LITTLE ROCK — Too often, individuals lie to themselves to avoid making moral choices, a professor of philosophy said in Little Rock on Monday.
St. Olaf College professor Gordon Marino, an expert on the ideas of Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, said during a lecture at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service that the morally right choice is often evident on first blush.
But the morally right choice can carry a cost individuals aren’t willing to pay.
Instead of making the morally wrong choice out of selfinterest, however, people lie to themselves to rationalize making the morally wrong decision, Marino said.
“It’s not often we just do things defiantly, ‘This is wrong, I’m going to do it anyway and I don’t care,’” Marino said. “We are always ready to feed ourselves some line to convince ourselves that what is wrong is right, or at least all right. There’s a tendency to explain things away.”
Marino is curator of the Hong Kierkegaard Library in Minnesota. The library is home to more than 11,000 volumes on the philosopher. Marino is also an editor of the Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard.
Kierkegaard, a philosopher from the 19th century, emphasized the importance of free choice and individual responsibility. He’s considered one ofthe fathers of existentialism.
A personal example of the human tendency to self-deceive, Marino said, was when he became convinced that the Contra rebels were killing civilians with U.S. support during the violence in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
Marino decided at the time that the morally right thing to do would be to stop paying taxes to the U.S. government in protest.
He didn’t do so immediately, however. Soon, he applied for a prestigious academic scholarship.
Marino knew it would hurt his chances to earn a scholarship if he stopped paying taxes, so he never did.
At the time, Marino said, he lied to himself and rationalized the decision by saying he could do more good for a greater number of people if he received the scholarship and went on to earn his doctorate.
To Kierkegaard, one solution to the problem of selfdeception is making the morally right decision immediately, Marino said.
“He’s not saying we should do whatever we want to do impulsively. It’s only after we know what the right thing to do is that we should do it and not waste any time,” Marino said. “In many, many cases, we do know what the right thing is. We have some kind of clarity.”
Marino thinks another part of the solution is changing the way ethics are taught in American high schools and colleges.
He said there’s too much emphasis on teaching philosophical theories and not enough training on how to live a moral life from a practical standpoint.
“As educators, we should provide more opportunities for thinking about what gets in the way of doing the right thing,” he said. “What are the impediments of being moral?”
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 04/14/2010