Philosophy Now Magazine - Question of the Month

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Below is my "Question of the Month" response which was published in Philosophy Now, Dec 2015/Jan 2016 (see subscriber link)

 (I was awarded a random book for my response.)

 What’s More Important: Freedom, Justice, Happiness, Truth?
The thought foremost in the minds of the Jews fleeing the Third Reich would have been freedom from Nazi clutches, not justice. For them justice must have seemed a distant mirage. What makes justice hard to get is that, as philosopher John Gray points out, it is “an artefact of custom.” So when customs change, justice changes. And happiness here? The term can be applied in the context of someone fleeing oppression only if we stretch the meaning of ‘happiness’ to cover emotions such as relief, comfort, or solace. It is doubtful though if Hitler’s victims would have experienced even pale happiness.
ABA's Magna Carta Memorial, Runnymede, UK. (Photo: Andrew Bowden/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 2.0)
Some say that truth consists of beliefs and doctrines. That leaves out a lot. Moreover, one could also distinguish, as Michael Ignatieff does, between factual truth and moral truth. The truth that we encounter in everyday life seems to lie somewhere between the beauty Keats saw in the Grecian Urn and the malleable variety to which our pseudo-statesmen allude, or it may be close to the truth that C.S. Peirce and William James identified in their Pragmatism, as something that works, something that brings success. Evolution tries to set us on the right path through the ‘inherent value systems’ that Nobel-laureate biologist Gerald Edelman says are embedded in our brains – while pragmatism reminds us to also differentiate between what is ideal and what is achievable. We are nonetheless forced to look for at least a working definition of these values, otherwise our moral compass would be pointless. Truth, even if itself undefined, then seems the most important, as it appears causative of all else. As regards freedom and justice, one needs to be conscious that differences in beliefs are ingrained in human nature. Hence, even in an ideal polity, freedom has to exist before justice can be delivered. Lastly, happiness – in reality, largely a state of mind – is a by-product of the realisation of truth, freedom and justice.

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