I am a daily reader of the NYT – having grown up in the northern suburbs, it is a deeply ingrained habit – but I do not bother trying to get at the columnists who are hidden behind the "select" wall.  And, you know, life can go on fairly well without on-demand Friedman, Krugman, Brooks, et al.  But this reference to a recent David Brooks piece by Matt Yglesias, got me to thinking:

Ironically, Brooks describes himself as a defender of an older view of
morality in which "we are defined not by our individual choices but by
our social roles." But, of course, this is the point. Haster is Speaker of the House of Representatives
and is supposed to act like a responsible custodian of the House, not
like a two bit goon ready to cover-up God-knows-what in pursuit of a
contiued majority.

     The issue at hand is the Mark Foley sex-talk scandal and the ineptitude of the Republican Party leadership in taking responsibility for it.  I care less about the particular way in which Brooks is making a distinction, in this case, between "social roles" and "individual choices," as I am in the distinction in and of itself.

         The implication is that an "older morality" that emphasizes our social roles, and the ethical duties that attach to them (and Yglesias is turning this against Brooks’ politics) is better than some sort of new fangled morality that centers more on individual choice, devoid of social context,which would allow for a different calculus of the good (i.e. what is good is what is good for me, not what is good for the fulfillment of my social responsibilities).  I would assert that, based on a rather old morality – the writings of Confucius and Mencius – that this is a false distinction.

    First, I think it is uncontroversial to remind everyone
that Confucianism places social roles very much at the center of its
ethical thinking.  But it also links social role very much to
individual choices.   Here is one of my favorite passages from Mencius:

There’s only one way to know if people are good or evil; look at the choices they make.  We each contain precious and worthless, great and small.  Never injure the great for the sake of the small, or the precious for the sake of the worthless.  Small people nurture what is small in them; great people nurture what is great in them. (209)

     The fulfillment of social roles depends upon innumerable daily individual choices; it moves from the inside out, from conscience to context.   Morality is always and everywhere about individual choice.  Perhaps what Brooks really means is to distinguish is the ends of ethical decision-making: social good versus individual good.  But that is not the same as the means of personal choice.  This is important because one could imagine a responsibility-evading tactic of invoking social – or in the Foley case with Hastert, political – role to avoid personal choice.  Isn’t that what Hastert had been implying: his leadership role did not require that he manage all of these kinds of details – that is what he has a staff for, and they can be blamed – so the fact that he did not personally choose to act upon a well-known problem was not a bad thing.  He was caught out, of course, and has now asserted personal responsibility belatedly.   Which simply reminds us that social role in instantiated by personal choice.

    In other words, "social role" is not some inert, unchanging fact.  It is a dynamic process that requires constant consideration and cultivation.  What does it mean to say "I am a good father"?  Or that "fathers are due a certain deference due to their social role"?  Brooks, I think, wants us to believe that there is some stable, black and white, clear moral criteria that will allow for the direct translation of such abstractions into everyday moral life.  But there aren’t.  Rather, the meaning of such social roles depends critically on the particular contexts that individuals find themselves in and the careful "individual choices" they make in trying to do the right thing.  "Old morality" is just not as easy – nor clearer than "new morality" – as Brooks thinks.