In Praise of Hypocrisy

 “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice gives to virtue.”  That’s an aphorism that has fallen into desuetude, along with the word “desuetude.”  The saying was still in use in the mid-twentieth century but became virtually meaningless in popular culture after the sixties.  That was when the moral imperatives now popular came into fashion:  “Stand up for what you believe in” and “Be true to your values.”  Instead of being encouraged to be virtuous, the general public was told to affirm and exhibit for the world whatever their beliefs happened to be--hedonistic, nihilistic, Marxist, Christian, et cetera.

Simultaneous with this dubious moral revisionism, hypocrisy was promoted to number one on the scale of bad things, standing as it does in direct opposition to the aforementioned imperatives.  A hypocrite doesn’t outwardly embrace what he really believes in or values.  The question thus arises, how is hypocrisy in any sense a tribute to virtue?   

To answer that question one must explore the dramatic origin of the word “hypocrisy,” literally “an actor under a mask.”  As thus understood, the idea of “pretense” is a necessary component of the term—an element now often ignored.  And what the moral “actor” pretends to be is virtuous, or at least more virtuous than he really is. Given this meaning of the word, simply failing to be true to one’s values would not make one a hypocrite since neither pretense nor virtue need be part of that behavior.  The ubiquitous “I’m only human” excuse would suffice to provide secular absolution for any disconnect between values and performance.

It’s only when an individual pretends to be virtuous when he isn’t as virtuous as he pretends to be that hypocrisy in the aphoristic sense comes into play.  The reason for pretending to be virtuous is that virtue is, or at least was, generally recognized as superior to vice.  This recognition of virtue’s superiority (even if only pretended for public consumption) is the “tribute” vice gives to its opposite number.

We can thank the famous French philosopher of the 1960s, Jean-Paul Sartre, for the aforementioned moral revisionism that replaced objective moral standards with self-defined mores and substituted “authenticity” for virtue.  Being “authentic” involved embracing one’s own actions and standards of conduct.  Consequently, “hypocrisy” was transformed into the vilification of “inauthentic” persons who failed to embrace their own actions or standards of conduct.  Nowadays “hypocrite” has become the only judgmental epithet many persons are willing, and eager, to employ.

The most pernicious use of this redefined term is to vilify persons who don’t live up to the high standards they espouse, thus making it equivalent to the word “sinner” or, in more pedestrian terms, “imperfect.”  It’s true that a hypocrite in the traditional sense “pretends” to be something he is not, but it is not the case that someone who fails to live up to exalted moral standards is a hypocrite.  A person who fails to clear a traditional moral bar set at seven feet isn’t a hypocrite unless he pretends otherwise.  

Yet thanks to today’s linguistic legerdemain all morally serious persons, people whose ideal of virtue exceeds their grasp, have become hypocrites.  Moral zeroes, by contrast, are deemed “honest” or “true to themselves” if they set their moral bars flat on the ground and step triumphantly over them.  No one accused Howard Stern (at least not back in the day) of hypocrisy.  Instead his shamelessness, formerly at or near the bottom on the scale of vices, was embraced by the cultural avant-garde.  Stern openly and profitably disparaged traditional standards of virtue.  

Thus, in this topsy-turvy world of setting one’s own moral standards, the ethical playing field is hopelessly slanted in favor of shamelessness.  The rules of the game encourage everyone to place the moral bar as low as possible and to prize being non-judgmental above all else.  Anyone who dares raise the bar of virtue high will be pummeled with charges of hypocrisy for failing to be perfect (cf. William Bennett, The Book of Virtues).     

Being a hypocrite in the traditional sense isn’t a good thing, but it’s better than shamelessness.  The latter doesn’t pay tribute to virtue at all, whereas the former exists in a world where virtue is an objective good honestly pursued by imperfect people and sometimes indirectly honored even by those corrupted by vice.