On “the Sublime”

Reply to UINC’s second question: “How do you view human morality? Do you believe that an absolute, sublime morality exists?”

This question is really too broad—especially the first half, which basically requires a review of my views on ethics. However, my ethical position has not yet truly taken shape, so I can only talk about some scattered, immature ideas.

“Sublime” is a word I quite like, and in fact this word is neglected in mainstream modern normative ethics, because they are more concerned with the minimum moral norm than with the highest pursuit of virtue. And since I lean toward virtue ethics, the first thing I have to do is bring “sublime” back into the thematic center of ethics.

So what is the sublime? First, this word will always remain rather vague; it is impossible to give it an absolutely precise definition so that people can objectively and logically determine, beyond situation, beyond subjective factors and cultural factors, what is sublime and what is not. In other words, the absolute sublime, as a concept, cannot be defined. But whether one can believe in its existence is another matter.

For me, “sublime” does not need to be defined or regulated; what it needs is to be described and explained. For “sublime,” as a word, has already taken root in everyday language—this is beyond doubt. When we say a person is “sublime,” we all know that what we mean is meaningful. It is just like when we point at the sun and say “sun,” we of course “know” that we are pointing at something real and definite. As for further research into whether the sun is actually a big fireball or a hydrogen balloon, that does not affect the certainty of the most basic demonstrative definition. We still have to investigate what the “sun” really is and describe it, but if someone says that the thing everybody points to and calls “sun” simply does not exist, that is utterly unreasonable. Philosophers who do that (for example, logical positivists) are merely evading the issue—whenever they are unable to explain something, they dispose of it once and for all by reducing it to a misuse of language, trying to re-regulate human language with a language so simple that even machines can understand it, and in the end only drive themselves into a dead end.

So, what is the sublime? That is to say, when we say a person is “sublime,” what are we expressing at the same time?

First, let me reiterate: there does not exist an independent, abstract, objective, and absolute standard of judgment for “sublime” that is detached from concrete situations and subjective factors! My position here is of course consistent with my pluralism. In other words, it is impossible to list all the necessary and sufficient conditions for sublimity, and then clearly describe all of a person’s manifestations and check them against those conditions one by one, so that even without people, a computer relying only on mechanical computation would be enough to determine whether a person deserves to be called sublime. This desire for objectivity or precision is not only an unrealistic wish, but also a wildly misplaced direction—why would people rather trust mechanical judgment than trust their own judgment? All a computer can do is judge according to principles commonly accepted by people and through the simplest logical deduction. If that is the case, why not directly examine the principles in one’s own heart and use one’s own will to judge? If there is anywhere that an absolute moral measure exists, it can only be in each person’s own heart.

What I want to say is: seeking an “objective” or “absolute” moral standard is actually a form of laziness—lazy about thinking and judging oneself, or lacking trust in one’s own thinking or judgment, and trying instead to shift the responsibility for judging good and evil onto the masses, or onto philosophers, or onto computers. Everyone should have a measure of good and evil in their heart; why must one always depend on others?

Of course, in many circumstances ethics also needs to seek consensus in order to formulate norms, especially when legal issues are involved. But when we discuss “the sublime” rather than baseline ethics, there is no need at all for us to deliberately seek consensus.

Still, if there is no consensus, then there is no need for any ethical discussion at all, because everyone can just mind their own thinking and judgment: I have my standards, you have yours, and nobody can tell anyone else what to do? That is certainly not what I mean. I have already said that in such matters, philosophy is not meant to issue norms, but to describe and explain. That is to say, we cannot and need not seek to achieve absolute consensus; rather, we should try to describe and explain the consensus that already does in fact exist!

There must be some shared, recognized, universal thing already in existence—that is the premise for discussion! Because aside from the very few stubborn skeptics, everyone can use the word “sublime”; everyone dimly knows the word’s certainty, just as everyone would never doubt the existence of the sun, nor doubt whether the thing they are pointing to is the same sun. Or, just like words such as “good,” “beautiful,” and “strong,” even though we often point to entirely different things and call them by the same word, the existence of that word shows that there must be some commonality among those things—clearly, it must be because of that commonality that people can assign the same word to them; it is certainly not because people first assigned them the same word that they came to possess some commonality. Humans are not God, after all (only God can create things through words).

However, there is something not quite accurate in my previous formulation: with certain concepts, the things the concepts refer to may not themselves share any commonality, but rather there is some commonality among situations such as “when the subject refers to some thing as this concept.” For example, concepts like “high,” “big,” and “strong”: “high” is always assigned within some comparative situation. As an isolated thing, something cannot really be said to be high; only when it exists within some environment or background, or when it appears within some context in discourse, does it make sense to say it is “high.” The commonality is not inside the things; it belongs to the situation.

The case of “sublime” may be similar to that of “high” (is there an absolute “high”?); it is always used within the environment or background of some era or culture, or within some context in discourse, although as an adjective it describes a person.

Here I should note that I think “sublime” is used to describe a person—and not an action. Of course, we also often talk about how noble a certain action of someone is, but after all, this cannot be completely separated from the actor. For example, if the same act of funding a poor child’s education is carried out by a selfless teacher or by the child’s father, that is obviously a very different matter. We cannot evaluate an act as sublime independently, while entirely excluding the actor’s identity, background, motives, and all the other factors. Of course, on the other hand, when we evaluate a person, we also cannot talk abstractly about his sublimity while separating him from every single thing he has done. But in my view, since none of a person’s actions are necessary for him to qualify as sublime, and all of his actions taken together are not sufficient either, I understand “sublime” as a description of a person.

Sublime, great, happy, noble, and so on are all words that point toward “people”; while right and wrong, justified and unjustified, reasonable and lawful, and so on point toward “things”—this is my basic understanding of some of these concepts in ethics. And I am more concerned with those words that point toward “people,” which is consistent with the virtue ethics I favor—virtue ethics is concerned with “what kind of person should I become” rather than “what kind of thing should I do.”

Some criticisms of virtue ethics point out: discussing how one should be a person still ultimately has to come down to what exactly one should do, otherwise how can it be made clear? This objection is ineffective. First, being a person and doing things cannot be separated; the issue is one of focus. Second, the pursuit of precision is both unrealistic and a form of evasion. Setting the topic of discussion as abstract actions stripped away from the actor may indeed make it easier to satisfy the requirements of objectivity, universality, and precision, but one cannot abandon and evade the more crucial questions for the sake of these illusory requirements. If “being a person” is the more important issue, then there is no reason to evade it simply because it is hard to explain clearly—this is just like someone losing a wallet on a dimly lit street but running under a streetlamp to look for it!

So, what common features do people called “sublime” have? I still cannot give a systematic answer to this question; I can only mention a few points in a scattered way:

First, the opposite of the ethical demands discussed by normative ethics—normative ethics, including Kant’s ethical principles, requires that what are regarded as universal ethical rules must be conceivable as acceptable to all people. If a rule cannot be universalized, then it is not a qualified ethical rule—for example, in a society, it is impossible for everyone to lie or everyone to commit murder, so lying and killing cannot be ethical rules; while requiring everyone not to lie and not to kill is possible, so not lying and not killing can serve as ethical rules. But the sublime cannot satisfy this universalizability principle at all—Lei Feng is sublime, but one cannot require everyone to be a living Lei Feng; one could even say that if in a society everyone really were a living Lei Feng, that society might well fall into chaos. In that case, should we not talk about the spirit of Lei Feng? Some people really do think that way—since it is impossible for everyone to be a living Lei Feng, why should one learn from Lei Feng? Furthermore, one extremely important argument modern capitalism uses to justify itself is precisely this: everyone can and should be selfish, and a society in which everyone is selfish can still develop very well! Capitalism is built on the idea that everyone is selfish. But does that then justify boldly declaring that “selfishness is a virtue”? Many people’s thinking really does proceed in that direction, saying that selfishness is virtue, and altruism instead becomes evil. From biologist Richard Dawkins to the famous American writer Ayn Rand, many intelligent minds have devoted themselves to vindicating “selfishness.”

Of course, vindicating selfishness is not without some rationale in itself; to a certain extent I also support some individualist ideas, and I also support the view that selfishness is not evil. But to turn around and claim that selfishness is a “virtue” is, I fear, to have a confused line of thought.

In my view, what “sublime” or “virtue” refers to is precisely not things that everyone can do, but always those few in society who are worthy of being called “sublime.” Virtue discusses the highest pursuits, those beyond everyone’s reach, rather than the lowest things that everyone can do. Therefore, when Dawkins or Ayn Rand argue that selfishness is universal and that everyone must be selfish, they are in fact also denying that selfishness could be a kind of sublimity or virtue. I also agree: everyone should and must be selfish, but precisely for that reason, selfishness cannot become a virtue.

“Sublime,” like “high,” is a situation-relative concept. It can always be only a title enjoyed by a minority. Even if everyone’s virtue generally improves, still only some few can be called sublime. It is precisely because everyone can be selfish that selfishness is not sublime; it is precisely because it is impossible for everyone to be as selfless as Lei Feng that Lei Feng is sublime. Of course, this logic of mine cannot be accepted within the paradigm of normative ethics. (For example, suppose we say that in general every adult can be at least 1 meter tall—does that mean a person who is 1 meter tall deserves to be called “tall”? Clearly not. On the contrary, precisely because almost everyone can be 1 meter tall, a person who is only 1 meter tall is unquestionably the shortest of the short; to regard such a person as tall is utterly absurd! Similarly, if we say that almost everyone is selfish, does that mean a person who has nothing but selfishness, a person who knows only selfishness, is a sublime being? Is that a virtuous person? That too is utterly absurd! Precisely because everyone is selfish, a person who knows only selfishness can never become sublime. Isn’t that simple?)

What general traits do sublime people have? I mentioned one just now: selflessness. Of course, to say selflessness is to speak in a relative sense; no one can achieve absolute selflessness. At the very least, one must always uphold one’s own convictions and devote oneself wholeheartedly to the beliefs one holds dear. This kind of “selfishness” in belief is necessary.

This is also another important trait of sublime people: steadfastness in conviction. Those we see as sublime are often people who hold fast to their beliefs to the very end, whose thought and conduct maintain a high degree of consistency. It is precisely this consistency that allows us to connect many of their actions and words, and thus speak of the sublimity of that person as a whole.

Sublime people often firmly believe in the existence of absolute sublimity—of the highest good—they firmly believe that they are advancing toward this ultimate goal, which is also a form of conviction. This belief can provide spiritual support for the consistency of their conduct. I think that “believing that there exists an absolute sublime morality” is indeed a trait of some sublime people. Of course, this is not a necessary condition for becoming sublime; holding fast to certain moral principles that belong only to oneself may also make one a sublime person.

Sublime people are often rational; their decisions or choices should be more the product of reason rather than mere whim, or simply obedience to habit—a person with an intellectual disability may also be trained into a selfless sacrificer, and a fanatical cultist may also completely abandon their own interests, but they cannot be called sublime, because behind their consistent behavior we see more irrationality. Only someone who has freely reflected on their own life, and who is able to control their conduct autonomously and rationally, can possibly become sublime.

In addition, sublime people should also follow certain widely recognized moral principles (otherwise they could not be recognized as sublime), such as “Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire,” the so-called “Golden Rule” (though, unlike normative ethics’ understanding of principles, in my view a so-called “principle” is “guiding” in meaning, not “normative”).

Sublime people should also respect and revere the moral law present in everyone’s heart, or “conscience,” or the “four sprouts” of human nature (compassion, shame and aversion, deference and modesty, and the sense of right and wrong). In short, one should respect some kind of one’s own “moral intuition,” no matter where that intuition comes from—whether one says it comes from the innate structure of the human mind, or that God placed a ray of light in the human heart, or that it is merely a construction of the social environment—people should not deceive themselves. People ought clearly to feel the difference between the instinctive desire for virtue and the instinctive desire for food and sex; there is no need to tangle excessively over this issue.

Before I knew it, I had written so much, going this way and that, and wandering farther and farther off course. I’ll stop here. I may not have really touched the original intent behind UINC’s question very much. Let’s just say I took the topic and rambled freely for a bit; we can talk about related questions slowly another time.

May 1, 2007, 8:14 p.m.

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Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.