The Doctrine of Things Indifferent

I want to write for you today about the doctrine of things indifferent.  Specifically, I want to explain for you the ethical doctrine and the political doctrine (there is also a psychological doctrine, but we shall not discuss that).  We shall see that a proper understanding of the doctrine of things indifferent casts light upon many key debates in current politics concerning the constitution, social conservatism, and immigration.

The Question

One of the trickiest questions in moral and political philosophy is this: does it ever really not matter which of two policies is followed?  At first blush, it seems as if the answer must obviously be yes.  One thinks perhaps of something like which side of the road we drive on, or whether a contract can be based on a handshake or whether a piece of paper must be signed.  Provided that there is some policy, that it is clear, and that it does not change arbitrarily through time, it seems as if it cannot really matter which policy is followed.  Similarly, when asked whether I would like a chocolate or coffee ice cream, can it really matter which I choose?

And yet, upon reflection this answer seems difficult to defend.  Consider, for example, any way of evaluating action or policy on the basis of its consequences.  If I buy the coffee ice cream, then the store orders some more, so the demand for coffee is just a little higher, so somewhere in Kenya an extra girl is employed to pick coffee when she might otherwise have gone hungry and been forced into prostitution.  Because of this, she does not die of AIDS.  But if I buy the chocolate ice cream there is a little more demand for chocolate, so a man in Latin America keeps his job when he might otherwise lose it.  Because of that he is able to pay for his son to have music lessons.  This son grows up to compose a superb guitar piece widely played around the world.

And of course there are many subsequent consequences, also, from the continued life of the girl or the commercial success of the boy.  Now, to be sure, we may not know what all these consequences are, and we may not even know how to say whether it is better that the girl live or the boy compose his guitar piece.  But we surely do not want to say that it doesn’t matter.

One set of manoeuvres here, which will not detain us long, are those of nihilism.  The nihilist might respond by saying that this case just illustrates the futility of pretending that anything matters or at the very least that we have any way of telling what is best.  Let’s park that thought.

(And in passing, let us note that the problem arises also for relativists.  For suppose the relativist says that each of us has her own values and priorities and none has objective universality.  Where does that get her?  For even with her own individual value system, she must decide whether two actions are ever really indifferent to her.)

The most straightforward manoeuvres are probably the following two.  One is to say that even if it must ultimately matter which of two actions or policies is pursued, there will be some occasions on which we cannot tell which is best with any certainty.  For those who like jargon, we might say that even though there may never be metaphysical indifference (i.e. it never really doesn’t matter), there will often be at least some limited epistemological indifference (i.e. we don’t know which is better).  (Of course, there will be many other occasions on which we can be very sure which is best, so there is not even epistemological indifference in these cases.)

The other straightforward manoeuvre is to say that morality is not about what is metaphysically best, to this degree of precision at least.  Morality requires of us only that we go to reasonable lengths to evaluate the consequences of our actions.  We cannot be held morally responsible for highly complex chains of consequence about which we could not possibly know anything.

Each of these two manoeuvres leaves indifference provisional.  Although, as matters stand today, we may not be able to tell enough about the consequences of our two actions or policies to decide which is better and which worse, we are not denying that one or other of them must actually be the best.  So perhaps later evidence or reasoning might eliminate the epistemological indifference.

Ethics: the Stoic doctrine

The originators of the ethical doctrine of things indifferent were the Stoics.  In its purest form, the doctrine is that only virtue and vice matter, whilst things such as health, wealth, and fame are matters of indifference.  So it doesn’t matter whether you act so as to promote your own health or not – indeed, you are even, strictly, permitted to commit suicide.  Being the cheerful fellows that they were, the Stoics softened this pure doctrine to the position that, provided that virtue was pursued and vice avoided, one might as well act in ways that promote health and wealth – the key was not to believe that acting thus was to do something truly good.

Thus, we might only slightly misrepresent the Stoic  doctrine if we say that Stoics held that there were matters of metaphysical indifference (e.g. actions that promote health or illness) but some of these were not matters of practical indifference.  So, the things indifferent might be divided into those that were practically better, those practically worse, and those truly and ultimately indifferent.

Politico-theological indifference: the doctrine of Melanchthon, father of political liberalism

Stoicism was never terribly popular, and by the late Middle Ages had been largely irrelevant for many centuries.  But then, dramatically and with huge import, the Stoics’ doctrine of things indifferent was re-framed and re-applied in a new context by the most brilliant philosopher of the Reformation, Martin Luther's right-hand man, Philipp Schwartzerd, who adopted the pseudonym “Melanchthon”.

Melanchthon’s contributions to classical grammar and education theory (the areas of his formal work) were still considered important literally centuries later.  But it is his contributions to theology and politics that were most profound and most enduring.  I shall not bother you with his ideas in theology, for you have heard them all and consider them the standard view so deep and obvious that you have probably never paused to wonder who came up with them.  But they were considered revolutionary (literally) at the time.  Similarly, his key political doctrine, that we shall explore in a moment, involved a truly audacious leap of thought and imagination.  To aspire to be Melanchthon is the highest and most presumptuous aspiration for any intellectual: to produce radically new ideas that become so overwhelmingly dominant and widely accepted that eventually your writings come to look obvious and clichéd and no-one even bothers to remember your name.

Melanchthon sought to find a means by which Catholics and Lutheran Protestants could coexist, perhaps even within one Church.  His concept was that, provided all could agree on a set of core doctrines (in particular, concerning the means of salvation) other practices such as what vestments priests wore and some other aspects of worship and even of Christian conduct could all be regarded as things indifferent.

This doctrine (already visible as early as 1530, well before most of the tragedies of Reformation-era violence) is in the top two or three pivotal moments in the history of political thought.  It marks Melanchthon as amongst the strongest claimants on the title of “Father of political liberalism”.  The idea of a society in which we sign up to a narrow set of uniting doctrines and beyond that are permitted to do our own thing, within reasonable limits, seems so obvious, so natural to us now that it almost has the quality of an eternal verity, a notion that has always been and no-one first produced.  But this form of liberalism originates with Melanchthon.

In the religious sphere, the harder-line Protestants in the Swiss tradition adopted Melanchthon’s concept (in this, as in many matters) and came to talk of “primary and secondary matters”.  In England, Richard Hooker, writing nearly 70 years later, took up the idea and applied it to church organisation as well as other matters.  Hooker’s generous broad church concept thereafter defines Anglicanism almost up to the present day, and provided the target or model for the English liberals such as Locke to construct their constitutional vision.

There was always a bit of doubt as to quite how to understand indifference.  Was it metaphysical indifference, for example?  Did God really not mind how the church was organised, or how church services were conducted?  I think that it should be clear how Melanchthon’s concept should be employed once one understands its origins in Stoicism.  Remember that for the Stoic the indifference is to be understood by reference to true matters of virtue and vice.  Being ever so wealthy could not make up for a lack of virtue.  Likewise, I think Melanchthon’s concept is that it avails us naught if we burn ever such sweet incense, or (if it be better) have our churches ever so plain and ascetic, when our doctrine of salvation is flawed.  But it is only in a purist, slightly fanatical sense that the Stoic might claim that this meant one should be indifferent between poverty and wealth, health and sickness.  Provided that one was virtuous, one might as well be rich.  Likewise, I feel one should understand the politico-religious doctrine of things indifferent as saying that, okay in some swivel-eyed purist’s sense it “doesn’t matter” what you do provided that you sign up to the core doctrines.  But speaking as practical people, it certainly makes some kind of difference (cf riches versus poverty), just not the same order of difference as the core/primary matters.

Application to current debates

The nature of the doctrine of things indifferent is of obvious application and interest today.  What are the core doctrines to which we should expect all society to sign up, and what are the secondary matters?  What is the origin of these core doctrines - are they products of religion?  If not, products of what?  If so, of what religion?  Should these core doctrines be permitted to evolve as we experience immigration, or should they be maintained with immigrants expected to sign up?  Should we understand the secondary matters as points of true indifference – perhaps even that one of the core values is that one should not challenge people over secondary matters, as some advocates of political correctness suggest?  Or do we need to facilitate debate over the secondary matters so that with further evidence and reasoning any doubt concerning some of them might be eliminated and those might take their place amongst the core doctrines?  Is the proper position that we must regard all secondary matters as unquestionable, or are we permitted to think some secondary matter behaviours wrong, even criticise them?

In all these debates, Melanchthon’s shadow hangs over us yet.  And yet, we see him not.