Abuse of the Word Extremist; Is The Sermon on the Mount a “Set of Extreme Ideas?”
Tyler Cowen wrote a Bloomberg column “In Defense of Extremism,” pointing out that to label an idea “extremist” is a lazy way of dismissing the idea.
An example he cites is tripling legal immigration, an idea he favors while recognizing that it’s outside the mainstream. Tyler’s point is that if you disagree with that idea and want to preserve your intellectual virtue, you need to say why you disagree with it. Not merely call it “extreme.”
As well, just because today’s popular opposition makes an idea currently extreme and therefore impractical to implement does not by itself render it a bad idea. Yesterday’s “extremist” proposal––Tyler cites gay marriage–––can become today’s accepted mainstream position.
Of course, there are many ideas that Tyler and others believe are both extreme and ill-conceived, e.g., giving Guam statehood. But there still remains a responsibility to say why ideas like this are bad.
Tyler’s column is a good reminder that using words like “extreme” as a substitute for reasoning and debate is a bad habit, easy to fall prey to.
What really caught my attention, however, was Tyler’s paragraph below:
“In fact, one might even say that much of American society itself is based on a set of extreme ideas called Christianity. I myself am not religious, but it seems to me that in this respect Christianity is not unlike many other religions.”
Full disclosure: I am Jewish and consider myself part of a religious tradition that is the older brother of Christianity. Within the Gospels, the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7 ) is a beautiful summary of most of the major ethical precepts of Christianity. In its expression of both great hope and great expectation of man’s capacity for goodness, one can aptly call the Sermon extreme.
Among other things in the Sermon, Jesus asks of man
To turn the other cheek and love our enemies, e.g., if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.
To serve one master- god, and not material ambitions
To judge not, that you be not judged.
To give to the needy anonymously and to pray and to fast without show, i.e., to not seek praise from your fellow man for your good acts
To which we might say, “Ah, If only men were angels!”
For if you study the Sermon in its “simple and direct way” 1 without rationalization or sophistry, it’s hard to argue that America, or the life of any individual, is organized around or based on the teachings of the Sermon. Not even close.
Experience of life teaches us that our human nature condemns us to behave in opposition to these teachings. So, we see them as unattainable, maybe the way things are arranged in heaven, but not here on earth.
Perhaps the most unrealistic of the Sermon’s teaching is to turn the other cheek and love one’s enemy. I search my life in vain for even one pure example of my having turned the other cheek against a foe.
I have never been in a physical fight in my life. I’ve run from fights, but avoiding a fight is far from turning the other cheek.
In business, I’ve been lied to many times and defrauded once. Each time, I’ve vowed revenge and on very rare occasions even sought it. (We’re never so tough as when we’re fulminating inside our own head!)
I’ve been in many arguments; recently they seem to happen on-line. In my sub stack comments, I think I’ve come close to turning the other cheek, But when I’ve “liked” a hostile comment directed to me (e.g., “you’re a moron,”) I’ve done so with sarcastic intent.
Yet, despite the great divide between my behavior and what the Sermon preaches, I find great value in the Sermon. Or in any set of well-organized and ambitious ethical precepts, which are mostly found in religious doctrine.
While it’s true that I cannot generally live according to the precepts of loving my enemy or refraining from judging others, or renouncing material goods, having these extreme ideals in mind can help guide me.
Most of our decisions in life do not fit well with an absolute set of ethics like the Sermon. We rely instead on instinct––if you call me a moron, I’ll call you an idiot; or, if we tamp down instinct and stop to think, we rely on an “ethic of responsibility” (per Max Weber 2 where we judge our actions by what is practical––someone has defrauded me, I will report him to the authorities rather than “giving him my cloak after he’s taken my tunic.”
Still, we can gain enormous positive value by weighing our actions in dual fashion against both an absolute ethic of morality and an ethic of practicality or responsibility At least then, having weighed what to do, when we compromise the absolute ethic, the ethic of the Sermon, we do so knowingly because it is the responsible, mature, reasonable thing to do. We do not self-delude.
And when we make a stand and are able to choose the absolute ethic, we can know that too.
“simple and direct” are Leo Tolstoy’s (translated) words. Tolstoy became a “convert” to the literal interpretation of the Sermon and believed adherence to it would mean an end to the concept of the State and all the State’s associated evils.
A key concept in Weber’s two majestic 1919 lectures “Politics as a Vocation” and “Science as a Vocation.” Weber called turning the other cheek an “ethics of indignity.” Further, to live purely by religious precepts required “a surrender of the intellect.”