The Richard Wagner Fallacy Part 3

Being Cate Blanchett

Philosophy’s problem

We are half-way through our meditation on the logic of cancel culture. Thus far our considerations suggest that it is a trait’s irrelevance to a particular evaluative judgment that makes that judgment an example of The Richard Wagner Fallacy. The nationality of Gal Gadot is irrelevant to determining her suitability to play Cleopatra, whilst Richard Wagner’s anti-Semitism is irrelevant to the question of how good or worthy of performance his operas are. Similarly, the personal beliefs of liberal political philosophers and liberalism’s historical origins are irrelevant to the question of whether this doctrine represents the truth about justice.  (It may not be the truth, but not because some of the people who defended it were apologists for Empire.)

Yet, there is a sense in which philosophy’s answer does not fully satisfy. It is all well and good saying that a consideration is irrelevant.  But what makes it so? The initial answer we put forward was that taking it into account violates the principle of “strict separation” between relevant and irrelevant considerations. Yet this begs all the interesting questions about cancel culture. Whilst telling us that the relevant is to be separated from the irrelevant - and woe betide our arguments if we don’t - the principle of strict separation does not tell us how this is to be done.

In order to be of any use the principle therefore needs to be able to offer a clear criterion in virtue of which it may be applied in specific cases. And this is no easy task, for we have seen that cancellation takes many forms. Sometimes it concerns the suitability of an individual for a rôle or position, whilst in others it’s all about how a work of art or some other type of creative product ought to be evaluated. In still others it’s about the truth or persuasives of a doctrine, opinion, or viewpoint. For the principle of strict separation to be worth its salt, therefore, whatever criterion we come up with has to help us distinguish the relevant from the irrelevant in each of these different kinds of case.

Vocations and standards of excellence

Luckily, it is precisely in a commonality between our cases that the search for a defence against the weaponised pearl-clutching that is cancel culture shows some promise. The more keen-eyed reader will have noticed that each of our cases involves the cancellation either of the contributions of individuals or of individuals themselves, both living and dead, who are famous in their chosen field of endeavour. And it is the idea of dedicating one’s life, or at least one’s professional life, to a particular field of endeavour - that is, to having a vocation - that enables the principle of strict separation to be of practical use.

To see how let us momentarily step away from the likes of Richard Wagner, liberal political philosophers, and Gal Gadot, and take an altogether different case. Imagine in this connection a menacing stalker who pursues his victims under cover of darkness, and who has gained notoriety not just for his crimes, but for his ability to evade justice and sow fear in the community. Eventually the prolonged media coverage of his case creates an image of the stalker that is firmly lodged in the popular imagination, to the point where he receives a moniker - the Night Stalker - and with it a public identity defined entirely by his nocturnal misdeeds. In such a case we would say that stalking is “what the Night Stalker does”, or “what he is known for”. It is, no less, than his chilling vocation.

And it is through the idea of a vocation that we may give the principle of strict separation evaluative teeth. For as the Night Stalker’s vocation stalking acts as the appropriate domain of evaluation to which a unique set of (admittedly unconscionable) standards apply.  Thus, it is in virtue of the standards that determine competence or, we may say, somewhat jarringly, “excellence” in stalking that the Night Stalker is considered to be good at what he does.  This is determined by his notorious ability to conceal his movements and hide in plain sight, to meticulously sanitize the scenes of his crimes so as to avoid leaving incriminating evidence behind, and to feign plausible deniability when questioned by the police.

Imagine now that after may months the Night Stalker is finally apprehended. Shockingly, it now transpires that our shadowy fiend was not just a stalker by night, but a much loved baker of delicious cupcakes by day. Knowing that we had spent years happily consuming his cupcakes would now make us feel somewhat awkward to say the very least. But even under such circumstances we would not attempt to evaluate the quality of the Night Stalker’s cupcakes or his suitability to bake them via his effectiveness as a stalker, or vice versa. These, after all, are entirely distinct domains of activity to which different standards apply. “Your cupcakes taste awful because you are the Night Stalker” makes as little sense as “your prison sentence ought to be reduced because you are an excellent baker”. Why? Because to make either argument would be to inadmissibly mix the standards of one vocation with those of the other.

Extrapolating from this case, we may say that each of the vocations from which we have taken our examples of cancel culture have their own standards of excellence, and in terms of which the logically sound evaluation of both contributions and contributors is to be conducted. Thus, applying the principle of strict separation, the reason why Wagner’s anti-Semitism cannot offer us any guidance as to the merit of Tristan und Isolde is because,