"On Controversy"
The following is the text of the Baccalaureate Address delivered by President Richard C. Levin on May 26 in Woolsey Hall.
We gather here as one community to celebrate your commencement, to rejoice in your accomplishments. It is a time for reflection -- a time to give thanks for the devotion of your teachers, for the lessons you have learned, for the bonds you have formed with classmates, for the beauty of this place. It may seem contrary to the spirit of the occasion, but I would like to speak to you about controversy -- its inevitability in a free society, its occasional unpleasantness, and, ultimately, its value. We have had a substantial measure of controversy on our campus this past year. It would seem appropriate to reflect on what we have learned.
The inevitability of controversy in public life is described by James Madison in the Federalist papers:
The latent causes of faction are ... sown in the nature of man. ... A zeal for different opinions ... [has] divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.1
Madison points out that it is among the tasks of government to regulate the competing interests that give rise to controversy, though he sees no realistic means of suppressing it. He writes:
There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty that is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.
Let us pause over this a moment. Madison's first point is that controversy can be stifled by suppressing freedom of expression, but this would be an unacceptable solution. More interesting is the second method of eliminating controversy -- giving every citizen the same opinions. Madison claims this is "impracticable" for two reasons: First "as long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. ..." Second, "The diversity in the faculties of men ... is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests."2
Thus, Madison believes that the harmonization of competing values and interests is merely impracticable, not impossible. If all men were endowed with equal and adequate critical faculties, all would reason their way to common conclusions. A uniformity of values and interests would emerge.
The belief that all competing values can be harmonized, that all interests can be finally reconciled, is a common feature of Platonic, Judeo-Christian, Enlightenment and Marxist thought, though it is expressed in very different forms. As Sir Isaiah Berlin, the distinguished historian of ideas and political philosopher, explains, three common threads run through these systems of belief. First, all genuine questions have one and only one true answer. Second, there is a dependable path to the discovery of these truths -- which in different systems of belief involve a different combination of reason, faith, and divine intervention. Third, the answers to all genuine questions are compatible with one another and form a single whole, for it is assumed that one truth cannot be inconsistent with another.3
Berlin argues that conflict among values is inevitable for reasons different from those advanced by Madison. The goals of liberty and equality, justice and mercy -- to give just two examples of legitimate personal and societal objectives -- cannot be completely reconciled. Reason cannot lead us to a unitary solution that realizes all the aspirations of humanity; many legitimate goals cannot be achieved simultaneously. Choices must be made; compromises among values must be found. There is no single answer to the question of how much liberty should be sacrificed in the name of equality, or how much justice should be tempered with mercy. Cultures will reach different conclusions about how to balance these objectives, as will individuals within a culture such as our own.
* * * * *
I mentioned at the outset that controversy is not only inevitable, it can be unpleasant. As Madison points out, controversies in the public arena can inflame factions with mutual animosity, kindle unfriendly passions, and excite violent conflict. As Berlin argues, the single- minded pursuit of a unitary vision can blind an individual or group to the legitimacy of competing values and thus eliminate the possibility of compromise. In the extreme, single-mindedness becomes narrow-mindedness: it leads to the suppression of dissenting views, to the totalitarian denial of life and liberty.
In a free society, we seek to counter the tendency for controversy to degenerate by establishing rules and observing customs that preserve civility. In this University we have a strong tradition of tolerating controversy. Free expression is protected, even if the speaker's words are bitter, disrespectful, insensitive, or hurtful. Those who utter offending words are not punished; instead, those who interfere with the rights of speakers to speak are subject to discipline. These rules combine to produce an atmosphere of free and open debate, a climate in which the answer to a false argument or a hurtful argument is not the suppression of speech but more speech; argument is met with counter-argument.
The controversy on our campus this past year has for the most part honored these rules of civility. Passions have been inflamed, and, at times, rhetoric has been shrill. Demonstrably false claims have been trumpeted as truths. This has been uncomfortable, even disturbing, but each side has had ample opportunity to make its case.
* * * * *
If conflict among legitimate values is inevitable, how should we conduct ourselves? If Berlin is right, we must not only compromise with one another, but each of us must privately balance the competing claims of legitimate yet ultimately irreconcilable values. Berlin often cites the great philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who said: "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight was ever built."4
We cannot build a perfect life or a perfect world. But this should not deter us from building a better life or a better world. To recognize that values ultimately clash is not to deny the possibility of ethical conduct. By a thoughtful, well-reasoned assessment of competing claims, one can chart a highly principled, if not an ideal, course of action.
Let us take Abraham Lincoln as an example. David Donald's new biography makes clear the sense in which Lincoln was a man of principle, but also a pragmatist.5 He was not inalterably committed to a single, unchanging vision that directed all his actions. He was not, for example, an abolitionist, although he found slavery morally repugnant. He entered his Presidency seemingly driven by one objective -- preservation of the Union. Gradually, by a combination of external circumstances and the growth of his own self-confidence, he came to grasp that bringing an end to slavery was a practical possibility. Thus, he allowed another objective -- that all men are created equal -- to become a guiding principle.
Lincoln's principled pragmatism stands in stark contrast to behavior driven by a single, all-embracing vision. Among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus, Isaiah Berlin found vivid expression for this opposition: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Lincoln did not, in Berlin's words, "relate everything to a single central mission," a "single, universal organizing principle in terms of which alone all that [he was] and [said] has significance." Like the fox, Lincoln "seized upon the essence of a vast variety of objects for what they are in themselves, without... seeking to fit them into... any one unchanging, all-embracing... sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision."6
Now some of you who graduate this weekend may be hedgehogs, and to you I would say: beware the excesses of the true believer. Use the tools of critical inquiry you have acquired here at Yale to remind yourselves that the end you seek -- however worthwhile in itself -- does not always, does not often, and perhaps does not ever, justify means that are intolerant and inhumane.
To those of you who are foxes, I would say: prepare yourselves to tolerate ambiguity, to accept the fact that conflict among values is inescapable. Your lives and the world you live in are imperfect, but your Yale education has prepared you for them. You have learned to think clearly and independently, to disentangle difficult ideas, to weigh and balance competing claims as you shape your own lives.
Women and men of the Class of 1996; hedgehogs and foxes alike: I hope that you will never be overwhelmed by controversy, but you will not avoid it altogether. Use the powers that you have developed here to learn from the struggle with competing ideas and values. Though you may not build Jerusalem, may you never cease to improve yourselves and the world around you.
1 James Madison, The Federalist Papers, no. 10, London: Penguin, 1987, p. 124.
2 Ibid., p. 123.
3 Isaiah Berlin, "The Pursuit of the Ideal," in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991, pp. 5-6. See also, "The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West," in op. cit., pp.24-25.
4 Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1958, p. 56; "The Pursuit of the Ideal," pp. 18-19; "The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West," p. 48.
5 David Donald, Lincoln, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. 6Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1953, pp. 1-2.