Christ and the Pharisees, Lawrence Ladd
"No one has ever died from contradictions."
– Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
"Consistency is the playground of dull minds."
– Yuval Noah Harari
Linguistic prescriptivism has gotten a bad rap. In some of my circles, at least, it’s become common knowledge that since language naturally evolves over time, attempting to "correct" common speech is as futile as it is elitist. This characterization of prescriptivism is partly right–some people wield the rules of Standard English against others in order to denigrate their intelligence or character. Although descriptivists are right to condemn this linguistic bullying, I think that it would be a mistake to reject all attempts to prescribe rules of language. Rather than abandoning the idea that some linguistic norms are more correct than others, we should redistribute the power to shape rules of speech, embracing a form of prescriptivism that is both egalitarian and democratic. You and I, being competent speakers of the same language, give each other reasons to coordinate and modify our shared rules; rather than deferring to a handful of elites, we work together to develop norms that serve our shared purposes. If some descriptivists want to replace the aristocracy with anarchy, then I think we should have a republic. It’s in this spirit of equality and fraternity that I turn toward ‘hypocrisy,’ a term that is abused more often than it is used correctly.
How is this possible? Meaning derives from use; if everyone used ‘hypocrisy’ to describe a rare African bird, then it could have an odd number of feathers. I think it would be a mistake to stop there, though. Words are hidden inferences, and my use of ‘hypocrisy’ reliably conveys an attitude of scorn that is appropriate in some situations but not in others. If ‘hypocrisy’ describes a specific transgression that matches the word’s connotation, then it would be a mistake to use this word against people whose behavior does not merit that level of criticism. This “verbal abuse” would allow me to persuasively criticize people who don’t deserve to be criticized. This post, then, is an attempt to unsheathe the inner logic of hypocrisy, explain the meaning behind the emotion, and urge people away from statements that invoke this idea inappropriately.
I’ve framed this as an argument about which uses of 'hypocrisy' are correct, but if you really dislike that idea, then you could instead read me as making an argument about what we should do with this word going forward. To paraphrase Sally Haslanger, I mean to ask, “What is hypocrisy and what should it be?” Even if other people are “correct” to speak in the way that they do, we can still do better. I think we’ll all be better off if we can achieve clarity about this confusing and dangerous word.
Hypocrisy is Not Inconsistency
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." Inconsistency is inescapable. We never see the whole picture at once; by the time we’ve focused on one thing, we’ve already forgotten something else. If you think that your beliefs and actions are wholly consistent, then you haven’t even begun to get things right.
“If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing.”
Hypocrisy is not inconsistency. ‘Hypocrisy’ and ‘hypocrite’ have severely negative connotations, so we should reserve them for behaviors that merit severe criticism. Given that it is practically impossible to make our moral beliefs consistent, let alone to make our beliefs perfectly consistent with our actions, it is inappropriate and unhelpful to describe every example of inconsistency as hypocrisy. ‘Inconsistency’ is a perfectly good word for this concept, one which diagnoses a problem but does not ascribe severe wrongdoing to the inconsistent person.
I’m reminded of an evangelical Christian talking point: The evangelical will ask, have you ever lied or stolen? Yes and yes. Would you allow a liar and a thief into your home? Well, that’s what God, in His infinite grace, has offered us. It never helps to point out that most people who have lied are not liars and most people who have stolen are not thieves. If the word ‘thief’ were inclusive enough to describe someone who stole a pen fifteen years ago, then it would be worse than useless. The word would make it too easy to criticize people who have done almost nothing wrong, and it would trivialize the moral wrong of more serious cases of theft. Likewise, it’s unacceptable to define ‘hypocrite’ so broadly that it would describe every person or to define ‘hypocrisy’ in a way that describes an involuntary, inexorable deficit in our moral reasoning.
This problem gets worse because we are overly quick to attribute inconsistency to our ideological opponents. (If you don’t want to read about abortion, skip to the next paragraph.) By being selectively vague about which values are relevant to particular issues, it’s easy to attribute inconsistency to almost any set of values that we dislike. Consider this argument: “There’s nothing ‘pro-life’ about the party that supports the death penalty but opposes gun control and universal health care.” Alternatively, “Democrats claim to care about ‘choice,’ but they don’t think I should have any say in where my kids go to school, whether to get the vaccine, or what the government does with my money.” I see variations on these arguments frequently, and they’re pretty bad. Neither set of views is actually internally contradictory or self-defeating.1 ‘Life’ and ‘choice’ are rhetorical inventions; nobody is actually for or against them in general. (You claim to be pro-life and yet you use hand sanitizer? Curious!) In both examples, the accusation of inconsistency adds rhetorical heft to an argument that has not actually been made. If I could show that my opponents’ views are inconsistent, then I wouldn’t have to bother making more substantive arguments–they would already be proven wrong. Typically, these arguments also imply that my opponents are stupid, dishonest, or both. Before I object to beliefs in this way, I should ask myself, “Do I really think these views are inconsistent, or do I just think that these people are wrong about multiple things?” If I want to find out whether someone’s views are consistent, I’ll have to leave the realm of abstract concepts and focus on their specific reasons for holding the views that they do. (EDIT: I've eaten some of these words in response to good criticisms, see here. )
So, inconsistency is very common, but it’s also more evenly distributed than you might have thought. Every person and every political coalition has some inconsistent ideas, but most people’s views are not so horrifically inconsistent that you can explode them with a pithy observation. We should be slow to accuse our ideological opponents of severe inconsistency and even slower to accuse them of hypocrisy: We are probably perceiving more inconsistency than is actually there, and the inconsistencies that do exist within their beliefs may not be especially unreasonable or culpable. We usually aren’t justified in concluding that our opponents are extremely irrational or dishonest.
Hypocrisy is Not Falling Short of One’s Values
On this point, I have some powerful enemies. Oxford Languages defines hypocrisy as “the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform,” and Merriam-Webster defines it as “a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not…behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel...especially the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion.” Egalitarian prescriptivism gives me the flexibility to borrow from these definitions without recognizing dictionaries as final authorities, and in fact, I think that these dictionaries and others have recognized part of the meaning of ‘hypocrisy’ while overlooking another crucial element. We should not accuse people of hypocrisy just because they fall short of the moral views that they express.
Louis XVI, the king with two faces. On one side he vows to defend the constitution, on the other he vows to destroy it.
Suppose that, all things considered, it’s morally wrong for Eleanor to eat meat. Eleanor 1 continues to eat meat and thinks that it’s ethical for her to do so. Eleanor 2 continues to eat meat, but she’s uneasy about it. She concedes that eating meat is immoral, and she even argues with other meat-eaters that it would be better for them to become vegetarian or vegan.
Given my assumption that it’s wrong for Eleanor to eat meat, Eleanor 2 is better than Eleanor 1. Since she’s worried about the ethics of eating meat, she is more likely to become vegetarian in the future and also to influence other people to eat less meat. In fact, this stage might be a necessary step for Eleanor before she becomes vegetarian or vegan. However, if ‘hypocrisy’ means “falling short of one’s expressed values,” then Eleanor 2 is actually more criticizable than Eleanor 1; she deserves criticism specifically because she is more willing to criticize herself. Why is that? ‘Hypocrisy’ connotes selfishness and dishonesty, but Eleanor 2 is probably a bit less selfish and more honest with herself than Eleanor 1. Hypocrisy describes an abuse of moral concepts for selfish ends, but Eleanor 2 is using these concepts appropriately to describe a gap between her actions and her conscious moral beliefs.
Since ‘hypocrite’ has a very negative connotation, I have a strong incentive to avoid feeling or looking like a hypocrite. Ideally, this should motivate people to be honest–I won’t represent myself as being better than I actually am. If we’re not careful, though, then it could instead have the effect of pushing people toward moral mediocrity, punishing most actual attempts to raise moral standards.
First, people typically need some time to make significant changes in their moral behavior. Suppose that I’m struck by an argument that makes me think that I should behave better than I currently do–I should give more money to charity, I should stop eating meat, and I should call my parents more often. If I’m initially reluctant to do these things, then it will be difficult for me to accomplish them in just one “move”--most likely, I will have to spend some time thinking about it before these actions become a major part of my life. This is the way that people usually make significant moral changes in their lives; it’s comparatively rare to change your actions immediately in response to a good argument. It’s very important for people to have the option to entertain or express views that don’t match their current conduct, both to build their courage and to see how other people react to the choices that they’re considering.
Second, by expressing a value that I don’t (yet) live up to, I might influence other people to move closer to that ideal. If I’m intellectually persuaded that I should be vegetarian, but I haven’t yet found the willpower to change my diet, then my only remaining options are to either advocate actions I don’t actually take or to rationalize arguments in favor of eating meat. The second option is obviously worse: I might persuade other people that it’s okay to do something morally wrong. Likewise, suppose it’s true that, as Peter Singer has argued, we should donate all of our expendable income to high-impact charities. I’ve never heard of a person who lived up to this ideal–by his own admission, Singer does not donate all of his disposable income, although he does come much closer than most people. By advocating this moral standard, Singer has motivated numerous other people to donate more money to higher-quality charities. It seems highly unreasonable to criticize Singer specifically for expressing a moral ideal that has done a lot of good; it’s strictly better that he expressed this view at the risk of being perceived as a hypocrite. The more we punish people for falling short of their expressed values, the less likely we are to hear challenging moral arguments which might be true.
Hypocrisy is Moral Duplicity
Hypocrisy derives from the Greek hupokrisis, meaning ‘the acting of a theatrical part.’ Hypocrisy is moral stagecraft, an abuse of moral language and concepts that allows people to receive moral credit because they appear to meet a standard when they actually fall short of it. A hypocrite is not someone whose sincere values are inconsistent, nor someone who admits to falling short of their own values, but rather someone who playacts morality in order to carve out special privileges for themselves. Consider Eleanor 3, who claims to be vegan in public but eats meat in private. Even worse, she’s extremely judgmental toward other people who aren’t vegan: She scolds a friend for putting cream in his coffee and then she goes home and eats a steak.
In Dante’s hell, the hypocrites wear sparkling white robes that are lined with lead. Print by Gustave Doré (1832-1883)
In the last section, I argued that self-criticism is valuable because it allows people to push in the direction of raising moral standards even if they don’t currently meet the higher standard. You might think, then, that Eleanor 3 is doing something good by causing other people to think that she’s a vegan even though she isn’t; if people think that veganism is very common, then they might become more likely to become vegan themselves. Although Eleanor 3’s hypocrisy might have some positive consequences, it is much more fraught than Eleanor 2’s decision to be honest about her failure to live up to her own ideals.
First, when a person is honest about their moral shortcomings, other people acquire evidence about how easy or difficult it is to live up to that same standard. Suppose that Eleanor 3 and I are in the same Ph.D. program in a small town, and that it’s not actually possible to sustain a vegan diet on our income in this region. Alternatively, suppose that Eleanor and I share a medical condition that severely restricts what we can eat. Under these conditions, it would actually harm my health to become vegan; I might need to compromise by consuming some dairy alongside vegetables. If Eleanor claims to eat a vegan diet but actually doesn’t, then I might think that becoming vegan is manageable for me even if it really isn’t. If I ask Eleanor for advice about maintaining a healthy vegan diet under these constraints, then she’ll be forced to lie to me, with potentially serious consequences for my health.
Second, Eleanor 3 may also mislead me about how emotionally easy it will be to become vegan. Suppose that I’m in a transition period where I am revving up to become vegan, but I haven’t yet gotten up the nerve. If becoming vegan would be very hard for me, then the best strategy will be to begin only once I’ve understood and accepted that fact and taken steps to make myself more comfortable during the transition. If I’m under the misapprehension that going vegan will be very easy for me, then I’m more likely to attempt it in haste, burn out, and conclude that it’s a miserable experience that nobody should attempt.
Third, hypocrisy can also make it more difficult to notice that a moral rule is undesirable and should change. Suppose that we live in a community where most people think that it’s wrong to have sex before marriage, but about half of them do it anyway. If everyone were forthright, then it would be widely understood that it’s difficult for people to follow this rule, whether or not they should. (Per my other arguments, though, it would not be hypocritical for these people to say that waiting until marriage is morally correct even though they failed to do the right thing.) But if everyone puts on a show, pretending to be sexually virtuous when they actually haven’t been, then it will look like the rule is working–abstaining from sex appears to be a manageable task that most people succeed at, and everyone claims to be better off for having done it. Under these conditions, it would be difficult to acquire enough evidence to realize that the rule is not working.
Dante’s hypocrites walk endlessly along a narrow track in their leaden robes.
What If Hypocrisy Isn’t That Bad?
Maybe we’re all using ‘hypocrisy’ correctly, and the problem is that it has an overly negative connotation? You might think that, rather than changing the current dictionary definitions, we should just try to keep criticisms of hypocrisy in perspective. Since she continues to eat meat, Eleanor 2 is a hypocrite, but that doesn’t have to be a severe criticism; we can simply choose to see that as a very mild criticism on the order of calling her conduct inconsistent.
Although this approach is logically consistent, it’s impractical. In practice, it would be much more difficult to change the connotation of this word than it would be to change the way that we apply it. If I say “Eleanor is a hypocrite,” then I’m responsible for making you think that Eleanor is a duplicitous jerk. It’s no good to say, “Eleanor is a hypocrite. [...] Oh, sorry, what I meant is that her values aren’t perfectly consistent with her behavior, just like everyone else. I don’t have a serious problem with her.” Since it would be onerous and ineffective to use ‘hypocrisy’ without regard for its connotation, we ought to accept the connotation as given and modify our use of the word instead. Once we make those adjustments, I think we end up with a definition like this: A hypocrite is someone who claims to live up to moral standards that they don’t actually meet. Just as a person who rarely lies is not a ‘liar,’ a ‘hypocrite’ is someone who does this especially often or in especially repugnant ways. Although this is similar to the first part of Merriam-Webster's definition--“a feigning to be what one is not"--their definition also implies that this meaning is equivalent to "behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel." I've attempted to improve their definition by prying these meanings apart: "Feigning to be what one is not" is the core of hypocrisy, while "contradicting what one claims to believe" is something broader.
Thanks to Nicko Boylan for commenting on a long draft of this post.
1 I oppose the death penalty and I think it’s a tragedy that Roe is likely to be overturned, but this pro-choice argument plays dumb about the reasons that many people disagree with me on both of those issues–namely, they think that fetuses are morally innocent while murderers aren’t. I think that the disagreement about gun control and health care can be explained by a perceived difference between doing and allowing harm: It’s wrong to actively kill a fetus, but not to passively allow someone to die of a treatable illness. Likewise, I think that opposition to gun control tends to have a deontic justification: It’s morally acceptable to own a gun, so the government must protect this right regardless of the downstream consequences.
The second set of values is consistent because reproductive freedom is much more important than most other kinds of choice. Being forced to give birth is objectively a larger imposition than the other restrictions on choice that this Republican finds objectionable, so there’s no internal problem here.
These criticisms might be correct for some versions of each argument, though. If someone opposes abortion because of “the absolute sanctity of human life,” then it really does seem like they should support universal health care. On the other hand, I think that liberals and leftists sometimes defend abortion in terms that fit more easily with libertarianism than within a left worldview, which generally does expect people to sacrifice some of their autonomy for the greater good.↩
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