perfectionism gives each human being a shared comprehensive goal. This makes perfectionism a very demanding moral theory. It is demanding in two respects. First, it demands, other things being the same, that we weigh the perfection of others equally with our own perfection. Second, it demands that, to the extent left open by the first demand, that we maximize our own perfection. Perhaps this kind of consequentialist perfectionism asks too much of us. We can imagine forms of perfectionism that relax both of its demands. Consider, for example, a perfectionist moral theory that includes an agent-centered prerogative. Such a theory could allow that persons can favor their own perfection, to some reasonable degree, over the perfection of others and that persons need only pursue their own perfection up to some threshold level. This relaxed perfectionism would depart from the main historical defenses of perfectionism (which emphasize maximization) and it would not well fit the term perfectionism (which connotes maximization). But the important question is whether a view of this type is nonetheless plausible. The answer depends, in part, on whether human nature or objective goods perfectionism is the favored view. If perfection is understood in terms of the development of human nature, then a view that departs from the maximizing injunction will look less promising. A person who has extraordinary potential for excellence, but who only achieves a threshold level of development does not plausibly achieve perfection. Since she was capable of so much more, we should not be content with her modest achievements. Intuitively, we should judge that she has not fully lived up to the requirements of perfectionist morality (Hurka 1993, 56). Moreover, on this version of perfectionism, an agent's primary moral goal is to develop human nature, not to lead a rewarding or fulfilling life. But if the development of human nature is the goal, then it is a bit of a mystery why each human being's own development should have special value for himself (Hurka 1993, 62–63).
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Matters look different if perfection is understood in terms of the realization of objective goods. For, on this version of perfectionism, it is plausible to hold that each human being has an agent-relative interest in leading a successful life, where success is understood in terms of the pursuit of valuable goals and the realization of perfectionist goods. A successful life, so understood, plausibly requires only a threshold realization of certain perfectionist goods, such as friendship, knowledge, and aesthetic experience. For these reasons, a non-maximizing injunction fits better with objective goods perfectionism than with human nature perfectionism. Whatever its merits, the introduction of an agent-centered prerogative into perfectionist morality would exacerbate a problem with standard consequentialist versions of perfectionism. It would appear to give human beings a moral liberty to harm others if doing so would promote their own perfection.[4] True, the problem is present even without the introduction of the agent-centered prerogative. A pure consequentialist perfectionism in principle could enjoin the sacrifice of those who had little potential for perfectionist achievement for those who had great potential. But such a view would at least have the virtue that those who were sacrificed would be contributing to the goal of maximum perfectionist achievement—a goal they should share if they are consequentialist perfectionists. The same is not guaranteed to hold true if the prerogative is introduced. Since the worry here is one that confronts consequentialist accounts of morality in general, it might be thought that perfectionist morality should take a deontological structure instead. Deontological perfectionism would hold that the goal of promoting human perfection is constrained by the requirement to respect the perfection, or the capacity to achieve it, in each human being. The structure of such a view can be glimpsed by considering the objective goods version of perfectionism. For it is plausible that the achievement of certain objective goods, such as friendship or community with others, requires that we treat others with respect. Requirements of respect, it can be said, are constitutively necessary conditions for the realization of many perfectionist goods. This is not the place to explore the structure of such a view in detail. Nor is it the place to discuss the extent to which it represents a genuine departure from consequentialism (Pettit and Smith 2004). Instead, another possible response to the worry can be mentioned. As Rawls pointed out, perfectionism is often taken to be merely one element of a general moral theory (Rawls 1971, 325). The moral duty to maximize human perfection must be balanced against other moral principles. Deontological constraints and agent-centered prerogatives might limit the duty to promote human perfection, but they might do so because they are derived from independent moral principles. On this mixed view, in which perfectionism is 82
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understood as merely one element of a general moral theory, it is possible to recommend perfectionism as an agent-neutral maximizing doctrine and avoid the unwanted implications that morality is excessively demanding and that it endorses the sacrifice of some for the sake of greater overall human perfection. Page | 83
Perfectionist ethics has often been associated with elitist doctrines. Whether it takes a consequentialist or deontological structure, perfectionism is compatible with assigning different weights to the perfection of different human beings. And a number of important perfectionist writers have maintained that the perfection that matters the most is the perfection of those who are capable of achieving the most. This “superman” version of perfectionism, a view famously associated with Nietzsche, gives absolute weight to the excellence achievable by certain great men, such as Socrates or Goethe and zero weight to the rest of humanity (Nietzsche 1873/1876; Griffin 1986, 60–61). The superman version of perfectionism is an extreme view. It holds that some human lives count for much and many human lives count for nothing. This view should not be confused with a different and less extreme view, one that can be termed the prioritarian version of perfectionism. This view holds that we should value the perfection of each and every human being, but in aggregating human perfection we should count the greater perfections more, by some multiplier, than the lesser perfections.[5] The prioritarian version of perfectionism is not elitist, since it does not imply that the lives of those who can achieve more count for more. It holds only that greater perfections—a greater development of human nature or a greater realization of objective goods—count for more in summing up overall human perfection. More precisely, it directs us to pursue the greatest overall human perfection, where this is determined by a weighted summing of the perfection of all human beings. Compared with the superman version, the prioritarian version of perfectionism is significantly more plausible. It captures the thought that greater achievements are more valuable than lesser achievements without denying value to the latter. It recognizes the claims of greatness without excluding all other achievements from moral concern. Still, while not elitist, prioritarian perfectionism will likely have inegalitarian implications for the distribution of resources. Thomas Nagel explains: A society should try to foster the creation and preservation of what is best, or as good as it possibly can be, and this is just as important as the widespread dissemination of what is merely good enough. Such an aim can be pursued only by recognizing and exploiting the natural inequalities between persons, encouraging 83
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specialization and distinction of levels in education, and accepting the variation in accomplishment which results. (Nagel 1991, 135) One might object to these claims by holding that a sufficient amount of goods that are “merely good enough” should be able to outweigh a small number of truly excellent goods. But if the excellent goods are weighted more heavily, as recommended by the prioritarian version of perfectionism, then in practice this possibility may be unlikely. (Much depends here on the strength of the prioritarian multiplier.) Nagel appears to accept the prioritarian view, for he concludes that “no egalitarianism can be right which would permit haute cuisine, haute couture, and exquisite houses to disappear just because not everyone can have them” (Nagel 1991, 138). The prioritarian version of perfectionism, then, may license significant inequality in the distribution of resources. The inegalitarian character of the view has some attractive consequences, however. When applied to population ethics, it has the potential to avoid Parfit's “Repugnant Conclusion”. As Parfit explains: We might claim that, even if some change brings a great net benefit to those who are affected, it is a change for the worse if it involves the loss of one of the best things in life (Parfit 1986, 163). The focus here, as with Nagel's remarks, is on perfectionist goods rather than on the welfare of human beings. To avoid the repugnant conclusion, it must be claimed that these goods—“the kinds of experience and activity which do most to make life most worth living”—take absolute priority over less valuable experiences and activities. This claim, as Parfit allows, is vulnerable to counterexample. It is very hard to believe that the best artistic experience is infinitely better than a slightly less good, but still excellent, artistic experience. Viewing a Picasso might be better than viewing a Braque, but not infinitely better. It is more plausible, then, to construe the prioritarian version of perfectionism as just assigning some finite positive multiplier to the greater perfections. But while such a view would not be vulnerable to the kind of counterexample just adduced, it would disable it from answering the Repugnant Conclusion (Hurka 1993, 81–82). The discussion so far has emphasized the perfectionist concern with creating and preserving the best human experiences and activities. This concern inclines perfectionism toward inequality. But it is possible to defend an egalitarian version of the view; and the history of perfectionist ethics contains a number of such examples. Here four possibilities for developing an egalitarian version of perfectionism briefly can be mentioned. 84
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(1) One can hold, as Spinoza did, that the most important perfectionist goods, such as understanding, are non-competitive. Their realization by one human being does not impede, and may advance, their realization in others. Maximum perfection, so understood, is compatible with equality of material condition (Spinoza 1667). (2) One can hold, as some writers like T. H. Green did, that inequality in the distribution of resources impedes the perfection of all, the rich as well as the poor. Perfectionist values, on this view, can be fully realized only in a society in which each member is roughly equal in power and status (Green 1986; Brink 2003, 77– 88). (3) One can hold that the perfection of each human being matters equally and that the distribution of resources most likely to promote the greatest overall human perfection is not one that contains great inequalities. Such a view would reject the prioritarian weighting function discussed above, holding instead that the perfection attained by each human being should count equally. (4) One can hold that perfectionism inclines toward inequality, but that other nonperfectionist principles impose an egalitarian constraint on the pursuit of perfectionist values. These possibilities show that there is no tight connection between perfectionism and inequality. The degree to which perfectionism licenses inequality will depend on answers to a number of difficult questions, e.g. which version of perfectionism is best?, how great are the natural differences between human beings?, to what extent are perfectionist goods competitive?, and what, if any, non-perfectionist moral principles limit the pursuit of perfectionist values? The answers to these questions are very much in dispute within perfectionist morality. Without firm answers to them, no one should reject perfectionist ethics out of hand because of a commitment to egalitarian values.
Human beings should care about their own perfection as well as the perfection of others. As we have seen, the standard of perfection is objective in the sense that it guides, or should guide, human action, even if it what it recommends is not desired. These claims explain why perfectionism assigns an important place to self-regarding duties. A self-regarding duty to develop one's talents, if there is such a duty, is categorical. One has the duty whether or not one has a desire to fulfill it. The possibility of self-regarding duties of this kind are sometimes rejected on conceptual grounds. Moral duties concern one's treatment of others, and so a moral duty to oneself is a confused notion. But this worry should not detain us for long. 85
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The key point is that we can have categorical reasons to develop our nature or to engage in valuable, as opposed to worthless, activities. It is a secondary issue whether we should classify a self-regarding duty as a moral duty or as (merely) a categorical non-moral duty (Raz 1994, 40). But while the worry should not detain us, it does point to an attractive feature of perfectionist ethics. Much contemporary moral theory ignores duties to oneself, whether understood as moral duties or not, and focuses exclusively on our duties toward others. Perfectionist ethics is an important corrective to this tendency. By expanding the domain of ethical concern, it has the potential to enrich contemporary moral philosophy (Hurka 1993, 5). Different perfectionist theories offer different accounts of the content of selfregarding duties. Generally speaking, it is useful to distinguish negative from positive duties to oneself. Negative duties are duties to refrain from damaging or destroying one's capacity to lead a good life. For example, barring exceptional circumstances, one has duties to refrain from suicide and self-mutilation. Positive duties, by contrast, are duties to exercise one's capacity to develop one's nature and/or to realize perfectionist goods. For example, one has a duty to develop one's talents and not to devote one's life entirely to idleness and pleasure (Kant 1785). Specific negative and positive self-regarding duties are derived from the more comprehensive duty to oneself to do what one can to lead a good or excellent life. It is probably true, as Aristotle pointed out, that the success of one's life depends on factors outside of one's control. If so, then no one can have a duty to lead a good life. Still, excluding the effects of luck, we can say that each human being will have a more or less successful life depending on the decisions they make and the options they pursue. And we can add that each human being has a comprehensive duty to lead a successful life, to the extent that it is within his or her power to do so. Stated at this level of abstraction, the perfectionist case for affirming self-regarding duties does not look particularly controversial. Resistance to it will likely derive from one of two quarters. Some will reject the very possibility of categorical duties, whether to oneself or to others. Others will accept the possibility of categorical duties, but insist that they are limited to the treatment of others. This latter view, on its face, looks unstable. It is likely motivated by the worry that if self-regarding duties are acknowledged, then the door is open for paternalistic interference. To address this concern, we must turn now from perfectionist ethics to perfectionist politics.
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The transition from perfectionist ethics to perfectionist politics is a natural one to make. Political institutions can be arranged, and state policies can be adopted, that promote or impede perfectionist values in various ways and to varying degrees. If one is committed to perfectionist ethics, then this commitment establishes a presumption in favor of perfectionism in politics. Other things being equal, one should favor political institutions and state policies that do the best job of promoting the good in the context in which they apply. Importantly, this natural presumption can be defeated. For one thing, the political pursuit of perfectionist ends might be self-defeating. This possibility is considered below. But it will be useful to begin by assuming that perfectionist state policies can be effective in achieving their aims. Critics of perfectionist politics often reject the idea that there are objectively better and worse ways of living. Subjectivism or nihilism about the good often stands behind anti-perfectionist commitments. But the most influential recent philosophical criticisms of perfectionist politics do not stem from this quarter. Sophisticated critics of perfectionism grant, if only for the sake of argument, the claims of perfectionist value theory. They then seek to show that perfectionist state policies, even if informed by a sound understanding of the good, nonetheless would be illegitimate. The character of perfectionist politics is best appreciated by considering these arguments and their limitations.
Many contemporary writers on politics reject perfectionism and hold that the state should be neutral among rival understandings of the good (Dworkin 1978; Ackerman 1980; Larmore 1987; Rawls 1993). The principle of state neutrality, as it can be called, articulates a principled constraint on permissible or legitimate state action. The constraint can, and has been, formulated in different ways.[6] Three formulations of the constraint have attracted support of late, and can be mentioned briefly here.[7] 1. The state should not promote the good, either coercively or non-coercively, unless those who are subject to the state's authority consent to its doing so. 2. The state should not aim to promote the good unless there is a societal consensus in support of its doing so.
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3. The state should not justify what it does by appealing to conceptions of the good that are subject to reasonable disagreement. As these formulations bring out, the idea of state neutrality has been understood broadly in recent political philosophy.[8] A natural interpretation of the principle would allow the state to promote the good, so long as it did so in an even-handed manner. But most proponents of state neutrality wish to keep the state out of the business of promoting the good altogether, at least if the good to be promoted is controversial or subject to reasonable disagreement.[9] A perfectionist approach to politics rejects the principle of state neutrality on all these formulations. For perfectionists, there is no general principle in political morality that forbids the state from directly promoting the good, even when the good is subject to reasonable disagreement. It will be helpful to spell out in a little more detail the implications of this rejection of state neutrality. The first formulation presented above follows from a consent-based account of political legitimacy. Perfectionist political theory rejects consent theory and so rejects this formulation of the neutrality constraint. The second formulation appeals to societal consensus, rather than actual consent. It holds that in large pluralistic societies, the state should not aim to promote the good, since what is considered good often will be subject to controversy. This formulation of the constraint is not extensionally equivalent to the first one, since there can be a societal consensus that an institution or practice is good and ought to be supported by the state even when there is not universal agreement on the matter. The second formulation targets the aims of state officials. These aims are not always open to view, and state officials may have a variety of motives in mind when they make political decisions. For this reason, some have thought that it is more promising to apply the neutrality constraint not to the aims of state officials, but rather to the justifications they give in public for the decisions they make. This yields the third formulation of the neutrality constraint. Defenders of state neutrality often defend the doctrine by appealing to the ideal of public reason. Public reasons, they argue, must be shareable in a way that excludes appeal to controversial ideals of the good. Thus state neutrality and public justification in politics emerge as different sides of the same coin.[10] The second and third formulations of the neutrality constraint figure in recent influential versions of social contract theory, most notably that of Rawls and his followers (Nagel 1991; Rawls 1993; Barry 1995). These views represent the chief contemporary rival to perfectionist political theory. In developing an account of political morality, these modern day contractualists instruct us to bracket our full 88
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understanding of the human good. Only by so doing, is it possible to present an account of political morality that has a hope of securing the allegiance of citizens who hold very different conceptions of the good. The plausibility of the principle of state neutrality remains very much in dispute in contemporary political philosophy. Proponents of the principle maintain that state neutrality is necessary if the state is to respond appropriately to the fact that reasonable citizens in modern democratic societies are committed to conflicting conceptions of the good. They also hold that state neutrality is vital to ensuring stable and mutually beneficial social cooperation in these societies. Those sympathetic to perfectionist politics counter: (1) That support for valuable forms of life requires political action and that strict adherence to the principle of state neutrality “would undermine the chances of survival of many cherished aspects of our culture;� (Raz 1986, 162) (2) That it is possible to reject state neutrality and embrace value pluralism and hold that there are a plurality of good, but incompatible, forms of life fully worthy of respect (Raz 1986); (3) That proponents of state neutrality overvalue the goods associated with agreement and undervalue other goods (Wall 1998); and (4) That state neutrality is neither necessary or sufficient for stable social cooperation and for preventing the abuse of state power (Sher 1997). Much of the debate over state neutrality assumes that there is a strict incompatibility between state neutrality and perfectionist politics. But, in reality, the relationship between the two is more complex. While perfectionists reject the principle of state neutrality on its common formulations, they need not reject it on all possible formulations of the principle. To explain: some perfectionists, as just noted, embrace value pluralism and hold that there are a plurality of good, but incompatible, forms of life fully worthy of respect. These perfectionists can claim further that the truth of value pluralism explains how fully reasonable people can adopt and pursue different ideals of the good. With this idea in mind, they could propose the following restricted principle of state neutrality. RNP: If two or more ideals of the good are eligible for those who live in a particular political society, and if these ideals have adherents in that political society, and if these ideals cannot be ranked by reason as better or worse than one another, then the state, to the extent that it aims to promote the good in this political society, should be neutral between these ideals in its support of them. (Wall 2010) RNP restricts the scope of state neutrality to ideals of the good that are fully reasonable. Whether or not it is a sound principle of political morality, it is a principle that both responds to the fact of reasonable pluralism and is available to 89
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the political perfectionist. Since RNP does not rule out state action that promotes reasonable over unreasonable conceptions of the good, a proponent of this principle can accept it while affirming the perfectionist claim that “certain conceptions of the good are worthless and demeaning, and that political action may and should be taken to eradicate or at least curtail them” (Raz 1986: 133).
Still, the principle of state neutrality, on its common formulations, remains an antiperfectionist principle—one with wide, if not completely unrestricted, scope. Its proponents seldom present it as a foundational normative commitment, however. As mentioned above, state neutrality is often defended as an appropriate response to the fact that reasonable people in modern societies disagree in good faith over the nature of the good and/or the good life for human beings. But how exactly would state neutrality constitute an appropriate response to this purported fact? A popular answer appeals to a moral norm of respect for persons, where persons are understood as rational agents. The distinctive feature of persons is “that they are beings capable of thinking and acting on the basis of reasons” (Larmore 1996, 137). To respect another person one must engage his capacity to respond to reasons. In politics to respect another person is “to insist that coercive or political principles be as justifiable to that person as they are to us” (Larmore 1990, 137). The mutual justification of political principles, it is then argued, is possible only if all citizens bracket their controversial views about the good and seek to argue from common ground. Note that this way of grounding state neutrality explains why the principle, on its second and third formulations, does not rule out state promotion of shared or uncontroversial conceptions of the good. Since a shared conception of the good could figure in common ground justifications for political principles, its promotion need not express disrespect to any citizen. State neutrality thus applies only to disputed conceptions of the good. Suppose now that a modern state favors a disputed ideal of the good. We need to explain why this action would be disrespectful to some of its citizens. The state might favor an unworthy ideal; but if so, then its action would not be justified on perfectionist grounds. So we must assume that it favors a sound ideal. On this assumption, how would its action express disrespect to those whose views were disfavored? Proponents of state neutrality point out that people can have mistaken views, even while being appropriately reasonable. (This possibility is often explained by reference to what Rawls termed “the burdens of judgment.”) They then insist that if someone is appropriately reasonable, then his views about the good should not be denigrated by the state.[11] 90
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This argument immediately invites two questions. First, what is the connection between respecting a person's appropriately reasonable views about the good and respecting her? Second, how should we construe the phrase appropriately reasonable—that is, how reasonable is appropriately reasonable? The first question is pressing, since the argument, as it stands, appears to confuse respect for persons with respect for the views that they currently endorse. People, after all, are not stuck with the conception of the good that they affirm. As rational agents, they can revise their views in response to evidence, argument and reflection (Raz 1998). If this is correct, then, so long as the state respects their capacities as rational agents, it is unclear why it must also respect their mistaken, albeit reasonably affirmed, views. Proponents of state neutrality can respond that there is an intimate connection between the views about the good that a person affirms after reasonable examination and his social identity. By disrespecting the former, the state disrespects the latter. As one writer explains: Of course it remains the case that respect is for persons, not for their doctrines. But these doctrines are so deeply a part of people's search for the meaning of life that public governmental denigration of those doctrines puts those people at a disadvantage, suggesting that they are less worthy than other citizens, and, in effect, not treating them as fully equal ends in themselves. (Nussbaum 2011, 22) In considering these claims it is important to keep in mind that we are assuming that the state is favoring a sound ideal of the good over a misguided or false ideal. If we assume further that persons with mistaken views about the good are not rationally sealed off from true beliefs about the good, then we can hold that the state in favoring the sound ideal is, among other things, attempting to engage the rational powers of its citizens. This will be true, at least, if state officials justify their favoritism toward the ideal by appealing to the reasons that establish its soundness. By doing so, state officials arguably would show respect for all citizens understood as rational agents (Galston 1991, 109). We have arrived at two contrasting understandings of the norm of respect for persons. For lack of better terms, let us call them Respect (1) and Respect (2). Respect (1): Respect for persons, understood as rational agents, requires the state to respect the rational powers of its citizens, including their capacities to examine and revise their conception of the good. It also requires the state to justify its support for sound or true conceptions of the good by presenting valid reasons to its citizens for doing what it is doing.
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Respect (2): Respect for persons, understood as rational agents, requires the state to respect the doctrines that its citizens affirm, including their conceptions of the good, whether sound or not, provided that these doctrines are (i) the product of the appropriately reasonable exercise of their rational powers and (ii) bound up with their sense of identity. Naturally, if Respect (1) is the favored view, then an appeal to the norm of respect for persons will not ground the principle of state neutrality, at least on its common formulations. By contrast, if Respect (2) is the favored view, then it may provide a good measure of support for the principle. The type and degree of support that it provides, however, will depend on how clauses (i) and (ii) get specified. Consider clause (ii) first. It suggests that a person's beliefs about the good can be bound up with her sense of identity. We might call these identity-constituting commitments. Other beliefs about the good may not be central to a person's identity, call them peripheral commitments. The distinction is not sharp, and a commitment that is peripheral for one person may be identity-constituting for another. Still, while fluid, the distinction does seem to mark something important. Certain commitments are very tightly bound up with a person's sense of who he is, while others are not. The present modest point is that, given Respect (2), respect for persons requires the state to respond in the right way to its citizens' identity constituting commitments. It does not speak to the issue of how the state should respond to their peripheral commitments. Thus an appeal to Respect (2) would not explain why state action that favors disputed conceptions of the good that do not impugn the identity-constituting commitments of any of its citizens would be impermissible. Next consider clause (i), which is of greater importance and brings us to the question of how to construe the phrase “appropriately reasonable” in the statement of the respect for persons norm. Respect for persons, on Respect (2), requires the state to respect the conceptions of the good of its citizens provided that these conceptions are the products of the appropriately reasonable exercise of their rational powers. The standards of appropriate exercise can be set high or low. Consider the following.[12] Fully Reasonable: a conception of the good is appropriately reasonable so long as “its adherents are stably disposed to affirm it as they acquire new information and subject it to critical reflection.” (Cohen 2009, 52) Moderately Reasonable: a conception of the good is appropriately reasonable so long as its adherents are stably disposed to affirm it and in affirming it they are
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responsive to evidence and satisfy minimal standards of coherence and consistency. Minimally Reasonable: a conception of the good is appropriately reasonable so long as its adherents are stably disposed to affirm it and it is the product of their efforts to find meaning or value in life. (Nussbaum 2011) The first of these specifications is demanding, especially if the standards of critical reflection are themselves demanding. Many conceptions of the good affirmed by people in modern societies will not qualify as appropriately reasonable under it. The second specification lowers the standards, but it too is inconsistent with a range of conceptions of the good that flout simple demands of consistency and are not responsive to evidence, such as those oriented around astrology or New Age religions (Nussbaum 2011). If either of these specifications is factored into Respect (2), then the norm of respect for persons will not rule out nonneutral state action that favors some disputed conceptions of the good over other less reasonable conceptions. The first two specifications, however, can do justice to the thought that respect for persons is respect for their distinctive capacity to respond to the reasons that apply to them. It is much less clear that the third specification can do so. Since irrational and even silly conceptions of the good can be the product of efforts to find meaning or value in life, they are entitled to full respect under it. However, since these conceptions of the good are not the product of the exercise of rational capacities—except in the very minimal sense in which any belief is the product of such capacities—the third specification fits uncomfortably with the thought that respect for persons is respect for their rational capacity to respond to reasons. Yet this minimal specification of the standards of reasonableness—precisely because it is so undemanding—can support a principle of state neutrality with wide scope. There is a tension, then, between construals of Respect (2) that take seriously the claim that the distinctive feature of persons is their capacity to respond to reasons and construals of Respect (2) that can ground a principle of state neutrality that has the kind of wide scope associated with common understandings of the principle. There may be no cogent construal of Respect (2) that both does justice to the thought that persons are owed respect in virtue of their rational capacities and grounds a principle of state neutrality with wide scope. Moreover, Respect (1) remains an eligible interpretation of the norm of respect for persons and, as emphasized here, it cannot ground a principle of state neutrality of the sort that proponents of the principle traditionally have wanted to defend.
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No conclusions can be drawn in this entry concerning the best interpretation of the norm of respect for persons. In light of the foregoing discussion, two modest points can be registered. First, a simple and straightforward appeal to the norm of respect for persons cannot ground or justify the principle of state neutrality (on any of its common formulations), since this norm, like other normative commitments, is subject to a range of interpretations, which are very much in dispute among moral and political philosophers. Second, perfectionists and anti-perfectionists alike can accept that respect for persons is a factor relevant to assessing the legitimacy of state action. Their disagreement over how this norm is best characterized is reflected in their disagreement over state neutrality.
Those who reject the principle of state neutrality entrust the state with the task of promoting the good. This can give rise to the worry that a perfectionist account of politics is insufficiently sensitive to the harm of coercion and to the value of liberty. If the state need not be neutral among rival understandings of the good, then is the door not open for the coercive imposition of state policies designed to promote the good? In fact, many versions of perfectionism drawn from the history of political thought have paid little heed to the value of individual liberty. It is an important matter, then, to what extent perfectionist politics can be reconciled with a proper regard for individual liberty. To approach this issue, it will be helpful to consider the so called harm principle. The harm principle, as articulated by writers in the liberal political tradition from Mill to Feinberg, is often taken to be an essential safeguard for individual freedom in political society. At least at first pass, the harm principle substantially restricts the power of governments to promote the good. It holds that governments cannot coercively interfere with persons unless doing so is necessary to prevent them from causing clear and direct harm to others. The harm principle requires interpretation and can be understood in different ways. But for present purposes our question is whether the harm principle is best understood to be an anti-perfectionist principle—a principle that provides reasons for rejecting or limiting perfectionist politics. The first thing to say is that not all perfectionist policies are coercive. Governments can and do promote the good noncoercively. A government may promote the good, for example, when it intelligently subsidizes art. This perfectionist policy need involve no coercive interference whatsoever.[13] So the harm principle, even if sound, would not bar all perfectionist policies. It would rule out only coercive governmental policies designed to favor some options and discourage others. The question then is whether this restriction is itself anti-perfectionist. 94
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Here we need to proceed with caution. The extent to which perfectionism licenses the coercive promotion of the good depends, among other things, on the degree to which autonomy or liberty is itself recognized to be a perfectionist good. On some versions of perfectionism the harm principle would be an anti-perfectionist principle, while on others it would not be. Consider, in this regard, Mill's own defense of the harm principle. For Mill “individuality” is an essential component of a good human life. Mill's notion of individuality can be understood to be a conception of autonomy. A person is autonomous for Mill if he leads his life on his own terms and develops his capacities and faculties according to “his own mode of laying out his existence” (Mill 1859, 64). The important point for present purposes is not Mill's particular characterization of autonomy, but rather the structure of his view. Autonomy is understood to be an essential aspect of a good human life, not a separate norm. And the value of autonomy explains, at least in part, why Mill recommends the harm principle. The Millian defense of the harm principle sits well with the perfectionist focus on good human lives. Its availability nicely illustrates how perfectionist politics can be consistent with a strong rejection of state coercion. But it is natural to suspect that Mill overstates his case. Even granting that “individuality” is an aspect of a good human life, we should wonder why it takes priority over all other aspects. If a governmental policy, say a policy that criminalizes the sell and use of dangerous recreational drugs, would prevent many from ruining their lives while infringing the individuality of only a few, then, contrary to Mill, the government may do better in discharging its duty to promote good human lives by adopting the policy than by not adopting it. This point can be pushed further. Autonomy, it can be argued, requires that one have access to an adequate range of valuable or worthwhile options (Raz 1986). This adequacy requirement does not imply that every time an option is closed off one's autonomy will be set back. Moreover, what may be of value is not autonomous agency per se, but valuable autonomous agency. Joseph Raz explains: “Since our concern for autonomy is a concern to enable people to have a good life it furnishes us with reason to secure that autonomy which could be valuable. Providing, preserving or protecting bad options does not enable one to enjoy valuable autonomy” (Raz 1986, 412). If valuable autonomy, and not autonomy per se, is what has perfectionist value, then when governments eliminate, or make it more costly for persons to pursue, worthless options, then they may do no perfectionist harm and much perfectionist good. On Raz's view, the harm principle is superceded by an autonomy principle that captures the truth in it while avoiding its exaggerations. The autonomy principle 95
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holds that the state has negative duties to respect the autonomy of its citizens as well as positive duties to promote and sustain social conditions that contribute to its realization. The harm principle, to the extent that it is sound, is vindicated because it follows, given certain contingent facts, from the autonomy principle. This leads Raz to reformulate the harm principle as a principle “that regards the prevention of harm to anyone (himself included) as the only justifiable ground for coercive interference with a person” (Raz 1986, 412–13). So construed, the harm principle would permit the coercive enforcement of at least some self-regarding duties. Both Mill and Raz accept versions of the harm principle. But they accept it not as a limit on perfectionist politics, but rather as a principle that guides the proper promotion of the good. Their political theories are examples of perfectionist liberalism and their discussions of the harm principle show how perfectionist politics can be supportive of individual liberty. It can be objected, however, that the defense of individual liberty provided by perfectionist liberalism is insufficient. Recall that on the perfectionist view discussed here autonomy is an aspect of a good human life. It is not a separate norm. A strong and uncompromising defense of the harm principle, it may be thought, must be based on a different understanding of the value of autonomy, one that holds that the autonomy of persons cannot be infringed even when doing so is, all things considered, in their best interests. Autonomy, on this view, is a sovereign right, not an ideal to be promoted (Feinberg 1989). The nature and plausibility of this alternative view of autonomy, however, are not matters that can be taken up here.[14]
Most perfectionist writers accept that sometimes the state can permissibly use coercion to promote the good. Still, coercion is in general a clumsy device for pursuing perfectionist ends (Hurka 1993, 157). Noncoercive perfectionism, such as subsidizing valuable pursuits, attaching penalties to worthless ones or creating new valuable options, is often the better method for promoting the good.[15] Even noncoercive perfectionist measures, however, may pose a threat to autonomy. As one critic expresses the worry, Messing with the options that one faces, changing one's payoffs can be seen as manipulation … If it is done intentionally, it also takes on the insulting aspect of manipulation, for it treats the agent as someone incapable of making independent moral decisions on the merits of the case. (Waldron 1989, 1145–1146) The objection is that noncoercive state perfectionism is inherently manipulative. It distorts the rational decision making of citizens by altering the value of their 96
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options. It is also insulting—the state treats its subjects as if they were children— and this is objectionable, over and above any impact it has on their autonomy. These are important concerns. Before discussing them more fully, we need to clarify their character. The noncoercive perfectionist measures in question are paternalistic in the sense that they are intended to help citizens lead better lives. Not every kind of non coercive state perfectionism is paternalistic, however. Recall non humanistic versions of perfectionism. Those who accept these views might favor state support for excellence in science and art not because doing so will enable citizens to lead better lives, but because the state ought to promote excellence. This defense of non coercive state paternalism does not presume that some citizens are not good at making independent moral decisions about how to lead their lives. The manipulation objection to non coercive state perfectionism, accordingly, must target a subset of these measures. Focus then on non coercive state perfectionist measures that are intended to help citizens make better decisions about how to lead their lives. Even if these measures are well designed, they may invade autonomy. And if autonomy is itself a perfectionist good, then there would be perfectionist reasons to oppose these perfectionist measures. These reasons would not establish that no such measures should be undertaken. Presumably, the autonomy-based reasons could be outweighed in some cases, but—assuming again that autonomy is a perfectionist good—these reasons would establish that there is a pro tanto case against state perfectionism of this kind. Is it true that non coercive state perfectionism that aims to help citizens make better choices is inherently manipulative in an autonomy-invading way? Perhaps not. No government “can avoid either non rationally shaping its citizen's preferences or providing them with incentives” (Sher 1997, 66). This is true, since even if governments do not adopt perfectionist measures, the unintended consequences of state action will have effects on citizen preferences for options and on the relative costs of the different options that they confront. Thus it can be said that “if all political arrangements do nonrationally shape preferences and provide incentives, a government will not further diminish autonomy simply by producing these effects intentionally” (Sher 1997, 67). This line of argument can be extended further. Every political society provides its members with an ethical environment, an environment that consists of options and pressures, some rational and some not, that affect how the options are perceived. A political society that does not engage in state perfectionism of any kind can be said to countenance the ethical environment that results from its political decisions. (It countenances this environment insofar as it could have made decisions that would 97
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have affected it, but chose not to do so.) It is possible that an ethical environment that results from no state perfectionism will be ideal for the autonomous decision making of its members. This may not always be the case, however. Noncoercive state perfectionist measures may be able to counteract or cancel various pressures and influences that would otherwise impede rational decision making by its citizens. Designed well, such measures might contribute to an ethical environment in which people were best able to respond to the reasons for and against the options that they confront. This argument puts the spotlight squarely on the effects of perfectionist measures. If these measures help citizens respond better to the reasons for and against the choices that they confront, then they may not invade, but rather protect and promote, autonomous decision making. If so, this state perfectionism could not be resisted by appeal to autonomy's perfectionist value. Even if this argument were accepted, however, it would not address all the concerns that motivate the manipulation objection. That objection points not only to the effect that noncoercive state perfectionism can have on autonomous decision making, but also to its potentially insulting character. And its potentially insulting character is a function of the fact that it is intentionally undertaken by the state. Noncoercive state perfectionism can take two forms. It might be designed to protect and promote autonomous agency, or it might be designed to help citizens pursue or engage with valuable options (Wall 1998, 197–198). The second form may seem insulting in the way that the first is not. For the first form of state perfectionism merely seeks to empower citizens to make authentic decisions about how to lead their own lives. It does not attempt to encourage them to take up some pursuits over others on the grounds that doing so would constitute a more valuable exercise of their autonomous agency. It is possible that people have a fundamental right to ethical independence that rules out at least this second form of state perfectionism. We cannot escape the influence of our ethical environment: we are subject to the examples, exhortations, and celebrations of other people's ideas about how to live. But we must insist that that environment be created under the aegis of ethical independence: that it be created organically by the decisions of millions of people with the freedom to make their own choices, not through political majorities imposing their decisions on everyone. (Dworkin 2011, 371) If there is a right to ethical independence (and if people generally believed in its existence), then this would help to explain the sense of insult mentioned above. State perfectionism, it could be said, usurps the responsibility of people to lead 98
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their own lives as they see fit, provided that they allow others the same freedom. By so doing, it treats adult citizens as if they were children. The right to ethical independence may be thought to follow from something even more fundamental—the equal moral status of citizens. State perfectionist measures, whether coercive or not, that aim to encourage some pursuits and discourage others on the grounds that they have greater ethical value offends this status by presuming that some citizens are not fully capable of forming, pursuing and revising a conception of the good (Quong 2011, 101–106). This denial of equal moral status explains why such measures send an insulting message, one that is objectionable over and above any impact it has on the autonomy of citizens. In response, perfectionists can argue that the purported right to ethical independence is an exaggeration of an important, but more modest truth. If autonomy is a perfectionist good, and if it is a central component in a well lived life, then persons have rights to make important life-shaping decisions that governments must respect. By acknowledging and honoring these rights, governments treat their citizens not as children, but as independent moral agents. However, these rights do not follow from, or add up to, a general right of ethical independence, one that rules out all governmental efforts to promote the good. Further, perfectionists can argue that it is no insult to a person's status as a moral equal to treat him in ways that presume that his rational capacities are not perfect, but subject to error. Our capacity to form, pursue and revise a conception of the good, like our capacity for a sense of justice, can lead us to mistaken conclusions. When the state supports valuable pursuits over worthless ones, it no more denies the equal moral status of those who reject its action than when it enforces a sound conception of justice that is in dispute. In both cases, presuming that citizens can make errors does not express the view that they lack, or are deficient in, the capacities that constitute equal moral status. The principle of state neutrality, the harm principle, and the purported right to ethical independence all impose moral limits on the power of governments to promote the good or the means by which they can use to promote the good. But sometimes it is claimed not that perfectionist politics are in principle illegitimate, but rather that they are or would be self-defeating. The best way for the state to promote the good, it is sometimes claimed, is for it to refrain scrupulously from all direct efforts at promoting the good (Kymlicka 1990, 199–205). An indirect argument against perfectionist politics thus grants that it is permissible for the state to promote good human lives, but seeks to shows that efforts by the state to do so 99
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will fail. Indirect arguments of this kind take different forms. Some arguments appeal to the nature of the human good, while others point to the incompetence of modern governments. The most influential argument that appeals to the nature of the human good holds that for an activity or relationship to improve a person's life he or she must endorse its value. This argument, which is often referred to as the endorsement constraint, holds that political measures that compel or guide people into activities or pursuits that they do not value will be counterproductive. These measures will not improve the lives of anyone; and they may do harm by directing people away from activities and pursuits that would add value to their lives. The endorsement constraint is based on a simple idea. To add value to a human life, an activity or relationship must be affirmed from the inside. “No life goes better by being led from the outside according to values the person does not endorse” (Kymlicka 1990, 203). Questions can be raised about what constitutes endorsement of an activity. For example, does endorsement require a positive affirmation of the value of an activity or does it merely require that one not be alienated from it? Different versions of the endorsement constraint can be distinguished depending on how the motive that is taken to condition the value of activities is characterized. And different versions of the endorsement constraint will have different implications for state policies. Suppose, for example, that many citizens have no opinion whatsoever on the value of art and that they are induced to attend art museums because their government gives them a tax break for doing so. Here they do not endorse the activity in the strong sense of positively affirming its value. Nevertheless, the government policy of giving tax breaks to citizens who attend art museums may do some good if endorsement does not require positive affirmation. If the citizens are not alienated from the activity, then they may derive value from it. The endorsement constraint looks particularly compelling when certain examples are considered. To take one such example: it is widely thought that for religious worship to add value to a life it must be true that the person actually sees the value of religious worship from “the inside.” Critics of the endorsement constraint contend that the argument overgeneralizes from these plausible examples (Wall 1998). Critics also contend that the endorsement constraint has real force when directed at state efforts to compel people to pursue particular activities, but much less force when directed at state efforts to discourage, or forbid, certain worthless activities (Hurka 1995, 47–48). For example, if the state criminalizes prostitution, then it need not compel anyone to pursue an activity that he or she judges to be of no value. Closing off a worthless option can leave many worthwhile options open 100
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for people to pursue according to their own judgments about the value of these options. The endorsement constraint can be bolstered so that it speaks against state efforts to screen off bad options, even when these efforts leave citizens free to pursue valuable options according to their own judgments. The endorsement constraint, it is sometimes claimed, is necessary to ensure that people lead lives of ethical integrity. To lead a life of ethical integrity one must respond well to the challenge one's life presents one with. And such a challenge, or so it may be argued, cannot be made better when “it has been narrowed, simplified, and bowdlerized by others in advance” (Dworkin 1995, 271). This defense of the endorsement constraint grounds it in a background conception of a good human life, one that holds that the goodness of a human life lies in “the inherent value of a skilled performance of living” (Dworkin 1995, 244). This background conception of a good human life (a conception Ronald Dworkin refers to as “the challenge model”) has been subject to telling criticism (Arneson 2003); but its availability nicely illustrates how an ethical concern for promoting good human lives can ground resistance to perfectionist state policies designed to promote such lives. Rather than appealing to a background conception of a good human life, indirect arguments more frequently appeal to more mundane facts about the competence of modern governments. For a variety of reasons, it is often thought that modern governments simply are not up to the task of promoting the good. It will be helpful to distinguish local from global versions of this objection. It might be true that a particular state should not directly promote the good. Those in power in this state might hold false beliefs about the good, for example. In addition, it might be true that states in general should not directly promote certain objective goods. Friendship is a good that plausibly contributes to the objective value of human lives, but if states try to promote it directly they may do more harm than good. These are both instances of local worries about perfectionist politics. The global objection generalizes from either or both of these worries. It holds either that all states lack the competence to promote the good or that all (or perhaps most) goods are such that it would be counterproductive for the state directly to promote them. Local worries about the effectiveness of perfectionist politics present no deep problem for perfectionist political theory. No serious writer on politics does not share them to some extent. Global distrust of perfectionist politics, however, may seem to present a genuine objection. If global distrust of the competence of modern governments to promote the good were warranted, then the best policy for states to adopt might be state neutrality. For consequentialist 101
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reasons, a perfectionist approach to politics could recommend that the state never aim to promote the good. The global objection rests on very strong claims. Perfectionists can reply that those who advance them exaggerate valid worries about the potential for states to abuse their power. In addition, they can argue that the global objection threatens more than perfectionist politics. If states cannot competently promote the good, then, for the same reasons, they may not be able to enforce justice competently either (Caney 1991). Finally, perfectionists can argue that institutional safeguards, such as legally codified rights, can be effective in preventing the abuse of state power, including state power that promotes perfectionist goods (Sher 1997). Be this as it may, it is important not to confuse means with ends. The end of perfectionist politics is the protection and promotion of objective goods and/or objectively valuable human lives. The question of where and how often the state should rely on indirect, rather than direct, measures to promote the good is a question within perfectionist political theory.[16] Though nothing of much importance turns on it, one could categorize a view that holds that perfectionist political ends are, for contingent reasons, always best pursued indirectly as a genuine instance of perfectionism. Indeed, one can imagine a view that holds that perfectionist political ends will be best achieved if no state official accepts the perfectionist approach to politics. This would be an extreme limiting case—a selfeffacing perfectionism, but perhaps a perfectionist theory of politics nonetheless. Alternatively, one might conclude that a perfectionism that always counseled its own rejection would not be worthy of the name.
Perfectionism has a distinguished pedigree in the history of ideas, but like many theories in moral and political philosophy it remains very much a work in progress. The topics discussed in this entry—perfectionist value theory, perfectionist ethics and perfectionism as an approach to politics—are subject to on-going controversy and development. Moreover, these topics, while complementary, remain partially independent of one another. It is possible to affirm perfectionist ethics and reject perfectionism as an approach to politics. Likewise, it is possible to accept some of the claims of perfectionist value theory while rejecting perfectionist ethical and political conclusions.
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Kraut, R., 1999, “Politics, Neutrality and the Good,” Social Philosophy and Policy, 16: 315–332.
Lecce, S., 2008, Against Perfectionism: Defending Liberal Neutrality, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
McCabe, D., 2000, “Knowing about the Good: A Problem with Anti-Perfectionism,”Ethics, 110: 311-338.
Patten, A., 2012, “Liberal Neutrality: A Reinterpretation and Defense,” Journal of Political Philosophy, 20: 249–272.
Rashdall, H., 1907, The Theory of Good and Evil, London: Oxford University Press.
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Politics, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Raz, J., 1990, “Facing Diversity: The Case of Epistemic Abstinence,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 19: 3–47.
–––, 1996, “Liberty and Trust,” in Natural Law, Liberalism and Morality, R. George (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sandel, M., 2005, Public Philosophy, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Waldron, J., 1989, “Autonomy and Perfectionism in Raz's Morality of Freedom,” Southern California Law Review, 62: 1097–1152.
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Aristotle | autonomy: in moral and political philosophy | consequentialism | doing vs. allowing harm| egalitarianism | liberalism | Nietzsche, Friedrich: moral and political philosophy | paternalism |value: pluralism | well-being
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CHAPTER FIVE Perfectionism (psychology) Not to be confused with Perfectionism (philosophy). The many faces of perfectionism
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Perfectionism (psychology) Not to be confused with Perfectionism (philosophy). Perfectionism, in psychology, is a personality trait characterized by a person's striving for flawlessness and setting excessively high performance standards, accompanied by overly critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others' evaluations. It is best conceptualized as a multidimensional characteristic, as psychologists agree that there are many positive and negative aspects. In its maladaptive form, perfectionism drives people to attempt to achieve an unattainable ideal, and their adaptive perfectionism can sometimes motivate them to reach their goals. In the end, they derive pleasure from doing so. When perfectionists do not reach their goals, they often fall into depression. Definition Perfectionists strain compulsively and unceasingly toward unobtainable goals, and measure their self-worth by productivity and accomplishment. Pressuring oneself to achieve unrealistic goals inevitably sets the person up for disappointment. Perfectionists tend to be harsh critics of themselves when they fail to meet their standards. Normal vs. neurotic perfectionism D. Hamachek in 1978 argued for two contrasting types of perfectionism, classifying people as tending towards normal perfectionism or neurotic perfectionism. Normal perfectionists are more inclined to pursue perfection without compromising their self-esteem, and derive pleasure from their efforts. Neurotic perfectionists are prone to strive for unrealistic goals and feel dissatisfied when they cannot reach them. Hamachek offers several strategies that have proven useful in helping people change from maladaptive towards healthier behavior. Contemporary research supports the idea that these two basic aspects of perfectionistic behavior, as well as other dimensions such as "non perfectionism", can be differentiated. They have been labeled differently, and are sometimes referred to as positive striving and maladaptive evaluation concerns, active and passive perfectionism, positive and negative perfectionism, and adaptive and 110
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maladaptive perfectionism. Although there is a general perfectionism that affects all realms of life, some researchers contend that levels of perfectionism are significantly different across different domains (i.e. work, academic, sport, interpersonal relationships, home life). Page | 111
Others such as T.S. Greenspon disagree with the terminology of "normal" vs. "neurotic" perfectionism, and hold that perfectionists desire perfection and fear imperfection and feel that other people will like them only if they are perfect. For Greenspon, perfectionism itself is thus never seen as healthy or adaptive, and the terms "normal" or "healthy" perfectionism are misnomers, since absolute perfection is impossible. He argues that perfectionism should be distinguished from "striving for excellence", in particular with regard to the meaning given to mistakes. Those who strive for excellence can take mistakes (imperfections) as incentive to work harder. Unhealthy perfectionists consider their mistakes a sign of personal defects. For these people, anxiety about potential failure is the reason perfectionism is felt as a burden. Perfectionistic strivings vs. perfectionistic concerns J. Stoeber and K. Otto suggest that perfectionism consists of two main dimensions: perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns. Perfectionistic strivings are associated with positive aspects of perfectionism; perfectionistic concerns are associated with negative aspects (see below). Healthy perfectionists score high in perfectionistic strivings and low in perfectionistic concerns. Unhealthy perfectionists score high in both strivings and concerns. Nonperfectionists show low levels of perfectionistic strivings. Prompted by earlier research providing empirical evidence that perfectionism could be associated with positive aspects (specifically perfectionistic strivings), they challenged the widespread belief that perfectionism is only detrimental. In fact, people with high levels of perfectionistic strivings and low levels of perfectionist concerns demonstrated more self-esteem, agreeableness, academic success and social interaction. This type of perfectionist also showed fewer psychological and somatic issues typically associated with perfectionism, namely depression, anxiety and maladaptive coping styles. Measurement 111
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Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS) Randy O. Frost et al. (1990) developed a multidimensional perfectionism scale (now known as the "Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale", FMPS) with six dimensions: concern over making mistakes, high personal standards (striving for excellence), the perception of high parental expectations, the perception of high parental criticism, the doubting of the quality of one's actions, and a preference for order and organization. Hewitt & Flett (1991) devised another Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS), a 45-item measure that rates three aspects of perfectionistic selfpresentation: self-oriented perfectionism, other-oriented perfectionism, and socially prescribed perfectionism. Self-oriented perfectionism is having irrational expectations and standards for oneself that lead to a perfectionistic motivation. An example is the constant desire to achieve an ideal physical appearance out of vanity. Other-oriented perfectionism is having irrational expectations and standards for others that in turn pressure them to have perfectionistic motivations of their own. Socially prescribed perfectionism is developing perfectionistic motivations due to the fact that significant others expect them to be perfect. Parents that push their children to be successful in certain endeavors (such as athletics or academics) provide an example of this type of perfectionism, as the children feel that they must meet their parents' lofty expectations. A similarity has been pointed out among Frost's distinction between setting high standards for oneself and the level of concern over making mistakes in performance (the two most important dimensions of the FMPS) and Hewitt & Flett's distinction between self-oriented versus socially prescribed perfectionism. Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (APS-R) Slaney and his colleagues (1996) developed the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (APS-R) to identify perfectionists (adaptive or maladaptive) and nonperfectionists. People are classified based on their scores for High Standards, Order, and Discrepancy measures. Both adaptive and maladaptive perfectionists rate highly in High Standards and Order, but maladaptive perfectionists also rate highly in Discrepancy. Discrepancy refers to the belief that personal high standards 112
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are not being met, which is the defining negative aspect of perfectionism. Maladaptive perfectionists typically yield the highest social stress and anxiety scores, reflecting their feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem .In general, the APS-R is a relatively easy instrument to administer, and can be used to identify perfectionist adolescents as well as adults, though it has yet to be proven useful for children. Interestingly, in one study evaluating APS-R in an adolescent population, maladaptive perfectionists obtained higher satisfaction scores than nonperfectionists. This finding suggests that adolescents' high standards may protect them from challenges to personal satisfaction when their standards are not met. Two other forms of the APS-R measure perfectionism directed towards intimate partners (Dyadic Almost Perfect Scale) and perceived perfectionism from one's family (Family Almost Perfect Scale). Physical Appearance Perfectionism Scale (PAPS) The Physical Appearance Perfectionism Scale (PAPS) explains a particular type of perfectionism - the desire for a perfect physical appearance. The PAPS is a multidimensional assessment of physical appearance perfectionism that provides the most insight when the sub-scales are evaluated separately. In general, the PAPS allows researchers to determine participants' body image and self-conceptions of their looks, which is critical in present times when so much attention is paid to attractiveness and obtaining the ideal appearance. The two sub-scales it uses to assess appearance concerns are Worry About Imperfection and Hope For Perfection. Those that obtain high Worry About Imperfection scores are usually greatly concerned with maladaptive aspects of perfectionism, physical appearance, and body control behavior. They also demonstrate low positive self-perceptions of their appearance, whereas those scoring highly on Hope for Perfection yielded high positive self-perceptions. Hope For Perfection also corresponded with impression management behaviors and striving for ambitious goals. In summary, Worry About Imperfection relates to negative aspects of appearance perfectionism, while Hope For Perfection relates to positive aspects. One limitation of using the PAPS is the lack of psychological literature evaluating its validity. Psychological implications
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Daniels & Price (2000) refer to perfectionists as "ones". Perfectionists are focused on personal integrity and can be wise, discerning and inspiring in their quest for the truth. They also tend to dissociate themselves from their flaws or what they believe are flaws (such as negative emotions) and can become hypocritical and hypercritical of others, seeking the illusion of virtue to hide their own vices. Researchers have begun to investigate the role of perfectionism in various mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders and personality disorders. Each disorder has varying levels of the three measures on the MPSscale. Socially prescribed perfectionism in young women has been associated with greater body-image dissatisfaction and avoidance of social situations that focus on weight and physical appearance. The self-help book Too Perfect: When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Jeanette Dewyze and Allan Mallinger contends that perfectionists have obsessive personality types. Obsessive personality type is different from obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD) in that OCD is a clinical disorder that may be associated with specific ritualized behavior. According to Mallinger and DeWyze, perfectionists are obsessives who need to feel in control at all times to protect themselves and ensure their own safety. By always being vigilant and trying extremely hard, they can ensure that they not only fail to disappoint or are beyond reproach but that they can protect against unforeseen issues caused by their environment. Vigilance refers to constant monitoring, often of the news, weather, and financial markets. The relationship that exists between perfectionistic tendencies and methods of coping with stress has also been examined with some detail. One recent study found that college students with adaptive perfectionistic traits, such as goal fixation or high standards of performance, were more likely to utilize active or problem focused coping. Those who displayed maladaptive perfectionistic tendencies, such as rumination over past events or fixation on mistakes, tended to utilize more passive or avoidance coping. Despite these differences, both groups tended to utilize self-criticism as a coping method. This is consistent with theories that conceptualize self-criticism as a central element of perfectionism.
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There have been identified three main components of perfectionism: self-oriented, other-oriented, and socially prescribed. Self-oriented perfectionism is an intrapersonal dimension characterized by a strong motivation to be perfect, setting and striving for unrealistic self-standards, focusing on flaws, and generalization of self-standards. Self-oriented perfectionism may also involve a well-articulated ideal self-schema. Other-oriented perfectionism involves similar behaviors, but these behaviors are directed toward others instead of toward the self. Socially prescribed perfectionism entails the belief that others have perfectionistic expectations and motives for oneself. Positive aspects Perfectionism can drive people to accomplishments and provide the motivation to persevere in the face of discouragement and obstacles. Roedell (1984) argues: In a positive form, perfectionism can provide the driving energy which leads to great achievement. The meticulous attention to detail, necessary for scientific investigation, the commitment which pushes composers to keep working until the music realises the glorious sounds playing in the imagination, and the persistence which keeps great artists at their easels until their creation matches their conception all result from perfectionism. Slaney and his colleagues found that adaptive perfectionists had lower levels of procrastination than non-perfectionists. In the field of positive psychology, an adaptive and healthy variation of perfectionism is referred to as optimalism. Exceptionally talented people who excel in their field sometimes show signs of perfectionism. High-achieving athletes, scientists, and artists often show signs of perfectionism. For example, some contend that Michelangelo's perfectionism may have motivated him to painstakingly complete his masterpieces including the statue David and the Sistine Chapel. Scientists that intently pursue their interests in the laboratory are often considered perfectionists. This obsession with an end result may motivate them to work diligently and maintain an impressive work ethic. Famous figures have publicly admitted that they have perfectionist tendencies. Martha Stewart once described herself to Oprah Winfrey as a "maniacal perfectionist." An intense focus on one's passion can lead to success.
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The adaptive form of perfectionism is typically considered the positive component of this personality trait. Adaptive perfectionism includes preferences for order and organization, a persistent striving for excellence, and conscientious orientation to tasks and performance. All of these characteristics are accompanied by low criticism and negativity, and high support and self-esteem. The positive, adaptive forms of perfectionism are more closely associated with the Big Five personality factor of conscientiousness, whereas maladaptive forms are more similar to neuroticism (see below). Negative aspects In its pathological form, perfectionism can be damaging. It can take the form of procrastination when used to postpone tasks and self-deprecation when used to excuse poor performance or to seek sympathy and affirmation from other people. In general, maladaptive perfectionists feel constant pressure to meet their high standards, which creates cognitive dissonance when one cannot meet their own expectations. Perfectionism has been associated with numerous other psychological and physiological complications as well. Suicide Perfectionism is increasingly being seen as a risk factor for suicide that has a double edged sword. The tendency of perfectionists to have excessively high expectations of self and to be self-critical when their efforts do not meet the standard they have established combined with their tendency to show a "perfect face" to the world increases their risk of suicide ideation while decreasing the likelihood they will seek help when they should. General applications Perfectionism often shows up in performance at work or school, neatness and aesthetics, organization, writing, speaking, physical appearance, and health and personal cleanliness. In the workplace, perfectionism is often marked by low productivity and missed deadlines as people lose time and energy by paying attention to irrelevant details of their tasks, ranging from major projects to mundane daily activities. This can lead to depression, social alienation, and a greater risk of workplace "accidents."Adderholdt-Elliot (1989) describes five 116
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characteristics of perfectionist students and teachers which contribute to underachievement: procrastination, fear of failure, an "all-or-nothing" mindset, paralyzed perfectionism, and work holism. According to C. Allen, in intimate relationships, unrealistic expectations can cause significant dissatisfaction for both partners. Greenspoon lists behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that typically characterize perfectionism. Perfectionists will not be content with their work until it meets their standards, which can make perfectionists less efficient in finishing projects, and they therefore will struggle to meet deadlines. In a different occupational context, athletes may develop perfectionist tendencies. Optimal physical and mental performance is critical for professional athletes, which are aspects that closely relate to perfectionism. Although perfectionist athletes strive to succeed, they can be limited by their intense fear of failure and therefore not exert themselves fully or feel overly personally responsible for a loss.[33] Because their success is frequently measured by a score or statistics, perfectionist athletes may feel excessive pressure to succeed. Perfectionism sheds light on people's desire for structure and guidance. They tend to work well in structured environments with explicit instructions. Because perfectionists focus on concrete aspects of a task, they may be inflexible to change and lack creativity if problems arise. This can pose a problem when an unforeseen situation arises. Medical complications Perfectionists can suffer from anxiety and low self-esteem. Perfectionism is a risk factor for obsessive compulsive disorder, obsessive compulsive personality disorder, eating disorders, social anxiety, social phobia, body dysmorphic disorder, work aholism, self harm, substance abuse, and clinical depression as well as physical problems like chronic stress, and heart disease. In addition, studies have found that people with perfectionism have a higher mortality rate than those without perfectionism.[34] A possible reason for this is the additional stress and worry that accompanies the irrational belief that everything should be perfect. Therapists attempt to tackle the negative thinking that surrounds perfectionism, in particular the "all-or-nothing" thinking in which the client believes that an
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achievement is either perfect or useless. They encourage clients to set realistic goals and to face their fear of failure. Since perfectionism is a self-esteem issue based on emotional convictions about what one must do to be acceptable as a person, negative thinking is most successfully addressed in the context of a recovery process which directly addresses these emotional convictions. Narcissism According to Arnold Cooper, narcissism can be considered as a self-perceived form of perfectionism - "an insistence on perfection in the idealized self-object and the limitless power of the grandiose self. These are rooted in traumatic injuries to the grandiose self." Narcissists often are pseudo-perfectionists and require being the center of attention and create situations where they will receive attention. This attempt at being perfect is cohesive with the narcissist's grandiose self-image. If a perceived state of perfection isn't reached it can lead to guilt, shame, anger or anxiety because he/she believes that he/she will lose the imagined love and admiration from other people if he or she is not perfect. Personality traits Perfectionism is one of Raymond Cattell's 16 Personality Factors. According to this construct, people that are organized, compulsive, self-disciplined, socially precise, exacting will power, controlled, and self-sentimental are perfectionists. In the Big Five personality traits, perfectionism is an extreme manifestation of conscientiousness and can provoke increasing neuroticism as the perfectionist's expectations are not met. Maladaptive perfectionism is more similar to neuroticism while adaptive perfectionism is more similar to conscientiousness. The latter positively corresponds with life satisfaction, self-esteem, secure attachment, and cohesive self-development. A study found that athletes with a respect and love for themselves ("basic selfesteem") exhibit more positive patterns of perfectionism, whereas individuals who 118
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have a self-esteem that is dependent on competence aspects ("earning self-esteem") show more negative perfectionism. Treatment Treatment for perfectionism can be approached from many therapeutic directions. Some examples of psychotherapy include: cognitive-behavioral therapy (the challenging of irrational thoughts and formation of alternative ways of coping and thinking), psychoanalytic therapy (an analysis of underlying motives and issues), group therapy (where two or more clients work with one or more therapists about a specific issue, this is beneficial for those who feel as if they are the only one experiencing a certain problem), humanistic therapy (person-centered therapy where the positive aspects are highlighted), and self-therapy (personal time for the person where journaling, self-discipline, self-monitoring, and honesty with self are essential). Cognitive-behavioral therapy has been shown to successfully help perfectionists. By using this approach, a person can begin to recognize his or her irrational thinking and find an alternative way to approach situations. Cognitivebehavioral therapy is intended to help the person understand that it is okay to make mistakes sometimes and that those mistakes can become lessons learned.
The many faces of perfectionism The need for perfection comes in different flavors, each associated with its own set of problems, researchers say. By ETIENNE BENSON Monitor Staff November 2003, Vol 34, No. 10 Paul Hewitt, PhD, does not have much patience with researchers who argue that perfectionism--the need to be or appear perfect--can sometimes serve as a healthy motivation for reaching ambitious goals. "I don't think needing to be perfect is in any way adaptive," he says. 119
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Hewitt should know. In more than 20 years of research, he and his colleagues-particularly psychologist Gordon Flett, PhD--have found that perfectionism correlates with depression, anxiety, eating disorders and other mental health problems. This summer, several new studies were published that help explain how perfectionism can contribute to psychopathology. "In the literature right now--this astounds me--people have said that self-oriented perfectionism is adaptive," says Hewitt, a practicing psychologist and professor at the University of British Columbia. "People will make that claim, and they'll just ignore the fairly large literature that says that it's a vulnerability factor for unipolar depression, anorexia and suicide." The question of adaptiveness Since the early 1990s, Hewitt and Flett, a professor of psychology at York University in Toronto have championed the idea that perfectionism comes in different flavors, each associated with different kinds of problems. Some of those problems may be less severe than others, they argue, but no form of perfectionism is completely problem-free. Other researchers, however, have suggested that some forms of perfectionism-particularly those that involve high personal standards--can be adaptive. Worldclass athletes, they argue, have extraordinarily high standards; they shouldn't be labeled pathological just because they aim high. That's an over simplification, says Hewitt, one that conflates two very different things: the desire to excel and the desire to be perfect. To illustrate the difference, Hewitt tells a story about one of his patients, a depressed university student who was convinced he needed to get an A+ in a particular course. The student studied hard and aced the class, but when Hewitt saw him afterward, he was even more depressed and suicidal than before. "He proceeded to tell me that the A+ was just a demonstration of how much of a failure he was," says Hewitt. If he were perfect, the student argued, he wouldn't have had to work so hard. Defining perfectionism 120
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At the heart of the debate lies a disagreement over definitions--what exactly is meant by the words "adaptive" and "perfectionism." For some researchers, the debate can be resolved by dividing perfectionists into two types, adaptive and maladaptive. That's the path taken by psychologist Kenneth Rice, PhD, and his colleagues in a recent study in the Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy(Vol. 17, No. 1). They found that both adaptive and maladaptive perfectionists have high personal standards, but failing to meet those standards is more stressful for the latter than for the former. Not everyone agrees that such a distinction is the best solution. "I think it's unfortunate that we have evolved into a language in which we talk about perfectionism as 'adaptive,'" says psychologist Randy Frost, PhD. "That might not be a productive way of thinking about it." In particular, talk of adaptiveness often ignores the role of context in determining whether a particular attitude or behavior is adaptive, says Frost, a professor at Smith College. High standards might be adaptive in one situation but not another, or for certain people but not others, he says. Furthermore, while high standards are a part of perfectionism, they alone are not enough to make a person a perfectionist. "One thing that's clear is that the setting of high standards for oneself isn't always related to pathology," says Frost. Links to psychopathology While the debate over the adaptiveness of perfectionism continues, researchers have made significant progress in understanding how perfectionism can contribute to psychopathology. For some varieties of perfectionism, the link is clear. Socially prescribed perfectionism--believing that others will value you only if you are perfect--has been associated with depression and other problems, including suicide.
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"I think the reason for that is that socially prescribed perfectionism has an element of pressure combined with a sense of helplessness and hopelessness," explains Flett. Socially prescribed perfectionists, he notes, tend to feel that "the better I do, the better I'm expected to do." Page | 122
There are also clear problems with other-oriented perfectionism, the tendency to demand perfection from friends, family, co-workers and others. It can be particularly damaging for intimate relationships, says Hewitt. "If you require your spouse to be perfect, and you're critical of that spouse, you can tell right away that there's going to be relationship problems," says Hewitt. For self-oriented perfectionism--an internally motivated desire to be perfect--the picture is less clear. Studies by Hewitt and Flett and their colleagues, as well as other research groups, have found links to mental health problems, particularly eating disorders. In a recent paper in Cognitive Therapy and Research (Vol. 26, No. 6), Hewitt, Flett and their colleagues reported a correlation between anorexia nervosa and self-oriented perfectionism. Other studies, however, have failed to find such connections. Hewitt and Flett suggest that this is because self-oriented perfectionism is a risk factor, or vulnerability, for psychological disorders--not a disorder itself. Self-oriented perfectionists do fine in situations of low stress, they argue, but are more likely to become depressed, anxious or suicidal when things go wrong. "Essentially, what we've found for the so-called adaptive dimension of perfectionism--self-oriented perfectionism--is that when people experience life stressors, it didn't turn out so successfully," says Flett. Support for Hewitt and Flett's "specific vulnerability hypothesis" is not yet conclusive, but some evidence for it has been found. In a recent issue of the Journal of Counseling Psychology (Vol. 50, No. 3), they and their colleagues reported that the effect of perfectionism on depression in female students was moderated by "hassles"--minor interpersonal and achievement-related problems.
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Other supporting evidence comes from a recent study by British psychologists Rory O'Connor, PhD, of the University of Strathclyde, and Daryl B. O'Connor, PhD, of the University of Leeds. They found that hopelessness and psychological distress among college students could be predicted by the interaction between perfectionism and avoidance coping-dealing with problems by avoiding them--but not by perfectionism or avoidance coping alone. Perfectionists with positive coping styles, O'Connor and O'Connor found, were no more depressed than average. The results, reported in the Journal of Counseling Psychology (Vol. 50, No. 3), support the idea that perfectionism interacts with other traits and life events to produce psychopathology. Perfectionistic self-presentation The desire to present oneself as perfect also has important consequences for psychopathology, especially in the context of treatment. Hewitt, Flett and their colleagues have recently devised a new scale, the Perfectionistic Self-Presentation Scale (PSPS), to measure it. The PSPS rates three aspects of perfectionistic self-presentation: advertising one's own perfection, avoiding situations in which one might appear to be imperfect and failing to disclose situations in which one has been imperfect. Hewitt and Flett have found that the PSPS predicts psychological distress above and beyond what is predicted by their original measure of perfectionism, the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale. The finding is reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 84, No. 6). "Those types of individuals tend not to disclose anything that's going to make them look imperfect," says Hewitt. "It's difficult to keep them in treatment, because you're asking them to do the thing they've been fighting against." As a practicing psychologist who frequently treats perfectionists, Hewitt avoids focusing on high personal standards. Patients have likely been told hundreds of times to lower their standards, and the therapist who repeats that risks being ignored, he says. 123
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"I work more on the precursors of perfection--the need to be accepted, to be cared for," says Hewitt, "Those interpersonal needs are what drive the perfectionistic behavior." Page | 124
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References 1. Jump up^ Stoeber, Joachim; Childs, Julian H. (2010). "The Assessment of Self-Oriented and Socially Prescribed Perfectionism: Subscales Make a Difference". Journal of Personality Assessment 92 (6): 577– 585. doi:10.1080/00223891.2010.513306. PMID 20954059. 2. Jump up^ Flett, G. L.; Hewitt, P. L. (2002). Perfectionism. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. pp. 5–31. 3. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h Yang, Hongfei; Stoeber, Joachim (2012). "The Physical Appearance Perfectionism Scale: Development and Preliminary Validation". Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment 34 (1): 69–83. doi:10.1007/s10862-011-9260-7. 4. Jump up^ Parker, W. D.; Adkins, K. K. (1995). "Perfectionism and the gifted". Roeper Review 17(3): 173– 176. doi:10.1080/02783199509553653. 5. Jump up^ Hamachek, D. E. (1978). "Psychodynamics of normal and neurotic perfectionism".Psychology 15: 27–33 6. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Rice, Kenneth G.; Ashby, Jeffrey S.; Gilman, Rich (2011). "Classifying adolescent perfectionists". Psychological Assessment 23 (3): 563–577. doi:10.1037/a0022482.PMID 21319903. 7. ^ Jump up to:a b c Stoeber, Joachim; Otto, Kathleen (2006). "Positive Conceptions of Perfectionism: Approaches, Evidence, Challenges". Personality and Social Psychology Review 10 (4): 295– 319. doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr1004_2. PMID 17201590. 8. ^ Jump up to:a b c Greenspon, T.S. (2008). Making sense of error: A view of the origins and treatment of perfectionism. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 62, (3), 263-282. 9. Jump up^ Greenspon, T.S. (2007)What to do when good enough is not good enough: The real deal on perfectionism. Minneapolis: Free Spirit Publishing. 125
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10.^ Jump up to:a b Greenspon, T.S. (2002) Freeing Our Families From Perfectionism. Minneapolis: Free Spirit Publishing. 11.Jump up^ Greenspon, T.S. (2000). “Healthy perfectionism” is an oxymoron! Reflections on the psychology of perfectionism and the sociology of science. The Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, XI,197–208. 12.Jump up^ Frost, R. O.; Heimburg, R. G.; Holt, C. S.; Mattia, J. I.; Neubauer, A. A. (1993). "A comparison of two measures of perfectionism". Personality and Individual Differences 14: 469– 489. doi:10.1016/0191-8869(93)90181-2 13.Jump up^ Randy O. Frost, Patricia Marten, Cathleen Lahart, Robin Rosenblate: The dimensions of perfectionism. Cognitive Therapy and Research, October 1990, Volume 14, Issue 5, pp 449-468. DOI: 10.1007/BF01172967 14.Jump up^ Hewitt, P.; Flett, G. (1991). "Dimensions of Perfectionism in Unipolar Depression"(PDF). Journal of Abnormal Psychology 100 (1): 98–101. doi:10.1037/0021843X.100.1.98. PMID 2005279 15.^ Jump up to:a b c "The Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale: Reliability, validity, and psychometric properties in psychiatric samples". Retrieved March 22, 2012. 16.Jump up^ Toon W. Taris, Ilona van Beek, Wilmar B. Schaufeli: Why do perfectionists have a higher burnout risk than others? The mediational effect of workaholism. Romanian Journal of Applied Psychology, 2010, Vol.12, No.1, pp. 1-7. 17.^ Jump up to:a b Slaney, R.B.; Rice, K.G.; Mobley, M.; Trippi, J.; Ashby, J.S. (2001). "The Revised Almost Perfect Scale". Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development 34(3): 130–145 18.Jump up^ Daniels, M.D., D.; Price, PhD, V. (2000). "The Essential Enneagram". New York: HarperCollins 126
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19.Jump up^ Hewitt, P. L.; Flett, G.; Ediger, E. (1995). "Perfectionism traits and perfectionistic self-presentation in eating disorder attitudes, characteristics, and symptoms". International Journal of Eating Disorders 18 (4): 317–326. doi:10.1002/1098108X(199512)18:4<317::AID-EAT2260180404>3.0.CO;22. PMID 8580917. 20.^ Jump up to:a b Mallinger, A.; DeWyze, J. (1992). "Too Perfect: When Being in Control Gets Out of Control". New York: Fawcett Columbine 21.^ Jump up to:a b c Wielkiewicz, R. M., & Wonderlich, S. J. (2006). Correlations between perfectionism and coping strategies in response to researcher-selected vignettes or participant-selected events. Psychological Reports, 98(3), 745-755. 22.Jump up^ DUNKLEYD,.M.,ZUROFFD,.C.,& BLANKSTEIKN.,R.(2003). Self-critical perfectionism and daily affect: dispositional and situational influences on stress and coping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 234-252. 23.Jump up^ http://gei.sagepub.com.proxy.uba.uva.nl:2048/content/13/3/216.f ull.pdf+html 24.Jump up^ Roedell, W.C. (1984). "Vulnerabilities of highly gifted children". Roeper Review 6 (3): 127– 130. doi:10.1080/02783198409552782 25.Jump up^ Neimark, Jill (May 2007). "The Optimism Revolution". Psychology Today: 1–3. Retrieved July 1, 2011. 26.Jump up^ Brett, Bill. "Are They Too Perfect?". Boston.com. Boston Globe. Retrieved 12 May2012. 27.^ Jump up to:a b c d Rice, Kenneth G.; Leever, Brooke A.; Noggle, Chad A.; Lapsley, Daniel K. (2007). "Perfectionism and depressive
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symptoms in early adolescence". Psychology in the Schools44 (2): 139–156. doi:10.1002/pits.20212. 28.Jump up^ Greenspon, Thomas S. "Is There an Antidote to Perfectionism?" Psychology in the Schools, November 2014: 986998. 29.Jump up^ Antony, PhD, Martin (2009). When Perfect Isn't Good Enough: Strategies for Coping with Perfectionism. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications. p. 312. ISBN 978-1572245594.|page= 30.Jump up^ Psychology Today (May 1995). "Perfectionism: Impossible Dream". Psychology Today 31.Jump up^ Adderholdt-Elliot, M. (1989). "Perfectionism and underachievement". Gifted Child Today12 (1): 19–21 32.Jump up^ Allen, C. (May 2003). "The Perfectionist's Flawed Marriage". Psychology Today 33.Jump up^ "The Downside of Perfectionism in Sports". Sports Psychology Today. Retrieved12 May 2012. 34.Jump up^ "Being a Perfectionist Can take toll on health". Retrieved March 22, 2012. 35.Jump up^ Arnold M. Cooper, "Introduction" in Arnold M. Cooper ed., Contemporary Psychoanalysis in America (2006) p. xxxiv 36.Jump up^ Sorotzkin, Benzion (18 Apr 2006). "The Quest for Perfection: Avoiding Guilt or avoiding shame?". Psychology Today. 37.^ Jump up to:a b Cattell, H.; Mead, A. (2008). "The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF)".The SAGE Handbook of Personality Theory and Assessment 2: 135– 159.doi:10.4135/9781849200479.n7. ISBN 9781412946520 38.Jump up^ Koivula, Nathalie; Hassmén, Peter; Fallby, Johan (2002). "Self-esteem and perfectionism in elite athletes: effects on competitive 128
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anxiety and self-confidence". Personality and Individual Differences 32 (5): 865–875. doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(01)00092-7. 39.Jump up^ "Types of Therapy". Retrieved March 22, 2012. Page | 129
Further reading[edit]
Castro, J.R.; Rice, K.G. (February 9, 2003). "Perfectionism and ethnicity: implications for depressive symptoms and self-reported academic achievement". Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 9 (1): 64– 78. doi:10.1037/1099-9809.9.1.64. PMID 12647326
Jackson, Melissa (June 19, 2004). "Why perfect is not always best". BBC News. Retrieved 14 March 2013.
Phillipson, PhD, Steven. "The Right Stuff: Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder: A Defect of Philosophy, not Anxiety". Center for Cognitive-Behavioral Psychotherapy. Retrieved 14 March 2013.
Shaw, Daniel (2013). Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation. Routledge
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THE END OF THE BOOK Sometime people thinks that perfection is all about good life,well being, thinks that is all about meeting the very high standards in life, while others thinks that perfectionism associated with ethical theories that characterize the human good in terms of the development of human nature. So according the above and a lots of examples, others views, other writings from different scholars and great philosophies like Aristotle and etc tries to explains a lots . All in all there is burden to every explanations. Means that there must be independent reason to support that perfections exists. Also through this book shows that how a person can become affected or fails to achieve goals in his or her life through determining perfection in life. Also the danger of being perfect book is like a golden weapon to all human beings to thinks and also to focus on the things which will determine our reality in life. Danger of being perfect is much insisting to perfectionists to change their behaviors and also to be good people. As usual the danger of being perfect is trying to show the core elements or all ways like in philosophy, psychology ,politics ,developments and etc that shall enable a person to determine the best value in life. The danger of being perfect show how people must love their love through willing to changes, to let go of old ways and unhealthy habits so that we can be best we can be. It is about having the right perspective and understanding the value of who we are and what we have. To know the danger of being perfect let us to discover the greatness that is inside us and also help us to be willingly to change our life. No matter where we are today, we have the potential to have better life, relationships, to increase in confidence and also to overcome obstacles and also to celebrate the life that God has given us. Perhaps some unfair things have happened into our past. Those things don`t define us and they don`t determine our future. So let this book help us to see our life with a fresh new perspective.
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This book can be used both spiritually, formation process in religious life, inspirations/motivational, psychology studies, philosophy studies and etc. So let our light shine before men, we won`t put this beautiful book in a drawer or in a book shelf or under a basket; we will let others see it by leading it to our poor neighbors who can`t afford to buy a copy of it. We should buy gifts copies for our parents, partners, brothers, sisters, priests, nuns. It is good rather to lend the book than give it away or people may just put it on a shelf, then only one more person reads the book. St Jerome says that when we pray we speak to God; but when we read; God speaks to us. St .Augustine, St. Ignatius of Loyola dedicated their lives completely to God after reading spiritual book. Maybe after reading this book, you may dedicate your life to God or develop love to your neighbor . so I ask you to take the book now, do not give it away. You may be surprised at your ability to be an apostle and spread the love of God after knowing the meaning of perfection that is a chimera. Please will you help me to distribute this wonderful book? I have set quantity prices very low for you. God bless you. By Avitus Leonard.Nganyirwohi
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Notice Alphonsus,L,, 1927,Dignity and duties of the priest,New YORK;Brokln. Editoral Verbo Divino, 2004; I believe a little Catholic Catechism; Graficas Estella,31200, Estella(Navarra). Editoral Verbo Divino,2009; God shows the way to his people, Espana, Graficas Estella,31200, Estella( Navarra). ____,2004; Compendium of the social Doctrine of the Church; pontifical council for justice and peace. _____,2013-2014; Compendium for Development perspective; Dodoma, Tanzania; University of Dodoma( school of social sciences). Osteen Victoria, 2004; love your life; new York; free press
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Index of References Holy Bible Sacred scripture Old Testament Second Book of Samuel 22:31 Job 37:16 Psalms 18:30
New Testament Gospel according to Matthew 5 :48 Gospel according to Luke 18:19 Letter to Romans 12:2 Letter to James 1:25
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HOLY QURAN Quran 39:18 TMQ 16:19 TMQ 32:7 Hadith narrated by Bukhari 50/4777 Authentic Hadith, narrated by Muslim 1955
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ORDER FORM AVITUS LEONARD, NGANYIRWOHI, EMAIL; nruguye@yahoo.com BLOGS: www.avitusleonard.wordpress.com www.avitus.thoughts.com MOBILE PHONES: +255682155358 +255758356695 CODE NUMBER: 1229202119( such number must be send to nruguye@yahoo.com or +255682155368 for notification).
Gentleman/ladies Please send me__________________ copies of THE DANGER OF BEING PERFECT. Enclosed is my payment in the amount of__________________. Name_________________________________________________________ Street_________________________________________________________ City___________________________________________________________ Country_______________________________________________________ Country code___________________________________________________
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The danger of being perfect by Avitus Leonard, Nganyirwohi
The danger of being perfect is written by Avitus Leonard, Nganyirwohi. Born 17/05/1989 at Rubya Village, Muleba District in Kagera Region. Schooled at Rubya primary school at 1998-2004, and joined Bukinda seminary-kabale Uganda at 2005, 2006 joined Kisubi seminary-kampala, Uganda. Then 2007 joined Mzinga High school-Dar es salaam, Tanzania. 2011-2014 joined Institute of Judicial Administration-Lushoto. 2014-2015 joined Rosminians fathers at Gare formation house. Currently deals with writings books, such as spiritual books, motivation books, law books, psychological books, philosophical books, a blogger and etc. The author of the book is much competent in law especial commercial law, human sexuality, philosophy, psychology and also a motivational speakers. For more info visit www.avitusleonard.wordpress.com
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