Conclusions

Così fan tutti valorizes certain kind of compromises but makes no attempt to resolve underlying tensions between reflective and social selves. At best, it minimizes them by easing up on social constraints to make individual expression easier, but also providing reasons for individuals to exercise self-restraint. Of equal importance, it encourages individuals to accept tensions, even contradictions, between their sense of what is right – a judgment arising from their reflective selves – and what they are prepared to accept in practice. The opera encourages these compromises through role playing, which it reframes in an interesting way. We have examined role playing as something that people are either forced to do to achieve their external goals or sought to do to express and develop their inner selves. The former involves conscious dissimulation which is likely to provoke tension between reflective and social selves while the latter often encounters external constraints and social disapproval. Mozart and Da Ponte put a positive spin on dissimulation and use it to smooth social frictions and allow people expanded freedom within a social order that must, of necessity, be to some degree constraining. The kind of dissimulation that characterizes the last scene of the opera stands in sharp contrast to the that which drives its plot. Guglielmo and Ferrando's charade to test the steadfastedness of their mistresses is egocentric and threatening to the social order, but their willingness to overlook the unfaithfulness of their women by pretending that it never happened has the potential to uphold the institution of marriage and restore the happiness of the two couples. Their charade is based on acceptance of the rigid social conventions of the existing order while their marriage accepts the inevitable tensions between that order and individual frailties and needs for self-expression.

Do reflective and social selves need to be harmonized? Mozart and Da Ponte clearly regard such a project as fatally flawed, if not downright dangerous. Some prominent political theorists disagree. Leo Strauss and Charles Taylor, and many conservatives and communitarians, believe that transcendent moral orders are essential and obtainable. Taylor maintains that only people who live in societies where there is consensus about the moral order are capable of developing identities in harmony with their surroundings. He conceives of identity as the site of our moral compass and denies that adequate foundations for moral choices can be found within ourselves, in nature or created through social engineering.⁷⁸

Secularism and cynicism have certainly increased in the modern world, but Taylor's argument fails to acknowledge that transcendent orders are no longer possible, or could only be achieved at horrendous human costs. In the West, traditional forms of Christianity compete with many different visions of the cosmos. There are some people – a small minority in the West -- who lead culturally isolated lives with others who share their beliefs and practices. Most Westerners live in pluralistic societies, and an even more pluralistic world, where there is no consensus about fundamental values. In its absence, we confront acute, sometimes violent, conflicts over beliefs and practices, making it impossible to live in harmony with the social order regardless of our beliefs.⁷⁹ Dispensationalism nicely illustrates this problem. Like all forms of Christianity, it claims legitimacy on the basis of its understanding of the cosmic order, but believers find the larger society bemused by or downright hostile to their eschatology. Their response – the only one possible aside from hermit-like withdrawal – is to insist that the Jesus will soon prove their truth claims by rapturing the faithful. This demonstration is expected to prompt mass conversions and, after a period of tribulation, the advent of the Millennium. Jesus, Dispensationalists insist, will impose harmony between individual identities and the social order.

Taylor is undoubtedly correct in insisting that in the absence of an accepted cosmic order there is no firm foundation for moral choices.⁸⁰ But it does not follow that people will stop making moral choices or give up their commitments to identity. Throughout this book I have argued that continuous and unified identities are impossible under any circumstances and belief or disbelief in cosmic orders does not affect this reality. Toward the end of this chapter I explore alternative ways of thinking about and practicing self-identifications. In the paragraphs that follow I relate ethical behavior to identity in a very different way than Taylor.

Traditional European conceptions of order relied on enforcement of moral codes by family, church and state. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was a general assault on these authorities and their self-serving claims that they were essential to maintain order.⁸¹ Philosophers conceived of morality as self-governance, which in turn provided the justification for people to assume control of their lives in a wide range of domains. Locke, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Reid, Bentham, Rousseau, Wolff and Kant are all major figures in this intellectual transformation. From Locke to Kant, many philosophers committed to this project nevertheless doubted that moral codes could effectively be enforced by reason-induced self-restraint. More and Voltaire considered belief a vengeful god necessary to maintaining order because those who would commit misdeeds had to expect judgment and punishment.⁸² Kant thought belief in god and a "world not now visible" absolutely essential if reason is to lead people to morality as its apprehension depends on receptivity to "objects of emulation and awe" as incentives and sources of resolve.⁸³ While writing this section of the chapter, Pope Benedict XVI was addressing 70,000 people a mile away in Hyde Park repeating his shopworn and empirically unjustifiable message that morality is impossible without religion and that atheism is responsible for the Nazis and other twentieth century horrors.

These fears are groundless. Public opinion polls reveal that the percentage of people who believe in god in the developed world, the US aside, is somewhere in the range of 30-35 percent.⁸⁴ It is lower in Scandinavia and Japan, places with relatively low crime rates and a high degree of voluntary compliance to social norms. By contrast, Eastern Europe and Latin America, with significantly higher religious beliefs and church attendance are demonstrably less law-abiding and more violent. There are many reasons for these differences and most political scientists would contend that they have little to do with religion. This is my point. Ethical behavior and political order are not dependent on widespread acceptance of cosmic orders and their transcendental moralities. Believers and non-believers alike routinely obey laws, practice honesty, behave considerately towards one another and not infrequently, display altruism.

When asked to justify their behavior, some religious people refer to the Ten Commandments or other religious principles or teachings. But many will simply assert, as most non-believers do, that they do what is right. Concern for divine sanction or logical grounds for ethical systems is a question that concerns a very narrow circle of intellectuals. Some of them err, and display arrogance, in thinking that the vast majority of people require or desire incontrovertible warrants for good behavior. The absence of such warrants does not even trouble most intellectuals who are aware of the problem. As Mozart and Da Ponte hope the principal characters of Così fan tutti will, they have long since learned to live comfortably with ungrounded ethics and difficult moral choices. They are prepared to accept many kinds of ethical compromises but also feel capable in most instances of distinguishing between right and wrong, even though they recognize they cannot possibility demonstrate the validity of their judgments. For many people, I suspect, ethical behavior helps them to construct and maintain identities. If so, the arrow of causation works in the opposite direction supposed by Strauss, MacIntyre and Taylor.

Even if they could be grounded or universally accepted, cosmic orders would not provide the kind of ethical guidance Strauss, MacIntyre and Taylor assume. Among people who believe in a deity – or any form of cosmic order -- there are, and always have been, enormous controversies about the proper application of religious principles to specific issues and problems. The ordination of female or homosexual ministers and same sex marriage offer contemporary examples, just as dancing, card playing and the education of women did in the past. Cosmic orders have lots of wiggle room and require interpretation the same way laws and constitutions do. Conflicting positions in these controversies are no more defensible in cosmic orders than they are in secular ones. In institutionalized cosmic orders, religious authorities attempt to adjudicate controversies, but in the West, a declining proportion of people are willing to accept their right to impose solutions by fiat. This points to a more general problem faced by religions or philosophical systems that root themselves in cosmic orders. Even in situations where there is a consensus about a moral position, it does not mean everyone will act accordingly. I have seen no empirical evidence in support of the proposition that religious people behave more ethically than their secular counterparts. The last century provides ample evidence of both kinds of people committing the worst kinds of atrocities.

In practice, modern roles and affiliations are multiple and often cross-cutting. These tensions put a premium on rules and conventions that provide guidance when facing role conflicts and they are routinely offered by the religious, economic, political and other authorities. In the modern world, these authorities are generally independent of one another and not infrequently at loggerheads. People in search of guidance often encounter competing sets of rules, which only intensifies their problems of choice and commitment. When rules are reinforcing and effective, they have the potential to become unduly constraining and make it difficult for people to act in ways they think consistent with their personalities, needs or goals.

This is the problem faced by all the aristocrats of Don Giovanni, its eponymous hero aside. Civil order and psychological well-being require rules -- but also frequent exceptions to them. Orders with loose, vague or ambiguous rules are invariably fortuitous as authorities of all kinds do their best to forestall such possibilities. For this reason, successful orders are never the result of purposeful design. It is all the more ironic that so many intellectuals have nevertheless aspired to overcome alienation and injustice through the rational construction of orders. And it is to these utopian projects that I now turn.