Philosophy Talk: The Blog

The Meanings of Spitzer’s Apology

Nick Smith, J.D. and Ph.D., author of I Was Wrong: The Meanings of Apologies (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of New Hampshire

nick.smith@unh.edu

For a video of Spitzer's apology with this essay, see http://cupblog.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/parsing-spitzers-apology/

 
Elliot Spitzer’s recent statements accompanying his resignation as governor of New York provide an occasion to reflect on the meanings of apologies. I find apologies dizzyingly complex social rituals and in I Was Wrong: The Meanings of Apologies—published by Cambridge University Press in 2008—I identified more than a dozen kinds of meaning that we seek from gestures of contrition. Instead of worrying whether an example “is or is not” an apology, I wonder how well it serves certain purposes and to what extent it conveys certain kinds of subtle social meanings. I referred to these as a “loose constellation of interrelated meanings,” and in some cases a victim may desire each of the forms of meaning I mention. In others, she may only seek one sort of meaning such as a sincere expression of sympathy or a remorseless payment to cover the cost of repair.

I devoted much of the book to the inexact science of parsing the distinct spheres of meaning from each other. I began by considering how an apology can explain the history of an injury. Contested facts often lie at the heart of moral conflicts, and the offender’s explanation of the nature of her wrongdoing can in certain circumstances be the most significant and hardest-earned aspect of an apology. I then braved the knotty question of the relation between apologies and responsibilities. I subdivided this into concerns regarding 1) the distinction between accepting blame and expressing sympathy, as we often find in the form of “I am sorry that X happened to you”; 2) the general relationship between causation and moral responsibility; 3) the status of accidents and surprisingly common denials of intent in the form of “I didn’t mean to X”; and 4) the problem of standing, where one person apologizes for another. I then noted the significance of identifying each moral wrong in the act to be apologized for, which entails both explicitly naming the offense as a blameworthy violation of a moral value and naming each violation rather than covering over a host of wrongs with an undifferentiated and generic statement of contrition. In addition, a regretful offender believes her actions were wrong and she would not undertake them again if confronted with similar circumstances and temptations. I then considered the various ways in which the performance of the apology can alter meaning. The problems of reform and reparation presented numerous points of discussion, as did questions regarding the emotions and intentions of the apologizer. Collective apologies, such as those from corporations or nations, compound these issues.

The book considers the many nuances and gritty details of apologetic meaning, but in general I find that asking a few simple questions can take us to the heart of the meaning of an apology: Did the offender explain what she did with an appropriate degree of specificity? Does she accept blame? Does she make clear why her actions were wrong and identify the principles she violated? Does she promise not to do it again redress the problem she caused? These questions tend to lead to further questions about the meanings of any given apology, but they can provide some insight in Spitzer’s case.

First, Spitzer’s statements obviously admit very little. Rather than “coming clean” and confessing the details of his wrongdoing, he leaves us to speculate. He could have admitted all of the relevant facts, but instead it may require years of investigations and legal proceedings to disclose the extent of his transgressions. Or he might strike a deal that effectively ends the discussion. His repeated description of the reason for his resignation as a “private failing” seems untenable given that he is a former governor and attorney general facing charges in several federal crimes, but casting the offense in this way suggests that he may deny the prostitution-related charges and instead cast the sexual relations as an affair but not a crime. This may seem like a losing argument given the facts discussed publicly to date, but Spitzer may negotiate himself into a position to sustain this claim and avoid criminal charges. If he denies relations with a prostitute, he will not apologize for that specifically.

I also wonder about the nature of his relationship with the high-priced prostitution ring. Was he an otherwise typical client, or did he somehow abuse his power as a former prosecutor to establish special authority and protections? Surely his involvement with prostitution required him to repeatedly lie and breach the trust of his family, his staff, and the general public, but these offenses go unnamed. Such spectacular moral failings often result from the aggregation of many lesser offenses, and such an accounting would provide insights into the character of Elliot Spitzer and the nature of this offense.

In addition to his failure to admit the morally salient facts of the scandal, it remains unclear why he believes his actions were wrong. He says he “did not live up to what was expected” of him, but what values did he violate? We would benefit from some precision here. Why was it wrong? Because he disrespected his wife in so many ways? Because he exposed his children to this ordeal? Because he repeatedly lied? Because he paid a financially vulnerable woman twenty-seven years younger than him to have sex with him? Because he supported an industry that he publicly denounced? Because his hypocrisy after claiming that he wanted “ethics and integrity to be the hallmarks” of his administration contributes to public cynicism toward government officials? Because he weakened the Democratic Party? Because he violated the rule of law, which is an especially grievous offense for a public official of his stature? Or was his primary failing, in his eyes, getting caught? His apology would have considerably more meaning if he explained what he did and made explicit why he believes it was wrong in these regards.

A few other features of Spitzer’s apology warrant comment. What were his intentions for providing the apologetic statements? Spitzer may have negotiated with prosecutors to offer his resignation and apology in exchange for lenience in criminal proceedings against him. If so, his apology may seem entirely self-serving rather than an attempt to advance the victims’ well-being and affirm the breached values. Such intentions can drain an apology of much of its moral value.

Spitzer also helps himself to various “emotional amplifiers” in his statements, indicating that he is “deeply sorry” and that he “sincerely apologizes.” I discuss the emotional components of apologies in some detail in I Was Wrong, but we can appreciate the difficulty of determining whether Spitzer has experienced emotions of contrition with sufficient intensity. His use of “deeply sorry” and “sincerely apologize” does little to provide us with a window unto his emotional and mental states. I generally resist the idea that apologetic emotions are retributive in nature—the apologizer deserves to suffer acute humiliation—but his remarks about “rising every time we fall” seemed so self-assured that they risked appearing to minimize the seriousness of offense. At times his statements sounded like a celebration of a hard fought campaign upon honorably conceding to a formidable foe.

This leads me to wonder about the timing of his apology. Spitzer apologized within hours of initial reports of the scandal, and he resigned while further apologizing within forty-eight hours. Spitzer leapt from one peak to the next in his career, and he was by all measures a rising star. His political career came crashing down; his family will never be the same. I can only imagine how he suffers. Here we should recognize a truth that often conflicts with our media culture: moral development does not occur with a news cycle. Spitzer has a great deal of work to do, and he will be accounting for this for the rest of his life. Here reform and redress can hold much meaning. In my view, the best apologies are like promises to change. Like promises, we cannot judge them fully in the moments they are spoken. We need time to search for the deepest values that orient our lives and begin rebuilding our future with habits that honor those principles. We are all engaged in this process, and although it may not make for good television it this the sort of persistent moral growth that creates good people.

For these reasons I do not think we should make too much of Spitzer’s apology. The words are vague and its meaning is ambiguous, like someone telling you that they love you on the first date. Such a statement could well be a life-transforming proclamation, but we would need to know much more before we could make a well-informed judgment. We will have a much better sense of the meaning of Elliot Spitzer’s March 2008 apologies if we check in with him in ten years.

Open Thread on Apologies

Dear Listener:

You probably have notice the lightness of blogging recently. But things are about to change. Today's guest, Nick Smith, has agreed to blog about today's topic of Apologizing. And to get things started, I thought I'd start an open thread and invite listeners to contribute their thoughts.

I thought the episode was quite interesting myself. The one thing that still puzzle me is apologizing for things done accidentally.

It seems to me if I accidentally step on your toe, I do owe you some sort of apology, even though I didn't exactly "wrong" you. It would be odd if I were simply indifferent to your pain, certainly. At the bare minimum, I need to acknowledge your pain, acknowledge my role, however unintended, in causing you pain, and express regret at it having happened the way it did.

That doesn't quite add up to an apology, I admit. But it's something close.

Or so it seems to me.

Anyway, comment away!

Saint Augustine

by John Perry

When I was a graduate student at Cornell, Saint Augustine (354-430) wasn't required reading.  Years later I became responsible for teaching the Winter quarter of a freshman class at Stanford, where the books were selected from a "Core Reading List".  I somewhat reluctantly put Saint Augustine's Confessions on the list.  The structure of the Core List was such that I couldn't get by with Descartes, Hume and Locke.  I set about getting up to speed on Saint Augustine.

Continue reading "Saint Augustine"

Why Music Matters: Open Thread!

posted by Ken Taylor

I'm in the airport at Tucson. I'm listening online to our episode on "Why Music Matters" which we recorded in front of live audience at a locale in San Francisco. David Harrington, of the world famous Kronos Quartet is our guest. Since my flight is about to board, I won't have time to listen at length. And I've been too wrapped up in the conference to blog about the topic. But I thought it might be fun just to open up an entry to comments from listeners about the show and the topic. I'll add my own two cents worth in a separate entry when I get some time --hopefully later this week.

For now, comments on the episode from listeners are welcome. Post away!

Work and the Self

posted by Ken Taylor

Today's episode was on Work. Our guest was Al Gini from Loyola University of Chicago. He's a philosopher by trade, the author of a number of books about work and the self, and the resident philosopher at WBEZ public radio in Chicago.

The episode was recorded a couple of months ago, back in late October, in front of a live, large and lively audience of students and faculty at Centenary College in Shreveport Louisiana. We were at Centenary for the better part of a week. We not only recorded today's episode there, but we also broadcast an episode on Philosophy and Literature live from Centenary's college radio station, KSCL, which has the singular distinction of airing our show twice per week. We also did a couple of other public events in connection with Centenary's First Year experience. Meeting with the students was especially fun. But we were also wined and dined, in very fine style, by many of Centenary's energetic and engaged faculty members. It was a delight getting to know you all.

We thank all the good folks at Centenary, the nation's smallest Division 1 school, for making this all possible. And I hope you enjoyed having us around as much as we enjoyed being around.

We'd like to do more of this sort of thing in the future -- as I think I've mentioned before. So if you'd like to bring us to a college campus near you, including your own, get in touch and let us know.

Since it's been a couple of months since we recorded the show, I have to admit that it's been about that long since I thought hard about the topic of the show. I listened to it as it was broadcast this morning and was reminded of many things that I thought at the time. I think I still think most of them. But in the rest of this post, I'll try out briefly a few follow-up thoughts.

Continue reading "Work and the Self"

Rename that Radio Show??

posted by Ken Taylor

Believe it or not, program directors, the gate-keepers of public radio, almost universally hate the name 'Philosophy Talk' -- whatever they think of the program Philosophy Talk. Even PD's who seem otherwise to like the program quite a lot, sometimes say they hate both the 'talk' part of our name and the 'Philosophy' part of our name. But folks seem particularly to hate the combination of 'Philosophy' and 'Talk'. A PD at a very major station on the West Coast hated our name so much that he/she even cited it as one reason for not putting us on the air when we were first starting out.

Because we get this a lot, we've been thinking about changing the name. We're just starting to brainstorm about possible new names. We're thinking about having a "Rename that Radio Program" contest on the air and via our blog and our website in order to involve our listeners in this potential rebaptism.

What's in a name, you say? Well, apparently a lot. The "talk" part apparently makes us sound to some PD's like we're trying to be the "Car Talk of Philosophy." That's apparently a definite no, no. "Can't tell you how many times I've been pitched a program purporting to be the Car Talk of X" says more than one PD dismissively. The "Philosophy" part is also apparently pure death to some. 'Philosophy' apparently connotes to some PD's staid academic discourse. And they believe that that is what it would connote to their listeners as well. They think that will be a turn off to the listener and will prevent the listener from even sampling our program. One PD wrote to us that he/she has seen no research suggesting that he/she should put 52 hours/year worth of philosophy programming on the air.

When you tell people like this, "Well lots of people have sampled the program and love it," they are not always impressed. They may suspect that we have only a niche audience and that the name stands in the way of our breaking out of the niche. [Of course, they never ever acknowledge that one thing that prevents us from reaching a wider audience is their own unwillingness to give us access to their air.]

Okay. So you see what we're up against? See why I sometimes get frustrated by the "business" side of this whole affair? I firmly believe that we are offering something that millions crave. But I guess I am willing to acknowledge that though people do crave what philosophy has to offer, they don't necessarily crave it under the rubric 'philosophy', if you know what I mean. That may have been what the surely well intentioned PD who cited the lack of market research justifying 52 hours/year of philosophy on the air was getting at. But who knows, really?

My very dear and usually wise wife told me that we should just stick to our guns and not change our name. But some professional publicity and marketing types, who work in the trenches, say that if the name is a problem for the gatekeepers, then it's a problem that needs to be overcome.

Anyway, got any ideas? We'd love to hear them.

Political Correctness and the Speech Fashion War

posted by Ken Taylor

It's been awhile since I've done this -- awakened at a god-awful hour on Sunday morning, to write a blog about an upcoming show. I hope I'm lucid.

Today's show is about the political correctness. Our guest is Leonard Steinhorn, author of a rousing defense of the baby boom generation, to which I proudly belong, called The Greater Generation. According to Steinhorn, we baby boomers were the leading edge of a great sea change for the better in America. Our age cohort almost single-handedly ended racism, sexism, and homophobia. We brought down corrupt and mendacious presidents. We ended a pointless and forlorn war. By elevating the sanctity and fragility of the environment to national consciousness, we brought to heel a kind of anything goes capitalism that saw our lakes and streams and air as just more commodities to be used up and discarded. We took the university by storm, first as students and then as faculty, helping to make them more than perpetuators of narrow privilege. We took the conformist, hierarchical and oppressive America bequeathed to us by our so-called greatest-generation forebears and shook it up root and branch and in the process gradually remade it into a more caring, progressive, egalitarian society.

Assuming that we boomers really do deserve all this praise, it's still fair to wonder what any of this has to do with political correctness. Well, I think it actually has a fair bit to do with at least the fate of the term 'politically correct' especially with the claiming, reclaiming and disclaiming of that somewhat odd phrase.

Continue reading "Political Correctness and the Speech Fashion War"

What We've Been Up To, lately!

posted by Ken Taylor

Obviously, this blog hasn't been buzzing with activity recently. That's mainly because life and work have been incredibly, incredibly busy for both John and me. And it seems harder and harder to get our on-air guests to take us up on our invitations to guest blog. So much to do, so little time to do it! I'm sure you understand. But I hope we can do better in the coming months.

I can already see a new New Year's resolution coming. I will blog on a more regular basis.

Just to get back in practice, I thought I would write not so much of a philosophical blog entry, but an entry about about the recent comings and goings of the Philosophy Talk crew and about some things that are on the horizon. It's been a busy and exciting time for us.

Continue reading "What We've Been Up To, lately!"

Philosophy Talk Holiday Treats Coming Soon!

UPDATE: Sale Products Available Now!

Just in time for the holidays, we at Philosophy Talk will offer our listeners some holiday treats, including:

THE COMPLETE PHILOSOPHY TALK

Until the end of the 2007, you will be able to purchase The Complete Philosophy Talk , the entire archive of Philosophy Talk to date -- all 147 (and counting) episodes -- for the price of $129.95. That works out to about 88 cents/episode.

Buy it for yourself! Or give the gift of thought!

A perfect holiday treat for your philosophically inclined friend, offspring, parent, or significant other!

EXCLUSIVE TELECONFERENCE

Purchase either The Complete Philosophy Talk for the bargain price of $129.95 or a Philosophy Talk Annual Subscription for the low, low price of $1.35/episode between Monday, November 27th and December 31, 2007 and receive as a bonus thank-you (for either the purchaser or the gift recipient) an invitation to an exclusive teleconference with John Perry, Ken Taylor, and the entire Philosophy Talk posse.

Dialog with America's Public Intellectuals #1, in real time, up close and personal, without ever having to leave the comfort of your home, office, or dorm room!

All current subscribers will also be extended invitations to this special event.

More details about the exact time will be available on here

INDIVIDUAL EPISODE SALE

Don't want to own the complete archive of Philosophy Talk? Aren't sure you're ready for an annual subscription? But you still want to sample the gift of thought?

Just for listeners like you, we will also be making each individual episode available at a reduced price. Between Monday, November 27th and December 31st, 2007, you can purchase any past episode of Philosophy Talk for $2.95.

For more details on how you can give Philosophy Talk, the gift of thought, for the holidays, click here.

Poetry, Philosophy, Truth

Howdy folks; Troy Jollimore here. Ken and John were kind enough to invite me to be their guest for the “Love, Poetry, Philosophy” show they taped at Powell’s City of Books in June. And now that the show is being broadcast, they were kind enough to invite me to blog for the show as well. I’m happy to take them up on it—keeping in mind that blogging is a very informal medium, and that what I have to offer may turn out to be no more than a few fairly random thoughts.

 

One of the relations between poetry and philosophy that we didn’t really get to discuss on the show, as I recall it at least, has to do with their respective conceptions of truth. I’m really generalizing here, but I’m going to make the claim that analytic philosophy, at least as traditionally practiced, is dominated by a conception of truth that has (at least) two significant features. First, it is propositional: it takes the proposition to be the primary entity that truth attaches to. And second, it is unitary: it tends to take it that there is one truth about any given subject matter. Thus philosophers are always looking for THE truth about something—THE proper analysis, THE correct understanding.

 

Poets tend not to think like that, partly because their understanding of truth tends to have more to do with metaphor, and poets tend naturally to be pluralists. If I have a philosophical analysis of x, and you come along with a philosophical analysis of x that isn’t the same as mine, then it seems like, as philosophers, we’re obliged to try to figure out which one is right; but again, they can’t both be right. But if I have a metaphor for y, and you come along and offer another metaphor for y, I can accept that your metaphor is a good one without feeling obliged either to (i) reject the validity of the metaphor I had already offered, or (ii) showing that at a deep level, the metaphors are really the same. So philosophers tend to view truths the way most people view spouses: you only get one at a time, so accepting them is a matter of replacement. Whereas poets tend to view truths, a lot of the time at least, more as friends: you can accumulate them, and you don’t need to get rid of the earlier ones.

 

In a related way, poets put more emphasis on the role of pictures than on the role of propositions. After all, a set of true propositions about z need not constitute an adequate picture of z. The propositions may all be trivial and uninteresting and leave out what is truly interesting or distinctive about z. So poets, on the whole (again, I am generalizing terribly) are more interested in truth as it attaches to pictures, than truth as it attaches to propositions. Thinking about truth in terms of propositions makes us more inclined to believe in the ONE truth since, after all, any proposition must either be true or false, and so there can only be one complete set of true propositions about the world. But thinking in terms of pictures reminds us that any human grasp of this one complete truth is partial, and that in human terms, the idea of multiple distinct but not necessarily incompatible truths may in fact be one that makes a certain sense.

 

Admittedly there is, among many poets, the idea of a ‘more complete’ understanding; as we add more metaphors to our mental stock, we form a deeper, richer, more adequate picture of the world, and so understand it better. We learn to see things from different angles, to appreciate them in a different light; to come to understand how something that doesn’t attract you can nonetheless appear attractive to someone else; and so forth. On the other hand, I think many poets think that there is no such thing as a complete or total understanding—there is always the possibility of coming to understand something better, of adding another metaphor.

 

Some philosophers have held views something like this. Nietzsche, for instance, may seem to have had something very much like this in mind with his “perspectivism.” And like Nietzsche (at least in some of his moods), some poets may want to take this sort of thing too far, and give up talking about truth at all. This, I think, is an overreaction to the valid recognition that it is always perilous, and very often misleading, to talk about the ONE truth about anything. But on the whole, it seems to me that poets—even those who tend to feel nervous when the word ‘truth’ is bandied about—do believe in truth; it’s precisely what they are striving for when they search for good  metaphors.