Dr. Seuss and Philosophy - Jacob M. Held [99]
We don’t have to work too hard to find examples from everyday life that seem to fit this general description. I am unfair to someone because I begrudge him his far greater success. My envy works around the clock to sow the seeds of seething resentment. If I can convince myself that he has wronged me or that his gains are ill gotten, I can take refuge in righteous indignation, something far more comfortable than a frank admission of my own inferiority in some respect or other. Maybe this is what happened to the Grinch. Maybe he was always something of a loner, living on Mount Crumpit and seeing the laughter and camaraderie of the Whos as something of a slap in the face. Those Whos think they are so big, so much better than me. Well, they are all fakes and hypocrites. They don’t really love each other. All they really care about is the Christmas loot. Take that away from them and then see how happy they seem. Yes, that’s it! I shall expose those phonies for what they really are. But when Christmas survives in spite of the Grinch’s crusade, perhaps he sees not just the Whos but also himself more clearly. Maybe his change of heart is a case of his head realizing the twisted corruptions of his own heart. As the Seuss story goes, “It could be that his head wasn’t screwed on quite right” (Grinch), and maybe he suddenly sees the light, just as we can see the error of our ways when we are going the wrong way in a geometrical proof.
This is one way to look at the Grinch, and indeed, changes of heart in general—as instances of coming around to some important principle that we have ignored, abandoned, or just haven’t noticed before. The emphasis in this case is on reason: The light we see is the light of reason making plain the undeniable truth, and once we see it, we cannot resist it, just as we can’t ignore the truth about geometry or arithmetic.
The Grinch’s Change: Bring Back That Loving Feeling?
Yet, consider another way to think about the Grinch’s change of heart. One might contend that the Grinch doesn’t suddenly grasp some new truth, but instead, he feels something new. Whereas Kant saw ethics in terms of rational moral laws, David Hume (1711–1776), the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, looked to human sentiments as the ultimate source. As Hume saw things, reason must always be the slave of the passions in a fundamental sense. He regarded sympathy, our capacity, and indeed, our decided proclivity to participate imaginatively in the weal and woe of our fellow human beings, as the cornerstone of morality. Show Hume a Grinch who might not only wish to steal Christmas but also annihilate every last Who in the world, and he might say many bad things about such a mean fellow, but “irrational” wouldn’t be one of them.
In fact, imagine for just a moment a Grinch who didn’t care about anyone else in the whole wide world. As Seuss might say, “Not a bit, not a stitch, not even a sliver” (Grinch). As far as this Grinch would be concerned, Hume would say he’d have no reason to blink an eye, even if so doing might save a thousand little Cindy-Lou Whos from some grave threat. A Grinch who might stand idly by as the Whos starve or suffer Who genocide would be many things—cold, callous, cruel. But these vices wouldn’t necessarily make him irrational. The road to change