Impartiality

Each summer, I teach a one-week institute titled “The Philosophy of Love and Sex.”  It is quite successful, but quite intense – 8hrs/day over five days – and generally everyone is emotionally depleted by the time it is done.  More than a few relationships usually suffer from this course and people’s perceptions and ideas undergo dramatic, and sometimes traumatic, transformation. 

I like it, but it takes all of the skill that I have as an instructor to teach this course. 

We were talking during one of our sessions about homosexuality and gay marriage.  Tough topics for some, and the moment I say “let’s talk about two humans of the same sex getting married” everyone becomes immediately and emphatically neutral, or at least, they become doggedly “impartial” and “nonjudgmental”:

“Oh, well, lots of people in the world and what they do is their own business.”

“I dunno, don’t see why they can’t get married…free country.”

“I’m not really in favor of it, but I get it.” 

“Well, what do YOU think, professor?”

What do I think?  I think I have some harsh words about our views of “impartiality” and “nonjudgmental” thinking.  To some extent, I understand the impulse here.  There are conflicting forces in a class like this.  Students are worried about taking strong positions in front of their peers and in front of me.  They don’t know what my own position is and they’re worried that if they don’t “tow the company line,” as it were, I might retaliate with a low grade (for any students reading this, be at ease.  I do not do any such thing and you might be surprised how rarely this occurs.).  But there’s something else going on, too.  An intentional and studied refusal to take a stand on a major issue.  And this resistance to taking a stand masquerades as a kind of intellectual neutrality and “objective” impartiality. 

On my good days, I think that this “objectivity” is a well-meaning but misguided distaste for disagreement.  In an unreflective way, most people value free speech and the right to think (and sometimes do) whatever they wish.  Disagreement then looks like a sort of limit on our guaranteed right to express ourselves.  And indeed, when my students talk about why they’re reticent to take a stand, they talk about the value of not stifling opinions through calling some “right” and some “wrong,” and they regard disagreement as an insult or criticism, in short, as an attack.  I like this quality in people; I like to think that my students are wary of trampling free speech.  On my good days…

Nevermind that disagreement is healthy.  Nevermind that it is the contrast and opposition between positions that drives discourse, forces reflection, and makes people reevaluate their own position in light of new arguments.  Discourses where either everyone agrees or no one posits anything of substance are not discourses.  They’re more like pathologies of discourse.  Signs that something has gone wrong.  At the very least, disagreement is a check both on indifference and absolute claims.  In other words, very very necessary.

On my bad days, I notice that my students’ indifferently “objective” attitude disappears at the first sign someone disagrees with them, especially when the disagreement concerns something deeply valuable or meaningful in their lives.  Case in point: my students were happy to invoke neutrality with regards to gay marriage, but when I suggested instead that adults should be able to marry children this neutrality disappeared.  There were very strong feelings and no sign of their previous reticence towards disagreement. 

Strong identities were formed around the need to protect children, the intrinsic sense of wrongness in the relation, the importance of consent and autonomy, and a deep belief that something of the sanctity of marriage was violated when applied to children.  Adults marrying children looked to them more like servitude than love, more like abuse than mutual care.  Reticence evaporated and strong positions were established around these deeply powerful values. 

But gay marriage…eh.

At this point, intellectual neutrality and impartial “objectivity” look cruel.  If you check out on the issue of gay marriage, if you “see both sides,” your indifference is appalling.  How can you not take a stand – whatever it is – regarding the assertion that the sex of two people is an adequate basis to deny them legal rights of union?  I am not arguing that one should be for or against gay marriage.  I am also not arguing that one can hold both positions (see Dr. J’s excellent series of posts for the problem with this view).  I am arguing that the insistence of neutrality in the face of this issue looks nothing like neutrality.  It looks like a cruel and almost heartless indifference.  After all, the question is not simply an issue of homosexuality.  As I see it, a primary issue is the basis on which we grant or withhold legal rights of association.  And that is a deeply important and meaningful question for everyone who would claim rights in this society.  Gay partners without legal rights of union have no special rights to visitation in the hospital, have no protection in the custody and adoption of children, are not entitled to the many tax breaks and other basic advantages of being married, and on and on and on.  I simply do not understand indifference on this issue, whatever your position. 

When we suspend for a moment the values that attach to not taking a side (neutrality, objectivity, impartiality), the cruelty of this approach begins to stand out.  If you  just don’t care what happens to people of the same sex that want to marry, then your indifference says something about the lack of importance that you grant to their concerns simply because they are gay.  If you don’t see the problem and you think, “Fine, fine, whatever.  Let them marry if they want,” then once again, I wonder how you accept with blithe indifference the cultural, social, legal and ethical barriers put in place to keep people of the same sex from having legal rights of union.  You don’t have to go out and protest, but at least call it as it is. 

The issue is more than the recognition that not taking a side is in fact taking a side.  We live according to our passions, our commitments, our identities formed in powerful and often shared values.  I do not know what it means to be a human being in the world if I am not motivated by my senses of right and wrong, of sympathy and outrage, of connection and interconnection with cultural values, social mores, and all manner of things that provoke my thought, compel my action, and inspire my approbation or condemnation.  Suspending that looks to me like giving up a large portion of my humanity.  It looks unnatural and I cannot conceive of such “impartiality” as intellectually mature.  In fact, intellectual maturity means staking out a position but without the expectation that you are absolutely right.  It means living and thinking passionately in the awareness that others live in the same way.  It means holding on to values and ideas that you are willing to subject to public scrutiny, rational debate, and on occasion, ridicule.  Finally, intellectual maturity means that you do not locate impartiality in the withdrawal of our most human impulses, but rather you find impartiality in the encounter of differences with and among others as you stake claims within a multiply connected and extensive field of human relations.