Moral Conviction and Character
Matthew Pianalto
Eastern Kentucky University
matthew.pianalto@gmail.com
Abstract: We often praise people of integrity, who honor their convictions in the face of
adversity and practice what they preach. We admire people who have the courage to take
a stand. However, strong moral convictions can also motivate atrocious acts. I argue that
moral conviction itself—qua moral conviction—has instrumental value that is connected
to its relationship to integrity and courage, and explore three things—reflectiveness,
willingness to provide reasons and elucidation, and basic humility—that must accompany
moral convictions in order to ensure that they are held responsibly, and which thus
mitigate the inherent riskiness of believing with conviction. I also suggest that such moral
convictions have a social value and thus that the value of moral convictions is not limited
to the important (if instrumental) roles they play within the life of the individual.
“People in those old times had convictions; we moderns have only opinions. And it needs
more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.” –Heinrich Heine, The French
Stage (1837)
1. These words of Heinrich Heine suggest that there is something valuable about convictions and
that a world in which people have “only opinions” is a world in which nothing great can be
achieved. We often praise people of integrity, who honor their convictions in the face of
adversity and practice what they preach. We admire people who have the courage to take a stand.
Of course, this praise must surely also be based upon respect for, if not approval of, that for
which such people stand. The conviction of suicide bombers is surely as much a factor in our
condemnation as are the horrific consequences of their actions. Given a long history of
catastrophic, vicious, and insane convictions, is there anything about moral conviction qua moral
conviction which, at least sometimes, makes it valuable? It might seem that all the value can be
located in the content of one’s convictions. If that’s right, then there is nothing “value-added” in
2
belief with conviction. Since convictions qua convictions can be good or bad, that any particular
moral belief attains the status of a conviction might simply be, at best, a point of moral
indifference.
A more severe view on conviction would hold that moral convictions are a bad thing to
have—that there is something irrational about elevating any moral belief (however respectable)
to the status of a conviction. In doing so, one risks succumbing to vices of moral blindness:
fanaticism, dogmatism and self-righteousness (or what Bernard Gert has recently called moral
arrogance1). Yeats wrote, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate
certainty,”2 and Nietzsche warned, “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”3
Convictions can blind us. Thus, some have thought, better not to have them.
I will argue that both of these views—ambivalence toward and outright dismissal of
moral conviction—are mistaken. In what follows, I will suggest that the value of conviction is
instrumental and will provide a sketch of a few traits and activities that must accompany
conviction in order to temper its inherent riskiness.
2. My subject herein is moral conviction, although I will sometimes drop the qualifier and refer
simply to conviction. We can speak of particular moral beliefs as moral convictions, and of
persons believing particular moral claims with conviction. Taken as a subject-term, moral
convictions are those moral beliefs that flow from, or reflect, a person’s central moral
commitments and ideals—those which play a central role in a person’s moral reflection,
decision-making, and outward activity. Moral convictions tend to be settled, firmly held, and
“Moral Arrogance and Moral Theories,” Nous Supplement: Philosophical Issues, 15, (2005), pp. 368-385.
“The Second Coming,” Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)
3
Human, All Too Human, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Section 483 (1878)
1
2
3
believed to track objective moral truth, and thus are not primary candidates for revision (and a
person might not regard her convictions as open to revision at all).
Taken as a mode, we can speak of believing with conviction as a mode of belief in which
the individual does not simply assent to the truth of p, but rather the individual embraces p, and
holds p among the class of claims which she regards as bedrock, or not up for grabs (and in the
moral case, essential to one’s moral outlook). I am hesitant simply to define belief with
conviction as belief with “subjective certainty,” because this seems unnecessarily strong.4 A
person who believes p with subjective certainty may indeed believe with conviction, but if a
person is deeply committed to p—which is what I have in mind by a person’s embracing p—then
this seems sufficient for regarding the person’s relationship to p as one of conviction.5 Thus,
conviction comes in degrees, and we might differentiate stronger and weaker convictions, as well
as moral views that do not attain the status of conviction, in terms of the resilience of a belief in
the face of various kinds of pressure (such as the presence of disagreement or various prudential
threats to the person prepared to act on her convictions).
Additionally—and putting aside concerns about weakness of well (although see Note 11
below)—moral convictions possess strong motivational force. So a conviction is a belief one
embraces and which is strongly motivating. This motivational force is not restricted to their
4
For similar reasons, I have reservations concerning the definition of conviction advanced in Linda Skitka’s
psychological research. She defines conviction as “an unshakeable belief in something without needing proof or
evidence.” (Linda J. Skitka and Elizabeth Mullen, “The Dark Side of Moral Conviction,” Analyses of Social Issues
and Public Policy, (2002), p. 36.) In particular, I find the clause “without needing proof or evidence” problematic
for a few reasons. For one, the request for “proof” or “evidence” might not make sense when discussing moral
convictions—this may implausibly treat the process of moral justification as too much like the process of empirical
justification. Additionally, Skitka’s definition might capture a sufficient condition for a belief’s counting as a
conviction, but it seems implausible that a person’s “needing” (or seeking) justification for one’s moral beliefs—
whether we construe this on a model of seeking “proof or evidence”—necessarily disqualifies that person’s belief as
a conviction. (In later work on moral conviction, Skitka seems to dispense with this language and simply defines
moral conviction as “a strong and absolute belief that something is right or wrong, moral or immoral,” in Skitka et
al, “Moral Conviction: Another Contributor to Attitude Strength or Something More?” Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 88:6 (2005), p. 896.)
5
My thinking here has been influenced by Robert Merrihew Adams’ similar resistance to holding that “moral faith”
requires subjective certainty. See Adams, “Moral Faith,” The Journal of Philosophy, 92:2 (1995), pp. 75-95.
4
influence on outward action. Convictions “go deep” in the individual and influence the way in
which she sees the world around her, how she understands herself, and how she organizes and
acts upon her other beliefs, aims, and projects. A person of conviction not only has strong moral
beliefs, but will have a strong tendency to speak out on relevant moral issues or to take other
proactive measures in the service of her convictions. This is the source of conviction’s inherent
riskiness. Their strong influence and centrality of place can, if those convictions are misguided,
drive one headlong into (moral) disaster—both the outward disaster of immoral action and the
inward disaster of a distorted self.
3. With this sketch of moral conviction in hand, we can consider what kind of value moral
convictions, in themselves, possess. There are enough reasons to hold moral convictions under
suspicion. Their resilience may seem problematic, since the person of conviction might
demonstrate too little sensitivity to contravening considerations.6 Similarly, those who
acknowledge the essential contestability of moral claims might wonder whether belief with
conviction can ever be rationally defensible, or at least think that the legitimate scope of belief
with conviction must be severely restricted. We certainly want people to have appropriate moral
beliefs and to believe sincerely and firmly. However, does belief with conviction make any
positive contribution to admirable persons or to the performance of admirable actions, or is belief
with conviction a negative tendency which is sometimes tolerable, but never in itself to be
encouraged?
6
Moral convictions have drawn the recent attention of psychologists, who have demonstrated clear relationships
between intensity of moral belief and intolerant behavior toward those with divergent moral views, as well as
readiness to take and accept extreme (and what some researchers seem worried were unjust) measures in response to
moral wrongdoing. While the general direction of these findings should not surprise anyone, they certainly provide a
different angle from which to consider the potentially troublesome nature of conviction. See, e.g., Skitka and Mullen
(2002), pp. 35-41; Skitka et al. (2005), pp. 895-917; and Jennifer Cole Wright et al., “The Cognitive and Affective
Dimensions of Moral Conviction: Implications for Attitudinal and Behavioral Measures of Interpersonal Tolerance,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34:11 (2008), pp. 1461-1476.
5
The positive contribution of convictions seems tenuous, I suspect, because their value is
instrumental. The instrumental nature of their value goes some way toward explaining the
ambivalent view about conviction sketched at the outset, since something with instrumental
value can be put either to good or bad use. Strong moral convictions often stand behind both
atrocious and inspiring actions. Perhaps those like Yeats and Nietzsche, who adopt the extreme,
anti-conviction view, denounced conviction too hastily as a result of focusing only upon its worst
manifestations. Here, there are obvious parallels with those who denounce religious belief due to
the many horrible things that have been done in the name of some God or other, failing to take
sufficient notice of the good persons and actions that have also been inspired by religious faith.
Bad convictions, like bad news, get more press, and this is understandable. But to conclude that
“the best lack all conviction” goes too far, as this remark fails to do justice to the many moral
heroes and heroines who stood by their convictions, for example, in the face of an unjust status
quo. Gandhi had convictions but was not a fanatic or self-righteous lunatic.
There are two ways in which we might understand the value of conviction as playing an
instrumentally important role in the life of the individual. These flow from the identity-shaping
and motivational roles played by convictions. In addition to these two kinds of value, moral
conviction may also have a third kind of value—a social value, which I will comment on at the
end of this essay.
3.1. If we take convictions to mark an agent’s deepest, and sometimes unconditional,
commitments, and if such commitments play an important role in the development of a person’s
identity or sense of self, then having convictions may be importantly related to the possibility of
having or acting with integrity. A common conception of integrity would have it that a person
6
who does not “stand for something” lacks a basis for integrity, and so has no integrity to lose.
Kekes, for example, writes, “Many men have no unconditional commitments. This means that
they have no clear sense of themselves. The moral consequence is that they may be nice, but not
good. Such men are afloat in conventional morality, but they have not made its requirements
their own.”7 Lacking a sense of self, a person without any convictions simply goes with the flow.
If society expects him to treat others kindly, he does so; if society expects him to abuse others, he
does what’s expected. If asked to give up his own life in the service of a greater good, he does
his duty, but his motives lack depth: there is nothing of him in any of his actions. This is, I take
it, what we often mean when we say that a person lacks conviction. By contrast, the person of
conviction (sometimes8) exhibits a kind of autonomy and self-investment. This person’s
convictions may be conventional or radical, but the difference is that in the person of conviction,
his actions flow from his character and his deep sense of what is right and good; his actions are a
part of who he is and what he stands for. Such a person can, of course, act out of character, and
doing so may indicate a loss of integrity or a (heretofore unrecognized) lack of conviction. If he
retains any amount of his integrity in the aftermath, such lapses are an occasion for remorse (and
importantly, such a reaction may be essential for the restoration or preservation of integrity over
the course of a whole life. The person who feels no remorse probably had no integrity in the first
place and so, despite surface appearances, had no integrity to lose and was not the person we
believed him to be).
So far, these considerations only posit a constitutive relationship between convictions and
integrity—that having integrity requires that a person have some conviction(s). In order for
convictions to have instrumental value, there must be some value in having integrity. Perhaps
7
8
John Kekes, “Happiness,” Mind, 91:363 (1982), p. 366.
This parenthetical qualification should become clear in light of the discussion of Nietzsche in §3.2.
7
this needs no argument; however, some ways of understanding integrity inherit many of the same
concerns we might raise about conviction. If a suicide bomber can bomb away with integrity,
then we should be equally ambivalent about integrity. The thought that moral integrity is of
positive value has led some to construe it in such a way that those committed to vicious projects
cannot have it (though they might exhibit some kind of personal integrity).9 This would imply
that not all convictions make moral integrity possible, and if a person can be significantly
blinded by her own convictions such that she loses all sense of self, then perhaps some
convictions are incompatible with integrity (in any sense) altogether. This might happen, for
example, if a person has unconditional commitments which are incompatible, or someone who,
in the grips of his convictions, fails to acknowledge his own fallibility or who comes to see
herself as a completely bound instrument of her own convictions. Such a person may not be
lacking in conviction, but may indeed be lacking other traits which make integrity possible.
Thus, even if conviction plays a necessary role the development of a person of integrity,
conviction alone is not sufficient. This does not show that convictions lack value, but only that
their value is one part of a larger story.
3.2. The strong motivational power of convictions also has instrumental value. Believing with
conviction may make certain kinds of actions possible for the agent which wouldn’t be possible
if the agent has, as Heine put it, “only opinions.”
Convictions drive action, and the degree of social or personal risk involved in
undertaking a particular action—where one believes that some central moral issue is at stake—
Gabriele Taylor expresses sympathy with this view of moral integrity in thinking that “the ruthless egoist will not
in fact possess integrity,” and Lynne McFall echoes this view in her own discussion, both suggesting that certain
kinds of commitments fail to be principled in the right kind of way to serve as a basis for integrity. See Taylor,
“Integrity,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 55 (1981), p. 158, and McFall,
“Integrity,” Ethics, 98:1 (1987), pgs. 7-10.
9
8
would seem to require a complementary degree of conviction. This might seem to blur
unnecessarily the line between conviction and courage, or between belief and desire. Our
convictions, it could be said, are one thing, and whether we have the courage to act upon our
convictions is another. Courage, however, needs an object, something about which one can act
(or preserve, or realize) with courage. So, as with the relationship between conviction and
integrity, we can say that one’s convictions serve as a central referent for one’s disposition to act
courageously. Particularly, if we wish to speak of moral courage, it seems plausible that the
strength of one’s belief will make a difference in whether one’s disposition to respond with
moral courage is activated.10 Perhaps a person lacking moral conviction has no basis for acting
with moral courage. Conversely, the stronger our conviction, the more likely we are to act;
conviction provides a reason for courage—and importantly, a stronger reason than a mere
opinion.11
We know that convictions can motivate people to do things that we find atrocious, but it
is equally clear that convictions have guided some of our most inspiring figures. Socrates’
conviction that he must not allow himself to be an instrument of injustice made it impossible for
him to sell himself out and save his life. His conviction (and his courage) enabled him to resist
the easy escape which his friends were willing to provide.12 Martin Luther King Jr.’s convictions
made it possible for him to persist in his struggle against racial inequality even in the face of
great personal risk. Such people are unimaginable without conviction, precisely because without
Wright et al’s (2008) research on moral conviction and tolerance provides some empirical justification for
claiming that belief strength does affect our dispositions, in this case, the person’s tendency to act tolerantly toward
those with divergent beliefs. (So this is not just armchair speculation.)
11
Here I am ignoring the problem posed by weakness of will. However, if it is possible for a person to have genuine
convictions but to be weak-willed in acting on these convictions, this “willingness to do” can become internalized,
and in this clash between conviction and the will to act, we can locate a basic source of guilt and remorse, and so the
basic motivational structure of conviction would persist in this sort of case. This is similar to what I said above about
the person of integrity who acts out of character.
12
For an interesting and subtle discussion of Socrates, see George Kateb, “Socratic Integrity,” in Integrity and
Conscience, ed. Ian Shapiro and Robert Adams, (New York: New York University Press, 1998), pp. 77-112.
10
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strong conviction, it is difficult to see how they could have persisted—without a steadfast object
for their courage. This is sufficient to show that conviction has an important place in a morally
admirable life, but again, it can only be part of the story.
Even Nietzsche, who denounces convictions as “prisons,” recognizes the motivational
value of conviction and admits that great actions can require conviction. While he berates the
need some have to believe in an absolute value or truth, seeing this need as a sign of weakness
and a lack of self-mastery, he admits that the pursuit of one’s own ideals may require or, as he
puts it, permit convictions. He writes:
Conviction as a means: there is much one can achieve only by means of a
conviction. Grand passion uses and uses up convictions, it does not submit to
them—it knows itself sovereign.—Conversely: the need for belief, for some
unconditional Yes and No […] is a requirement of weakness. The man of faith,
the ‘believer’ of every sort is necessarily a dependent man—such as cannot out of
himself posit ends at all. The ‘believer’ does not belong to himself…13
Nietzsche’s remarks on conviction cut against the suggestion above that convictions play an
important role in the development of an integrated self. For Nietzsche, the problem is that
convictions can also consume the self, leaving a person thoughtless, small-minded, and
inauthentic. On the other hand, the idea that a person could “use” convictions in order to achieve
some great end, without being consumed by the conviction, would seem to be in tension with the
very conception of conviction as a belief that is not up for grabs (or as an unconditional
commitment). Thus, the important question is how, or whether, it is possible to believe with
conviction without being consumed by such belief. (If not, then Nietzsche’s proposal simply
13
The Anti-Christ, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, (New York: Penguin, 1968), §54.
10
makes no sense.) On the assumption that this is possible—I will not argue directly for this claim
here—we must ask: what must we do in order to believe both responsibly and with conviction?
4. That convictions play instrumentally valuable roles in our moral lives does not provide reason
for adopting any particular conviction. Given the risks—since if we place our conviction in the
wrong things we will do or become evil—one might take a cautious approach and have
conviction only in those things which one knows for certain are correct. The problem with the
cautious approach is that one would then run the risk of having conviction in exactly nothing and
become a moral drifter (or as Kekes put it, as quoted above, become “afloat in conventional
morality”). Our lives present us with moral challenges and dilemmas, and often there is not
enough time or information—or it is not clear that more time and more information would even
be helpful—to ensure that our course of action, or our ideal, is certainly the correct one. This is
what James was getting at when he said that, “Moral questions immediately present themselves
as questions whose solution cannot wait for sensible proof.”14 This is not to say that moral
dilemmas can only be resolved by adopting a conviction one way or the other, but hard choices
do require that one “take a stand” in the face of uncertainty, and cautiousness may not always be
the best, or the most respectable, option.
Instead of attempting the (impossible?) task of spelling out from the ground up how we
should “build” a conviction, I want to start from where we are right now, with the fact that many
of us have moral convictions. As I have already said, some people become consumed by their
convictions. They fail to hear, and sometimes even to see, others in their midst. Perhaps some
fall victim to the delusion that they have no epistemic peers (or at least, none who disagree with
them). How can we avoid the perils of convictions while at the same time maintaining them?
14
William James, “The Will to Believe,” Section IX.
11
First, it is essential, at times, to take a reflective stance. This involves acknowledging and
keeping in view the riskiness of convictions, as well as the fact that our convictions have a
history—that they have grown out of other convictions, our education, our experiences, all in
ways that we may not always notice. One of Nietzsche’s complaints about the weak-minded
“men of conviction” is that, “They do not see far enough, they do not see things beneath them:
but to be permitted to speak about value and disvalue one must see five hundred convictions
beneath one—behind one….”15 Reflection about the history of our convictions can be unsettling,
because there is the chance that we will discover things that lead us to wonder whether we
should maintain the particular convictions we have. However, reflection can also lead to a deeper
understanding of ourselves and our beliefs, and to affirmation of the views we hold. Reflection is
risky in a way that—if done honestly—complements the riskiness of conviction. This is not to be
confused with a process of self-affirmation in which we simply seek to renew our conviction—
say, through some ritual or recitation. Reflection must probe our convictions and reveal to us
both what it is that gives us conviction in some particular value, as well as what we are willing to
do, or what else we are willing to believe, in order to preserve that conviction. What we must not
be willing to do is to abandon the openness to taking this critical stance.16
Second, and in connection with this, we must be willing to give reasons for, or
elucidations of, our convictions, both to ourselves (which is the point of reflection) and to others
when necessary. In the recent film Doubt, Sister Aloysius Beauvier exhibits a deep conviction
that Father Flynn has had an “inappropriate relationship” with a boy. Father Flynn exclaims that
she has absolutely no evidence for the charges she is making, and she responds succinctly, “No,
15
The Anti-Christ, §54.
Openness here must surely also include openness to others. Given this, the reflective person would do well to bear
in mind the polarizing that can occur when one has deep convictions. See Note 6 above. Polarization can be
damaging for many reasons, and among them is the possible loss of opportunities to learn from (or about) others,
because one refuses to engage honestly and openly with others.
16
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but I have my certainty.”17 While her relevant belief is not exactly a case of moral conviction,
the example is still illuminating. The film makes clear that Sister Aloysisus’ and Father Flynn
have fundamental differences concerning how the Church and clergy should relate to the parish.
(She is more conservative, and he is more progressive—the film is set just after the radical
changes of Vatican II.) Much of his behavior and the content of his homilies strikes her as
unseemly. Her suspicions seem to have led her to convince herself of some actual moral failing
on Father Flynn’s part—one which they would both agree is a failing. This actual failing would
demonstrate the corruption in his other views (or show that his views flow from a corrupt
character and so cannot be trusted). However, “having my certainty,” cannot serve as a sufficient
response to the request for reasons and explanation. In saying that we must be willing to give
reasons for our convictions, I want to understand reason-giving in the broadest sense possible.
We may not be able to prove our convictions—the request for proof, construed in certain ways,
might not make sense—but we can provide, in various ways, a rationale that stands behind our
convictions. We often distinguish between explanations and justifications, emphasizing that an
explanation is not equivalent to a justification.18 However, it is not clear that there is a definite
line separating the two, and an elucidation may sometimes reveal to ourselves, or to those
confronting us, paths to justification not previously noticed. We must seek to some reasonable
degree to make ourselves not only intelligible, but also respectable, to those with whom we
17
Ultimately, we learn that this is not true, for she reveals in the final moments of the film that she has great doubts;
in her character, we see the embodiment of the struggle to reconcile deep conviction with the threats posed to it by
the necessity of reflection. This case is also interesting in that it probes the problem of tending to see those with
whom we have conflicting views as morally defective.
18
A possible, and important, confusion here between an explanation and a justification would occur if someone,
recognizing the role convictions play in the development of the self were to seek to justify some convictions on the
grounds that abandoning it now would result in a loss of integrity. It is this sort of (bad) reason which Williams
connects with “moral self-indulgence.” (See Bernard Williams, “Untilitarianism and Self-Indulgence,” Moral Luck:
Philosophical Papers 1973-1980, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 40-53.) Especially once we
notice that not all convictions are of the sort which are compatible with moral integrity (or which make moral
integrity) possible, it becomes clear why this cannot count as a legitimate reason: the appeal to one’s integrity is
viciously circular because what is under question is whether one’s integrity as such (i.e. the sort of character one
possesses, as characterized, in part, by her convictions) is worth keeping intact.
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disagree. In some cases, this will be difficult, maybe impossible, but I think the general
prescription is correct, and is related to the final element of responsible conviction.
Third, there is something we might call basic humility, but which we might also describe
as maintaining as sense of our own humanity, which is essential to responsible conviction. The
thought that we have no epistemic peers, that everyone else must be mistaken, should, if we have
it, be regarded a sign of danger. We might be attracted to the picture of Dr. Stockmann in Ibsen’s
An Enemy of the People, as he declares in the play’s closing moments that “the strongest man in
the world is he who stands most alone.” But we must also bear in mind that the person who
stands alone, isolated from others, runs the risk of madness. To take a comedic (but not entirely
inappropriate) example, consider the scene in the Coen brothers’ film The Big Lebowski, in
which the Vietnam veteran Walter Sobchak pulls a gun out during a bowling match, convinced
that a member of the other team fouled on his previous roll and should be scored a zero for that
ball. Waving his pistol, Walter laments, “Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only person
here who gives a shit about the rules!” The other side of these kinds of self-isolating thoughts is
that one also runs the risk of failing to see the humanity in others—one comes to see “other
people” as an unpleasant abstraction. It would seem to be much easier to direct our rage at others
when they are no one in particular, and generally degraded to boot, just as at one point in An
Enemy of the People, Stockmann publicly claims that the “compact liberal majority” should
perhaps just be eliminated. If we fail to see ourselves as among others, we also foreclose on the
importance of giving reasons and elucidations, for if others are beneath us, then it can seem that
we owe them no explanation (and at any rate, they are too stupid and degraded to understand, so
what would be the point of giving an account?). The sense in which the appropriate attitude
14
might be called humility is that it involves holding our self-confidence in check, and preserves
one’s sense of human fallibility in which reflection and reason-giving remain important.19
None of these constraints on responsible conviction guarantees that the surviving
convictions will prove correct, but they significantly mitigate the riskiness of conviction. They
show that the proper holding of a conviction is dialectical, and should make clear the difference
between conscientious conviction and blind conviction which, left unchecked, can consume us.
5. Let me end by considering a worry and commenting briefly on the third kind of value,
mentioned above, which moral convictions possess. First, it might be asked how it is possible to
maintain conviction in the face of these several demands without failing to uphold our several
responsibilities. Why should we think that reflection, the search for reasons and elucidations, and
intellectual humility won’t simply lead to a kind of paralysis? I fear that my initial response to
this worry is a bit Pollyannaish, but I will give it anyhow. I suspect that our convictions will, in a
sense, take care of themselves. Mill was probably right that too much scrutiny of our ends can
lead to a loss of faith in our aims and in ourselves.20 But Mill himself is proof that our deepest
convictions have a way of resurfacing after periods of serious doubt, undergoing modifications
which make it possible to live with them again. With some trepidation—given that the riskiness
of conviction can never be wholly eliminated—I sympathize with Williams’ thought that, “very
often, we just act, as a possibly confused result of the situation in which we are engaged. That, I
suspect, is very often an exceedingly good thing.”21 When real action is called for, our true
19
Some might recommend that we instead call this modesty. Perhaps not too much turns on which term we use. I
emphasize humility—moderation or humbleness in one’s attitude toward oneself—over modesty—moderation in
one’s speech and action—in order to stress the importance of seeing oneself as one among others.
20
In Chapter 5 of his Autobiography.
21
J.J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against, (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1973), p. 118.
15
convictions have a way of making themselves manifest in what we do. (Of course, it is equally
true that such situations can reveal a person’s lack of conviction.) This does not imply that
reflection is mere play-acting; rather, the point is that reflection itself cannot destroy us, our
integrity, or our conviction, unless there was nothing of substance to be destroyed in the first
place.
Finally, Cheshire Calhoun has suggested that moral integrity has social value because
persons of integrity can be trusted to honestly and sincerely represent and live in accordance with
their own best judgment. In our search for proper ways of living, we depend on the examples and
possibilities set forth by others to provide a background for our own reflection and judgment.
Calhoun writes,
To have integrity is to understand that one’s own judgment matters because it is
only within individual persons’ deliberative viewpoints, including one’s own, that
what is worth our doing can be decided. Thus, one’s own judgment serves a
common interest of co-deliberators. Persons of integrity treat their own
endorsements as ones that matter, or ought to matter, to fellow deliberators.22
Calhoun nevertheless emphasizes that moral integrity is “not just a matter of sticking to one’s
guns,” because, “Integrity calls us simultaneously to stand behind our convictions and to take
seriously others’ doubts about them.”23 This is similar to the tension between the strong degree
of commitment intrinsic to conviction and the constraints necessary for responsible conviction.
The important parallel between Calhoun’s view of the social value of moral integrity and the
similar value of moral conviction is that we surely don’t want too many of our actions to result
merely as a “possibly confused result” of our current situation. For if too much of what we do
22
23
“Standing for Something,” The Journal of Philosophy, 97:5 (1995), p.258.
Ibid., p. 259, 260.
16
fails to flow—in a fairly transparent way—from something deep within us, especially where
moral values are at stake, then we again risk moral drift. Additionally, if we are too modest, or
too humble, in our moral beliefs, we risk losing our voice or our opportunity to influence events.
These risks are not only personal, for over-cautiousness can set a bad example. Thus, it
sometimes makes sense in the realm of morality to encourage a person not simply to believe, but
to have some conviction about it.