The many colors of betrayal

We should, I believe, be judged by our compromises more than our ideals and norms. Ideals tell us something important about what we would like to be. But compromises tell us who we are.” Avishai Margalit wrote these words about his 2013 book On Compromise and Rotten Compromises. For Christians, it may be a discomforting message. But it has the ring of realism and, I suspect, is what most moral discernment and direction can achieve.

Compromise is a way station toward the subject of Margalit’s current book: betrayal, an ethical fault beyond possibility of compromise. Margalit, who has taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, is an analytic philosopher. But he believes that ordinary language speakers are generally much sharper about making distinctions than abstract moralists. This is particularly true in matters of conduct, where our ability to qualify, justify, and excuse our behavior has been honed by centuries of practice. On Betrayal is a continuous exercise in locating the subtleties within our considered moral judgment. When does compromise descend into betrayal?

To understand betrayal, Margalit distinguishes between “thick” and “thin” human relations. Family and friends are the exemplars of thick relations, but the notion is often extended to nations, organizations, and causes. Religious affiliation is presumed to be familial in two senses: it consists of thick relations not only between believers but also linking the community of believers with God. A religious affiliation that fails to realize a familial sense may fail as a religion, no better than a business that touts its “family” of customers.