The setting

Ibrahim Lawson

The aim of this part of the programme is to provide an answer to the question "What kind of society is it that not only permits but condones and actively encourages usury?" I believe that this is a question of central importance since our answer is in fact the point of this seminar – not the subject of it but certainly the point, because in the end its not just a question of usury.

We have heard so far today about the real defmition of usury and about the traditional attitudes towards it, from Plato and Aristotle in the classical tradition and from Judeo/Christian sources in the Bible. We have noted the progression from St. Augustine at the beginning of the Dark Ages in the 4th centurv A.D., to Thomas Aquinas in the Renaissance nearly 1000 years later, re-affirming Aristotle's judgement that usury was a barren form of money-making and as such was unnatural and so unjustifiable.

We have seen how attitudes began to change from the Reformation in the 16th century, through the English revolutions of the 17th, and the forging of modern banking practices, particularly in London, Genoa and Ansterdam by the 18th century.

We've been given a vivid picture of the seriousness of the current state of affairs in the world and the essentially negative contribution, not to say outright delinquency, of financial agencies at this critical time. We've seen how modern men and women have been persuaded- collectively and on a global scale – to make the great leap of imagination required to imbue with value inherently worthless fiat money – money that doesn't even represent real wealth – and this despite repeated disastrous crises of confidence with whole fortunes being wiped out practically overnight.

All of this makes me want to s top for a moment and wonder about the how and why of these things. And having considered where all this has come from, to imagine where it might all be leading.

The point for me is; "what is it about us, about modern people, about the modern world, which has allowed usury to become such a huge part of our lives?" Why was it so roundly condemned by 18th century moralists like Kant, who, towards the end of that century in 1795, spoke of "the ingenious system of international credit invented by a commercial people in this century which shows the power of money in its most dangerous form"?

I would like to show in this paper that the answer as to how and why usury has come to dominate economic affairs lies in what can and should be viewed as a general decline in morality and ethical behaviour. In order to do this I will give a brief sketch of two distinct, and in many ways, opposing world views:

- on metaphysics and the nature of reality.

- on the role and scope of human reason.

- on the basis of ethics.

Historically these two vie ws began in practice to diverge significantly over just this period we have been looking at, from the Renaissance, through the Reformation, early modern times and the Enlightenment to the Victorians and to date. Over this period one widely accepted world view has been supplanted by another; though I should emphasize that I am not suggesting a good old days" scenario, at least as far as Europe is concerned. By world view or 'weltanshanung' I mean the inner landscape, the whole vvorld of meanings which we inhabit as human beings. We might even go so far as to say that in the last 500 years or so human gs' understanding of themselves and their world – at least in the West, and of course our Western world view is rapidly predominating across the vvorld in this century – has changed more radically and fundamentally than at any other period in history. I find this significant – so what I'm going to do then is to outline these two ways of looking at the world and to show that usurv is but one, albeit an important, facet of what amounts to a moral issue, in fact the moral issue, since we will be talking about the principle of right and wrong', or 'good and bad' and not any particular instance of moral or immoral behaviour such as honesty or lying, charity or theft, philanthropy or usury.

In order to give even this outline sketch, I hope you forgive me if vve have to go a little slowly because I want to make sure that the issues at stake are quite clear. I will describe in philosophical, social and psychological terms those aspects of our modern society forming the context in which usury has found such fertile soil.

The first overall philosophical position, or world view, holds as a basic and fundamental principle that not all realities have a material existence : that an abstract or "intelligible" world, to use Kant's term, has its ovvn transcendental or metaphysical reality beyond and distinct from the material or "sensible" world of time and space that constitutes the immediate facts of our workaday experience. It is not easy to speak succinctly about this distinction between abstract and concrete, but a few examples will clarifv things and I'm sure you all know what I'm getting at, although there are curious implications in this potentially, though not inevitably, dualist doctrine.

This Platonist conception of abstract entities is perhaps best illustrated by numbers. Certainly it seems clear that a number has no material form -how many twos are there in this room? Show me threeness – what is the ten-ness of, for example, your fingers? The talk of discovering rather than inventing new and ever greater prime numbers clearly seems to indicate that they are somewhere 'out there', independent of our cognition of them, waiting in the wings, so to speak.

Consider also the game of chess, for example. What is chess exactly? The sum total of all boards, pieces and moves? This would be a taxonomic view – identification by labelling. Or is chess essentially the rules by which the game is played? And if so, what is the o ntologkal reality of these rules? That is, in what do these rules have their being? Not their existence, since that term is properly restricted to material facts, but their being – where are the rules of chess or any other game or rule-governed activity for that matter? Now what about such qualities as beauty, truth and justice? We do seem to be able to recognise and respond to these things in some innate way, but what are they?, and where dot hey come from?

Here there are, in fact, two answers. The first, which corresponds to the view I have been discussing, is that their reality is abstract just as numbers are abstract and just as, I will argue, the moral imperative, the truly moral impulse to do good for its own sake, must be abstract in that it IS, it has its being or ty, prior to any context in which we might identity its working. We nee d a name for this view, so for the sake of convenience I will call it the "Right View".

The other view holds that everything is material, exists as matter in time and space, and is governed by the "laws" of motion and other physical laws conditioning the behaviour of particles, elements, compounds and so on, so that number, truth, beauty, justice and the rest exist only in our cognition of them, whick is to say, exist simply as electrochemical impulses in our brains, for which we are biologically pre-programmed.

This view is certainly not modern, it was known to the ancient Greeks who called it atomism and it doesn't seem to have been taken particularly seriously by most people until modern times, by which I mean the last few hundred years. For the sake of simplicity and consistency we can perhaps refer to this view as the "Wrong View".

Turning now to ethics – the science of morals – what does the Right View have to say? In this I am most familiar with the work of Immanuel Kant, whose beautifully lucid, profound and compelling arguments for the absolute, 'a priori' abstract and ideal nature of true morality makes his 'Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals' essential reading. To quote from the introduction to H.J. Patons excellent translation, this book's message "was never more needed than it is at present when a somewhat arid em p iricism is the pervading fashion in philosophy. An exclusively empirical philosophy, as Kant hiniseff argues, can have nothing to say about morality: it can only encourage us to be guided by our emotions, or at best, by an enlightened self love, at the very time when the abyss between unregulated impulse or undiluted self-interest, and moral principles has been so tragically displayed in practice".

Kant says basically that there are three kinds of "good" – we use the word "good" in three different ways and this distinction is central to my argument and so please excuse a short digression into moral philosophy. Firstly, we have good in a technical sense – a good pen, a good design, a good idea. These are good precisely in relation to the extent to which they accomplish practical goals or end – we can say that this kind of good is 'ends oriented' or empirical, contingent upon results.

The second kind of good Kant called "prudential good" and it relates to wishes or desires an emotional gratification, both for ourselves and others, in general as in " a good time", or a good film, good conversation, or a good cause even.

Both of these kinds of good are relative to or contingent upon, vvorldly goals and the Wrong View of course holds that these are the only kinds of good possible. Whole philosophies of far-reaching impact have been generated by this view of the basis of morality – for example, Benthams "Utilitarianism" develo p ed by J.S. Mill in the 19th century and currently in favour with, among others, the Conservative Party and its supporters – the greatest good for the greatest number -vvith 'good' measured entirely in technical and prudential or pragmatic terms.

Kant's view of this kind of morality he makes clear. "Hence everything that is empirical", he says "is, as a contribution to the principle of morality not only wholly unsuitable for the purpose, but it is even highly injurious for the purity of morals; for in morals die proper worth of an absolutely good wili, a worth elevated above all price, lies precisely in this – that the principle of action is free from all influence by contingent grounds (the only kind th at experience can supply). Against the slack, or indeed ignoble, attitude whicli seeks for the moral principle aniong empirical motives and laws, we cannot give a Ivaming too strongly or too or human reason in its weariness is fain to rest upon th is pillow and in a dream of sweet illusions ... to foist in to the place of morality some misbegotten mongrel patdied ip from limbs of vey varied ancestry and looki'ig like anything you please, only not like virtue, to him who has once beh eld her in her tn4e shape. To beh old virtue in her proper sh ape is nothing other than to show morality stripped of all admixture with the sensuous and of all the spurious adornments of reward or self love. How mudi she di en casts iii to die sh ade all else t/i at appears attractive to the inclinations can be readily perceived by every man if /ie will exert /iis reason in t/ie slightest – provided /ie /ias not entirely ruined it for all abstractions.

For Kant the moral law, the categorical imperative to act correctly in all matters is something necessarily true, just as 2 and 3 is necessarily 5 whether anyone thinks or believes so or not.

Now this Right View is not really provable in the sense of demonstrable or verifiable, and Kant acknowledges this. We are operating here at the extreme limits of human enquiry and our only tool is pure reason. "We can only defend" says Kant, that is we can only defend our rationality -ultimately explanations are impossible since explanations require reasons, reasons are causes, and eventually there are actions vvhich are not themselves caused and so have no explanation.

These things – of which true goodness is one – do not exist in this world, they are timeless and abstract and as such are not susceptible to change, decay or corruption – "goodness", which subsists in the 'four duties' – never to harm oneself or others and to help oneself and others vvhci'ever possible - is moral bedrock – the ethical. gold standard.

The Wrong View rejects all of this. Morality is only contingent since nothing is abstract – morality is inevitably concerned with interest, interest in goa 5 to be achieved, satisfaction to be met. Now I vvould say that this cutting loose from the "gold standard" ethically speaking, has been the root cause of the major personal, social and philosophical problems of our time and this is the central theme, subject and key to ihis paper. So now, having identified and defined the nature of the problem, how does this relate to usury? Well, as I said before, usury must be seen not only as directly causing many of the social, political, economic and ecological difficulties and disasters of today – as we have seen and will see in the rest of today's seminar – but it must also be seen as a direct result of the abandonment of the traditional and time-honoured understanding of the fundamental realities of ethics and metaphysics.

We might even go further and suggest that the Right View was attacked and broken down deliberately and specifically to allow the introduction of usury on a large and 'legitimate' scale. This might sound like some alarmist conspiracy theory, but then again there were certainly enough people sounding a warning against usury and accurately predicting its consequences to suggest that those ultimately responsible for the new fmancial developments of the 17th and 18th centuries were nQt unaware of the implications of what they were doing and may even have welcomed them.

Again, if ethical principles are essentially abstract and imperishable, how can something immoral be re-negotiated by human beings? Can we decide that circles will henceforth be square, or that two plus twc will equal five by the end of the fmancial year? But, of course, if good and bad, right and 'yrong, are only what thinking makes them, then to quote Nietzsche, "Nothing is true, everything is permitted", included all manner of injustices and selfish behaviour – as long as no-one complains too loudly, or as long as you can get away with it. A very convenient philosophy for usurers.

Although our main interest this seminar is usury, I think it is significant and worth mentioning that the change from Right to Wrong View has also resulted in problems in the psychological sphere. It has been argued that the modern individual has a different experience of himself from his ancestors, who knew that however uncertain and uncornfortable the vagaries of this world, the true world of eternity was a solid reality beyond appearances, a source of meaning and value in life.

Since men have made themselves the only measure of the universe people have experienced an increasing alienation and isolation from their world an from others in it. When individuals have to decide for themselves the parameters of their existence metaphysically and ethically, the ego finds itself thrust onto centre stage and suddenly strangely unsure of its lines. No wonder most people would prefer not to think about it; its not surprising that when it comes to education cuts the Philosophy Departments are the first to feel the bite of pragmatic government policy. Most of us just do not really want that kind of stress, an then we are all victims of the Hollywood Syndrome, we are all the stars of our own docu-drama, in my case its 'The Life of Ibrahim', loosely based on the facts and also featuring in supporting walk on parts and in descending order of importance, my family, my friends, my acquaintances, and only then everyone else in the world I'm not going to meet or ever be concerned with to any great extent, bit players on my stage.

When morality shrinks down to self interest – enlightened or otherwise -and psychology throws up increasingly alienated and confused mentalities, social disorders become mevitable, and America is probably the best example of the way things are going. Things are going west, and this is

because we have for centuries been rejecting the Right View of reality and embracing the Wrong View at the behest of t hose who have most to gain.

And here I might just for a moment abandon the stance of resolute objectivity which I have been careful to maintain, and say that in my view, in the light of what I have mentioned of the failure of contingent morality to provide a workable basis for society, the Wrong View is certainly wrong; even tho ugh itis qulte difficult at times to make moral judgements, traditionally men have turned to God for guidance, and Kant's controversial claim was that pure reason could confirm the ethical validity of God's decree in conceiving the categorical imperative, the moral law.

So to return to usury – my objection is not simply that usury is wrong because it doesn't work; because it results in practical difficulties, it needs to be controlled so it doesn't get out of hand and start producing all kinds of problems – which is the Catholic Church's current view of the matter, according to a recent Vatican publication on the problem of the Third World debt crisis.

No, it's sim p ly the case that usury is objectively, absolutely and categorically immoral. Of course, unethical activities are the cause of undesirable effects, but this is not why they are unethical. When our society moved the goalposts, changed not only the rules but the whole basis of ethics by allowing usury m, then having accepted one form of immorality it was left with no solid defence against the breakdown of the whole moral order. We are reaping the results of this process today.

To fmish I would like to give two examples of modern pragmatic thinking which I think show clearly that the answer to our ihitial question "What kind of society is it that not only permits but condones and actively encourages usury?", is that it is one that has somehow floated free from the moral 'gold standard', which has renounced Kant's categorical imperative, the p ure impulse to do good for its own sake regardless of technical or prudential benefit and which is itseff based on a knowledge and understanding of the necessary realities of the unseen, intelligible world and a reverence for its laws. A reverence which, Kant says, is the result of fear and inclination in equal proportion.

The first example is of one of the fundamental and inescapable problems for the pragmatist.

The other morntng my children incurred my displeasure by pulling some large sprigs off a rosemary bush in a public planting outside a supermarket and attempting to sell them to passers-by at 10 p a sprig. "But there's plenty of it", they objected when I remonstrated with them. "That's not the p oint', I said "What if everyone pulled bits off the bushes, then they would beaterrible mess". "But they don't", was the inevitable reply, "and anyway if they did, it wouldn't make much difference if we did too, would it?"

This exemplifies in a nutshell what is known to logicians as the problem of collective action and to economists as the problem of public good. In the example you can see how the decision to pick the rosemary is rational, whether others do or not, and there would be little point in not doing so if other people were. If this is rational though – and it's held to be so – then everyone ought to do it if they wanted to although paradoxically no-one wants a ragged and vandalised public environment. The problem then is basically that rationally consistent self-serving behaviour is self-defeating, "the apparently rational course of action leaves people worse off than they need to be", to quote an article on the subject which appeared in the TIMES written by three Professors of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at UEA, which concluded that there was no rational solution to the problem even though it is frequently solved in everyday life. People dog ive to charity for example. In this case it would always be rational not todo so, since if other people are g iving, your 50p isn't going to make much difference, and neither would it if no-one was giving. The paradoxical result of this reasoning is. that there would be no charity at all if everyone took this position, although no-one would want that.

In brief, if other people are doing it, I may as well not, so then no-one does it which is a result no-one wants, we'd all prefer that everyone does their share. And, of course, no-one wants to do it by themselves.

This is the rationalism implicit in today's morality – it's empirical and pragmatic, collective action based on interest, rational, pragmatic self-interest.

The funny thing is that many people do want to take on public duties, even if the majority selfishly decline. Many people do refrain from picking the flowers or littering the streets – but why?

Plato's view, which he took from Socrates and which he held to throughout his life, was that injustice harms the wrongdoer, an immoral act has inevitably negative consequences for the person who commits it. All of us who recognise the truth of this in our deepest reflections, have accepted the Right View of idealistic realism as against pragmatic rationalism. This connects to our theme of usury as we have seen by virtue of the fact that usury sprouts in the fertile s6il of pragmatism, that usury is now revealed as the fruit of the decay of idealism.

Usury is often defended by the claim that no-one would want or have any reason to lend money, which is a necessary p art of social and business life, if there was no interest on the loan: that altruism and philanthropy – as moral qualities – are not sufficient motivation. I say this is a sceptical view of human nature – it certainly seeins justified today, the dominant pragmatic rationalism as exemplified in the problem of collective action, cannot construe a functioning and complex economy without self-interest as a necessary' condition, a 'sine qua non'.

This also means that the solution to the problem of usury is not and cannot be pragmatic, the solution lies in the recovery of morality. You see, the setting aside of usury would be a p ublic good; unfortunately, left to himself, modern man cannot help but fall into the pragmatic trap.

The urgent question is then, why do and what can make people, co-operate collectively in t he public good against their own self- interest? One solution has traditionally been a strong central authority controlling people's individual liberties to the necessary extent since many people are unable to freely restrain themselves – which is the only true and noble freedom – not anarchy or libertarianism, but the freedom to commit oneself to the conditions of being human.

Thomas Hobbes, an early English empirical philosopher, was stumped for an answer. 'A' power over us all" was needed he decided.

And with that intriguing thought I will go on to my last example, which I think shows how confused the present moral climate is.

It is taken from an article which appeared in The Guardian a short time ago under the title "A certain idea that the rest of the world may be wrong" – a confusing enough heading in itself, equating as it does the idea of certainty with that of the possibility implicit in the verb 'may' – we can be certain that others are wrong, or we can suspect that they may be – but surely we can't be certain that they may be!

Of course the heading is a typical Guardian play on words, so perhaps it is intended to echo the self-declared uncertainty of the rest of the piece.

Beginning with a reminder that the original zealots were the fundamentalist Jewish sectarians who killed themselves and their families rather than surrender to the Romans at Masada, the author, Geoffrey Taylor, goes on to ask "where does conviction end and zealotry begin?" On what basis do we decide the right and wrong of people's o p inions and beliefs – when does passionate conviction in the rightness of our own views entitle us to oppose or suppress the wrong ones of other people? For this Taylor has no answer because, crucially, for him there can be no certainty in belief of any kind. He rejects indifferentism – which holds all value systems equally authentic, and nihilism, in which all are equally suspect, but can only suggest – in place of conviction – that we "distrust any assertion which expresses a certitude, and experiment for fruitfulness among those which do not" – practically a text book definition of pragmatism and typical I would say of contemporary ethics. And why is certainty to be mistrusted? Because "if certainty is unobtainable in science, which no-one now seriously doubts, why should we expect to find it in disciplines not open to measurement?"

My point is that ethics is beyond the reach of telescope or microscope, beyond any scope of measurement or calculation, beyond the grasp of logic or instrumental reason even – and it may be that we can be better guided by our hearts than our heads. Certainly tradition has recognised the heart as the true seat of the intellect.

In conclusion perhaps I can restate my argument. The widespread practice of usury, defined as immoral economic transactions, is the result of the abandonment of idealism in favour of empirical, rational pragmatism. Certainly the development of the two has gone hand in hand.

There were three main causes and have since been three widespread effects of this shift from idealism to pragmatism; firstly, individualism and psychological alienation – the Hollywood Syndrome; secondly, soclo-economic injustice, of which usury is the main symptom and political instrument; and thirdly, the loss of belief in intangible realities, the spiritual or "unseen" world.

These three problems are part and parcel of a single issue. As regards usury then the remedy is not available to us unless we are prepared first to cure ourselves, we must not think that we can solve today's problems individually and out of context – at the heart of all the issues is the need for understanding, for good character and for correct ethical behaviour.

Well, thank you for your attention – I hope I haven't laboured too many a simple point or avoided too many problematical ones. My hope is that I have brought into some focus at least the ethical dimensions of the problems of usury and our society and hinted at the possible direction of a solution.

Usury: The Root Cause of The Injustices of Our Times (PAID, Norwich, UK, 1987) Usury and its Effect on the Environment: a local view

17 May, 2007 23:07