Personality and opinion.

Simon, Yves R.

I WISH TO START BY REMARKING THAT there are things that are above opinion. Let us be convinced of that before we begin to reflect upon opinion itself. There are things that involve certainty, and qualified certainty, and there are things that are not matters of opinion. We need to keep those things in mind as we try to decide how to behave with regard to problems of opinion and how our personality should be involved in matters of opinion.

What are those things that are above opinion? Very briefly, we can say that they are first the propositions of faith. The propositions of faith are revealed by the Divine Word and, yes, they are indeed obscure. Obscurity is essential to faith. But it is not just a matter of opinion. We have here, in obscurity, in darkness, the best possible guarantee, the guarantee of the Divine Witness.

There are also a number of natural certainties that we have no right to treat as matters of opinion. In morality, for instance, there are many things that are undecided, many problems that indeed change from one social goal to another, sometimes from individual to individual. But there are also a few ethical essences--I mean essences of ethical character--and in particular a few ethical things that involve intelligible necessity and that are either right or wrong. We will be inspired if we give all possible attention to circumstances, if we are well aware of the contingencies that may cause exceptional situations. When all that is perfectly understood, however, there remains the basic proposition that with regard to a number of ethical subjects there are natural certainties that are far above matters of opinion. Why do we need to speak of those things? For the obvious reason that we are often tempted to treat things that are above opinion as if they were matters of opinion.

And why? Because of the overwhelming fact that concerning these things that are above opinion, whether we speak of faith propositions revealed by the Divine Witness, or of natural certainties, in both cases, minds are actually divided. This is our temptation and it is a really treacherous one. Our temptation is to consider that wherever there is division among minds, there is no real certainty. We like to assume that where there is certainty, there is also unanimity, and a consensus. Well, that is not true. When there is complete and qualified certainty, there may still be a hundred accidental reasons why there should be no factual consensus, no unanimity. Let me use an example. Suppose, for instance, that we discuss whether it is lawful for parents to cut the throat of their twelve-year-old child. I think we will all agree that, all other things being equal, it is not lawful to cut the throat of a twelve-year-old child. But what if he is only nine years old? Is it the same? We would be unanimous in saying that it is wrong to cut the throat of a nine-year-old child. What about cutting the throat of a three-year-old child? We achieve about the same level of unanimity. What if we consider the cases of a newly born or an unborn child? In such cases our unanimity becomes less and less certain.

I remember a case that happened near my native province in Normandy, France. A young woman with a famous name who belonged to an upper-class family had surreptitiously become pregnant. She succeeded in disguising and concealing her pregnancy until the baby was born, and then she just killed him and buried him. The incident became publicly known, there was a trial, and the jury was not moved. They gave her a two-year jail sentence but then suspended it. So a jury made up of ordinary people might have considered that so long as a child is newborn, is not twelve years old, or nine, or three, but is newborn, if his mother wants to get rid of him, perhaps that can be tolerated.

What if the baby is unborn? Now we know that many people think that a mother has a sacred right to do whatever she pleases with what she considers is still a part of her body, and so it is with regard to something as serious as the murdering of children: we do not achieve unanimity. Perhaps we would, here, in a group be unanimous. But if we opened the door and invited a few people at random to join our conference, I am sure that we would be at a variance in regard to such a rather clear subject as the murdering of children.

Does this mean that the question is uncertain, and that it is only a matter of opinion, that it may be the opinion of a person that a newly born baby can be killed, just like that? Is this just a matter of opinion? No, it is not a matter of opinion. There is a natural certainty here and if we do not perceive it, if we do not share in this natural certainty, it is because of some accident that may be due to our own lack of intelligence or to our lack of morality, or to the influence of an environment, or to the failure of whoever took care of our moral upbringing to direct our mind properly in those matters.

There are a hundred reasons why things that are really matters of natural certainty do not create a consensus, do not cause agreement. Treating them as if they were matters of opinion is dangerous. To suppose that there must be lack of certainty wherever there is factual disagreement and a lack of consensus is a treacherous way to reason. It would be good reasoning if disagreement could not be caused by accident, but such is the fact. When there is natural certainty and perfect ground for agreement, disagreement still can be caused by a hundred accidental factors.

The first thing we have to think of when we speak of opinion is how strongly we may be tempted to treat as matters of opinion things that are far above opinion. Why are we so tempted? Because we all naively reason that if there is certainty there "should" be a consensus. Yes, there should be but the "should" is held in check by a variety of accidents.

What is rather terrible is that we have to live with people who are in disagreement with us even when disagreement in not permissible. It is easy to live with people who disagree with me in matters in which disagreement is permissible, but when I know that disagreement is not permissible, that's a lot more difficult. And yet that has to be done. It has to be done: we cannot change the great accidents of human history that cause us to be short of agreement on a number of matters--many of which are vital subjects--that are far above opinion. So with regard to those matters we have to be very firm and not yield to the temptation to consider them just as matters of opinion. At the same time we have to get along and be friendly with people who will consider murder legitimate in some cases when we are so convinced that murdering is always by essence an irretrievably very great crime.

All of which is by way of introduction. We need, before we begin to reflect upon opinion, to think of those matters that are above opinion and that we are so badly tempted to mistake for matters of opinion just because of the conspicuous fact that they have no factual consensus.

Now I wish to present a few remarks on personality and teachability. All problems, theoretical and practical, pertaining to the person are exceptionally difficult. What is a person? What constitutes personality? In what sense can it be said that the development of personality is an altogether desirable thing, the most desirable thing in the world? All of these questions are extremely difficult.

We all have a sound feeling that to be a person is something noble and worthy, and that we have no right to live as if we were not persons. So we all have, in other words, a sentiment that the development of an assertive personality is a desirable thing. However, we can see at once that it is a process surrounded by the greatest dangers, that the slightest deviation may cause a catastrophe and instead of bringing about the sound growth of the person, it may produce a destructive state of affairs-destructive for the person himself as much as for the community. But this sense of danger is something we feel and a rational validation of that feeling would necessitate a study of personality that would take, at the least, a semester. So we have to proceed on the basis of those feelings. After all, we are able to distinguish which of our feelings are sound from those that are not.

I spoke of teachability, the ability to be taught, the willingness to be taught. I have a great deal of experience with young people. The youngest of my six children is a high school junior. Among young people there is an understandable tendency to think that the proper assertion of personality, toward parents and other authority figures, involves an attitude of distrust, perhaps even an attitude of rebellion. As Descartes remarked so many times, "We were children before we became men." And, when we were little children we had to trust our elders. We had to believe the stories they told us, some of which turned out not to be completely reliable. But most of all, as we grew up, we had the feeling that the time would come when we could not depend upon witnesses or authorities or teachers. In short, we would have to look at things for ourselves and develop our own opinions. I don't need to elaborate on the psychological features that are extremely familiar to all of you whether you are still of the age when things are felt very strongly or in a more advanced age when it is possible to remember how strongly those things were felt. At all events, one fine day we discovered that we were no longer children and that we had to be persons on our own ground and with our own merits.

Concerning personality and teachability, the essentials of the issue can be summed up, I think, in very simple words. Universally, a witness is a person who has a substitutional job, who fulfills a substitutional function--substitutional, provisional, and transitional. In the sciences, for instance, before we can see for ourselves we are told by reputably reliable witnesses that things are such and such. Now, if a teacher has any sense of professional conscientiousness, he is most eager to have his students become independent of him as soon as possible. Suppose the subject is the science of nature. A man who has made similar experiments or computations is proposing his results for the belief of beginners. Well, how might they react? They will have to believe, otherwise they will never learn anything. But it should be understood on both sides that the role of the witness and that of a teacher is nothing else than a certified public witness, a witness certified as dependable by society. Academic examinations, doctor's degrees, academic appointments, all of that, signifies that society considers that "So and So" is a reliable witness in such matters as calculus, physics, philosophy, or other subjects.

To summarize: the desire of a good teacher is that his students no longer have to depend upon him but can see for themselves. If the subject is one of the sciences, then he or she will endeavor to lead the students to attain scientific knowledge and perhaps even an accomplished scientific knowledge. And if the subject is a matter of opinion, the teacher will encourage the students to work out an opinion for themselves. That is what any witness, and very particularly any teacher, must desire.

I express these words without hesitation because I am so convinced that they convey the truth. It is purely and simply desirable at all stages in the work of upbringing and education that a young person should, as soon as possible, see for himself, attain scientific understanding and the understanding of demonstrations if the subject matter admits of demonstration, or at least work out an opinion of his own, if it is a matter of opinion. When will it become possible for the young person to realize that he or she is able to do these things? Here we have one of the most difficult problems in the upbringing of the young, and that holds both for character training and the education of the mind.

A witness is a person who has to disappear, to make himself unnecessary as soon as possible. About that there is no doubt. On the other hand, we know by sad and frequent experience that if the young person gets rid of the witness prematurely, then, whether the matter is one of demonstration or one of opinion, he is unlikely ever to think soundly.

We are all very familiar with those youngsters who were given autonomy prematurely. If they had been given autonomy "just as soon as possible," it would have been perfect, but very soon is sometimes sooner than "as soon as possible." All too often it happens in the education of the mind as well as in the training of character that for having failed to depend upon guidance until the mind was mature enough to work out an opinion of its own, the conditions of a sound opinion have been ruled out forever.

I remember a few years ago we had a visitor, a young man of about thirty-two. I call him a young man because thirty-two is still young but this one was particularly so. We had dinner with him. During our conversation he uttered any number of stupidities although we knew him as a gifted young man. As he left, my wife and I remembered that when he was a youngster, having lost his father early on, he quickly told his mother that she should better keep out of his way because he considered himself mature enough to manage his own life. My wife said, "He is still thirteen years old." According to vital statistics he was thirty-two, but in terms of his maturity, he was only thirteen years old. This was understandable since this youngster deprived himself so soon of needed guidance, of needed witnesses, that his mind never grew, and at thirty-two he was as immature as if he were thirteen. The triviality of this example is, I suppose, excused by its familiarity and its significance. The case is by no means exceptional.

Now I wish to present a few remarks on the subject of faithfulness to one's opinions. It is a very common sentiment that there is something noble about abiding by the opinion that one has been holding for a long time, even for a lifetime. We all know people who derive pride from the fact that they voted Republican forty years ago and never quit voting Republican since then. Now I say Republican, I might just as well say Democrat. I have no preference. Just consider this psychology. The psychology of such a person is of stable, unchanging opinion, who is proud of that fact, and derives a sense of nobility from his very steady adherence to his opinions. It is something of interest that we do not dislike people who are faithful to their opinions. We are less impressed and appreciate people less who change their opinion casually, or who catch an idea or a trend in the present atmosphere and let themselves be guided by that trend, regardless of the opinion to which they have generally adhered in the past. We all think that there is some sort of nobility about faithfulness to one's opinions. That feeling or sentiment cannot be completely deceptive; I do not think it is. In fact, I think it conveys something. The bad thing about it is that it is terribly confused. When a man derives a sense of nobility, not to say a sense of pride, from the fact that he has been faithful to his opinions for so long a time, to what exactly has he been faithful?

I remember when I was a very young teacher I shared the teaching of philosophy in a very respectable university with a man who started teaching in the year I was born. He was a man of fine character, and he never missed a chance to recall that true honesty is something rare and to specify what he meant by true honesty as faithfulness to one's ideas. The fellow was very straight, very respectable, very noble. What he placed behind the words "faithfulness to one's ideas" was something beautiful and I knew it. Yet, I was struck by the ambiguity of that expression. To what or to whom are we faithful when we boast of being faithful to our opinions?

That faithfulness may be faithfulness to truth, steady adherence to truth, steady determination to find the truth. That is one possibility, and such was the case with my very respectable and respected older colleague in France. Very often, when we brag of being faithful to our opinions, we think of being faithful to our own self. There is a world of difference between faithful commitment to truth and faithful commitment to one's own self. All the difference between the best thing in the world--dedication to truth--and the ugliest thing in the world--the exaltation of the self. Those two are very easily confused.

As we are coming of age, it is really a thing from which we derive some satisfaction, a thing that brings us some consolation: to consider that this is how we have always thought, and we have not changed, and we do not intend to change. But what does that mean? If it means that, having been lucky enough to get an early start on the right track, on the track that leads to truth, and having an honest conviction that this was the right track, we stayed on that track and are determined to stay on it regardless of the cost, then we have the best thing in the world: dedication to truth. But how easy it is, under the appearance of dedication to truth, to be dedicated only to one's self. This is what faithfulness to one's opinion may convey. It does not do so necessarily. The expression and the feeling that it stands for are frightfully ambiguous. Let us be aware of this ambiguity.

I began this very informal little talk, by remarking that there are things above opinion and that the first thing we must do when we think of our duties in the shaping of our opinions is to have the deepest regard for those things that are above opinion, such as revealed propositions, those obscure propositions that are guaranteed by the best of all witnesses, the Divine Witness, the Word of God, or natural certainties, concerning for instance murder, assassination, and a few other moral topics. We are tempted to treat those things as matters of opinion because we are factually divided, but, again, that factual lack of consensus does not mean a thing concerning the certainty of those propositions that are above opinion.

We have been thinking in terms of truth and error, rather than in terms of action. Let us now turn to the latter, and we shall see that here opinion is in close connection with dispositions of greater power, dispositions involving certitude and capable of attaining certainties.

Can we be so sure of what we ought to do in relation to our problems of action? We live in a world of contingency where things can be otherwise than they are so that when we have conscientiously deliberated on a subject, carefully weighed the pros and cons, we still know that, although it is reasonable to act this way, we do not know, after all, what is going to happen.

Let me use a very simple example. Suppose that at the beginning of the summer, a family deliberates about how to spend their summer vacation. One possibility is to stay at home, another possibility is to go to the mountains, a third possibility is to go to the seashore, a fourth possibility is to go to a place describable neither as the mountains nor as the seashore. If everybody in the family is in good health and psychological condition, and if they have sufficient economic means, they really have plenty of choices. The good of the family can be attained by any of the four options, so any of those choices will be reasonable enough. Suppose they decide to go to the mountains. Everything has been carefully examined, and it is with a very good conscience that the head of the family concludes, "Let's do it. The trip will be a good thing for our family."

The trip may easily be done by train, bus, plane, or automobile. The last is by far the most dangerous, but the other three also involve some danger. The least dangerous of all is, perhaps, traveling by train. But what if a train wreck occurs and the family's child is killed. Then the proposition, "This trip will be a good thing for our family," becomes a lie. It turns out to be false. Now this is a very interesting point. The proposition, that "This trip will be a good thing for our family" was a proposition in a matter of opinion.

The felicities and the infelicities in the trip to the mountains or to the seashore are things broadly subject to contingencies. A car may be in very good mechanical condition and the driver may be an excellent driver, yet a blowout even with a new tire can happen, and at the most inopportune time: when the car is going at great speed, colliding head-on with a bus resulting in the death of fourteen people. Such things do happen and it is impossible to certify that the accident will not happen.

Consider another example. I intend to take a train tomorrow to return to my home, which happens to be a little far from my workplace. I won't deliberate about it. I have a twenty-five ride coupon book, so I don't even have to purchase a ticket. I shall just sit in the train. But no matter how infrequently train wrecks occur, I know that I may never see my home again. Once in a while, one person--or two, five, twenty, forty, or sixty--are killed in a train wreck. I recently read about such an awful accident--was it in Cuba, Puerto Rico, or Jamaica? There were over forty people killed in a train wreck. I am also reminded of the worst accident in contemporary history, which happened in a tunnel in Italy some years ago. A train got stuck in a tunnel and the fumes from the engine caused the death by asphyxiation of four hundred people. We can't certify that it will not happen to our children next time they take a train that happens to go through a tunnel. Those things are contingent. Thanks to modern science and engineering, we have impressive and ever-increasing regularity of favorable conditions, but the possibility of a catastrophe always remains.

Now this is the question I wanted to ask. Suppose that under the circumstances I have described, a father has decided that it will be a good thing for his family to spend the vacation in the mountains and off they go. Would you say that an unpredictable accident, the accident that was not probable, the accident that is just an expression of the wretchedness of our nature, of its constant exposure to destruction, that this accident invalidated the wisdom of the decision? By no means! Prior to the trip it was wise, certainly wise, to say, "Let's go. That trip will be a good thing for our family." It was certainly wise. It was a sound rule for the welfare of this little community. The accident does not change anything. The decision does not cease to have been what it has been: a wise decision, a sound direction of action.

We now have all that we need to know about the subject when we are deliberating about what we are going to do--most of the time at least. I say most of the time, because there would be an exception for the case when our deliberations lead us to conclude in favor of something that we ought not to do, something that is obviously sinful, but let us leave that out of the picture. When we deliberate about what we are going to do, we are really concerned with two things.

First, we are concerned with the cognition of the future. So we check the tire pressure before we leave for a long trip to determine whether the tires are in dependable condition. We discover that there are a few cuts in the tires, so we can predict with a disquieting ratio of probability that a blowout may happen. We cannot certify that a blowout will occur at an opportune moment. So before we leave we had better replace the undependable tire with a new one. Here you see how we are concerned with what is going to happen. We are concerned with predicting the future as best we can. Of course, we can't achieve more than an opinion. We can consider that it is perfectly reasonable to go on a long trip with these four tires, all of which were recently purchased and show no evidence of being ready to blow out.

What will probably happen? You see how I am concerned with the future, not the accomplished fact, but the fact to be accomplished, or the fact to come. I try to make my proposition adhere as closely as possible to what is going to happen in the future, and I know very well that this adherence can never be unqualified; it will always be the loose adherence of opinion. So far as the cognition of things is concerned, in a domain like that of human action, we will always have to be satisfied with opinion and probability. We may succeed in achieving very strong probability, very well-grounded opinion, and sometimes we have to act on a very uncertain basis. Should we say that there is a greater probability in favor of a felicitous outcome? We may have acted under extremely risky circumstances. At all events, we need not develop anxiety in an insane search for certainty in a domain which purely and simply does not admit of certainty. That is the domain of opinion.

But there is something that does admit of certainty. It is the direction of our action. And this is the second of our two concerns. The proposition, "Let's go, a vacation in the mountains will be good for our family," when taken as prophecy, as prediction of what is going to happen, is uncertain. It may be very reasonably probable, highly probable in fact, but it is purely and simply uncertain. We never really know. But if you take the same proposition as the rule of action, as a rule for the direction of our action, then it is quite a different story. Here a gentleman who is in charge of the family community has been deliberating conscientiously, examining the state of character of each of the members of the family community, the state of their health, the financial problems involved, the transportation problems involved, and having done his best, has come to a conclusion that is precisely what conscientiousness wants it to be. He has come to the conclusion that is precisely what virtue wants it to be. It is a conclusion that is precisely what good will wants it to be, what right intention wants it to be, and here we have a relationship between good will and judgment that is capable of certainty.

Although I do not know how my tires are going to hold up, although I really do not know if the train that I am absolutely determined to take tomorrow is going to take me home or take me to the hospital, dead or alive, the proposition--"That is what I shall do; I shall take that train tomorrow as usual, and I won't even be concerned about possible danger"--that proposition is possessed of certainty. Not at all as an expression of a coming event, but as an expression of harmony between good will and judgment. It is the very judgment that good will demands. It is a judgment in harmony with good will. A man of good will cannot do any better under the circumstances.

This is the rule: The direction is in harmony with good will, with faithfulness, with justice, with charity, with dedication; it is in harmony with all that makes up a good will. This harmony is something certain. Here we have, beyond the weak power of opinion, a certainty of purely practical character that in a purely practical order, in the order of human action--by no means does it have anything to do with science and the contemplation of truth--in this order of human action, we have here a judgment that attains unqualified certainty.

What I wanted to say is that opinion is placed between two systems that are better than opinion itself. If we consider opinion as relative to the knowledge of truth, then above it there is faith in revealed dogmas and there is sound adherence to natural certainties. If we consider opinion as related to the order of action, then there is something beyond opinion which is the certainty of direction in our action. The certain agreement of our rule of action with the demands of good will, with the demands of a right, righteous, clean, pure, straightforward intention is the deepest meaning of opinion. Of itself, it is a weak thing, since by definition it cannot attain certainty, but its glory is to be, to a considerable extent, preparatory and introductory to things that are above the probabilities of opinion, either in the order of truth or in the order of action.

In the answer to the problem of opinion and personality, the deep answer to the problem of what we should do in order to be true persons, genuine persons in the shaping of our opinions, is most likely to be found if we consider those two poles of certainty between which opinion takes place and moves: the theoretical certainty, and the certainty regarding truth which is found in revealed faith and also in a great many propositions of natural character; and at the other extremity, in the order of action, the certainty of harmony between the wise decision and the demands of a really honest will.

This article was transcribed from a tape recording of a lecture by Yves R. Simon and edited by Raymond Dennehy, University of San Francisco, and Anthony O. Simon, director of the Yves R. Simon Institute. It was originally delivered at the department of philosophy at St. Joseph's University, East Chicago, Illinois, in 1957.