Jonathan Bennett’s 1974 essay “The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn” from Philosophy 49, employs examples from Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” and draws inspiration from the Nazi regime, specifically Heinrich Himmler, to explain his theory of sympathy as a tool to correct one’s own “bad morality” provided one is open to correction and listens to said sympathies. I believe that if one experiences sympathies that go against his morality, his morality is inherently flawed to begin with.
Subject to controversy, Twain’s 1884 “Huckleberry Finn” looked to challenge era-specific issues that don’t hold up in the modern century. Most modern readers (hopefully) wouldn’t relate to Huck’s morality which is a product of the society that he is in. This shows in-text as Huck has doubts and regrets when it comes to helping a slave – Jim – escape. “I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. . . It hadn’t ever come home to me, before, what this thing was that I was doing. But now it did; and it stayed with me, and scorched me more and more.” (Twain, 1974) By use of the word conscience, one sees that Huck views this issue as inherent right versus wrong, and he believes he is on the wrong side. His choice to help Jim has nothing to do with his “moral compass” but, as is explained later on, it is due to his own sympathies towards a person who regards him as a friend. Huck is not actively choosing to challenge a slave-based economy or a time period saturated with racism, but is instead feeling guilt from the actions that go against this society. After Jim calls Huck his friend, we come to this internal debate: “I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. I went along slow then, and I warn’t right down certain whether I was glad I started or whether I warn’t.” It is his sympathies that cause Huck to do what he believes is the wrong thing. To Huck, this is a moment of weakness, but to any modern-day reader, it is a show of strength.
Conversely, Heinrich Himmler refused to give into his sympathies for the sake of his own skewed morality. This is, of course, referring towards sympathy towards the Jewish people during the Holocaust and his “bad morality” reflecting the one of the Third Riech. The conflict in Himmler’s mind is shown through one of his speeches: “. . . the extermination of the Jewish race. . . Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500, or 1,000. To have stuck it out and at the same time— apart from exceptions caused by human weakness—to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard.” Here, Himmler is openly admitting that it’s difficult to follow through on the Nazi’s plans while remaining “decent fellows”, however, the implication that one can remain a “decent fellow” is proof that his morality is, in many ways, “bad.” Himmler proposed that only the weak give into their sympathies and doing such is “taking the easy way out.” One can argue that this is a man doing what he is told; he is just following orders given by one Adolf Hitler. However, up to 10,000 Germans and Austrians fled persecution to help those in need, those affected by the Holocaust. (Smith, 2007) The text quotes a physician quoting Himmler in saying, “‘It is the curse of greatness that it must step over dead bodies to create new life. Yet we must. . . cleanse the soil or it will never bear fruit. It will be a great burden for me to bear.’” This seems to contrast some of Himmler’s cohorts in that, Himmler did view Jewish people as people. However, it’s been reported that Himmler was antisemitic his entire life, dating back to his college days (Longerich, 2012). He was utterly fascinated with the “Jewish problem” that led him to the join the Nazi party at a young age. His dairies were full with antisemitic remarks and propaganda. In this case, it doesn’t matter how Himmler felt towards the Jewish people. He saw dead bodies as dead bodies, but he saw the visceral feeling he got as weakness. He held deep-seated, antagonistic, beliefs against the Jewish people, that even his sympathies couldn’t erase. While Himmler’s bad morality was rooted deep in antisemetism, many others can’t free their grip from authority, which causes many to ignore their sympathies all together.
People are trained to submit to those we deem as “authority” from a young age. Of course, we are, how else would a structured society run? This is taken to extremes, however, as studies have shown that humans will submit to authority, even when they feel that they are doing something wrong. This study is known as “The Milgram Experiment” named after its conductor, Stanley Milgram, who wanted to examine justifications Nazi’s used following the Nuremberg Trials. Milgram was curious in seeing how easily normal people could be influenced into doing terrible things, for example, Germans in WWII. These tests involved two subjects, a “teacher” and a “learner”, the “learner” being in on the experiment and instructed by Milgram. The premise involved the “learner” being forced to recite a prepared list of words to memorize, and the “teacher” being instructed to shock the “learner” for every incorrect answer. The “learner”, of course, under Milgram’s direction, gives wrong answers and is submitted to shocks. There were four “prods” given, or, sentences meant to encourage the “teacher” to continue shocking the “learner”
Prod 1: Please continue.
Prod 2: The experiment requires you to continue.
Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.
Prod 4: You have no other choice but to continue.
Statistics show that 65% of the “teachers” continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts. Milgram concluded the experiment with his paper “The Perils of Obedience.” It says, “The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations… Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not.” The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.’” “Teachers” felt noticeable sympathy for their “learners,” which showed through pained facial experiences and even pleas to stop the test. However, the vast majority of participants continued to give into pressure, their own morality of resigning under authority more important than their supposed “moral” obligation to help others.
Of course, Himmler and Huckleberry Finn aren’t the only people that suffer from the multidirectional pulls of philosophical dilemmas. Many people feel the pull day-to-day as they struggle between the sympathy to help others being persecuted and their personal morality that demands that they fit in with society. Multiple tests have shown that individuals will go along with the crowd, even if it means going against what they believe to be correct. There also have been tests that shown that members of a society will submit to authority even if they feel as though they’re doing something wrong. Both of these tests can be shown in respect to our sympathy versus bad morality debate, and in the case of people such as Nazis. Next, we will look at the newest generation: fraternities.
In 2017, Penn State student Timothy Piazza died after repeatedly sustaining head injuries, ending with him falling down a flight of stairs in the Beta Theta Pi frat house.The fraternity was supposed to be alcohol free after an incident in 2009, and after this incident, the house was shut down. According to CNN, “As part of the ritual, Piazza consumed 18 drinks in 82 minutes on his first night of pledging. His blood-alcohol level went “from a zero to as high as a .36,” a grand jury report said, almost five times the legal limit.” (Simon and Rob Frehse, 2018. Emphasis mine) Several of the members of Beta Theta Pi pled guilty, and member Ryan Burke was sentenced to three months of house arrest. This case created the “The Timothy J. Piazza Anti-Hazing Law” which was unanimously approved by Pennsylvania State Senate Judiciary Committee. Hazing incidents date back to 1838, and wasn’t even the only death that year. After Piazza sustained his injuries, it took members of the frat over 40 minutes to decide what to do, which many attribute to the bystander effect as well as groupthink. In many cases like these, the members of the fraternity know what they are doing – engaging in violent and excessive hazing – is wrong. Many of these members not only feel sympathy, but even empathy due to the fact they went through the same ritualistic hazing. Fear of standing out against the group causes these people not to say anything. Everyone wants to fit in, and that leads people to do weird things.
Groupthink is a societal phenomenon unlike any other. This tendency occurs when the desire for harmony within a group leads to irrational behavior. These “irrational behaviors” include ignoring their sympathies or empathies to victims to fit in with the crowd. There have been many cases of people ignoring others being murdered, raped, or otherwise assaulted due to the “bystander effect”, a result of groupthink. Such examples of this include Ilan Halimi, a French Jew kidnapped in Paris and Shanda Sharer who was kidnapped by four teenage girls. Irving Janis proposed about eight symptoms of groupthink, one of which being: Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions. This nicely ties into the big discussion of “bad morality versus sympathy” as this unquestioned belief in the morality of their group – whatever it may be – becomes “bad” by the unwillingness to question it. Groupthink has been applied to cases such as the fraternity hazing but also what led the Nazi’s to invade the Soviet Union, and is how we get scandals such as Watergate. It also leads to centuries long oppression, through slavery or other forms of degradation.“Bad morality” is any morality that requires you to ignore your natural sympathies to others in order for it to survive.We find good morals to be based in sympathy, in the way we handle others and the compassions that we have. And just as everyone wants to fit in, everyone wants to feel as though their morality fits in the definition of “good.” But if your morality is pulling you one way, and your sympathies are pulling you in another, maybe it’s time to evaluate how good your morality may be.
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