I’ve been reading Rabbi Joshua Liebman’s classic, Peace of Mind, and came across a section on open-mindedness and moral confidence I thought would resonate with the Ethics Bowl community.
“Tolerance is not moral apathy or easy deviation from established principles. If we say apathetically, ‘One notion is a good as another,’ we are not being tolerant; we are merely being lazy… Dense, unenlightened people are notoriously confident that they have the monopoly on truth… But anyone with the faintest glimmerings of imagination knows that truth is broader than any individual conception of it… Renan’s remark that our opinions become fixed at the point where we stop thinking should be sufficient warning against premature hardening of our intellectual arteries, or too stubborn insistence that we are infallibly and invariably right” (76).
Much of the world behaves otherwise, but cocksure arrogance vs. relativistic indifference is a false dilemma.
The mature approach, which takes time to develop, is instead one of principled humility – a desire to seek moral truth combined with a willingness to change our minds.
And that’s exactly the disposition that Ethics Bowl fosters.