On Compromise and Rotten Compromises

Avishai Margalit, Joanne J. Myers

Introduction
JOANNE MYERS: Good afternoon. I'm Joanne Myers, Director of Public
Affairs Programs. On behalf of the Carnegie Council, I would like to
welcome our members, guests, and C-SPAN Book TV. Thank you for joining
us.

Today it is our privilege to welcome one of the world's most renowned
philosophers, Avishai Margalit. He will be discussing his latest book,
entitled On Compromise and Rotten Compromises. These essays were
originally delivered as part of the 2005 Tanner Lectures on Human
Values which are given in recognition of uncommon achievement and are
meant to advance and reflect upon the scholarly and scientific
learning relating to human values.

When we talk about compromise, we often use this word to mean a
meeting of the minds, striking a balance, finding a happy medium
between two extremes, or meeting someone halfway.

However you may choose to express this notion, whether as a verb or as
a noun, you may find conflicting views of what the word "compromise"
entails. In political life, compromise is often used in the context of
furthering one's goals. But knowing when to negotiate, when to be
accommodating, and when to resist can have far-reaching consequences.

In Compromise and Rotten Compromises, Professor Margalit has turned
the spotlight on the morality of compromise. Using a wide range of
historical examples, particularly those arrangements made with the
great tyrannies of the early and mid-20th century, he introduces new
and compelling distinctions about the subject. He considers such
questions as, when is political compromise permissible, and when is it
something we should never permit, even for the sake of peace? At what
point does peace secured with compromise become unjust?

At the center of this book is a tension between peace and justice.
Professor Margalit writes that he is particularly interested in the
moral status of compromise made for the sake of peace at the expense
of justice.

Our speaker is universally respected for his analytical skills and
moral acumen. He was born in Jerusalem and began his academic career
in the Department of Philosophy at the Hebrew University. Since then
he has been a visiting scholar at Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford.
Currently he is the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for
Advanced Study in Princeton.

As the author of several books maybe some of you have read—The Ethics
of Memory, The Decent Society, or Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes
of Its Enemies, a book which he coauthored with Ian Buruma—if you
have, you will understand how with each one Professor Margalit has
transformed philosophical perspectives on a range of political and
societal issues.

In 2001, he received the Spinoza Lens Prize, awarded by the
International Spinoza Foundation for making a significant contribution
to the normative debate on society, so it is not surprising that he is
one of the founders of Peace Now, the Israeli peace movement that has
called for the recognition of the rights of Palestinians to
self-determination in their own state alongside Israel.

At this time I ask that you please join me in giving a very warm
welcome to a very special guest. Professor Margalit, we're very happy
to have you here.
Remarks
AVISHAI MARGALIT: Thank you so much for your generous introduction.

On September 29, 1938, Hitler, Chamberlain, Daladier, and Mussolini
met in Munich and reached an agreement to transfer the Sudetenland, a
narrow strip of land populated by ethnic Germans, from Czechoslovakia
to Germany. In return, Hitler promised not to make any further
territorial demands on Europe.

In March 1939, the German army seized all of Czechoslovakia. The rest
is history—horrendous history.

The Munich Agreement became the symbol of a rotten compromise, a
compromise one should not sign under any circumstances. "Appeasement"
became the label for the policy that led to the Munich Agreement.
Since the agreement was perceived as rotten, the term "appeasement"
went through a total reevaluation. It lost its positive sense of
bringing calm and peace and came to mean surrendering to the demands
of a bully just because he's a bully. An "appeaser" became a term
synonymous with "delusional," or, as in the saying attributed to
Churchill, "one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last."

But is the Munich Agreement a clear case of a rotten compromise? My
answer in the book is that the Munich Agreement is a rotten
compromise, but not predominantly because of its content. If the
content of the agreement is not shamefully rotten, what is? It cannot
be the motive for signing the agreement that makes it rotten. There
was nothing shameful in Chamberlain's yearning for peace as a motive
for signing the agreement. Even Churchill, not a great fan of
Chamberlain, recognized his sincerity. I quote: "No one has been more
resolute and uncompromising struggling for peace than the prime
minister."

So the purity of Chamberlain's motive for peace was never in dispute.
The agreement cannot be rotten just because it was based on an error
of political judgment, putting Britain's trust in the hands of a
serial betrayer. That is an empirical blunder, not a moral sin.

So what is rotten in the Munich pact? My answer: The one with whom it
was signed, and not what was signed, makes it rotten. A pact with
Hitler was a pact with radical evil, evil meant to eradicate morality
itself. Not recognizing Hitler as radically evil was a moral failure,
on top of a bad error of political judgment.

It was Isaiah Berlin who initiated me into the topic of compromise and
rotten compromise, both by conveying to me a strong sense of the
importance of the spirit of compromise in politics and also by
conveying the formative experience of his generation, the Munich
Agreement, as definitive rotten compromise. We were discussing once
the Suez affair and I complained indignantly of the misuse of the
Munich Agreement by paranoid politicians, those who see Chamberlain's
umbrella as the symbol of defeatism everywhere. Berlin admitted that
much and added a story.

A man was seen hitting fiercely on top of a whistling, boiling kettle.
"What are you doing?" the man was asked.

"I can't stand steam locomotives."

"But this is a kettle, not a locomotive."

"Yes, yes, I know. But you have to kill them when they are still young."

I suspect that the often-used analogy of appeasing Nasser as
"Mussolini on the Nile," as Eden called him, or Saddam as "Hitler on
the Tigris" was of the kettle-as-a-young-locomotive kind. As much as I
want to use the Munich Agreement as the paradigm case for a rotten
compromise, I'm acutely aware of its obnoxious role in political
propaganda.

Now, two pictures:

The idea of political compromise is caught between two pictures of
politics: Politics as economics and politics as religion. Roughly
speaking, in the economic picture of politics, everything is subject
to compromise. Compromise is not always desirable or prudent, but it
is always possible.

In the religious picture, there are things over which we must never
compromise. The religious picture is in the grip of the idea of the
holy. The holy is that which is non-negotiable. Crudely put, one
cannot compromise over the holy without compromising the holy.
Conversely, in the economic picture of politics, compromise is at the
heart of politics, and the ability to compromise is highly praised.
That politics is the art of compromise is a tired cliché.

Economic life is based on the idea of substitution. One commodity can
be replaced by another, and this enables exchanges in the market.
Exchange leaves room for negotiation, and where there is room for
negotiation, there is room for compromise. Compromise has an internal
relation, a central relation, to what is exchangeable and divisible.

The economic picture serving as the model for politics makes it seem
as if compromise is always possible. Not so with religion. True,
religions, by which I mean religious institutions, make political
compromises all the time. They routinely develop elaborate
justifications and techniques to carry out their compromises. But
ideally, the logic of the holy as the core notion of religion is the
opposite of the idea of compromise.

The two pictures, the religious and the economic, evince two different
sets of motivations to explain political life. The economic picture
explains human behavior in terms of satisfying preferences, where the
religious picture brings the willingness for self-sacrifice into the
picture. A key mistake in political thought lies in disregarding the
workings of either of the two pictures, in the belief that only one of
the pictures sustains politics.

Let me dwell on one feature of compromise which bears on my concern
with compromise for the sake of peace. It is the element of
recognition involved in political compromises.

A clear case of a full-fledged compromise suggests rather than implies
recognizing the point of view of the other. Compromise may be an
expression of such recognition. It confers legitimacy on the point of
view of the other side. Full-fledged compromise may even involve a
measure of give-up from the strong side, not driving as hard a bargain
as it could to get what it desires. The point of such give-up is
indeed to confer recognition on one's rival and to dispel an image of
domination. By meeting the other party halfway, one may suggest a
semblance of equality between non-equals.

The practice of political compromise suggests that one key form of
compromise takes place when one recognizes the other side as a
legitimate partner for negotiation. Sometimes recognizing the other as
a legitimate side for bargaining is harder than reaching an actual
agreement. Recognition of the armed Basque separatists, ETA, by Spain
or the Shining Path by the government of Peru or the Kurdistan
Workers' Party in Turkey as partners for negotiation is more difficult
for Spain, Peru, and Turkey, respectively, than any concession they
may be required to make in order to reach an agreement.

Dubbing the other part a "terrorist" organization is tantamount to
regarding them as illegitimate partners, as extortionists who should
be resisted. Removing an organization from a terrorist list and making
it one side of negotiations is usually a major concession by the party
that confers legitimacy. The legitimizing side expects in return a
major concession by the former terrorist organization. Compromise may
take place in the way of recognizing the parties in the bargaining.

Recognizing a mortal enemy hitherto unrecognized as a legitimate party
of negotiation may play a transformative role in humanizing the enemy
and acknowledging the enemy as holding legitimate concerns. It calls
for empathy and attentive effort to understand the enemy's concerns
from the enemy's point of view. It calls for empathy, not for
sympathy—namely, identification with the enemy's concern.

So recognition is an important element of compromise.

But what is a rotten compromise? I see a rotten political compromise
as an agreement to establish or maintain an inhuman regime, a regime
of cruelty and humiliation—that is, a regime that does not treat
humans as humans. I use "inhuman" in the sense of an extreme
manifestation of not treating humans as humans. Inhuman in the sense
of cruel, savage, and barbarous behavior conveys only one element of
my sense of inhuman. Humiliation is another element. Humiliation, in
my view, is already not treating humans as humans. But humiliation
intensified by cruelty equals inhuman. So the fusion of cruelty and
humiliation is what an inhuman regime consists of.

The idea of an inhuman regime as a regime of cruelty and humiliation
guides my idea of rotten compromise. The basic thing is that we should
beware of agreeing, even passively, to establish or maintain a regime
of cruelty and humiliation—in short, inhuman regimes.

Many bad things dropped out of Pandora's box. Choosing the inhuman
regime among the bad things coming out of the box as a thing to avoid
at all costs calls for justification. The inhuman regime erodes the
foundations of morality. Morality rests on treating humans as humans.
Not treating humans as humans undermines the basic assumption of
morality. Morality is about how human relations should be, in virtue
of being human and in virtue of nothing else. Morality, by its very
nature, is based on the category of belonging to humanity, in the
sense of belonging to the human species. Assault on humanity by
treating humans as non-humans undermines the very project of morality,
the project of telling us how relations among human beings must be.

For the sake of defending morality, we end up with a stern injunction:
Rotten compromise must be avoided, come what may.

Now a tough question: Was the great compromise a rotten compromise?
The institution of slavery is a case of humiliation and cruelty.
Slavery based on racism is doubly at fault, for one is degraded as a
human being both on account of being a slave and on account of one's
race. So let me deal with compromises involving slavery as a test case
for my account of rotten compromise as a compromise that consists of
establishing or condoning the infliction of cruelty and humiliation.

It looks ridiculously anachronistic to charge the Mesopotamian King
Hammurabi for adopting slavery some 4,000 years ago. But there is
nothing anachronistic in holding Jefferson accountable for his
acceptance of slavery. Abolition for him was a live option. A live
option is not necessarily the preferred option. It is an option which
is on the horizon of its members, especially if a significant number
of members in the society or in their immediate vicinity opt for it.
There is no question that during the formation of the Union,
abolitionism was a live option.

In my view, a historical society is morally accountable relative to
its live options. This does not mean that the wrongness, say, of
slavery is relative, but only that the moral accountability is. So
asking whether the United States was founded on a rotten compromise in
accepting slavery is not an anachronistic question. The issue here,
unlike the issue in the case of the Munich Agreement, is the content
of the compromise rather than who signed it. As a matter of fact, the
agreement was signed by exceptionally remarkable individuals, who were
also, many of them, noble people.

What enabled the formation of the Union and the acceptance of the
American Constitution by its framers was the Connecticut compromise,
hailed as "the Great Compromise." The two thorny issues that the
compromise was meant to settle were political representation and
slavery. The sticky issue for us is the compromise on slavery. Slavery
was recognized, though Madison succeeded in keeping the word "slave"
out of the wording of the Constitution. The Constitution did not ban
slavery.

Moreover, it did not empower the Congress to do so. The importation of
slaves was authorized until 1808.

The U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 2, is particularly hideous.
It orders the return of slaves who succeeded in escaping to free
states to be returned to their slave owners. This was a situation that
the fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison faced. He said, "The
compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant
with death and an agreement with hell."

For Garrison, the Constitution was a pact with the devil, a rotten
compromise if ever there was one. Garrison had the sublimity of
language, the fearless independence, and the spiritual nobility of a
biblical prophet. But was he right? Was the Union based on a rotten
compromise, enabling the Constitution to be accepted at the price of
recognizing a political order that is systematically cruel and deeply
humiliating to a distinct group of people?

The Union was perceived by its adherents as a moral idea of great
moment—forming "a more perfect union," a political order that would be
not just more efficient, but morally better. Even I as a child in
faraway Jerusalem understood, as we read in class Stephen Benét's
classic "The Devil and Daniel Webster," that when Webster keeps asking
from his grave, "Neighbor, how stands the Union?" it was an echo of
the belief that the Union is something much higher than mere political
arrangement.

One can sell his soul to the devil for personal gain and still be
defended by Webster, but no one can betray the Union and be defended.

Well, then, was the tacit recognition of slavery in the Constitution a
fly in the ointment, something that spoils but does not destroy the
moral status of the Constitution, or was it a cockroach in the soup,
something that destroys the moral fabric of the Constitution,
rendering it rotten?

My short answer: It was a cockroach in the soup. For the more
interesting and more nuanced answer, you can read more in my book.

Now for the tension between peace and justice. The tension between
peace and justice is at the center of the book. Compromise is the
go-between. I'm particularly interested in the moral status of
compromise done for the sake of peace at the expense of justice. How
far can we go for peace by giving up on justice? Quite a distance, I
say, but not the whole way. This is the short answer. Here again, my
long answer is the whole book.

Declaring the two terms our intention is often a way of muddying the
waters and declaring them deep. Tension between peace and justice
needs elucidation. We tend to view peace and justice as complementary
goods, like fish and chips, whereas in actuality peace and justice
tend to each other as competing goods, like tea and coffee. The
tension is due to the fact of the possibility of tradeoff between
peace and justice. To gain peace, we may be forced to pay in justice.

Levi Eshkol, a former prime minister of Israel and a hero of mine, had
the reputation of being a relentless compromiser. A tall story had it
that when asked whether he would like tea or coffee, he answered,
"Half and half," the idea being that the spirit of compromise may
blind one to the fact of competing goods from which one has to choose.

The tradeoff between peace and justice is no laughing matter. It can
be tragic. The sense of this tragic choice pervades my book.

So here is the telegraphic message of the book: On the whole,
political compromises are good things. Political compromises for the
sake of peace are very good things. Shabby, shoddy compromises are
bad, not sufficiently bad to be always avoided at all costs,
especially not when they are concluded for the sake of peace. Only
rotten compromises are bad enough to be avoided at all costs. But then
rotten compromises are mere tiny subsets of a large set of possible
political compromises.

Thank you.
Questions and Answers
QUESTION: In a nuclear age, where peace is on the line, could one in
any instance go for the enforcement of a rotten compromise?
Particularly what comes to mind is Mr. Ahmadinejad and the North
Korean regime, who have a record of suppressing people.

AVISHAI MARGALIT: First of all, it's a really tough question. I deal
with it, but not sufficiently, not well enough, because it's really
hard. What is hard for me in the case of nuclear weapons is that it's,
tacitly at least—or maybe overtly—a case of coercion rather than a
case that calls for compromise. What should you do in cases of
coercion? By coercion, I mean when you get a threat and all the
options after the threat are much worse than the status quo. Having a
nuclear weapon, without even declaring it as a threatening thing, has
the potential of being coercive.

Should you make deals with someone with a nuclear weapon if the one
runs an inhuman regime? My answer in such cases may be yes. It
depends, really, on the element of coercion or non-coercion. If it's
coercive, you do what you do. I don't have a recipe for that. If it's
not coercive, then you don't make a deal. So a great deal depends here
on the facts, whether it's coercive or not. That's really a difficult
case to decide.

In the case of Ahmadinejad or North Korea, a great deal really depends
on the facts. I think the Pakistani nuclear weapon is immensely
threatening to its neighbors and it was spread by Khan and others. How
to deal with it? Very difficult to say. I don't have a wholesale
answer, only on a retail basis, case by case. That's the best I can
do.

QUESTION: In keeping with your philosophical thread on compromise and
tradeoff, there's a third word, "concession." How would you use those
three words to describe the unfolding consequences of our world? And
how do you deal with Iran or North Korea or Venezuela, for that
matter?

AVISHAI MARGALIT: Concession is when you have an initial position in
bargaining and whatever you renounce is, for you, a concession that
you make to the other side. Usually you try to enhance the concession;
the other side tries to minimize the significance of it. That's part
of negotiation and part of bargaining. So concession is obviously part
of the vocabulary of compromises. I don't use it that extensively, but
it's there.

What to do in particular cases—as I said, there we should really be
very careful about the facts. Just more rhetoric here can be
dangerous, as it was in the case of Iraq.

Namely, it blinds us from what actually happens. For example, Iran is
not just Ahmadinejad. It's a very complex society. I wouldn't even
define the rules of the mullahs in Iran as an inhuman regime. I don't
believe that that's true. It's too trivial to say that I'm against.
But that is, in my vocabulary, not an inhuman regime. It may now turn
into an inhuman regime, being immensely oppressive. I think now,
actually, is the real turning point.

What to do with Iran? This calls for lots of factual discussions on
what the options are.

What I try to devise is a moral vocabulary to deal with the moral
aspects. That's basically what I took on myself and into account. I
may be wrong in many historical judgments, factually wrong. The point
is whether I provide the right vocabulary, and not whether I give the
right historical analysis. I may be wrong about what formed the Union
and what the nature of the compromise was there, what the options were
there. But the point is, the test for me is whether I provided the
right vocabulary, the moral vocabulary, to deal with those questions,
even if I'm wrong empirically—namely, that I just got the facts wrong.

QUESTION: Do you see a distinction between a compromise and an
agreement, specifically with respect to the issue of an agreement's
underlying requirement, at least as I understand it, of trust, trust
being an element either in terms of the morality of the bargaining
power or the complexity of the bargaining power, as is the case that
you cited with Iran?

AVISHAI MARGALIT: I make a distinction between anemic compromises and
sanguine compromises. I was struck by one fact: In the books that deal
systemically and mathematically with bargaining—namely, game
theory—the word "compromise" is not there. I was struck: How come?
"Concession," yes, but not "compromise."

You would have expected it to be part and parcel of the phenomenon.

What they say is every agreement is a compromise. You want to sell
high, I want to buy low, and whatever we agree on is an agreement and
a compromise between our initial positions and what we agree on.
That's the anemic use.

What I try to describe is something more akin to our ordinary use of
"compromise," when there is a deadlock, when there is more texture and
more structure to the phenomenon than just mere compromise and
agreeing on a deal. You won't say that if you go here and buy a pair
of shoes and agree on the price, there was a compromise between you
and the seller. Not even in the souk, when the bargaining is taken
more seriously and more ritualistically, do you say, "We compromise."

So that anemic sense is not our ordinary sense of compromise.
"Agreement" for me is the covering term for all the cases, the anemic
and the sanguine. I describe what goes into the sanguine case. One
element that I describe here is recognition as an element of the
sanguine case of compromise.

QUESTION: Could you discuss the religious and economic motivations in
the compromise between the Arabs and the Israelis?

AVISHAI MARGALIT: There are two conflicts. There is the conflict
between Israel and the Arab states, which is an ordinary conflict
among states about territories, water, security. That's more in the
line of the economic model. There is another conflict between Israel
and the Palestinians, which is an intercommunal strife where what is
at stake is the identity of the two communities. They understand
themselves through this conflict. Therefore, they make things holy or
non-negotiable because both sides believe that it touches the very
basic identity of the community.

It's true that the word "holy" was used by President Sadat in the
Knesset when he came on his historical visit to Israel. He said, "The
land of Sinai is holy and non-negotiable." He used twice this
term—namely, the Holy Land.

Now you see, for example, in the Hamas, they declare Israel the whole
Palestine waqf—namely, a religious endowment. A religious endowment is
not for negotiation.

You can make truce. You can make temporary ceasefire. You can make all
sorts of deals in time, but in principle you cannot. Both sides, both
the Israelis—and not necessarily the religious; it's a fusion of
nationalism and religion here—both sides, I think, created and changed
the nature of the conflict from a nationalistic conflict that still
could be resolved into a religious conflict that will be impossible to
resolve, unless the two sides are too tired, like after 300 years of
religious wars in Europe. Then you just give up because you are too
tired. But as long you can keep the struggle, you keep it.

I think there was a major change. It was a continuous change. I think
there was a constant change from a national conflict to a religious
conflict. National conflict or all secular vision usually goes by
five-year plans. In religious conflicts, the stake is much higher and
the day of payment is postponed. I think that's basically the
perspective that now we face.

Therefore, to answer your question, yes, the religious picture of the
conflict took over between Israelis and Palestinians, I think, very
much.

QUESTION: I have a question regarding recognition, recognition as part
of compromise, maybe. My latest posting was in Ramallah. Among the
European Union diplomats, we had a lot of discussion about recognition
of Hamas as the legitimate winner of the election. But on the other
side, of course, it is a terrorist organization.

What do you think about this? If we recognize a terrorist or inhuman
regime or organization, will it become more human or less terrorist?

AVISHAI MARGALIT: I didn't say that—I don't advocate recognition in
all cases. It depends on what to recognize. Sometimes the nature of
the organization is such that there is nothing to recognize. You
vehemently disagree on what they stand for. All I said was that there
are cases when you can strike a deal and you can achieve something by
recognizing. Then don't make it a taboo.

As to the Hamas, the Hamas is more complicated than just—there are
three Hamas. There is the outside Hamas, led by Mashaal, there is the
Hamas of Haniyah, the prime minister of the Hamas, in Gaza, and there
is the Hamas of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, the military wing, with Dr.
al-Zahar and others.

Instead of answering your question, I'll tell you a story and see if
it works. When Israel left Gaza, two weeks before Arafat came from
Tunisia to Gaza, at Peace Now we got a phone call from the Hamas
people. I went to Gaza to talk to the Hamas people. I went with a
friend. Now I know it was a crazy thing to do. I was utterly in their
hands. But I did it. I met the one who is now what is called the
foreign minister, Dr. al-Zahar. He was a doctor. We went to his house.
We were well received.

There were a few people there from the Hamas, from the leadership. What's on?

He said, "Look, in two weeks Arafat is coming and he's going to
slaughter us"—namely, the Hamas—"and we want people of goodwill to
know about it."

I said to him, "So it's a humanitarian appeal."

"Oh, there is politics to it."

"What's the politics?" I said.

He looked, to me, utterly mystified and said, "What do you mean,
what's the politics of it? Under Islamic rule, you Jews will be
utterly secure, because you will be protected by us in an Islamic
state. You are dhimmi. You are Ahl al-Kitab, People of the Book. And
you'll be protected because that's the Islamic way. If you are worried
about security, you will be secure."

He didn't hide anything. He said it in the worst of
conditions—expecting Arafat to slaughter them. Yet when he said it, he
gave the whole thing, the whole account.

Whether he represents Hamas or not—I doubt it. He is an element, an
important element. But the Hamas is more complicated. And just to lump
together the three factions of the Hamas and take the worst case as
the most representative—that's easy for propaganda purposes. For
politics, I think one should really be more nuanced.

QUESTION: At the end you said that, on the whole, compromise for the
sake of peace is a good thing. Do you mean peace in the short term or
in the long term, taking into account the Irish treaty early last
century, where it achieved some sort of peace, but the rest of the
century, there was not whole peace?

Just a quick question. Kosovo is being asked to compromise. Can
freedom be compromised, a return of oppression? Or do you consider
that a deal worth compromise?

AVISHAI MARGALIT: You ask me successive questions. Each one of them is
a chapter in the book. It's almost as if you advertised the book,
because exactly I'm dealing with those questions.

I'm talking exactly about compromise for the sake of lasting peace,
the way Kant talked about peace, and against irredentism and against
irredentist element—namely, revanchism, as it was called—as an option,
and even if you have just claims for territories, giving them up for
the sake of a permanent peace. I'm not talking about truce and not
about ceasefire, but a permanent peace.

What is the difference? Obviously, the case of Kosovo was very much on
my mind. All I can say now is, you have to read the book.

QUESTION: What I'm thinking of is the what and the who and how you
began. How do we really ultimately appreciate who becomes evil and how
they become evil? For example, when you open a question on the
terrorists, for me they become a label. It becomes dehumanizing. How
do we then recognize and deal with the sources, the history, that make
the evil? Where is morality, in a sense, I'm asking, and where is
justice? It's a hard and murky area to find the true cockroach.

AVISHAI MARGALIT: There are two approaches to the psychology of
morality. One, morality is about shaping better human beings, working
on their characters.

Another is that people don't have, really, characters. They don't have
stable traits. That's just a lazy way of talking about people. What
you have to shape is the environment in which they are. Scandinavians
may behave better, not because they are better people, but because
they have a better environment.

I'm all for the situationalists—namely, those who talk about the
environment, not about characters. I didn't say that someone is evil
by character. Which is evil—that's for Shakespeare to tell. But most
people are not of that kind. Actually, it's an interesting question,
whether it's a coherent idea of doing something because it is evil.
Even Lucifer rebelled against God because he wanted to rebel, not
because he wanted to do the evil thing, and that was a way of
rebelling.

I am not assuming anything about characters or that there are evil
terrorists because they have this character or they are suicidal or
inhuman, and whether the others are—nothing of the sort. I don't
assume it for a moment.

What I do assume is that there are different environments, and what we
should do politically is shape the environments so as to create better
behavior. I use the word "evil," not as a human trait or human
character, but as behavior. I didn't try even to psychologize Hitler,
for that matter.

QUESTION: I would find it instructive if you would revisit Munich, as
to whether it was a rotten compromise. I follow your logic clearly.
But it seems to me that the party that paid the price of the
compromise wasn't invited to participate in negotiating the
compromise, which, it would seem to me, would indicate a rottenness.

AVISHAI MARGALIT: That's very true. Most of the rotten compromises are
at the expense of a third party. That's most cases. Here it was at the
expense of Czechoslovakia. They even came to Munich and weren't
allowed to participate or even present their case. So the compromise
here was definitely at the expense of the third party. That's, I
think, almost the usual case. But there are cases, of course, of
compromises which deal only with two parties.

I don't know if that was your question or I missed something.

QUESTION: When you say "we should," could you identify the "we" and
how you go about accomplishing that happy state?

AVISHAI MARGALIT: The way you do "We the people." We the human beings
who care about morality. We the human beings who care about decent
behavior. It's that way. I'm not speaking—who am I to speak on behalf
of anyone? I can barely speak for myself. It depends on which day you
ask me. But the "we" here is a fiction, but an important fiction.

There was a minister in Israel, a minister of education, very
charismatic. He said, "I know that I'm crazy half of the week, but I
don't know on which days."

QUESTION: The question I have goes back to the slavery issue. In a lot
of what we have been talking about you have seemed—and I hope you
won't get upset at this characterization—sort of flexible. But on the
slavery thing, you said, because it's a moral issue, it's essentially
non-negotiable. Is that what you said?

AVISHAI MARGALIT: Yes.

QUESTIONER: Suppose the issue had been, "Well, we can't solve it now,
but the Union is very important. So we will agree that slavery will be
abolished in 50 years."

You would still have these people that are being treated in an inhuman
fashion, et cetera, et cetera. What would be your position on
something like that?

AVISHAI MARGALIT: You can postpone. Sometimes you cannot implement
something right away. The point is, what is the extent to which you
can postpone a political solution? My claim is, it's what I call the
"desert generation" test. I'm against moral futurism. This generation
will pay. In your life, you won't see justice at all, but the next
generation will live better. That was, I think, Lenin's line—moral
utilitarianism. There will be a great deal of light in the future; now
it's dark. But that's only a generation that should pay the price.

If a solution doesn't meet a prospect for a generation, at the end of
the generation, to have a different life, then it's untenable.

In the case of the American Constitution, basically the idea was that
in 1808, just about the end of my test, there will be a change. It
didn't abolish, but there was a change. Had they said at that time
there would be an abolishment, then I can see a very strong case for
the Union. But this was the case.

So the main point is the desert. The "desert generation" phrase comes
from the Bible. Namely, Moses wasted a generation in the desert
because they were incapable, as slaves, to go to the Promised Land,
but the next generation will go to the Promised Land. It's all right
for a generation, for you and me, to say we are willing to work and
sacrifice our lives for a better life for our kids. But it's not good
for anyone to impose it on us. That's the claim. If immigrants come to
this country and sweat in order to have a better life for their kids,
it's their decision. It gives meaning to their lives. But if it were
imposed on them—you will be oppressed, but your children will have a
marvelous future—that's no good.

QUESTION: I was wondering what your thoughts are in regards to more
national issues, particularly about human rights and the, one could
say, compromise between gay marriage and, say, a civil union.

AVISHAI MARGALIT: I don't have a theory of everything. I have a view
about the question that you asked me, about gay marriage and civil
union. I think that the state has nothing to do with marriages.
Marriage should be—sanctifying relations among human beings is a
method for churches, synagogues, whatever. States should be concerned
only with civil unions. It's for the people to decide what the
significant civil unions are that they want, with whomever they want.

That's my position. I think people shouldn't fight for recognizing
marriage. They should fight for universal civil union rather than
universal recognition of marriage, which is, I think, a mixture of
categories. The state has nothing to do with it. That's my position.

Another issue is, people who care greatly about family values should
have adopted the gay marriage more than anyone else, because this is
the ultimate affirmation of the institution of marriage, of family.

I always found it very surprising, the rate of people who get
remarried—namely, those who were divorced once and get remarried—is
the same percentage as the people who get married in the first place.
How come people don't blame the institution of marriage and instead
blame themselves in the failure and try it again? In most cases when
you fail in something, you say, "The institution failed me. I won't do
it again." Why in the case of marriage it's not like that? That's a
real puzzle for me.

But then I said I don't have a theory of everything.

JOANNE MYERS: I thank you very much, Professor Margalit, for not
compromising and sharing with us all your ideas.

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