To engage in hypocrisy means to claim to hold a certain
position while in fact (deeper down?) you hold a quite different if not
contrary position.
Hypocrisy is widely viewed in a very negative light and frequently
that view is justified.
However, in certain circumstances there is a significant
silver lining associated with hypocrisy.
In fact, I believe that, in certain situations, hypocrisy may be a first
step in moral awareness.
When A engages in hypocrisy he implicitly acknowledges that
the position that he claims to hold is, in some sense, morally superior to a
common alternative position. Some observers
will see the position A claims and his alleged reasons for holding that
position to represent valid arguments and be convinced of the validity of that as
the morally superior position. Later, when
they learn of his hypocrisy, those observers may have different responses to A. But for some, what was a hypocritical
position for A, will remain a very real position for them.
Of course I need an example.
I offer a classic. “We hold these
truths to be self evident – that all men are created equal and are endowed by
their creator with certain unalienable rights.”
For how many generations has that been offered up as “our belief”. Perhaps the parents of the boomer generation
of Americans were especially convincing.
I do not know to what extent those parents’ claim of a belief in racial
equality was real. But many of their children
took their parents stated support of the principle to heart. The result was a large and necessary white
component to the civil rights movement.
Therefore, far from being universally a negative activity I
think the following is sometimes a better description.
Hypocrisy is the deference we show to those precepts that we
recognize as valid, but are unable to practice.
